What did you 3D print today?

I'm makin ornaments.

 

I printed a bunch of upgrade parts for my Hypercube Evo as I want to go to 10MM Y rods with Igus bearings. Using some Atomic dark blue carbon PETG. Amazing stuff. Atomic is next level and well worth the extra expense when it matters.

 

Problem: nozzle is colliding with print at higher layers, breaking models that have narrow bases.

Solution 1: calibrate Z axis, troubleshoot and correct slicer settings.

Solution 2: add a shitload of support.

 

Another dum-dum learning moment - apparently a lot of my "extrusion issues" were because I forgot to check the carriage on my X-axis - I have had a loose wheel for who knows how long. The dang ol' print head had been wobbling more than a drunkard trying to piss upwind.


A few months back my bed heater crapped out and the general recommendation was to not even bother warrantying it, just go straight for the nicer heater from Gulfcoast. While there I noticed they also had a machined aluminum bed and a sweet Y-carriage, so, why not, it's only money. I also noticed that they had rail systems that replace all the pom wheels. At the time I couldn't justify that latter part, since I was already knee deep at throwing parts into a basic printer. Now, I'm rethinking that. I'm wondering if I should get rid of those stupid POM wheels altogether, and just be the weird kid on the block that drops a supercharger into a Daewoo.







I dunno. I have another month or so to think about it. At least my bed is holding nice and level though.

 

OH!

I forgot to come back to this but uhm, here's that nozzle I mentioned



I've got the STL file

And the MSDS to the fluid

https://www.eastwood.com/images/library/33863-33864.pdf

 

Man, I hate organic chem. I had to look up that one by the CAS number on pubchem, but their one non-proprietary ingredient looks to be safe for plastics.

Toss a thimblefull into your campfire, see if it turns green.

 

I have their dual linear rail y-axis kit installed on mine, but I didn’t get the machined aluminum bed and I wish that I did. The linear rails that it came with were not great quality. I cleaned and lubed the rails and carriages several times but they still didn’t move smoothly. Having some preload on the carriages helped but the weight of the bed assembly wasn’t enough. Finally I swapped out to better grade ceramic bearings in the carriages and now they ride like butter. Well, they did until recently. I think I need to clean and lube them again after a few hundred hours of printing.

My current project on the Ender 3 is a belt-driven Z-axis with linear rails, and converting the X-axis to linear rails and the Voron Stealthburner tool head.

 

That's good to know. I'm having a hell of a time diagnosing why I'm getting PLA delamination. I've tried triple checking all nuts and bolts, I've played with temperature and speed. I've tried toggling z-hop, layer heights, and upping flow rates in the slicer. I've leveled it many times over. I've cleaned the print head, and when that didn't work, I replaced the nozzle. I was wondering if the rails would be the next step.

I'm thinking that I just hate PLA and am going back to PETG.

 

What are your print settings and is that silk PLA or normal PLA?

 

Without really knowing much but, do different types of plastics come with some sort of guide/settings for using it?

 

Yeah, there are general starting points for various filament types. People who really want to dial in the settings will take the extra time to do a bunch of test prints like temperature/cooling towers, flow tests, etc. for each spool of filament they have because even something as simple as a different color could have different optimal settings

 

Silk, 0.4 nozzle, 0.2 layer height, 0.28 initial layer.
210 hot end (have tried everything from 200-220 in 5 degree increments, it will crystallize at 220). Temperature tower test seems happy at 200, but it's the large prints that are giving me grief.
60 degree bed, enclosure doors open.
Have tried 100-105% flow rate, small items have had success with 105.
Default speed is 60/30 infill/walls (she's a snail). Have tried slowing down to 50% rate.
Cooling on at layer 10, 50% fan. Have tried both 100% fan and fan off.

Silk always gives me the blues. I'm redoing it with princess sparkle PETG, and aside from a fair bit of stringing (it's running hotter than I normally run PETG)
it's coming out beautifully so far.



Only thing I haven't done with silk is try it on a 0.6 nozzle.

 

As chenbro says, each brand has their own recommendations and most are kind enough to put a sticker right on the spool.

It's usually worthwhile to sacrifice 10-20 grams and an hour or two to run a test print that helps dial in ideal temperatures with every spool change. Most of the time, that will solve the problems of an impatient printer.

 

I totally understand the need to "dial in" I have write-ups on it in another genre lol just wondering if your guys rolls provided starting points for all that stuff

Thanks for answering!

 

Some do but each printer and setup is different so theres some times tweeking needed. I have 3 or 4 different colored spools of Matterhackers basic PLA and each one is slightly different but generally you can run the same settings.

 

I'll be posting something here soon. Coworker wants a Jeep key chain thing so I'll be making that here in a bit and giving it to him for Christmas

 

That sucks you have to check per spool, but makes sense I guess

The deviations are too big from one spool to another (of the same kind) right?

 

Honestly I've had more issues caused by moisture content than differences between spools.

 

Y'all should check the dog section