LesHall
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3D Prints
Posts posted by LesHall
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The neighborhood kids managed to find their way into my Mac and wreak all sorts of havoc and mayhem. Part of the fun they left behind is missing pre- and post- operations on my Cura prints. This means that I must home head and tray plus preheat manually as well as home head and tray plus cool down manually for each print. How can I fix this and erase the play of these destructive little gremlins?
Les
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11 hours ago, Smithy said:
Looks great and looks like a lot of work.
Are they flexible a little bit or completely rigid?
They are somewhat flexible, not much. The center, however flexes tremendously as the central ring arrangement acts like a four way hinge. It's actually a little bit freaky the first time you see it. The four branches rotate back suddenly (or slowly if you want) and emerging is this Alien Predator maw shaped thing. Kinda weird on a cross!
Les
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On an (almost) unrelated topic, Here is a photo of four Chainmaille crosses that I designed and created in 12 gauge wire rings.
Les
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Wicked cool! I recall seeing a short article on this, how difficult was it to print?
There is SO much goin on you just can't keep up with it all!
Les
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4 hours ago, Smithy said:
Very nice when it is so small. What about the noise?
I don't know yet; I plan to order it on next month's purchase list. Good point though, something to consider.
Les
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FYI: Check out this cute little fan. It's 16mm square and 4.5mm thick and it's a blower! Gotta get me one of them for hot motor driver chips, at $8 each from Digit-Key. Would be "cool" in a print head.
Les
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On 1/6/2019 at 4:55 AM, cloakfiend said:
Nice ball!!! And nice peactical skills! Looks neat and tidy!!! Im also trying something fun out myself, hope it wirks as well as this!
Cool cloak fiend, what are you thinking about doing?
Les
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Here are some photos of a Chainmail sphere in progress. It's from a design I created ten years ago and thankfully the writeup is still available. The plan is to write an updated tutorial with some easier techniques that have now surfaced.
Les
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Yes I agree. This concept is extremely wasteful.
If you need a mixed print and all you have is a single nozzle printer, it could do the job.
Les
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The way you mention is pretty close. In fact, in the original emails that is one idea that arose.
The original version is a little bit different. You buy or make a spool of pre-sliced filament. This spool has say: black and white filament alternating with lengths of 100mm each. So we have 100mm black, 100mm white, 100mm black, 100mm white and so on.
We slice the STL file with a custom slicer that knows this and directs filament where needed, either filament where optional (such as infill), and discard prints on the corners and edges when fast-forward (waste) printing is required.
Then we line up the filament by feeding it in and extruding it until black shows (clearer color to see) and then run the gcode from the slicer. If all goes well we get a gray-scale (dithered) black-and white object.
Does that make the idea a bit "clearer" (pun intended)?
Les
p.s. if we are making our own filament, then the approach you mention uses less waste. If we are buying the filament then it is the opposite. Or so I believe.
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Thank you for your replies ahoeben and Smithy. Yes those are similar yet different enough to be of different purpose. Here's why.
ahoeben's link goes to the Palette which does filament chopping and splicing to create exactly what this idea accomplishes, but with almost zero waste. However it's cost is $600 to $900 depending on what you buy and there is no 2.85mm solution, only 1.75mm.
Smithy's link is really cool also, a rainbow filament that paints rainbow colors in your print. This one does a similar thing but does not place colors in a controlled way.
It was the kind of stuff you show that led me to think of the one I imagined. The difference here is that no or nearly no equipment is required, just buy or make the special filament and accurately position it in your printer, use the special slicer to make your gcode, and let it print.
I hope that's a little more clear. Your examples are helpful, thanks again.
Les
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Hey folks, I've got a fun 3D printing technique to share with you. Back in October of 2016 I imagined this technique and shared it via email with two fellow enthusiasts. Now I'm revisiting the topic for fun (and maybe to try to earn a little cash). It could be that in the two years since it has gotten out into the widely known culture, I don't know. Here it is in a nutshell.
Let's take some filament in different colors and/or different materials and splice it into mixed segments forming a spool that varies in type along it's length. Next let's write a slicing program that begins with a certain color/material and prints with each segment onto the printed object in such a way that desired colors are printed where they are desired and printed in discard piles where they are not desired. Then we get a multicolored / multimaterial object plus a (probably) large amount of wasted filament, all printed on just a single nozzle 3D printer.
