Oh and I didn't put the glass bed on yet because I wasn't entirely sure what to change to prevent the head running straight into the bed due to the extra thickness.
What you'll want to do is home the printer, and then move your printhead up about 10ish mm before turning off your printer.
Then, you can take off the old bed and put on the new glass bed. Lower your bed a good couple of cranks at each corner (if it's a manual leveling adjustment) because at the end of this we'll need to raise it a bit.
Then, you'll need to adjust your Z-stop up; for me (Ender 3), I had to loosen (but not remove!) two screws (that go into the vertical rails) to adjust the Z-stop. Move it up a little bit, and then hold it in-place while you manually lower your printhead. It should click (but not fully depress) your Z-stop sensor about a mm before it hits your new glass surface. Once you've got it positioned properly, tighten the screws back up, then raise your printhead off the Z-stop sensor.
Then, lower it again manually and check it again to make sure it clicks well before the printhead hits glass.
Then turn on your printer and home your printhead; start the preheat cycle for your preferred filament. Once it warms up, you can manually level it again and be off to the races!
Of course it's fine and just the other way round. I got there in end my brain was just being a bit slow.
And I was thinking there's a setting to adjust but it makes much more sense that I need to physically more the z-sensor. Had a moment just now where I worried because on the Ender 5 the switch is on a horizontal rail and can't be moved but on a closer look there's a screw adjuster on the bed that can be moved to hit the switch sooner.
And there I was working out how to print a bracket to move the Z-switch. What do they say about problems when your only tool is a hammer?! :biggrin:
Starting to see some detail. The floor tiles are nearly finished and you can now see the outlines of the future walls. Once this is done I'll just have to do it twice more for a usable set
Did my first home print that was something I made in Fusion360 rather than a downloaded file or modified downloaded file.
My running watch, key and mp3 player used to live on the desk that the printer now inhabits. Now I could just put them in a drawer but a) having them out reminds me to go run dammit and ii) I have a 3D printer now - why wouldn't I use it!?
The first couple layers went a bit awry but I figured I'd let it carry on as that'd be the back of the piece:
Didn't come out too bad.
It works, but got the first hook a bit too close to the desk, forgot about the dangle of the straps. Also the hooks could do with being a bit bigger, they work but wouldn't take much of a knock for things to fall on the floor. I say hooks but Fusion was driving me a bit mad getting used to it so they are just a reverse tapered rectangle. I also forgot to make something for the watch's usb key.
At that point it was bedtime but my brain whirred along for a bit. So this morning instead of rejigging and rerunning a 2 hour print I made a couple plates to glue onto the hooks and a little pocket for the usb, the pocket didn't fit in the place I planned but by luck fit nicely on the underhang. And I only glued myself to it once.
It doesn't grip the desk very strongly but shrinking it down risks it being too tight and splaying when put on the desk. So instead a couple bits of double sided tape and job's a good un.
I know right?! This was just going to be a prototype to reprint once I get onto my proper roll of filament (I got black as it goes with everything) but I think it works quite well in white with the lightness of the desk. Prototype promoted to main use.
For a v2, you could use the fact that 45 degree overhangs are basically rock-solid on just about anything, and print your hooks as angled rectangles that don’t need the extra printed part glued on.
(Eventually, you’ll figure out, given your printer and fans, etc., exactly how much of an overhang you can reliably print. There are overhang tests on thingiverse you can download to test.)
For the grip on the desk, you could keep the edge part the same (or shrink it very, very slightly) and then have the gripping arms slope together a degree or two.
Ed: and apologies if I’m teaching Grandma to suck eggs here.
Getting better at having the right settings for finer detail stuff. Not quite perfect, the base has some wonky areas and it got a bit of stringing between the smaller turret roof, chimney and main roof, but nothing ruinous and some of the mistakes actually add an aged, worn feel so I'm overall pretty happy. Particularly happy because it took a few days to print in 3 different pieces and I HATE sinking that much time in just for it to go wrong. I say this without actually having rolled any dice through it it yet though, but at least it makes for a good model.
For a v2, you could use the fact that 45 degree overhangs are basically rock-solid on just about anything, and print your hooks as angled rectangles that don’t need the extra printed part glued on.
(Eventually, you’ll figure out, given your printer and fans, etc., exactly how much of an overhang you can reliably print. There are overhang tests on thingiverse you can download to test.)
For the grip on the desk, you could keep the edge part the same (or shrink it very, very slightly) and then have the gripping arms slope together a degree or two.
Ed: and apologies if I’m teaching Grandma to suck eggs here.
Good advice there, in fairness the current tapers on the hooks would have worked fine if I'd just printed them a bit deeper (Longer? More extrudicated?). And I could have rejigged that but a ten minute print and glue vs a repeat of a two hour print tempted me too easily. It's a functional piece and you can't see the gluing from the front.
And that's a good thought on the grip front, I thought about shrinking a bit but then worried if I went too small that the desk would splay the arms too much and I'd only be gripping on two points (and the spring of the piece would be working to push it off the end of the desk) rather than the whole arm. But an inward taper would work and give more leeway. As it is the double side tape has done the trick nicely but it's something to keep in the memory banks for the next job.
