3D Printing

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esd
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3D Printing

Post by esd » Sun, 24. Jun 18, 13:23

Curious - any of you lot into 3D printing?

I was lucky enough recently to be given a Flashforge Creator (the original wooden one) from a company that had retired the machine. After some trouble getting going with it (oh cooling, oh leveling, oh so many settings!) I'm starting to get some good prints. Still getting a little bit of "elephants foot" with my prints, so glue-joins are pretty obvious, but I've made a BSG Viper and Cylon Raider (still painting), as well as a Starfury I gave it's first coat of black (Psycorp/stealth livery) this morning. Several companion cubes, and a B5 comms link (three of 'em, actually). I'm working with PLA filament at the moment.

So anyone else?
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Post by Morkonan » Sun, 24. Jun 18, 22:05

Congrats on your freebie! That's awesome!

I've been interested in it for a very long time, but just haven't moved on it. (Mostly, due to constantly putting off building a new PC.)

A project I really want to do is 3D print a collection of D&D characters that were my players(friends) favorites and give them to them as Christmas presents. But, not just a 3D prints, more like very detailed "dolls" with cloth clothing, doll wigs, fake fur stoles on their cloaks, etc... Really go "all the way" on details and then put them in dollstands with those glass bell cover thingies on them. (Those D&D sessions, which lasted at least a decade, were very important to our whole group and I'd like to acknowledge that in a gift.)

I love your choice of projects! BSG, Bab5, great choices.

A question - Everyone sees mostly "perfect prints" as examples. But, what are you finding are the most difficult issues you're encountering as a new user? Are they mostly a factor of the equipment and media choice or are they things that will get better as your skills improve in setting up the prints?

Every time I start looking for the best choice of 3D printer, some new thing comes out and I' hesitant, wondering if I should wait until it's ready or ignore it and lose out on the advanced features? It's the same with all tech, I guess.

Thought about 3D printing any X ships? There's some precedent for that, IIRC, and someone did do a few of them and posted about it.

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Post by linolafett » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 11:29

I have an prusa i3 mk2 at home. Usually printing my spacecrafts and small stuff with it.

This machine was sper easy to get into, usually not causing a mess when doing something slightly wrong. Sometimes prinsts still fail, buts it is happening very rarely like 10% of the prints.

For small figures (sub 10cm) the usual plastic sausage printes (fdm) are not good enough. they just dont get the resolution you want for the super small details.
There are some resin based printers (sla/dlp) which can print in crazy high resolutions, but they are still expensive and the resin is a absolute mess and hazard to handle.
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Post by esd » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 12:39

Yeah resin isn't cheap or easy!
A question - Everyone sees mostly "perfect prints" as examples. But, what are you finding are the most difficult issues you're encountering as a new user? Are they mostly a factor of the equipment and media choice or are they things that will get better as your skills improve in setting up the prints?
Easiest way to answer this is that it's a tool. Many things can go wrong with the tool, as well as your materials and your techniques. This is the contents of my little box of fails.

This machines not new, and Royal Mail really beat it up. So it can be hard to know it it's a me-being-green issue, or aged damage issue, but it's mostly been about learning to level properly (still getting there), finding the right settings for your printer and filament, and cooling!

A year ago I thought 3D printing would be "load .obj model into printer, load filament, press print, wait up to 10 hrs, done". Now it's "One poly normal is wrong? Fix it! Can I do that without a support? What slicer shall I use? How thick should my walls be? Stringing, or under-extrusion? Settings!!!!" :D
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Post by Tamina » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 16:50

esd wrote:Flashforge Creator (the original wooden one)
We got the same, wooden as well, a few years old, including a heating plate.
> Make sure to print some spare parts for your printer! Some of the gears/moving parts are made out of wood and break easily. Especially if those gears were already replaced with PLA-gears, they break even faster. :)
This, the fact that the filament gets permanently stuck (can't let it run alone overnight), the nozzle clogging often and...
esd wrote:A year ago I thought 3D printing would be "load .obj model into printer, load filament, press print, wait up to 10 hrs, done". Now it's "One poly normal is wrong? Fix it! Can I do that without a support? What slicer shall I use? How thick should my walls be? Stringing, or under-extrusion? Settings!!!!" :D
... made us buy an Ultimaker 3. It was more expensive than the wooden crafting kit but just provide an 3D model and the printer does the rest. Including rotating the object in an optimal position, creating support structures and finding optimal settings.
It also comes with a heating plate, a webcam, mobile app (including webcam view) and of course wireless lan.
Very happy, good prints. Not much faster but tolerances are great!


