3DPrinting

Hey, I am looking for an advice on buying my second printer. I am looking for a machine that prints every day for 10+ hours mostly without me looking at it. Which one is better for the task?

Currently I'm deciding between Bambulab A1 and Sovol sv06 ace +. They cost more or less the same in my part of the world and sovol has a bigger print volume and seemingly less scummy (to date) company behind it. While bambu is super popular and pretty reliable.

Then add a magnet to your print head and a g-code pause at the sensor

We know you’ve seen them: the time-lapses that show a 3D print coming together layer-by-layer without the extruder taking up half the frame. It takes a little extra work compared to just pointing a camera at the build plate, but it’s worth it to see your prints materialize like magic.

Usually these are done with a plugin for OctoPrint, but with all due respect to that phenomenal project, it’s a lot to get set up if you just want to take some pretty pictures. Which is why [Whopper Printing] put together the LayerLapse. This small PCB is designed to trigger your DSLR or mirrorless camera once its remotely-mounted hall effect sensor detects the presence of a magnet.

The remote hall effect sensor.

The idea is that you just need to stick a small magnet to your extruder, add a bit of extra G-code that will park it over the sensor at the end of each layer, and you’re good to go. There’s even a spare GPIO pin broken out should you want to trigger something else on each layer of your print. Admittedly we can’t think of anything else right now that would make sense, other than some other type of camera, but we’re sure some creative folks out there could put this feature to use.

Currently, [Whopper Printing] is selling the LayerLapse as a finished product, though it does sound like a kit version is in the works. There’s also instructions for building a DIY version of the hardware using your microcontroller of choice. Whether you buy or build the hardware, the firmware is available under the MIT license for your tinkering pleasure.

Being hardware hackers, we appreciate the stand-alone nature of this solution. But if you’re already controlling your printer through OctoPrint, you’re probably better off just setting up one of the available time-lapse plugins.

I am getting my first 3D-printer (a Prusa CORE One) this week! I have tons of ideas that I want to get started with, but the most time-sensitive one is to make some self-watering planters for my balcony (so I can have time to grow some greens in the season). I wanted to do this without a 3D-printer last year, but I could never find any cases close to the right dimensions in the stores, and making the separator between the water reservoir and soil from off-the-shelf parts was not so easy with the cases I did find, so I hope I am able to make something functioning with my 3D-printer this year.

But I'm new to this, and I am looking for some advice to where to get started reading up on different concepts that will be relevant to this project. These are the things I am planning to dive into over the next weeks, and I am sure there are plenty of things I have not thought about at all:

1. Splitting and joining 3D-printed objects: The overall base area of the planter is too large for my 3D-printer to do in one go, and I am likely going to need four parts that I need to fuse together. I am thinking there are many "standard" ways of doing this, such as splitting with a jigsaw-puzzle pattern? I am also planning to simply glue to the parts together along the seam, and add an additional layer of glue along the boundary. Which leads to concerns about...

2. Water tightness: I know that making watertight prints is not the easiest thing in the world. The container should be able to contain water without leakage, and I am planning on reading up on all the ways to make the prints themselves as impermeable to water as possible. I am sure there are much to learn in terms of slicer settings here. In addition, I will look into different coatings I can finish it up with, such as a layer of water-proof wood glue. However, the water here will be absorbed by the soil and then by the plant's roots, so this coating should be non-toxic.

3. Material choice: To begin with, I will only have PLA available, but I can get other filaments if needed. There are two immediate concerns I have about this: whether it is food-safe (for the same reason as above) and whether it is suitable for outdoors use. It will not be in direct sunlight, as I will build a wooden case around these 3D-printed containers, but the planters themselves will be, so it could get a little hot during Summer. Any other considerations I need to make?

4. Modelling the parts: I am already familiar with Blender, and planned on using it for the first project. I have FreeCAD installed, but zero experience. The shapes are simple, and I am sure I can draw up something in Blender in no time. But since I want to split them up, and join them ideally as flush as possible, will the models be precise enough? Dimensional precision is the main reason I've heard for using CAD-software over Blender for hobby basis.

Hi there! I've had this printer about a year now. I used to use my buddies og Ender 3, and when the V2 was on sale I "upgraded" and got my own.

I realize now that for just a bit more money I could've had a much more performant machine, but, oh well. I'm gonna use this for a good long while. I only print as an occasional hobby, or to augment my other hobbies.

Anywho, it's been on a shelf up and out of the way all winter, unused, in a climate controlled room.

I pulled it out the other day to do a few prints, it works great. Ran about 12 or 16 hours of prints through it. But today I noticed these cracks. This seems to be the belt tensioner for the bed? Did I have it too tight? Am I supposed to relax it while it's being stored?

I can probably print a replacement. But I was just wondering what your thoughts were.

Thanks!

This is for older car models that do not have built-in navigation or bad navigation. My car is old enough to have a cassette player.

