Who has a 3d printer?

I went with the BLTouch for bed leveling. I love it.

Also, Google for "swiss clips" to get rid of the binder clips.  When you print big stuff you'll end up hitting them.

I did finally print some car parts. This is a 10" Datsun emblem for the Dirtson Lemons car. It still needs some clean up, I had to print it with a lot of support to keep things from sagging and falling over.

And speaking of falling over. The first attempt failed. As did the second. I had to add some 45 degree supports to keep it standing up for the entire 20 hours of printing. Naturally they always fall over in the middle of the night. Then you wake up to this...

So, I mentioned a while ago that we got a Markforged Onyx for work. It was such a success that we now have three of them running 24/7 making parts and they'll have paid for themselves very quickly. They're not a hobbyist machine - expensive to buy and they use a proprietary material that is really strong but not cheap. But for actual production, the print quality is the best I've seen and they're rock solid. I think we've only had two failures. The first was when someone swapped the beds between two of them after cleaning and the level was off. The other was a worn nozzle after 850 hours of print time - it was scheduled to be replaced at 1000 hours.

We're still learning how to best design parts for these and getting into the mindset that parts can be modified easily, but so far it's been a huge success.

That pile of trash that used to be the Solidoodle is still sitting on my workbench. Since I can have parts printed by the good printers, I am not motivated to get it up and running...

Straight off the bed. These things are stronger than Delrin.

Interesting, sounds like the filament might be nylon with up to 40% fiber reinforcement from various heavy duty composite fibers.

The nylon is easy enough to print, but I don't think I've seen nylon filament with kevlar or carbon fiber impregnated within.

Keith Tanner said:

We're still learning how to best design parts for these and getting into the mindset that parts can be modified easily, but so far it's been a huge success.

The design is very important to a successful print. That was the problem I was having with the emblem. It's symmetrical and really needed to be printed laying down and in two halves that could be attached after printing. That would have solved the print failure and cleanup after printing. Yes there would be an assembly step, but it would have been much shorter than support removal. I didn't do the design, and the guy that did was really excited about it and his contribution, so I didn't want to completely change it. In a production environment, that's a whole different story.  

has anybody tried to 3D print masks for frontline workers? I would like to help but I don't have a file, if anybody does let me know.

Toyman01 said:

Keith Tanner said:

We're still learning how to best design parts for these and getting into the mindset that parts can be modified easily, but so far it's been a huge success.

The design is very important to a successful print. That was the problem I was having with the emblem. It's symmetrical and really needed to be printed laying down and in two halves that could be attached after printing. That would have solved the print failure and cleanup after printing. Yes there would be an assembly step, but it would have been much shorter than support removal. I didn't do the design, and the guy that did was really excited about it and his contribution, so I didn't want to completely change it. In a production environment, that's a whole different story.  

We've done a fair bit of work to get the best surface finish, and of course orientation has a big effect. But it's also a different way of designing for manufacturing when compared to billet parts. With billet, it costs money and time to remove material. Additive manufacturing is just the opposite. We've got an upcoming product that is a rework of an existing one, and it ended up looking quite different because we only added what was needed instead of only taking away the minimum. We're going to revisit a bunch of little brackets, and of course we won't be constrained by how sheetmetal cuts and folds in that case. I'm looking forward to some weird looking organic things :)

There's a variant on our printer that will actually embed continuous carbon fiber in the nylon. Very strong as long as you take the limitations into account, but also quite a bit more expensive.

Started printing parts for a Lowrider2 CNC routing solution.  It is hoped to be configured to manage full sheets of material so I can build cabinets for the shop among other things.  We'll see.

Also working on expanding a backup printer to print some larger items and allow the conversion of the original to run a laser engraving solution and possibly a small drag knife.  Though it may get out back together and those functions moved to their own machines as the shop gets built out.

For now, it's just churning out parts:

trigun7469 said:

has anybody tried to 3D print masks for frontline workers? I would like to help but I don't have a file, if anybody does let me know.

I tried.  The resident I was talking to showed everything to his hospital's admin and they told him they didn't want it.

The statement they gave out sounded like liability reasons 

Been messing with Ender3 a bit more.  Was able to find this Ironing feature in Cura thanks to this video.  

It works pretty well with PLA, allows you to get a better surface finish on the top layer (or all layers) with not much more added time.  Here's a part example with top layer only ironing:

I have a basic Makergear with two print heads that we use for rapid prototyping at work. Its pretty wild what they can do with the right settings or material. Even when a part is too large you can just do a little puzzle piece split line in Solidworks, print in two chunks, and then slip them together.

Zissou said:

I have a basic Makergear with two print heads that we use for rapid prototyping at work. Its pretty wild what they can do with the right settings or material. Even when a part is too large you can just do a little puzzle piece split line in Solidworks, print in two chunks, and then slip them together.

