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LesHall

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Everything posted by LesHall

  1. Oh wow they have it for sale now! metal filament for sale I'm going to get some. Les
  2. Well I'm thinking that those problems can be overcome, for example see this new exotic filament: Copper and Bronze Filament Note that the stuff discussed in that article is *not* Copper Fill or Brass Fill, instead it has a very high metal content. Check it out! Les
  3. Ty for your reply, Owen. I agree that a simple coil of 2.85 mm pewter would be too inflexible, so what I was thinking was to make stranded or notched or spiral somehow patterns of it. You know how copper wire is really hard to bend if it's solid and bends easily if stranded? Something like that. Les
  4. OK, goofy question time here... I have begun to look into metal casting a bit and I am quite surprised to learn that some alloys of pewter have a melting point below the 250 C of my Ultimaker. So this gets the gears turning and I imagine casting the pewter into filament but not just filament, something with notches or spirals or some design to allow it to be pushed through the Bowden tube. If we did those two things, could we not print in pewter? I welcome your replies! Les
  5. Version 1.0

    962 downloads

    Please see three angles of my item plus one image of the item that inspired me.. I know, what I did kinda pales by comparison, but fear not - I am just getting started. My buddy can cast it into metal for $100. The idea is you clamp a contact mic (the Korg model $15 is the one I'm looking at) and then you stroke it with a violin bow ($17 at Amazon with rosin). and send the contact mic output to a mixer ($50 at Amazon) which sends it over USB to the software (ChucK) that will enhance the sound and send it to the speakers. So yeah, it's an $80 price tag on gear to run this rig. Still, it's nice because it should produce some exotic sound due to it's unique design. Also many other shapes are possible. Have to stay within a six inch box for the metal pours though. The one shown is in an 8 inch box (the ultimaker) so it must be a touch smaller. Still, a wide variety of designs are possible. This simple one is just for starters.
  6. A bee? Oh, a bee! A worker bee! A part of the hive mind! hehe Les
  7. To all the worker bees at Ultimaker: Work is tough, even on the best days it can be challenging. So today my Ultimaker 2+ has given me about I think maybe four months of flawless service, the Cura software is not only free but works great, and the whole system overall just plain works - like it is meant to be. Ease of use is phenomenal and problems are all but nonexistent. So if you are having a challenging day, I'd like to encourage you by saying: It's worth the struggle and it shows. My compliments. Les Out. Praise the Lord Les
  8. Yeah, Sander, and I suppose if we are to meditate on that theme a bit, well we might realize it as a general principle. That we should accept things for what they really are rather than try to fit into some predetermined box that we have in our minds. We are always striving for perfection and maybe we should be accepting of things for what they are. Like the sculptor Rodin who sculpted "The Thinker" as probably his most famous work. I learned once that when the clay developed a crack from drying, he would just leave the crack there rather than try to "fix" it. He is now a historic artist and those cracks are preserved in all of his works. Maybe we should take a lesson from Rodin and just learn to love our print lines? Les
  9. Reminds me of an old blog, which I have always really liked and helped me create a different frame of referencec. Nice article, thanks Sander (go read, it's short and says a lot!). I have also found in the past that using a larger nozzle size combined with a layer height of 75% nozzle size will really lay down the plastic for those large hollow prints of vases and earths and my Earth Drop on YouMagine (Earth Drop).
  10. I live in a Nursing Home in a small town just outside of San Antonio, Texas, and we had some flooding that interrupted the power recently. Plus my previous printer kept failing catastrophically on longer print jobs and I suspected gremlins at work, either that or an overheating component perhaps. In Florida the power system was dual redundant to handle hurricanes after a lawsuit accused the FP&L of negligence for not having a quick recovery system in place. That was cool as I once heard an explosion which was a transformer blowing itself up from the heat of the sun, followed by an outage that did not last long thanks to the dual redundant power. In North Carolina in the 90's there were issues with ice taking down power lines in the winter. The lines were not at all redundant because the ice was a rare phenomenon but it seemed to happen every winter for a while. So there are three datapoints - natural disasters mainly being the reason for outages. Les
  11. Yes, well, I was thinking of subtleties such as fluctuations in voltage could make the steppers step quicker, then you've got a mechanical dynamic that could leave a bit of a defect in the print. I do have a system understanding since I've got a MS EE degree and have pondered printer architecture closely. The thing is I get lost in complexity when the answer really is as simple as you reason! My bad, carry on... Les
  12. Oh that is too funny, hiding Pokemon in popular locations! I'll have to do that myself... Les
  13. I actually did post the question on Reddit of whether a UPS helps with print quality and the answer, which I kinda figured it would mostly be was no... The UPS will help with slow brownouts and such but the Power regulation plus stepper drivers plus the nature of the steppers themselves adds up to a system that does not flux with power changes, be they fast or slow. Makes sense to me. Les
  14. Version 1.0