I'm used (used is generous, slightly less unused is better) to machining metal on milling machines and lathes where if you make it x dimension you get x, I've used the work printers a little but still learning how much expansion/contraction you get from nominal size in the software vs final size on the part. And that's even assuming the printer is doing what I say given I haven't calibrated off my xyz ref cube yet.
It's all good though, I'm learning and more importantly I'm having fun.
Agreed on that, plastic does weird things when you make large flat objects that are attached to other things. Id been trying to print a box with relatively thin sides in PETG, and despite petg not being terribly warp prone, when it came off the bed it was anything but straight. Printed it in PLA and its almost perfect.
Seems like my filament sensor has crapped out - I've probably lost a day to it triggering in error and pausing the print - I've bypassed it for now but once the print is done someone is getting cracked open to see what the problem is.
Well my last two prints failed, each in different ways (on which I'll ask "What do?" tomorrow when I have time to grab a couple photos and put a proper post up) but that's my taster reel of filament (200g) basically done (I think there's 3 turns of the reel left plus whatever's in the bowden tube).
And I printed more than I was expecting and with only a couple real failures A few imperfections on a few of the prints and a couple that I restarted becfore the first layer was even done as it was obviously going wrong but otherwise nearly everything printed ok.
Very pleased so far. Alas I have to spend the day at the office tomorrow but I'm going to use part of that to go pick the work printer guys' brains. And then tomorrow evening or Tuesday get my real reel of filament loaded up and see what occurs.
Hopefully the new stuff doesn't snag on the reel as much as the test one did. Mostly cos the clatter as it pulled through kept making me jump and crash my ship in Space Engineers.
The first failure was the large flat base piece and it just warped up at the ends as the print proceeded, it didn't outright fail but the little loops for string endedup subsumed into the surface. Whether the problem was a draft coooling it awkwardly or just not enough bed adhesion I don't know.
The second was the rocket body itself which I printed standing on its tail. It got most of the way through and the the last ~cm of the nosecone I came back to a ball of spaghetti wrapped around the extruder. I guess just bad adhesion from one layer to the next. Whether that's a setting that needs tweaking or just one of those unlucky things I don't know yet. I've not had it happen on any other prints so far but I've not exactly done masses.
A couple other prints I found the first couple layers weren't quite sticking right, possibly the bed needs to come up a tiny as it was almost like it was trying to print ever so slightly in mid air. I have erred on the side of more gap than less out of fear of scrathing the bed. Which was kinda silly as I was still using the stock bed which I planned to replace with the glass one anyway so who cares if it gets scratched whilst I dial it in?
I did find printing with a raft helped a lot, as if a bit of that didn't lay properly it tends to get stuck down by the next pass. Speaking to the guy at work he says he prints pretty much everything with a raft as the extra filament used is a small price to pay for consistency.
Anyway I started a large print this morning that immediately started dragging around the first layer of raft so decided to bite the bullet and look at getting the glass bed installed. Took a couple tries to get the z-stop in the right place. And on my third pass of levelling I put a scratch in the coating :rotate: :redface:
Luckily at least it's over to the edge of the build plate rather than central. Annoying though. Just trying a quick xyz cal cube print and then I'll retry my intended print.
If you’re printing that ship on its tail, an issue with the nose cone part is that because it’s so small, the plastic won’t have time to cool before you come in for your next pass. So it’ll end up with molten plastic on top of mostly-molten plastic, which will sag and deform.
You might need to add some pauses at those layers in your slicer.
(Had a similar issue with some objective flight stands for X-Wing, which have 3 tall, thin rods on a base. As long as all three were being printed, things were fine. But, you can see where the shorter rods ended and the printer just kept adding layers to the tallest, because it goes from nice and round and smooth to lumpy and kinda deformed.
Trick for those is to just print two at a time, and the extra travel time + extra rod is enough to give things sufficient cooling.)
Well, after a whole bunch of design work, failed prototypes, and two modeling programs, I have finally achieved my 3D-printing dreams:
I have designed and printed ... a box.
Now, now, hold your applause, because it's not just any old box.
No, this is a Squadron Box, for Star Wars: Armada. And, frankly, I think it looks pretty sweet:
Because I'm me, it wasn't enough that I just make a box for some stuff - it had to be worthy to sit in with the other Armada stuff I'd been printing. I started off this process by printing out some squadron organizers from Thingiverse that I found when printing out some really nice play aids. See, I love Armada, but keeping track of all the stuff that's going on for each of your ships can be really, really fiddly. That's where something like this:
... comes in. Massive improvement in playability and organization. Anyway, while looking those things up, I came across these:
They hold 12 of the squadron miniatures each, and are designed to fit perfectly into the main Armada box - 4 of them two male and two female, so they link together and don't shift around a whole bunch and don't get your squadrons all messed up. Well, I've got a small problem with that, and it's that I have all of my bigger ships in my Armada main box, so I can't keep the squadrons in there. At first, I wanted to make some foamcore boxes to hold them in, and I figured I could do two organizers in a single foamcore box. My prototype of that worked out okay, but the big problem I have with standalone foamcore stuff (that isn't an insert in an actual box) is that it just feels really, really flimsy - and a box large enough to hold two organizers (~30cm x ~16cm x ~9cm) was really big and so felt especially flimsy.