That's it. There are a lot of details to discuss including ways to splice the filament, how to synch the colors, sudden or gradual transitions between colors, PLA based exotics, and probably other relevant details. If anyone would like to discuss this, here I am.
Les
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Oh, Hi Sander! I've been on an emotional roller coaster in the process of inventing lots of stuff. Some of it is 3D printer related. 50 inventions in the past two years, but I hardly recall them. Also I've been using my UM2+ all the time!
Lately my efforts have focused on completing old projects and I'd like to create some kind of business supplying others with tools and/or supplies.
How have you been?
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Beautiful! Have you thought of making an instructables article?
Les
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TY kmanstudios! Here is another photo of the same cube in translucent red PETG. Below is Cura with a spice bowl design that turned out to be somewhat Klingon in theme. The bowl did not print well so i an trying a different approach to printing it.
Les
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Here is a fun one that many probably have seen. It's a great way to print a cube with zero infill.
Les
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10 minutes ago, flowalistik said:
I LOVE experiments! Just to understand how you did it. You just heated the nozzle and burned the first layer on a paper?
I've used an Ultimaker as a plotter before, but I never considered using the nozzle itself. I'm really looking forward to this experiment, it would look great burning wood! #hype
TY for your quick reply, it's fun to exchange ideas. I have not tried a plotter, how do you mount it on the extruder?
Oh I missed your question, sorry. Yes I heated up the nozzle to 150C. It was not hot enough to burn and the print head moved too fast for any burning to take place. It's a mechanical pressing this first try.
This kind of experiment reminds me of playing with ketchup and chocolate syrup in the kitchen as a youth. All we ever really did was make a mess but it sure was fun.
Les
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Yesterday I had a funny idea: using my Ultimaker for various unusual purposes such as wood burning, paper marking, metal scribing, circuit board masking, wax melting, and lots of stuff like that. I got all excited as usual and below are some snapshots of this morning's brief effort. Yesterday I put a circle on a piece of blue tape (and then another) and now this attempt. It looks crude, yes, but a nice beginning don't you think?
I know it must not be an original concept, however it's new to me which is always exciting as the process of discovery is so enjoyable. The images shown are OpenSCAD "hello world" followed by low temperature tracing on a piece of card stock (on printer and scraped off).
It should be practical to expand this into 3D as well. Maybe better efforts with more heat and non-drilled nozzles in steel are better. Also the combination of 3D printing and this type of process could be interesting. I'd like to try combining both additive and subtractive 3D printing.
Les
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I forgot to mention that the nozzle I'm using is 0.8mm diameter so it leaves a cold booger dripping every time it finishes a print job. This prevents the filament from properly forming a blob at the beginning of a print.
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OK so what I'm reading here is that instead of my 3D printer eating it's boogers, I can grab the dump that it makes prior to printing each batch? That or an automatic booger wiper, or checking the flow?
Too much, way too funny.
Les
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geert_2,
This is, to me, an ingenious solution! I was expecting a software approach in which the nozzle is lowered earlier so the boogers stick to an untouched area of the bed and don't get tangled up in the print. Maybe both is best. Can you sketch the shape of your wire clip as I don't quite visualize it yet?
Les
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...well, the prints eat their own boogers. By this I mean that the gob of initial filament that the printer nozzle spits out in the front left corner of the bed at the beginning of the print often gets pulled into the print itself. It often gets "eaten" into the print and resides in the spaces between the infill traces. What's the fix for that?
Les
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Yeah, that or I guess slow the Z rise in the pre- and post- code steps perhaps?
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To UbuntuBirdy: Yes, I am no expert either, being an Electrical Engineer not Mechanical.
To neotko: I can handle the jumper as I have a few I can locate later, and if I read your posts a few times then maybe I can double the Z steps. I may try it, thanks for taking the time to spell it out for us!
Les
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pre- and post- print instructions missing - solved
in Improve your 3D prints
Posted
Good news - the problem is solved. I just downloaded a fresh copy of Cura 4.0, deleted the old cura folder in "Library/Application Support", and installed Cura 4.0 again. I had actually taken this action before however they slipped in and re-made whatever their brokenness was. Gremlins, ugh! Whatcha gonna do? Persevere I guess!
Les