3d printer picks its kinda a hobby right

[Athaea]

just dropping a pick of my 3d printer build for fufu since we got to talking about it

[Fufu]

Pretty fucking sweet. Test ride time?

[Tigerlilley]

WHAT IS THIS


what does it do?
what do you use it for?
did you build it?
have you made anything with it?
can I have one?

[Athaea]

what is this?                                    its a 3d printer

what does it do?                              it prints things in 3d
what do you use it for?                    to print things in 3d
did you build it?                                yes but it took ages
have you made anything with it?     yes ill put a few more picks up in a bit
can i have one?                               any one can make one if they want to throw the time at it to work out how to make one since its open source

its true name is a reprap prusa mendal
its basicly a 3d printer that takes 1.75 mm pla plastic filament/string and melts it then draws the object on the red plate
"it works sort of like the hot glue guns you used back in primary school"
then draws each layer up one at a time till it makes something
at the moment i can get it to print at a layer height of 0.2mm so it prints 5 layers for every 1mm of height which lets you get a lot of detail in to the object

at the moment it still needs a bit of work but ill prob finish it next week and do some more testing
long story short the z axis fell off at one point so had to do some modding to get it sorted but that just made the motors off center so there was vibration so yah....
i just left it alone for a month till i had more time and wasn't pissed off at it
hopefully it will be all sorted next week and i can make stuff with it

[Athaea]

heres some of the stuff i made during my first printer setup

the spiral mess was me trying to make a turbine blade as a detail check... yah im not there yet

the one of the right was me trying to make a roller for the printer as a spare since all the white parts you see on it are made by another printer

[Athaea]

with some more testing and tweeking i got it to make stuff like this

left i tryed again with the roller much better this time but bit harder to see detail since its black middle some blocks i found the stl files for on thingiverse very good for testing
the green one was me trying different fill styles so that i didnt have to make it solid so i save time and plastic since it doesnt have to be strong but as you can see from the shape im still learning
bottom one was with some tweeks and more exp ^.^

thing in green on bottom right was me having a go at a dice its ok for now but i think i can do better now it does have numbers printed in to it but i wasnt completely dialed in at the time so there a bit rough

up top in green is some rod clamps for the printer that ended up being to small but were a good test since i didnt know much about object scaling at the time

[Athaea]

this is my biggest part built so far and in my best setup so far too

i didnt think to get a side pick of it but the base is 1.5cm tall and the round bit goes another 1.5cm so its basicly 3cm tall at the tallest point

the top looks a little rough but that can be sorted with sand paper
i did have some problems with curling with this object since it was so thick the top and the bottom were a different temp so it curled towards the heat since the bottom basicly shrank for getting cold
who knew but was worth it just for that exp so i now know i need to use the heat bed for big objects like this to stop curling

[Athaea]

and lastly a part pic post z axis fault

and the skull is just a 3d printed one from one of my parts suppliers for being there 666 customer but it shows the detail im shooting for

[Tigerlilley]

up top in green is some rod clamps for the printer that ended up being to small but were a good test since i didnt know much about object scaling at the time

you used your 3d printer to print parts for your 3d printer?


This is awesome Athaea 

[Athaea]

well sort of i got them off another guy that had finished his so i payed him for them since the design is based round that idea of trying to make its self "self replicating"
at the moment the mount parts are as far as it goes since they havent built one that can print circuit boards yet but there working on it

[Wales]

I have seriously considered buying a commercial desktop 3D printer. I don't have the temperament to tinker with a device like this, I'd want the print quality to be at least passable from day 1. Sadly, going down that path is still Really Expensive, I just can't quite justify the cost. 

[Rekuja]

3D Printers still creep me the fuck out.

[Athaea]

yah fair enough the store based ones are like 2-5k at the moment
i did it for the challange and the possible pay off since theres a lot  of stuff i can make with this like rc car bodys so i will only need the motors and what not can make my own gear boxs and all that so its worth it for me

once i get this one all sorted ill prob look in to making a second one
which should be alot cheaper
first one cost in about 800 mark

big thing is the money you dont pay you have to pay in time spent learning
"steep learning curve"
"with a high skill cap"

dw  Rekuja ill be introducing you to are skynet overlords soon

[Fufu]

dw  Rekuja ill be introducing you to are skynet overlords soon

Sentient plastic.


Based on the images it looks like it's still got a fair ways to come before it can handle the detail on the model I sent you. But I'm sure you'll get there just fine.

[Athaea]

an update on my printer here's some pic's

followed by a pick of the machines new location also known as the garage

[Athaea]

if your wondering about the wrench its a nasa test wretch they had ago at building on the iss
then they released the plans so i had a go
had a few problems though sadly
the injector got jammed so had to work that out hence the bad finish
since part way through it kept going but nothing was coming out so that part wasnt build
if you look you can see the jump line for when that happened
and lastly the writing is inverted which is prob cos my x axis is setup wrong but i have an idea on how to fix that
basicly it just makes any writing i do come out as if your looking in a mirror
but for a test piece im very happy with it once i fix those things ill  print another and post that hopefully ill have a perfect wrench by tomorrow afternoon

[Min Kim]

That's cool Ath! Do you consider it finished now?

[Athaea]

after much pain and 2 weeks i think ive almost nail down the bugger thats stuffing with my prints will run a test this week see if i can get it to bugger off >.<