What did you 3D print today?

Trying to print these today out of Taulman T-Glass as a father day present for some relatives. Third time trying to get it to adhere well. 1st ended in a glob and smearing or something like that. 2nd it wouldn't stay on and made this huge glob on the nozzle. Good thing I have a silicone hot end sleeve to keep it clean. Gonna try slowing it down a bit, raising it a bit and turning the temp down a bit...

 

Said screw it and changed to PLA. It was over extruding so I turned down the flow rate and slowed it down for the first few layers so it got a few good layers...

 

Done! Little sanding and string removal and they'll be ready to be given as gifts!

 

Hoping Tim pick up a Bambu P1P soon, subscribing to this thread.

 

Amazing what you can do in tinkercad.



Trying to print a set of fork guards for my Grom, we'll see how it turns out in about 7 hours.

 

Good idea: torching wood PLA can produce really interesting char effects, just like real wood.

Bad idea: I shrinkidinked my can coozie around my can, resulting in 90 minutes of reworking the damn thing in the oven.

But hey, I'm happy with the nerdiest can coozie ever. I might do another.

 

Well we just completed Bigfoot's chiseled ass. Maybe by this time tomorrow I'll have a new mascot for the camper.

 

Led headlight mounts.

FINALLY have my leds installed

 

What filament did you use?

 

Inland ABS

 

It's quite interesting seeing the different levels of detail achieved so I have to ask, can a budget-friendly printer actually provide high-quality results?

Is printing something large something you can only do on one of those 45 degree styles with a conveyer belt?

What are the common 'mistakes' made that cause say...the plastic to not adhere or something as it prints?

And can someone actually print something that's strong enough to handle between people, or to act as a mock-up piece when designing something that won't break easily even if bolted in place?

Probably some dumb questions but I've never got into 3D printing and sometimes I consider doing so.

 

Budget printers can achieve good detail but honestly to get good detail for small things a resin printer is best.

Print size is always the limiting factor. You can print in parts and glue together. Know that large parts take a LOT of time.

Adhesion is one of the biggest issues folks face. Prints are almost always weaker along the layer lines and print settings can improve or worsen those effects.

Print strength depends a lot on design and materials. Not sure what specifically you are asking but you can make some strong prints

 

I never even heard of a resin printer, will look that up in a bit.

And yeah I notice many 3D printers have a small profile = small print job.

Kind of sucks considering how small many of these printers are, at least those up to $1k. And I'd hate to go gluing stuff together.

My idea was multipurpose = create an assembly for mock-up reasons which could provide results in real time as far as fitment goes, as well as make stuff for loved ones that have odd requests or something.

Being realistic, it wouldn't be used more than once a month which is why I ask these questions to decide whether it's worth trying or not. And if I like it, don't want to outgrow it damn near right away.

 

You just opened a huge can of worms, sir.

Budget friendly printers can achieve great results, but it depends on what you're doing for sure. If you're wanting to print like D&D miniatures, you'll need a resin printer to get any level of detail, but if you just want a smooth finish and sharp corners for a decent sized print that's easily achievable.

Size scales with cost, at least for budget printers. A lot of the entry level ones can do about 200x200x200mm, with mid level going 300x300 and up. The conveyor belt stuff is cool, but you can make a lot of large prints but just doing the design in smart ways with multiple pieces.

Adhesion to the bed can be solved usually with nozzle height, bed heat, drying filament, or some generous application of hair spray or glue. Prints will always be weaker along layer lines but they can be plenty strong. A lot of that can be fixed with experience, too, and knowing which orientation to print something to make sure it's strong where you need it to be.

I print use-able things all the time. Again though, a lot of it is experience and knowing what materials to use where. PLA or PETG print easily, don't require special heated enclosures or re-inforced nozzles but are on the weaker end of the spectrum. If you want to get real strong prints there are all sorts of exotic filaments out there, like carbon fiber reinforced nylon, but that requires hardened nozzles and really high temperatures.

Three recent examples of useable parts (only have pics of one on here though, sorry): fork guards for my Grom that look great, a fixture to clamp my grom's forks in a vice (held up to a surprising amount of clamping and rotational force), and one of my favorite prints recently is a socket for a 7 sided hand knob from my roof rack. It'll torque down tighter than hand tight with zero issues.

 

Was afraid of that, didn't want to start no war.

But yeah a quick search on resin printers pulled up some high-quality prints, but all stating that the print beds are much smaller so don't expect to print anything big.

Curing being part of the whole process not to mention slower printing compared to one using filament.

Right off the bat, a resin printer would serve me no real purpose.

Damn, carbon fiber reinforced nylon sounds cool as shit...and funny seeing you here; you get your skid done yet?

I should just cut it out and mail it to ya, you'll just handle bending it unless you need it bent too.

 

I worked on it today! Even broke out the good cardboard for it. Might actually end up printing a spacer for the rear of it so I don’t have to fold/weld up a mount to space it off the engine. And I need to figure out how I want to attach the two halves of it. I need it to come apart at the big hole in the middle. Sounds back-asswords, but it’ll actually go above my exhaust. The exhaust on a grom hangs so low I think it looks awful having a plate that far down, and the skid plate is more for looks and rock kick-ups than actual bashing through a rock garden or anything.

 

I'd incorporate those side "wings" into one of your pieces with a lip extending from each one and a nut welded on the inside.

That way you can attach the other plate to the lips on each side with small M6 or M8 bolts.

 

Funny, I had actually thought about welding a nut on the inside, but wasn't sure if I wanted to do a slightly recessed plate with rivnuts instead. I'm probably going to end up not having the big flap up top, either. I don't want to run giant braces up to it. Might print something for that space, too, since it's way above the header and won't be getting hot, it could flap around and just block debris with relatively little strength needed.

 

Simple!

Red outline is all one piece.

Yellow lines depict bends.



The black part is your first part of your skid and will mount to the second part of your skid with that overlap.

The overlap would have nuts welded on the inside for you to run bolts through.

Just an idea of course!