3D Printer Testing & Notes

This blog is dedicated to share my love & appreciation to 3D Printing. Printing, learning, and blogging from the dream city Melbourne, Australia ^_^ 

[3dlabcafe]

Migrating to FB

Hi, 

My life is getting busier now and I hardly have time to write long posts as well as keeping updates across the platforms anymore. Therefore I’m moving this blog to Facebook. 

Thank you everyone for viewing my posts and for the kind notes. It’s always great to know that there are many people are sharing the same love or someone across the globe finds my post is useful or interesting ^_^ 

If anyone is still interested in checking out my journey with 3DP, please drop by my page “3D Lab Cafe”. It’s a community page, and I’m based in Melbourne, Australia. Hope to see you there! ^^

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Subdivision bracelet

This is a beautiful bracelet. Designed by nervoussystem [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7048]

 While supports is often required for undercuts and hangovers, they are a disaster for an organic and intricate design if we don’t have the soluble filament for them. 

The first bracelet was printed without supports and rafts. (Note that in this case, raft is not necessary as the contact area with printbed is relatively small.)  However, an organic design means A LOT of hangovers and there were time that the nozzle would just fuse your filament into empty air and create a crumbled lump of spaghetti.

The second bracelet was printed with full raft and supports. Yes, the printout looked ‘supported’. Yet I was undermined the difficulty of removing all the little rafts intertwining with the ‘veins’ of this bangle. I gave up after spending about an hour and a half to pick them out bit by bit, breaking a couple of smaller veins, and still leaving about 30% of the supports that lie in between the two walls.

Haven said all these, I still insist that the bracelet is really nice. It would be perfect if I would have used a soluble filament for supports (eg. HIPS or Nylon). Will do next time, definitely :)

[3dlabcafe]

Printbed after 1 month and 35 prints and fail-to-print haha Time to change the bed sheet :) P/S: Guys. Never put glue stick on printbed!!! Heard somewhere - tried - 'omg!' :P

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Florescent Stratum vase

I fell in love at the first sight with this one of the popular vases on Thingiverse (^^) perhaps because of its modern architectural design, thanks to Mr. Hiroaki. You can find it at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:104120

Scaled to 90%. Single shell at 0.2mm, no raft / support, feed speed 80, travel speed 120. Took about 4hr 20' and came out beautifully, no cleaning or touch up required ^_^

I purposely didn't turn on raft to achieve the shiny, smooth bottom (as you can see in close up). However, the down side: to hard to remove; plus  risk of breaking off some of the 'fans' or pulling off a chunk of kapton tape :)

By the way, I got this new filament from ebay last week. Had a few prints… And...Colour is great, but it seems to jam up my nozzle from time to time so I'm a bit scared.  

----

Gandalf is too drunk to get off the chimney so we sent a rescue :P

TGIF. Keep your energy up, folks. Annyoung~~~

[3dlabcafe]

Studying, while waiting for my printer ^_^ Bonus, can you tell what I was learning? ;)

[3dlabcafe]

3D Printers Review 2014 | Best 3D Printer

Looking for the best 3d printers? We have easy-to-read, expert unbiased reviews and feature comparisons of the best and cheapest printers.

Ultimaker 2 is #1 FDM printer of 2014. Though everyone's opinion could be different, it is undeniable that this printer has the highest resolution among the FDM printers on market right now - up to 20 micron.

So, why is that impressive?_ In short answer, it's the grade to make jewellery and even finer than Form1+'s 25 micron. Hmm... now I feel like upgrading my printer ^_^" 

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Yoda with support (part 2)

Hi~ ^.^

It's been so long since the last post; even the  masters (while happily hanging out on my desk) start to complain now :P

In this note, I compare three prints of master Yoda, each in different resolution and corresponding speed. There is no need to lengthy description as the photos say it all. 

As a tiny note, the ears of 0.35mm Yoda were so fragile that I accidental broke one of them while removing the supports. So, guys, please be very careful when printing on low profile or you will scream in tears like me =^_^=

I also learned that we should remove the raft and support within a day after the print completed. Otherwise the plastic will harden and become quite annoying to remove. 

----

Part 1: http://3dlabcafe.tumblr.com/post/95000594727/printing-master-yoda-with-chin-support-part-1

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Master Yoda with chin support (part 1) Hi guys. Did you have a great weekend? Well, I did, as you can see, with Master Yoda haha The model is provided by NickRBrewer [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:48060], as a remixed of chylid's model. Applause to them :) This one run on standard profile, 10% fill, 1 shell, 0.2mm layers, standard speed 60-80 mm/s. No raft and color-matched support. Took 2.5 hrs.

What happened was: my right nozzle is slightly lower than my left nozzle as machine faulty (and I was printing by left one), it kept hitting on the layers on the right side. So about 30% of printing process, the support of left ear got knocked off, leaving that ear printed without support. (Besides, all the support layers stuck on like Yoda's facial hair, looked pretty funny indeed.) As a result, the two ears were very different in consistency (as you see in the close ups, right ear on the left and left ear on the right). 

Moving on to the front support. Personally I didn't think they were all necessary since the chin support (from the model) and the 'raft' support (generated by Makerware) were sort of overlapping. In addition, they left some marks on the chin and quite messy where the support broke off. I've seen someone else said that he could print with no support and it was fine, on a different printer though. You may try that too.  

Overall, I think it was an ok print. Good to see Master Yoda in tangible form :) I'll bring you more story on Master Yoda next time. For now, need to get ready for a new week. Good night ^_^ ------ PS: this is irrelevant  to this blog, but camellias and magnolias are in full (amazing) bloom in Melbourne now. Enjoy August if you're in town :)

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Winter is coming!