    998 downloads

    I cannot sell stuff for various reasons, so I realized a few days ago that there is nothing wrong with making and stockpiling goods for sale later. To that end I began designing and kranking out these gears. I happened to have hot pink (magenta) on the spool so I thought lady's gears would be kewl for starters. The smaller ones have weak small diameter shafts that tend to snap but the larger ones are tuff enuff. The axle of each has an inward taper at 45 degrees, an axle rising vertically, and an outer taper at 45 degrees. The vertical segment is of zero length on most how it worked out without realizing it. I will have to redesign the smaller ones for strength. This type of axle is a conversation starter because it is easily made with a 3D printer and difficult to make otherwise. These gears are intended to be paired with a future design effort of an articulated arm. I enjoy robotic arms and have struggled with the motor and controls of them, not really being happy with my attempts at design. So it dawned on me to make a non-motorized arm. The picture frame can mount on the end of the print-in-place arm and maybe up to three arms can fit in a base that gets weighted down or clamped to a table. In this way the photos are very uniquely presented and the user and/or guest viewer can enjoy moving them about with robotic precision, all Steampunk-ish in the way it interacts and just is so kewl. That is for the future though, for now I am just beginning with the gears! Les
  15. I'm not one who minds the print lines that much. I know that 0.1 mm layer height is way better than the 0.25mm that I print at with a 0.4mm nozzle, it's just that most prints really don't need that level of precision. It's kind of like we all want to pretend that we are not using 3D printers, that the parts are injection molded smooth and we are hiding the fact that they are 3D printed. I say celebrate the print lines - they are characteristic of our art so I welcome the print lines! I admire the print lines in fact, hahah. Well.. maybe not, they are non-idealities after all. Still, I kinda like them. Those 40 hour prints will go by in 10 or 15 hours if we print them at more realistic layer heights so my choice would be to post-process the lines away if they are not desired in the final print. Well, I'm rambling and the point has been made so I'll stop lol. Les
  16. I've got a big ole APC BACK-UPS 550 on my Ultimaker 2+. Ain't that the stuff? Under ideal conditions the UPS would not matter but I figure the power in anyplace could use a little helper on the input side of equipment. Say the power fluctuates - does the print quality change? That's a good reddit question. I may be wrong but I'd imagine it might have some effect on print details, however minor that may be. I just knew this printer was the best thing since sliced bread for my room / workshop and it will be years before I get another such toy so I thought it would be nice to protect it with a UPS. I had one BIG problem out of the box involving the filament getting tangled with the black mesh, then when I fixed that the printer has since operated flawlessly. It is such a dream machine compared to the Printrbot that I'm glad I got the UPS. I don't want to come across uppity cause life has been full of challenges for me, it's just that it sure has been a joy to own and operate this machine! Les
  17. MarcusWolschon, You may be aware of this trick. If you print PLA at 210 C on a 60 C bed, as is the Ultimaker 2+ default, and you let the bed cool to 30 C after printing, the item will just twist or slide right off of the glass easily. Therein lies the way! Les
  18. Version 1.0