So I thought, well, I've got a 3D printer, so what if, instead of foamcore and cardstock and glue, I just made one out of plastic? Making one that would hold two squadron organizers was going to be too big for my build plate, so I'd need to divide it up into smaller pieces - to TinkerCAD! And queue design #1! (Which is actually v2, because v1 was foamcore.)
So, I figured teeth to join both halves together, and then I'd need to come up with a way to hold the lid on (you can see the filleted magnet holders), but I really wasn't feeling the design and the post-processing work it would entail. Plus, with a joint down the middle, I figured I'd just be rehashing my flimsiness problem.
That pretty quickly moved on to design iteration #3, helped along when I found out that TinkerCAD has a built-in "box generator":
I'd decided that I wanted the boxes to be easily stackable, which meant that they couldn't just slide off each other. Accordingly, I designed feet for the bottom of the box which got inverted into holes in the top for them to rest in, holding the boxes in-place. This was also where I decided I wanted the box to open from the front, rather than the top, and that plain fronts were not what I wanted to do - I wanted to be able to indicate what was in the box by adorning the front of the box somehow. My original plan was to have a sort of lozenge that you could glue in-place. This could give you some depth on the front for visual interest and allow a huge range of designs - with a flat bottom, you can print out pretty much anything as a 25mm diameter circular shape.
I ran into printing problems with the "lozenge well" pretty quickly, which drove a couple of my posts earlier in this thread asking about bridging and supports. In the end, the results were extremely not pretty:
Between bridge printing just not looking good and the support material being a gigantic pain to remove, this was an avenue quickly explored and abandoned. Some things, however, worked really well, like the overall shape of the box, the magnets I'd added to keep the lid attached, and the feet. I realized I needed to add some grippers inside the box, however, or the organizer would squish the squadrons against the ceiling if you turned it over. I have kids and gamer friends, so I wanted something a little less likely to damage its contents.
The next version saw a thicker lid (because the magnet holes were deep enough that there was only a layer or two of plastic between them and the front of the box) and the addition of a nail-slot on the top of the lid to aid in opening it. The grabbers got moved around (which will happen a lot during this whole process) so that I could get the right amount of grippiness without breaking them with use or having things flop around.
After that - TinkerCAD v6 - things got fancy because I'd largely worked out the majority of the "bugs" in the design and I wanted to polish it up a bit.
Now it was time to add some chamfers to the box's edges, to make it look more Star Wars sci-fi (?), and I started working with an idea for a press-fit design for the decoration. (I went a little crazy there, too - you can see not only the big central decoration's slot, but some thoughts around having smaller ones around it in case you wanted to, e.g., indicate that this box had X-Wings and Y-Wings in it, and that one had TIE Defenders and Bombers, or whatever. I never actually printed the version with the individual squadron press-fit designs.) An "innovation" here was switching from a full-circle hole for the lid decoration to a notched circle, to more easily line up the decorations I was going to also make. (Because, as per above, I couldn't just make a box, it had to be a REALLY COOL BOX with MODULAR SHIT.)
I was able to design first passes for the Rebel and Imperial lid decoration, to fit the press-fit hole:
The first print of those failed to work, though, because in my notes I wrote "25mm" as the size of the front decoration, which was the correct radius for the circular hole. However, when I transferred my notes, I instead wrote a 25mm diameter, which obviously doesn't work.
At this point, I was really hitting up against the limits of what TinkerCAD could handle. Adjusting the chamfers, for instance, was an extremely manual process - I'd need to individually resize each of the 4-triangle-shaped "holes" each that were grouped with the lid and body for each dimension of the chamfer (e.g., there were 4 laid out horizontally to chamfer the top edge of the lid, and another 4 laid out vertically to chamfer the corners of the lid; then repeat again for the box body). I decided that this just wasn't going to work to get across the finish line, so I changed game engines 3D CAD programs, and went with Fusion 360.
The Fusion 360 UX is ... not great, especially when it comes to, like, camera controls and stuff. Luckily, changing the camera controls isn't too bad, but it's still got the zoom functionality backwards.
Anyway, Fusion 360 and PARAMETRIC DESIGN or, as I like to call it, "All the variables, everywhere." With parametric design, you can just set a variable for, e.g., "Wall Thickness," and change it in a single place and have your entire design reflect the new value. It's so wonderfully simple and easy to use except for when it's not (and, for some reason, you can't reorder your parameters in the program, so when you determine you need another variable for something, it'll never be laid out next to the variables for the things you knew about at the start).
So after 6 major versions in TinkerCAD, I dove into Fusion 360 and went through another ... uh, 20 versions. That's not quite as bad as it sounds, as F360 will do helpful things like make a new vX each time you save, or turn on or off the visibility of an item, but it was still an awful lot of tweaking, printing prototypes, retweaking, redesigning, etc., to get the boxes into their final form.
I also switched, at some point, between the "Most of a circle" press-fit solution I started using in TinkerCAD to an 8-point-with-one-missing-for-alignment-ease system. You can see the evolution of the lid decoration in the below prototypes:
Top-bottom, left-to-right:
Most-of a circle design; accidental 25mm diameter Rebel decoration with accidentally too-large notch
Imperial most-of-a-circle decoration with too-small press-fit part (needed to be taller to grab); Rebel full-size most-of-a-circle decoration, but the notch is still too big; final Imperial 8-point, missing-one version (works!)