It is indescribable feeling, printing your own toy ^_^

With 200% confidence, I’d say this is the best print I’ve got so far. Standard resolution. 10% fill, 0.2mm layers, 1 shell. For the speed, I tuned extremely slow this time because this model is relatively intricate and I saw my printer was struggle with Totoro’s details even at 40/55. So only 30/50 mm/s for feed/travel this time. Took 5hours.

While printing the base, the 2nd nozzle scratched and some threads were out of place. They certainly gave me some heart attacks and I paused 3 times to give them some time to cool-calm down. Then the whole castle stuffs were all cool.

Final print out is so clean and neat. It still couldn’t render the details on windows. But that’s too tiny to matter.

Wanna print yours? File from Thingiverse by damm301 [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:39680]  Remember to keep slow speed. Be patient and winter will come :) have fun ^_^

[3dlabcafe]

At Library at the Dock, Docklands, Melbourne. So glad to see a lot of 3D printing in town ^_^

[3dlabcafe]

[Printing] Crushed Espresso Cup

White ABS. Fill 10%, 0.3mm single layer. I selected very slow speed, 40mm/s for feeding and 55 for travel. Took 2.5 hrs to print.

In general, the support and raft worked well thus there was no major defects or collapse. But as you can see, base, undercut, and sharp corner are still challenging. What I can think of is to print double shells then sanding off the rough parts. Will see if it works :)

The file is available on Thingiverse. Thanks to vjsannyshine - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:263754 :)

[3dlabcafe]

[PRINTING] TOTORO

So, the first models I ever want to print from my 3d printer is a figure of Totoro. 

But Totoro has fat belly (yes, he needs to go on diet!), thus it means some kind of under cutting. And he also has quite some details, such as eyes, teeth, some dimples on his chess, etc. Therefore, printing is not as simple and straight forward as the straight-walled deer ring (see my previous post on it here).

It took me 5 prints to get a figure closed to what I expected. I put all five of them on the cutting mat with the printed squares of 1cmx1cm for you to see the size.

For the first three prints, I used Replicator G as the slicing software. It took about 2 to 3 minutes for G-code generation. Not too long, but it was relatively slow compared to half a minute for Makerware, which I used later.

Then the biggest problem I've got was the melting issue. As you can see from the photos, the lower layers where we have the under-cut, is where the layers tend to melt and collapse. On my third trial, somehow a piece of kapton tape was peeled off and the model was even knocked off, turning into a mini sculpture of avant-garde spaghetti. 

So I decided to try Makerware though it is not the software recommended by Flashforge. My reference point was a review on Amazon for the previous model Creator X by Eric Fisk. 

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TLTD31I6GRCV/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00I8NM6JO&nodeID=16310091&store=industrial

My forth print was a 100% scaled Totoro. It came out much better than the precedences but apparently a lot of details were lost and the under-cut part still had those funny, saggy wrinkles. 

They say the bigger the better. So I scaled up 200% this time. This time, all details showed up well and the saggy bits were gone. There were still some bumps and misaligned layers here and there, but that's not a big issue for me. 

This is for now. I'll come back later with more notes on my fun time with 3d printing ^_^

Ciao!

  -----

For the more info and to download the file, please visit: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12146

Again, thanks and big hugs to Joo, the author, and Thingiverse ^.^

Totoro is from the anime My Neighbour Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki, Studi Ghibi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro

[3dlabcafe]

LAPTON TAPE PEELED OFF My heart sank when I saw this :( I was on the 3rd trial to print Totoro figure using ReplicatorG. Platform was preheated to 115 degrees, the nozzle was 210 degrees. And this was the first print on this area, i.e. it was not supposed to damage that quickly. I do not know the reason yet. If you have a similar experience, drop a note :) Side note: from my observation, RepG took too long to slice the Totoro model, while Makerware was much faster. So although the machine is default to be used with RepG, I will give Makerware a go for my 4th trial of Totoro printing. I will not give up on my favourite anime character haha Will update the result of that print very soon. Enjoy the rest of your week, guys ^_^

[3dlabcafe]

Complete another print. This one is even more useful than the previous one! I can eat my soft boiled egg with it ~ yay ^_^ 

Printed with white ABS. Printed time is 2 hours. Resolution 0.2mm. The awesome design is credited to Creative Tools and Fabricatis on Thingiverse - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:67110 - yeah, love you guys for making this model!

I quite like the final result though some details (around the corners) are lost and there are some bumps here and there. Will give it some sanding and paint work over the weekend to see if I can improve the final egg cup :)

Cheers for now. Happy Saturday, guys!

---

Update: I've uploaded a short clip of this print at http://youtu.be/aC3zAt9vPsc 

[3dlabcafe]

First successful print from the Flashforge Creator Pro ^^

A short clip of the print: http://youtu.be/tr_iCRWZJVw

Deer Ring _ by flowalistiks on Thingiverse [http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:208661]

G-CODE: Printing software: Replicator G - 0040 Slicing Profile:  Replicator 2 slicing defaults Use: Left extruder (standard white ABS, pre-packed from Flashforge) Raft/Support: none Object fill: 10% --  Layer height: 0.2 mm  --  Number of shells: 1 Feed rate: 40 mm/s  --  Travel feed rate: 55 mm/s Print temperature (C degree): 220 TIMING: G-code generating:  1m45s  --  Heating: 10m -- Printing: 12m58s  (est. 14m32s) COMMENTS: The print out looks quite good. There are still some gaps at the corners and expected sanding/filing job. Lesson to learn: For this kind of models, I will print 100% infill next time.