What did you 3D print today?

covers the wires on my motorcycle trailer.

 

My foray into the world of 3D is less than a week old, and what did I do just now??

Honestly I don't know what I did. It just had a spontaneous z-axis drill-down during a home sequence and trenched my bed.

Bed is on order. 30 bucks. Not the worst mistake in the world, I guess. It seems to toss the offset if I tell the Z to raise so I can look under the print head. I need to make a note of that, I think.



But hey, I discovered the cause of my stringing problem - turns out it was a bad nozzle.



Lookit that lovely scar. But hey. No stringing or lifting. Progress.


One of these days, I'll get a part I'm proud of. I just about have the slicer dialed in for PETG.

...


Yesterday's RC car headlights in silk PLA came out ok-ish, aside from not getting supports dialed exactly as planned. But they're usable. That's good enough.





I jumped into this to support other hobbies. Didn't expect it to be a hobby unto itself.

 

For my first print, a Ramen monster.

 

Making progress, made a few goodies today.
Air nozzle, tooth paste slide squeezer, washer/spacers (that I designed!!!) To fit the transducer mount I made, and a not pictured spaghetti monster!

 

I once read that there's some weird compulsion amongst 3d printers - everyone prints a Groot as their first wood piece.

Yup, fell into that statistic. Also, I have been playing with various tool caddies, cable management, and cooling vents. I still haven't found a vent that I like yet.




Little guy needed his legs amputated to fit, but he'll work nicely.






Edit. I used tree supports, because of course you have to.

 

A quick hit with a torch or lighter will get all those strings off super quick, btw

 

Thanks for the tip. Learning to reduce strings has been my Sisyphean task.

 

I like playing Catan and made a new robber for the game. Found it on thingiverse.com
It is a cloaked robber carrying sheep!

 

Printed an F150 cup holder adapter for my buddies oversized water bottle...

 

Having a hell of a bad day today. Probably wasted a 5th of a spool so far.

Nozzle clogging issues, printer suddenly forgetting where it is halfway through a print, leveling problems, Z offset suddenly changes when starting a print, filament glooping from being too hot, lifting from the bed, extruder colliding with support structures...

Lots of issues, can't figure out how to troubleshoot. I tried downloading the latest firmware to reflash and it didn't recognize it. Might try again tomorrow.

Tonight, after dialing in Z while it was printing the freaking skirt, I slowed it to 40% speed. At least we're through the first three rows with success so far.

 

Hope you figure it out soon! I have no guess on why it's doing that

 

I'm still puzzled on the Z offset issue, but I think I figured out my adhesion and clogging. I'm running my default retract of 4mm on an intricate lattice-like model and tree supports. So it's constantly hammering filament into the nozzle while simultaneously lifting up on the structures. New nozzle, hotter temps, lower retract, and slower speed seems to solve it. I guess I'm just going to have to live with a shitload of strings on this one.


As for the Z malfunction, that's tomorrow's problem.

 

Stupid question but is your filament dry?

 

Filament is brand new. I took it out of the shrink wrap yesterday.

I still don't have a dryer though.

 

Don't know if you have one by you but I went to Rural King and bought a food dehydrater in the jerky and food processing section. I cut out the centers of the grates so my spool will fit in there...

 

Sprite hot end was a really good investment....
This dragon was about a gajillion pieces. Came out okay though. This was with the original hot end.
Oh, all of it is articulated...all of it. Toes, tail, wings, body, neck, mouth...yeah...

 

Actually fits nicely on my Ikea Lack table encloser...

 

The Lack mod is on my list to do soon. How does the enclosure do with plain ol' PLA?

 

Just fine long term wise. I had it warp a bit on the longer pieces so they aren't exactly flat but that's okay with me. Keeps the ambient temp up which is all I wanted. Terrible pic but you can see it's not flat all the way across...

 

My primary media will be alternating between PLA and PETG, and neither are supposed to be enclosed from what very few articles I read. However, that little thing has been heating the hell out of my mud room. If I can adjust it to keep my filaments happy and still trap the heat so that it isn't spiking the house AC bill, I would be a very happy camper.