8-point, missing-one prototype lid and outer ring (to which the Rebel or Imp sigil is added); 8-point, missing-one lid and Rebel prototype
The last ones were me working to determine how tolerances on these holes needed to work to get a press-fit that would hold, but be removable, and wouldn't need a soft mallet to install.
In the end, I squashed all the bugs, got my design decisions working (or adjusted), and hit print on the whole damn thing and went to bed (the box takes ~21 hours to print, the longest-running thing I've ever printed).
The print failed because of bad bed adhesion and massive curl-up, so I cancelled it the next morning:
... then, because my printer is in my office and makes noise, I needed to wait a whole week to try again. This time, I added a brim and dropped the printing temperature, and:
... it worked. And the squadron organizer fits in perfectly - though I've tweaked the gripper position to give just a little more play for the next copy I end up printing.
In the end, I learned a whole helluva lot about parametric design, CAD, and getting what you want out of your printer. I at first lamented the inability of Fusion 360 to properly move shit around, and now I sing the praises of joins. I've since used what I learned here to tweak some fishtank stuff for my wife and taught a little bit of the process to my Cub Scouts (they're designing bookmarks in TinkerCAD that I'm going to print for them, but they don't know that yet).
Thanks for following along!
A couple of other "fun" illustrations of the prototyping and finishing process:
The final version, with the Imperial logo gently applied (because Rebel was absolutely getting the first real one):
A final prototype of the lid, with the 8-point, minus-one pressfit design (there's a small divot in the lid at the bottom point to make removing the decoration a little easier), and the connection point from the box (without printing the whole box) to make sure they connect nicely:
The previously-mentioned failed first print of the final design, with a prototype of the box's cross-section to make sure the organizer will fit and two prototypes of the magnet holders to make sure they lined up properly:
The back of the lid (magnets not yet emplaced), and a close-up of the magnet holder:
Anyway, for my next trick, a little light arms manufacturing: home-printed Nerf Blaster, here I come!
And then I'll probably make a slightly different version of the Squadron Organizer, to either support storing some defense tokens with it or potentially hold boxed squadrons (using Sir Willibald's storage boxes).
I'll likely also clean these up a bit, maybe add the Republic and Separatist logos to my list of lid decorations (since they were recently released), and put the designs up on Thingiverse for others to play with.
... then, because my printer is in my office and makes noise, I needed to wait a whole week to try again.
Looks like you have an Ender 3/Pro? If you're not uncomfortable with messing around with the electronics I can recommend upgrading to better stepper drivers, they cheaped out and used ye ole A4988 stepper drivers, and they're where that whining noise during movement comes from.
I've honestly kind of forgotten what the original board the Ender 3 ships with looks like, but I think it had its stepper drivers soldered on - there should be four of them, under heatsinks. An upgraded board is pretty cheap (Mine cost 30 bucks or so), plus 20 bucks for four TNC2208 stepper drivers.
They pretty much eliminated all driver noise, so everything I hear when printing now comes from the fans.
... then, because my printer is in my office and makes noise, I needed to wait a whole week to try again.
Looks like you have an Ender 3/Pro? If you're not uncomfortable with messing around with the electronics I can recommend upgrading to better stepper drivers, they cheaped out and used ye ole A4988 stepper drivers, and they're where that whining noise during movement comes from.
I've honestly kind of forgotten what the original board the Ender 3 ships with looks like, but I think it had its stepper drivers soldered on - there should be four of them, under heatsinks. An upgraded board is pretty cheap (Mine cost 30 bucks or so), plus 20 bucks for four TNC2208 stepper drivers.
They pretty much eliminated all driver noise, so everything I hear when printing now comes from the fans.
Yep - the Ender 3 base model. I think the new hotness is this one. I'm seriously considering the silent board being my next purchase for it, because while I occasionally like the way my printer sings to me, it gets to be a bit much at times.
Oh yeah, they made their own board with better stepper drivers.
Switching is mostly a case of getting the wires back in the right sockets/terminals after unplugging everything, but at least in my Ender 3 Pro everything was labeled, so no problems knowing what went where.
I can second switching to silent driver board being a great upgrade. In addition to being so much quieter, if you plan on going to a direct drive extruder, the loud stepper drivers can introduce strange artifacts into your prints. Silent drivers fix a lot of that.
Also, I originally had a bigtreetech skr mini e3 v2, which is a great board, but it died when I touched the printer and shocked it. I cheaped out the second time and just got the creality board. Upgrading to klipper got me the missing features from the better board, and I couldnt be a whole lot happier with the setup.
First attempt at using wood filler to close some gaps in a multi-piece print after gluing together is not going so hot. I *loathe* sanding, the sound makes me literally ill, but clearly I need to do more of it; I had thought paint would cover up most of the excess but nope. Model is looking great though, will post pics when done!
Sanding not going well either, I may have to take a Dremel to it to get it as smooth as I'd like. But not too shabby. Will have to get some padding to glue to the inside, it's not fun on my scalp to wear
So I've just been using the Creality Slicer so far (Ender 5 Pro) but some instructions for prints reckon on printing different infill densities at different levels in the print or other changes that I can't see in my Slicer settings.