    1,147 downloads

    This fancy gizmo should really be called a Finger Rheostat because it acts like a variable resistor. You print the object in a base of PLA and an upper overhanging layer of Proto-Pasta electrically conductive PLA. Then you install it in a circuit squeeze and / or push it's coils around and they short together in such a way as to lower the resistance of the object. I used one to make a VCO and it works great! Les
  19. zoey89, there is a better technique. There is no need to stop mid=print and risk moving the print head as you describe. Just make two jobs, with the lettering subtracted from the background on the second job and registration marks for centering. Then use the zHop retraction setting set to 1mm or at least larger than the red color and it will turn out well in two colors, run as two separate but overlaid jobs. Les
  20. INTRO This is a really simple little trick that I just discovered and thought I would share. It turns out that after all the figuring out and trying of different bed substrates and all the experimentation, a technique has emerged for printing effectively in PLA. This technique is simply to print at your chosen nozzle temp (around 200 C or thereabouts) and with a plain glass bed temp of 60 C. That's right, a plain super clean bed at 60 C does the trick. Of course, you also have to let the print cool. It is the cleaning process and the cooling process for which I have suggestions. BED CLEANING I use a commercial Windex-like product that the maid left for me either by accident or as a courtesy. It's an industrial cleaner doled out in a plain squirt bottle so I cannot give you an exact product name. Just look for Windex or similar cleaner in your favorite store or on www.amazon.com. K, also GET A SQUEEGEE. I have a super squeegee with artsy design and double blade but really any squeegee will do. My squeegee is exactly wide enough to cover the whole bed width yet narrow enough to fit in the Ultimaker. I have no idea how my luck found that particular squeege width but i tell you it is the cat's meow. My cleaning process is as follows: o Get two paper towels, squeegee, and glass cleaner out and ready for action o Remove Glass From Bed p Clean Glass and Bed top with cleaning fluid sprayed on a bunched up paper towel o Allow Glass and Bed top to dry o Reinstall Glass o Spray cleaner on glass top, covering full width and back part of glass (avoid spraying back wall) o Squeegee surface and clean first bed front where fluid deposits, then squeegee blade o Put squeegee and cleaning fluit away This should clean your print bed to perfecdtion so that even the smallest or largest deposit of PLA will show no flaws underneath when all is said and done. Next up you print with the bed at 50 C and finally you allow to cool down, which has a small bit of technique as well, so here goes... COOLING DOWN When the print is done, the Ultimaker 2+ (I don't know about other models) will show a cool-down temperature down to 40 C. You need to let it cool down an additional 10 C to 30 C as the final temperature, or as close to 30 C as you can get. I just tried using a 6" fan to cool the PLA print and it worked very quickly. There is an important safety warning here: PET, PETG, and the PET family of filaments can take chips out of your glass bed if they are cooled too quickly. These instructions apply only to PLA. You are on your own for other materials. So anyway your printer will tell you at 40 C that the print has cooled sufficiently to remove it from the bed. Ah, but you are smarter than your printer and you know from experience that the print will not separate easily from the bed until another ten degrees (or at least seven degrees) C of temperature cooling have occurred. So how do you know when the bed is at 30C? Easy: you navigate the menu system into Maintenance > Advanced > Heat Up Build Plate to get a temp display and just leave it at 0 C as the target temperature. Now your pinter is monitoring the bed temp again, you've got a fan (or not) on the print, and you can wait and/or watch the print cool down to 30C. You know you've reached the threshold of gripping when you hear some snappy clicking sounds which are the bed and the print separating. These sounds should occur around 35 C or lower. The print can be removed with a thin bladed painter's knife or similar thin-metal spatula-like tool or in most cases when the print has some height to it, you can just grasp and twist the print to release it. There you go, print in hand, mirror-like bottom surface, and the satisfaction of a job done to perfection. Hope this helps a bit, it sure helped me. See ya! Les
  21. "Alright" you say, "what am I supposed to do, to generate the CAD design for these circuit boards?" "Surely you don't suggest I draw them with a 3D printing CAD software, trace by laborious trace?" Right! I did do that for the test circuit board in OpenSCAD, and boy was it a labor of love AKA a pain in the rear! "There must be a better way!", I thought. And there was. First let me say that what is really and truly needed is a Gerber to STL or even Gerber to gCode translation utility. That's not so super difficult to make as Gerbers are basically mostly of the format go here in (X, Y) then go there in (X, Y) and so on, and both STL and gCode can be represented like that. So certainly there may be in existence or will soon exist such software. I could not find it with a quick Google search anyway, so I developed a point and click workflow that is certainly a kludge but does get the job done for now. It goes like this. You begin by designing your PCB in your favorite flavor of PCB CAD tool (I chose Eagle), then the first piece of jujitsu is you save the layers to file in PDF format. At least that's how I could do it with Eagle. After that my second piece of jujitsu is to double click on each PDF file and use Preview (I'm on a Mac) to export the PDF file as a PNG file. You may generate the PDF file another way and that's fine. Then for my third piece of jujitsu I read those PNG files into OpenSCAD and saved them as STL files, so I have three STL files at that point. For the final piece of jujitsu I generate the