This model is made for a Toyota Yaris from 2001 and the phone inside is an S21 Ultra that would otherwise have been sitting in a drawer.

I have sacrificed the original sunvisor to get the swivel part out and modeled a new sunvisor around it. Since this car is really old it's okay to make these modifications.

So far the driving experience has improved a lot, it is a pretty decent location for a navigation system since you can focus on driving much more easily than having to look down and to the right.

The models and FreeCAD design file may be found here:

https://www.printables.com/model/1256013-toyota-yaris-sun-visor-with-navigation-phone

I'm incredibly new to 3D printing. I have an Anycubic Photon Mono 2 and I'm using the Anycubic standard resin. My first couple of prints went fine; first one was the test print and the second was a set of dice (which technically didn't go fine since I wasn't aware you can't just print right on the plate, so one side was blank).

However, ever since then my next 4 prints have failed. I thought I was maybe going too complex right off the bat - attempting to print a flexible dragon for my kids - so I decided to run the resin exposure test ("RERF"). Only 4 of the 8 printed, and the ones that did only barely printed. I have absolutely no idea what's going on with this and was hoping that someone here could give some insight and advice.

Thanks!

The video is a rather blatant Bambu Lab shilling job, but Matt doesn't try to hide it at all, and ultimately I find his use case for the printer interesting in its own right.

Our printer at work isn't connected to the network and there's no way to know if the print is done remotely. Also, I wanted to be able to check on the print remotely to know whether it had gone bad and stop the print.

Since one of our servers is sitting in the same room, I installed a USB webcam inside the printer's enclosuse, and a 20x USB spotter camera on the opposite wall looking at the printer's LCD screen, and setup Motion on the server to stream both cameras.

This is what is looks like when I point my browser to the server. I love it!

The face buttons (what used to be the shape buttons) are 3D printed! They work surprisingly well. I also had 3D printed dpad buttons, but they were wobbly and weren’t all that fun to use.

The main body of the controller is spray-painted (albeit poorly) as well as the triggers and share/options buttons since I couldn’t find a 3D model for the former and the 3D printed versions of the latter didn’t work very well.

Models: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1134416-musical-fidget-video-game-edition#profileId-1135383

There seems to be a bit of PLA in the screw hole of the hotend, probably from a previous clog, and that is preventing me from unscrewing it. Any tips?

All print parts in greentec pro black, the interior of the body is painted with musou black.

Test shots:

It was a niece request

So I was able to get the cad files from the good folks at micro swiss for their microswiss ng ender 3 edition. I also found a step file for a generic filament slicer. How easy would it be for me to somehow combine the two? I am okay at cad. But this seems like an undertaking, unless there's an easy way to do it. Has anyone done something like this before? The closest I've found was someone made one for the microswiss ng ender 5 edition, but I haven't been able to get a hold of the creator.

My main interest is in packing puzzles but open to any suggestions!

Just a simple and (in my opinion) sleek phone stand. Link for anyone interested: printables.com/model/1251408-simple-static-phone-stand

I'm trying to print this part out of Filament-PM TPE32 on a Prusa Mk4 with a textured sheet and I'm not having much luck.

The part is a bellows with a 100%-infill plate at the top and at the bottom. Despite leaving a giant brim inside and out, the whole thing has minimal adhesion to the bed and invariably comes off when the print reaches the top-heavy section of the part.

It's maybe the 10th print I'm attempting, slowly trying to dial in the parameters. I had to crank up the bed temperature to 47 degrees for the first layer to achieve any kind of adhesion, which is odd. I have other TPU/TPE filaments that stick better (but they're too hard for my purpose).

I could achieve slightly better adhesion by cranking up the nozzle temperature above 235C, but then it start stringing so bad it leaves raised obstacles almost immediately on the first layer while building the brim, and then the head slams into the obstacles and dislodges the brim at the second layer. The only way to get a good brim (and a good part) is to lower the nozzle temperature to 223C.

Clearly the problem is that the Prusa Mk4 is a bed slinger: it shakes the part loose. We have a Prusa XL on the way that should take care of the problem, but it's coming in 3 weeks and I need the part now.

Before I slather the bed sheet generously with glue, any advise to make this print succeed on the little Mk4 without making a gooey mess with the glue?

Here's the PrusaSlicer project file if you're interested.

A while ago I bought a roll of transparent petg "the filament" by spectrum. Wonderful, it printed great, shiny, smooth. I loved it.

Then I took advantage of the promotion on the Bambu lab website "4 rolls are discounted + free shipping" and I bought their transparent petg.

I opened the vacuum bag, loaded immediately in the printer and it strings and pops. Settings are correct as the slicer has a dedicated profile for this roll.

Their website says "warning: dry before using" - they mean that it comes already too moist from the factory?

I finally wrote up my process for creating a 3D printed Alice in Wonderland shadowbox.

I used the Disney Classics #8 book cover as the art to work from. It's all 3D printed except for the laser cut acrylic sheets.