Which slicers are you all using? And how difficult is setting up a diferent slicer - just a case of copying over the settings or do you need to set up drivers and whatnot?
So I've just been using the Creality Slicer so far (Ender 5 Pro) but some instructions for prints reckon on printing different infill densities at different levels in the print or other changes that I can't see in my Slicer settings.
Which slicers are you all using? And how difficult is setting up a diferent slicer - just a case of copying over the settings or do you need to set up drivers and whatnot?
I'm using the Prusa Slicer; I've also used the Creality slicer and the Cura slicer. They all have slightly different bells and whistles.
Setting up a new one is trivially easy. For Prusa, you just install it and, during the first run, it'll ask you what printer you have. You select the printer ("Creality => Ender 5") and it basically sets everything up perfectly (build plate size, orientation, etc.). Then you pick your filament, hit "Slice," and you're off to the races. Prusa has 3 modes (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) for how many options you want to see in the slicer's menus.
Prusa (and Cura?) can easily do variations in infill density by using modifiers - by default, you can add cylinders, speheres, and boxes and say, "Within this shape, do 75% infill; do 30% for the rest."
One thing I've had to do is set up profiles for my PLA; the generic PLA profile in Prusa prints way hotter than is necessary for the True [X] line of Hatchbox filaments (Generic PLA prints at 210 / 205; True Blue, Black, etc., have a print range of 180 - 210, so I have it drop the print temp to 195 after the first layer).
ED: Oh! Purge line. The Prusa and Cura slicers (pretty sure on the latter, at least) automatically add a purge line at the start of every print (a double strip up and down the left side of the print bed to make sure that the filament is flowing and get any remnants of the previous print out of the print head). I don't think the Creality one does that by default.
I used Simplify3D until about a year ago. The long awaited update for it appears to be abandoned though. I've since switched to KISSlicer and have been happy with it. The vast majority of my prints are self modeled & functional, I can't say how kiss handles aesthetic prints. It also has a pretty steep learning curve. But there are some tutorials on youtube.
I'm using Prusa slicer, mostly because I have a prusa printer, which means if I use Cura then the "% complete" display doesn't work because Cura doesn't put in whatever magic gcode is needed for that.
The other difference between it and Cura is that Cura seems to be a lot more efficient about generating supports; prusaslicer seems to end up putting little bits of stuff on _top_ of the model at times when it's next to other things that need supporting -- but they still remove okay, it's just ugly-looking until that happens.
Posts
What you'll want to do is home the printer, and then move your printhead up about 10ish mm before turning off your printer.
Then, you can take off the old bed and put on the new glass bed. Lower your bed a good couple of cranks at each corner (if it's a manual leveling adjustment) because at the end of this we'll need to raise it a bit.
Then, you'll need to adjust your Z-stop up; for me (Ender 3), I had to loosen (but not remove!) two screws (that go into the vertical rails) to adjust the Z-stop. Move it up a little bit, and then hold it in-place while you manually lower your printhead. It should click (but not fully depress) your Z-stop sensor about a mm before it hits your new glass surface. Once you've got it positioned properly, tighten the screws back up, then raise your printhead off the Z-stop sensor.
Then, lower it again manually and check it again to make sure it clicks well before the printhead hits glass.
Then turn on your printer and home your printhead; start the preheat cycle for your preferred filament. Once it warms up, you can manually level it again and be off to the races!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
So now I gotta wait for a new one to get shipped to me before I can print anything else.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
And I was thinking there's a setting to adjust but it makes much more sense that I need to physically more the z-sensor. Had a moment just now where I worried because on the Ender 5 the switch is on a horizontal rail and can't be moved but on a closer look there's a screw adjuster on the bed that can be moved to hit the switch sooner.
And there I was working out how to print a bracket to move the Z-switch. What do they say about problems when your only tool is a hammer?! :biggrin:
Starting to see some detail. The floor tiles are nearly finished and you can now see the outlines of the future walls. Once this is done I'll just have to do it twice more for a usable set
My running watch, key and mp3 player used to live on the desk that the printer now inhabits. Now I could just put them in a drawer but a) having them out reminds me to go run dammit and ii) I have a 3D printer now - why wouldn't I use it!?
The first couple layers went a bit awry but I figured I'd let it carry on as that'd be the back of the piece:
Didn't come out too bad.
It works, but got the first hook a bit too close to the desk, forgot about the dangle of the straps. Also the hooks could do with being a bit bigger, they work but wouldn't take much of a knock for things to fall on the floor. I say hooks but Fusion was driving me a bit mad getting used to it so they are just a reverse tapered rectangle. I also forgot to make something for the watch's usb key.
At that point it was bedtime but my brain whirred along for a bit. So this morning instead of rejigging and rerunning a 2 hour print I made a couple plates to glue onto the hooks and a little pocket for the usb, the pocket didn't fit in the place I planned but by luck fit nicely on the underhang. And I only glued myself to it once.
It doesn't grip the desk very strongly but shrinking it down risks it being too tight and splaying when put on the desk. So instead a couple bits of double sided tape and job's a good un.
(Eventually, you’ll figure out, given your printer and fans, etc., exactly how much of an overhang you can reliably print. There are overhang tests on thingiverse you can download to test.)
For the grip on the desk, you could keep the edge part the same (or shrink it very, very slightly) and then have the gripping arms slope together a degree or two.