Very cool, never thought about that feature in Solidworks! Do you typically glue the part together afterwards, or if you're only using it for mock-up is the slip-fit good enough?

In reply to engiekev :

Typically the parts snap together real tight since that split line in solidworks is infinitely thin, so the parts should fit super tight. But with the printing errors the two pieces normally squeak and pop into place with a little force. You could glue, or I've even thought about trying to melt the seam together, but I haven't needed to yet.

I also make the radii of my puzzle piece shapes R.06 or R.12, something close to a standard drill size in case the fit is too tight, then I can use a common tool around the shop to open up the shape a little.

Has anyone experimented with a smaller nozzles, like 0.2mm?

I'm trying to improve resolution in the horizontal plane and that appears to be the only way to do so, other than ironing.

Bump!

I've been doing a lot of reading and comparing, read a bunch of articles and watched a lot of YouTube videos.

I think I've decided I want a Creality CR-10 V3, seems to be the best bang/buck for a larger printer.  Artillery Sidewinder X1 is high on the list too.

This will be my first 3D printer, but I made a living as a CAD monkey and CNC operator for a few years. I'm looking for maybe a little better than entry level printer.

Any thoughts, better recommendation than the CR-10? It's cheaper to buy the V3 than it is to buy the V2 and upgrade it to a V3, so I figured I'd just start with the V3.

I need some caps for Buzzboy's old OZ Vegas. Anyone capable of that? There are a few different files I've found online

chandler said:

I need some caps for Buzzboy's old OZ Vegas. Anyone capable of that? There are a few different files I've found online

RacetruckRon might be willing to help, he can print with resin and it will look great!  Otherwise if you have already have the files, I could print some with PLA but it definitely won't look as nice as Ron's resin prints, or have as good of durability to UV I think.  Anyone else who has a PLA printer can give it a go too.  

Lee said:

Bump!

 

I've been doing a lot of reading and comparing, read a bunch of articles and watched a lot of YouTube videos.

I think I've decided I want a Creality CR-10 V3, seems to be the best bang/buck for a larger printer.  Artillery Sidewinder X1 is high on the list too.

This will be my first 3D printer, but I made a living as a CAD monkey and CNC operator for a few years. I'm looking for maybe a little better than entry level printer.

Any thoughts, better recommendation than the CR-10? It's cheaper to buy the V3 than it is to buy the V2 and upgrade it to a V3, so I figured I'd just start with the V3.

 I'm not very familiar with the CR-10 versions, but another friend who 3D prints lots of auto parts on Ender3 upgraded to the Cr-10 recently and loves it.  Seems like the best bang for the buck for large printers as you said.  Ive been very very happy with my Ender3.

https://www.kuttzy.com/shop

Lee said:

Bump!

 

I've been doing a lot of reading and comparing, read a bunch of articles and watched a lot of YouTube videos.

I think I've decided I want a Creality CR-10 V3, seems to be the best bang/buck for a larger printer.  Artillery Sidewinder X1 is high on the list too.

This will be my first 3D printer, but I made a living as a CAD monkey and CNC operator for a few years. I'm looking for maybe a little better than entry level printer.

Any thoughts, better recommendation than the CR-10? It's cheaper to buy the V3 than it is to buy the V2 and upgrade it to a V3, so I figured I'd just start with the V3.

If you're mainly going to be printing large things, go for it.  If you're going to be printing small-medium things then you're moving a lot of mass around to print and it can affect the print speed and such

Jewels got me a CR-10 V3 for my birthday!

I look forward to a whole new way to waste time and money!

is there any problem with "wet" filament  , 

It gets wet around here from the morning dew ,  will filament suck up the moisture ?

Is a zip lock bag good enough for storage  ?

Different filaments absorb moisture at different rates. I keep mine in a ziplock bag, with desiccant in the bag. 
i've used PLA that is 4 years old with no issues, and PETG that's a year old, no issues. 
i have some 6-year old filament I should try. 

Odd question lads:

I got a 3D printer board and screen- a bigtreetech SKR Pro v1.2- but I have no idea where to start. Heck, I don't even know if the board works! How do I test this? What 3D printer can I hash together using it as a good first time unit?

So I did a plier rack, did that and a holder for my Ryobi string trimmer holder. 

Today I took the rack out to the garage to try it out

Before

And after

Now you'll notice some husky pliers off to the side...wouldnt fit standing up, too tall for the drawer. 

So, as we speak, and I'll try to photo it later, Im printing a holder that is angled at 45*, that should allow me to place the 'taller' pliers in there and free up even more space, which Im all about.

I just bought my 4th printer, my first independent dual extruder. Printing a few upgrades, canwait to print dual-material stuff.