linolafett wrote:For small figures (sub 10cm) the usual plastic sausage printes (fdm) are not good enough. they just dont get the resolution you want for the super small details.
We also tested powder based printers. They are fantastic for printing models because you can print every shape you like without support structures. I still have some models at home, no Lino-ships though :(. However, the prints are weaker then the already weak PLA counterparts (mostly not an issue with models) and the printers are mostly "a tad" bigger :D
linolafett wrote:There are some resin based printers (sla/dlp) which can print in crazy high resolutions, but they are still expensive and the resin is a absolute mess and hazard to handle.
As far as I know materials used for DLP/SLA (photopolymers) are not even a resin but resin-like.
On the contrary PLA and most other plastics are in fact a resin :)
Thanks to some marketing people this messes a lot of things up >.<

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Post by Tamina » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 17:43

Before I forget
Morkonan wrote:A question - Everyone sees mostly "perfect prints" as examples. But, what are you finding are the most difficult issues you're encountering as a new user? Are they mostly a factor of the equipment and media choice or are they things that will get better as your skills improve in setting up the prints?
Every print has a pretty and an ugly face. Pictures rarely show the bottom side or inside of a 3D print.
Besides that, you can ramp up your models using sandpaper or a file and finishing it with varnish. :)

The most difficult task is to hide those ugly parts as much as possible or make them easily available for reworking by tweaking the model and its support structures as good as possible.
Complex objects always need support structures, a 3d printer can't print in the air obviously, and those need to be removed with force afterwards.
Splitting a complex object into multiple parts is difficult and mostly not viable because of big tolerances, they mostly don't fit together - even though the Ultimaker 3 is a blast in that regard.

One trick I learned over time: When printing small mm-to-cm-sized parts, the filament has no time to cool down in time before the next layer is already applied and that makes the surface quality bad - real bad! Like Vienetta Ice Cream bad!
The trick is to print a "cooling tower" next to the model, so that the 3D printer spends some time elsewhere and the filament has time to harden. :D

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Und wenn ein Forenbösewicht, was Ungezogenes spricht, dann hol' ich meinen Kaktus und der sticht sticht sticht.
  /l、 
゙(゚、 。 7 
 l、゙ ~ヽ   / 
 じしf_, )ノ 

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Post by linolafett » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 17:59

You can also jsut set a "minimum layer time" to allow the small piece to cool down without wasting filament. This though might cause some minor issues with the fimalent oozing out of the nozzle, while the layer si cooling. these ozzy thingies can easily brushed off afterwerds though.
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Post by esd » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 21:17

When printing really small things, I print more than one at a time. Solves the nozzle hover issue.
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Post by Morkonan » Mon, 25. Jun 18, 21:50

esd wrote:...Easiest way to answer this is that it's a tool. Many things can go wrong with the tool, as well as your materials and your techniques. This is the contents of my little box of fails.
Lol, reminds me of the Mutant Toys from "Toy Story."

pic - Mutant Toys
Tamina wrote:...Besides that, you can ramp up your models using sandpaper or a file and finishing it with varnish. ...
I've read about people smoothing out the layer lines with acetone when using certain materials. That's basically what some of the purposefully labeled 3D finishing products are - Acetone. Of course, ventilation is key, since nobody wants explosive vapors building up around hot equipment and electrical connections.
Tamina wrote:support structures, cooling towers <sic>
What's the cost of all these materials? I know costs vary, but every attempted work-around using materials costs money/material.

The biggest issue I see, when considering standard 3D printing for my own uses, is resolution. I see resolution "claims" on all the equipment, but that only really means how precise the print-head positioning can get. If goop comes out and strings around, it's not going to obey what's in the manual...

Power printing, resin printing, etc, is a bit more awesomer in that regard, but price is a consideration there as well as a bit more in the way of hazardous materials.

UV polymer curing has been around for quite awhile. It used to be widely used in commercial floor polishes, replacing standard and often messy "floor waxes," speeding application/curing time dramatically. (I don't remember, offhand, who first invented the tech or why, atm.)

If I decided to jump into 3D printing and started off with my intended project, I may have to simply use the printer to make a base model, then sculpt it by hand, adding two-part polymer details and then using them to make a mold so I can cast a finished piece... Out of what, I have no idea. I dunno, I'll think on it, might be able to get a quality finished piece after hand sculpting, etc..

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