Ed: and apologies if I’m teaching Grandma to suck eggs here.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Good advice there, in fairness the current tapers on the hooks would have worked fine if I'd just printed them a bit deeper (Longer? More extrudicated?). And I could have rejigged that but a ten minute print and glue vs a repeat of a two hour print tempted me too easily. It's a functional piece and you can't see the gluing from the front.
And that's a good thought on the grip front, I thought about shrinking a bit but then worried if I went too small that the desk would splay the arms too much and I'd only be gripping on two points (and the spring of the piece would be working to push it off the end of the desk) rather than the whole arm. But an inward taper would work and give more leeway. As it is the double side tape has done the trick nicely but it's something to keep in the memory banks for the next job.
I'm used (used is generous, slightly less unused is better) to machining metal on milling machines and lathes where if you make it x dimension you get x, I've used the work printers a little but still learning how much expansion/contraction you get from nominal size in the software vs final size on the part. And that's even assuming the printer is doing what I say given I haven't calibrated off my xyz ref cube yet.
It's all good though, I'm learning and more importantly I'm having fun.
Current progress - 75/96 hours on the clock...
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I need to do the same again and a few doors so the ol' CR10s is gonna be kept busy.
And I printed more than I was expecting and with only a couple real failures
Very pleased so far. Alas I have to spend the day at the office tomorrow but I'm going to use part of that to go pick the work printer guys' brains. And then tomorrow evening or Tuesday get my real reel of filament loaded up and see what occurs.
Hopefully the new stuff doesn't snag on the reel as much as the test one did. Mostly cos the clatter as it pulled through kept making me jump and crash my ship in Space Engineers.
Were you able to figure out your issue?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Both prints were parts of this piece: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4403425
The first failure was the large flat base piece and it just warped up at the ends as the print proceeded, it didn't outright fail but the little loops for string endedup subsumed into the surface. Whether the problem was a draft coooling it awkwardly or just not enough bed adhesion I don't know.
The second was the rocket body itself which I printed standing on its tail. It got most of the way through and the the last ~cm of the nosecone I came back to a ball of spaghetti wrapped around the extruder. I guess just bad adhesion from one layer to the next. Whether that's a setting that needs tweaking or just one of those unlucky things I don't know yet. I've not had it happen on any other prints so far but I've not exactly done masses.
A couple other prints I found the first couple layers weren't quite sticking right, possibly the bed needs to come up a tiny as it was almost like it was trying to print ever so slightly in mid air. I have erred on the side of more gap than less out of fear of scrathing the bed. Which was kinda silly as I was still using the stock bed which I planned to replace with the glass one anyway so who cares if it gets scratched whilst I dial it in?
I did find printing with a raft helped a lot, as if a bit of that didn't lay properly it tends to get stuck down by the next pass. Speaking to the guy at work he says he prints pretty much everything with a raft as the extra filament used is a small price to pay for consistency.
Anyway I started a large print this morning that immediately started dragging around the first layer of raft so decided to bite the bullet and look at getting the glass bed installed. Took a couple tries to get the z-stop in the right place. And on my third pass of levelling I put a scratch in the coating :rotate: :redface:
Luckily at least it's over to the edge of the build plate rather than central. Annoying though. Just trying a quick xyz cal cube print and then I'll retry my intended print.
You might need to add some pauses at those layers in your slicer.
(Had a similar issue with some objective flight stands for X-Wing, which have 3 tall, thin rods on a base. As long as all three were being printed, things were fine. But, you can see where the shorter rods ended and the printer just kept adding layers to the tallest, because it goes from nice and round and smooth to lumpy and kinda deformed.
Trick for those is to just print two at a time, and the extra travel time + extra rod is enough to give things sufficient cooling.)
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I have designed and printed ... a box.
Now, now, hold your applause, because it's not just any old box.
No, this is a Squadron Box, for Star Wars: Armada. And, frankly, I think it looks pretty sweet:
Because I'm me, it wasn't enough that I just make a box for some stuff - it had to be worthy to sit in with the other Armada stuff I'd been printing. I started off this process by printing out some squadron organizers from Thingiverse that I found when printing out some really nice play aids. See, I love Armada, but keeping track of all the stuff that's going on for each of your ships can be really, really fiddly. That's where something like this:
... comes in. Massive improvement in playability and organization. Anyway, while looking those things up, I came across these:
They hold 12 of the squadron miniatures each, and are designed to fit perfectly into the main Armada box - 4 of them two male and two female, so they link together and don't shift around a whole bunch and don't get your squadrons all messed up. Well, I've got a small problem with that, and it's that I have all of my bigger ships in my Armada main box, so I can't keep the squadrons in there. At first, I wanted to make some foamcore boxes to hold them in, and I figured I could do two organizers in a single foamcore box. My prototype of that worked out okay, but the big problem I have with standalone foamcore stuff (that isn't an insert in an actual box) is that it just feels really, really flimsy - and a box large enough to hold two organizers (~30cm x ~16cm x ~9cm) was really big and so felt especially flimsy.
So I thought, well, I've got a 3D printer, so what if, instead of foamcore and cardstock and glue, I just made one out of plastic? Making one that would hold two squadron organizers was going to be too big for my build plate, so I'd need to divide it up into smaller pieces - to TinkerCAD! And queue design #1! (Which is actually v2, because v1 was foamcore.)