each layer of conductor and difference() image of insulator for each layer, resulting in six separate STL files. Now with those six STL files, we can print them all, insulator first and conductor second for best quality results (i think so anyway), or we can combine the first two conductor and the first two insulator layers, print the conductor layers first, , then finally print the third conductor layer and skip the third insulating layer altogether, resulting in only three print steps for a two layer board. I found that combo approach to be confusing mentally and lower quality in print form because of all the Zhop-hop-hopping around leaving angel hare (also known as boogers) all over the board, which we really cannot tolerate because it shorts the conductors. Well there is one final tip in this crude and not-really-complete description, which is that we need sockets for our chips. The crudeness of the 0.4mm nozzle, a necessary minimum for the conductive filament to work (preferably 0.6mm), does not really support pin insertion and nor does it grab into the pins, so some type of friction fit socket is useful here. I'm still working on that, for now I'm just adding large pin blocks that are spaced closely enough for a chip to be inserted either upside down or with the legs folded beneath it or trimmed with flush cutters and forced into the friction fit socket. More to follow on that technique and how to introduce it into the CAD files as a seventh layer (using custom footprints in the PCB CAD software). So by now you've got the jist of it, you are a new jujitsu apprentice and you have at least an approximate understanding of that to do. Details and specifics to follow. Les Les go practice our CAD jujitsu!
  22. OK, let's get into it! First the 3D printing technique. The secret was revealed to me by Sander who suggested I read the following link: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/9172-multicolor-print where blecheimer describes a fantastic technique tor printing in multiple colors as long as those colors are all on the same plate of glass at the bottom of the print, great for a single layer board. blecheimer even identified the secret of this approach: Zhop! That's the number that specifies how high the print head is to "hop" in the "Z" direction at the beginning of each retraction (and back down at the end of each retraction). What the Zhop does, when you think about it, is it enables the printhead to cross a previously printed color of falment, missing it completely, and even drawing right smack dab next to it, fusing the colors due to nozzle overlap (it would seem ), and generally producing a fantastic multicolor planar print. So this tells us how to make single layer prints, we just draw with the insulator and then the conductor rihgt? Right! Then how, you may ask, do we print in multiple layers? Well, we use a little trick that I call "registration marks". When you make the second layer (substrate) conductor and insulator STL files (a separate print for each layer of each filament type is one good way to go and there are even shortcuts to that), Cura would just drop the layers down to the same level as the first layer, not print it above the first layer as is necessary, so how do you prevent this? What you do is you just put blocks at the corner that do extend down to the bottom of the first layer, then these blocks get drawn first when the second (substrate) layer is printed. And the same for the third (conducting) layer. Note that it is necessary to have the registration marks plenty far away from the board and from other registration marks to keep the printer from bumpint it's nozzle into them. Also we can get a double-whammy effect from the registration marks by putting them on the corners like that as they then get centered, all aligned and such, with the other layers. This way vias and conducting layers make excellent contact. Another trick is to use 0.7 inch or smaller traces with 0.3 inch or larger spaces (those numbers should total 0.1 inch as that is the spacing of chip pins. Of course, in our design files we convert those inch values to millimeter values by multiplying by 25.4 mm/in. It may even prove too wide to go with 0.7 inch and try 0.6 inch or 0.5 inch or so. OK, that's the physical jujitsu on the printer, the next post will describe the software jujitsu necessary to bridge the gap between the PCB world and the 3D world. So read on for another overview to be discussed for details and suggestions and corrections and other fun forum stuff like that!!! Les Les print a board!
  23. Have a look at this design's assembly drawing: And also this photograph of the physical 3D printed circuit: It's just a little demo print but it does have some nice features including double-sided board, vias, chip sockets of a new design, and translucent insulating "board" material. The yellow filament is just taking the place of real conducting filament which is being shipped to me now (I have 1.75mm graphene filament but it does me no good in the Ultimaker). I have developed both a printing methodology and a software workflow that together bridge the gap between the PCB design software and the 3D printing design software realm. I will detail these techniques in following posts. Les Les print some PCB's!
  24. Version 1.0

    1,077 downloads

    Single Nozzle Circuit Board Assembly Drawing
  25. Greetings Earthlings, take me to your nozzle supplier! OK, so I have poked around and found two types of nozzles that are wear resistant. First we have the plated brass nozzle (plated with steel), available from Proto-pasta here: https://www.proto-pasta.com/products/plated-brass-wear-resistant-nozzles ... and second we have the solid steel nozzle available from PrintedSolid here: https://printedsolid.com/products/e3dhardenednozzle?variant=7434732227. I emailed representatives from both suppliers and the story is that the solid steel nozzles are more durable while the plated steel nozzles have better heat carrying capacity, plus I image that the plated nozzles work better in an Olssen block. Which do you recommend? Les Les buy a nozzle!
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