Show off your 3D printed parts

I really look forward to seeing this done

 

You and me both. Perhaps you'd like to see the failed print from this weekend? Or some of my other 3d prints?

 

So I just got done building my second printer tonight and ordered the odds and ends to make it do what I want it to do with ease. Honestly about another $200 on top of the initial printer cost gets the job done.

So for about $410 total that gets you:

Ender 3 pro printer
Tool steel nozzles
Upgraded Bowden tube
Upgraded bed springs
Glass bed
BLTouch auto bed leveler
And an enclosure.

With those items I can print nearly any material with ease.

For a few extra bucks, I got bed weld to help with adhesion.

-Pyrotaco

 

A bonus with the ender 3 is you can also buy the expander kit and make it have massive build volume

 

I've had great luck with my ROBO r1. I think one of things you want to look for is a self leveling bed (which the ROBO has). I bought it years back so maybe now all printers come with that feature. It was like $500 and has been great. I am one of the people who built a cardboard box around it to keep the heat more level which helps with the prints. But I did design a legit wood/plexiglass box in CAD that I just need to go to Home Depot or something to get the materials to build. Also, my printer is limited to 8x8" prints... so can't print big things.

My latest print job which I just finished is a mount for the bedrails that transfers the weight off the bedrail and onto the side of the bed. I know a lot of people bend aluminum to do the same thing but mine is compact and takes up very little bed space.

 

Next up for design and printing will be mounts for a foldable table to be put under my roof rack

 

How often do you find yourself tinkering with the printer itself. Making adjustments, repairs, etc?

Have you tried this? My experience with these larger printers left me disappointed. My old printer was a similar volume. I got it to 72% reliability. Just too much weight in the moving bed, and more weight as you print. That was at 40mm/s. It is what lead me to build Bertha.

If you are going to do this, at least make sure that the thermal runaways on your printer are enabled. Many of these printers do not come with that enabled. Acrylic Plexiglass is also flammable. I'd recommend spending extra for Polycarbonate.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

Once I get it dialed in, I barely have to do anything with it setting wise.

As for the expansion kit, simple and straight forward. As you go larger it takes longer times. However, the kit is solid.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of having to replace pulleys, belts, V-groove wheels, constantly re-tightening screws on 3d printed brackets, etc.

 

Hardly at all

 

Awesome!!

 

I guess it's natural that they would improve. I had a Tevo Black Widow and an early CR10. I was having to do things like that on them every 3-4 weeks. That often involved re-squaring and re-calibrating everything and killed 1-3+ hours or days/weeks if you didn't have the parts. Between that and them shifting layers on heavier prints, I gave up on them both.

 

Naturally you'll have to do that every so often to just about any machine... It's just part of the game. However, if you do certain things, it helps to minimize the amount of time you'd have to do that. For example I always upgrade the bed springs and install a auto level sensor (BLTouch). It helps to reduce the amount of recalibration significantly. Also, how you manually level makes a huge difference. I use an stl file called just calibrate and it expedites the process of manual leveling.

 

Well shit guys, I bought a 3D printer. Thanks for leading me down yet another rabbit hole.

 

Hahaha welcome to the dark side. We have 3d printers.

So whatcha getting?

-Pyrotaco

 

I didn't want to deal with it anymore...

 

The Ender 3 Pro, based specifically on your recommendation yesterday!

I can't wait to dump a ton of time and money into it!

 

Here are a couple of good links when you do get it.

https://www.simplify3d.com/support/print-quality-troubleshooting/

https://www.simplify3d.com/support/materials-guide/

 

That's what I have

Pro tips (see what I did there):
- purple elmers glue stick. Raid the kid's school supplies or go out and buy some right now.
- the instructions say 35mm or something for the dead stop on the side. That is just a suggestion, be ready to tweak it after you try levelling the print bed the first time and try to get the bed in the middle of its range, upgrading the springs like pyro said would help I think (I haven't done mine yet but plan to).
- I might just be an idiot and this is obvious to everyone else but the bulldog clips that come with it are to hold the bed down while it is printing. Layer shift is real!

Have fun