So, I figured teeth to join both halves together, and then I'd need to come up with a way to hold the lid on (you can see the filleted magnet holders), but I really wasn't feeling the design and the post-processing work it would entail. Plus, with a joint down the middle, I figured I'd just be rehashing my flimsiness problem.
That pretty quickly moved on to design iteration #3, helped along when I found out that TinkerCAD has a built-in "box generator":
I'd decided that I wanted the boxes to be easily stackable, which meant that they couldn't just slide off each other. Accordingly, I designed feet for the bottom of the box which got inverted into holes in the top for them to rest in, holding the boxes in-place. This was also where I decided I wanted the box to open from the front, rather than the top, and that plain fronts were not what I wanted to do - I wanted to be able to indicate what was in the box by adorning the front of the box somehow. My original plan was to have a sort of lozenge that you could glue in-place. This could give you some depth on the front for visual interest and allow a huge range of designs - with a flat bottom, you can print out pretty much anything as a 25mm diameter circular shape.
I ran into printing problems with the "lozenge well" pretty quickly, which drove a couple of my posts earlier in this thread asking about bridging and supports. In the end, the results were extremely not pretty:
Between bridge printing just not looking good and the support material being a gigantic pain to remove, this was an avenue quickly explored and abandoned. Some things, however, worked really well, like the overall shape of the box, the magnets I'd added to keep the lid attached, and the feet. I realized I needed to add some grippers inside the box, however, or the organizer would squish the squadrons against the ceiling if you turned it over. I have kids and gamer friends, so I wanted something a little less likely to damage its contents.
The next version saw a thicker lid (because the magnet holes were deep enough that there was only a layer or two of plastic between them and the front of the box) and the addition of a nail-slot on the top of the lid to aid in opening it. The grabbers got moved around (which will happen a lot during this whole process) so that I could get the right amount of grippiness without breaking them with use or having things flop around.
After that - TinkerCAD v6 - things got fancy because I'd largely worked out the majority of the "bugs" in the design and I wanted to polish it up a bit.
Now it was time to add some chamfers to the box's edges, to make it look more Star Wars sci-fi (?), and I started working with an idea for a press-fit design for the decoration. (I went a little crazy there, too - you can see not only the big central decoration's slot, but some thoughts around having smaller ones around it in case you wanted to, e.g., indicate that this box had X-Wings and Y-Wings in it, and that one had TIE Defenders and Bombers, or whatever. I never actually printed the version with the individual squadron press-fit designs.) An "innovation" here was switching from a full-circle hole for the lid decoration to a notched circle, to more easily line up the decorations I was going to also make. (Because, as per above, I couldn't just make a box, it had to be a REALLY COOL BOX with MODULAR SHIT.)
I was able to design first passes for the Rebel and Imperial lid decoration, to fit the press-fit hole:
The first print of those failed to work, though, because in my notes I wrote "25mm" as the size of the front decoration, which was the correct radius for the circular hole. However, when I transferred my notes, I instead wrote a 25mm diameter, which obviously doesn't work.
At this point, I was really hitting up against the limits of what TinkerCAD could handle. Adjusting the chamfers, for instance, was an extremely manual process - I'd need to individually resize each of the 4-triangle-shaped "holes" each that were grouped with the lid and body for each dimension of the chamfer (e.g., there were 4 laid out horizontally to chamfer the top edge of the lid, and another 4 laid out vertically to chamfer the corners of the lid; then repeat again for the box body). I decided that this just wasn't going to work to get across the finish line, so I changed game engines 3D CAD programs, and went with Fusion 360.
The Fusion 360 UX is ... not great, especially when it comes to, like, camera controls and stuff. Luckily, changing the camera controls isn't too bad, but it's still got the zoom functionality backwards.
Anyway, Fusion 360 and PARAMETRIC DESIGN or, as I like to call it, "All the variables, everywhere." With parametric design, you can just set a variable for, e.g., "Wall Thickness," and change it in a single place and have your entire design reflect the new value. It's so wonderfully simple and easy to use except for when it's not (and, for some reason, you can't reorder your parameters in the program, so when you determine you need another variable for something, it'll never be laid out next to the variables for the things you knew about at the start).
So after 6 major versions in TinkerCAD, I dove into Fusion 360 and went through another ... uh, 20 versions. That's not quite as bad as it sounds, as F360 will do helpful things like make a new vX each time you save, or turn on or off the visibility of an item, but it was still an awful lot of tweaking, printing prototypes, retweaking, redesigning, etc., to get the boxes into their final form.
I also switched, at some point, between the "Most of a circle" press-fit solution I started using in TinkerCAD to an 8-point-with-one-missing-for-alignment-ease system. You can see the evolution of the lid decoration in the below prototypes:
Top-bottom, left-to-right:
Most-of a circle design; accidental 25mm diameter Rebel decoration with accidentally too-large notch
Imperial most-of-a-circle decoration with too-small press-fit part (needed to be taller to grab); Rebel full-size most-of-a-circle decoration, but the notch is still too big; final Imperial 8-point, missing-one version (works!)
8-point, missing-one prototype lid and outer ring (to which the Rebel or Imp sigil is added); 8-point, missing-one lid and Rebel prototype
The last ones were me working to determine how tolerances on these holes needed to work to get a press-fit that would hold, but be removable, and wouldn't need a soft mallet to install.
In the end, I squashed all the bugs, got my design decisions working (or adjusted), and hit print on the whole damn thing and went to bed (the box takes ~21 hours to print, the longest-running thing I've ever printed).
The print failed because of bad bed adhesion and massive curl-up, so I cancelled it the next morning:
... then, because my printer is in my office and makes noise, I needed to wait a whole week to try again. This time, I added a brim and dropped the printing temperature, and:
... it worked. And the squadron organizer fits in perfectly - though I've tweaked the gripper position to give just a little more play for the next copy I end up printing.
In the end, I learned a whole helluva lot about parametric design, CAD, and getting what you want out of your printer. I at first lamented the inability of Fusion 360 to properly move shit around, and now I sing the praises of joins. I've since used what I learned here to tweak some fishtank stuff for my wife and taught a little bit of the process to my Cub Scouts (they're designing bookmarks in TinkerCAD that I'm going to print for them, but they don't know that yet).
Thanks for following along!
A couple of other "fun" illustrations of the prototyping and finishing process:
The final version, with the Imperial logo gently applied (because Rebel was absolutely getting the first real one):
A final prototype of the lid, with the 8-point, minus-one pressfit design (there's a small divot in the lid at the bottom point to make removing the decoration a little easier), and the connection point from the box (without printing the whole box) to make sure they connect nicely:
The previously-mentioned failed first print of the final design, with a prototype of the box's cross-section to make sure the organizer will fit and two prototypes of the magnet holders to make sure they lined up properly:
The back of the lid (magnets not yet emplaced), and a close-up of the magnet holder:
Anyway, for my next trick, a little light arms manufacturing: home-printed Nerf Blaster, here I come!
And then I'll probably make a slightly different version of the Squadron Organizer, to either support storing some defense tokens with it or potentially hold boxed squadrons (using Sir Willibald's storage boxes).
I'll likely also clean these up a bit, maybe add the Republic and Separatist logos to my list of lid decorations (since they were recently released), and put the designs up on Thingiverse for others to play with.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Looks like you have an Ender 3/Pro? If you're not uncomfortable with messing around with the electronics I can recommend upgrading to better stepper drivers, they cheaped out and used ye ole A4988 stepper drivers, and they're where that whining noise during movement comes from.
I've honestly kind of forgotten what the original board the Ender 3 ships with looks like, but I think it had its stepper drivers soldered on - there should be four of them, under heatsinks. An upgraded board is pretty cheap (Mine cost 30 bucks or so), plus 20 bucks for four TNC2208 stepper drivers.
They pretty much eliminated all driver noise, so everything I hear when printing now comes from the fans.
Aww - thanks! Your journey through the 3D printing first steps was pretty inspirational.
Yep - the Ender 3 base model. I think the new hotness is this one. I'm seriously considering the silent board being my next purchase for it, because while I occasionally like the way my printer sings to me, it gets to be a bit much at times.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Switching is mostly a case of getting the wires back in the right sockets/terminals after unplugging everything, but at least in my Ender 3 Pro everything was labeled, so no problems knowing what went where.
Also, I originally had a bigtreetech skr mini e3 v2, which is a great board, but it died when I touched the printer and shocked it. I cheaped out the second time and just got the creality board. Upgrading to klipper got me the missing features from the better board, and I couldnt be a whole lot happier with the setup.
Because I zapped the first one.
However I have no idea how to use it, and what else I need to do so safely.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Which slicers are you all using? And how difficult is setting up a diferent slicer - just a case of copying over the settings or do you need to set up drivers and whatnot?
Most of them come with pre-defined profiles for the most common printers.
I'm using the Prusa Slicer; I've also used the Creality slicer and the Cura slicer. They all have slightly different bells and whistles.
Setting up a new one is trivially easy. For Prusa, you just install it and, during the first run, it'll ask you what printer you have. You select the printer ("Creality => Ender 5") and it basically sets everything up perfectly (build plate size, orientation, etc.). Then you pick your filament, hit "Slice," and you're off to the races. Prusa has 3 modes (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) for how many options you want to see in the slicer's menus.
Prusa (and Cura?) can easily do variations in infill density by using modifiers - by default, you can add cylinders, speheres, and boxes and say, "Within this shape, do 75% infill; do 30% for the rest."
One thing I've had to do is set up profiles for my PLA; the generic PLA profile in Prusa prints way hotter than is necessary for the True [X] line of Hatchbox filaments (Generic PLA prints at 210 / 205; True Blue, Black, etc., have a print range of 180 - 210, so I have it drop the print temp to 195 after the first layer).
ED: Oh! Purge line. The Prusa and Cura slicers (pretty sure on the latter, at least) automatically add a purge line at the start of every print (a double strip up and down the left side of the print bed to make sure that the filament is flowing and get any remnants of the previous print out of the print head). I don't think the Creality one does that by default.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The other difference between it and Cura is that Cura seems to be a lot more efficient about generating supports; prusaslicer seems to end up putting little bits of stuff on _top_ of the model at times when it's next to other things that need supporting -- but they still remove okay, it's just ugly-looking until that happens.