PRINTinZ printer plate

On another note; I'm extremely pleased with the printer plate from PRINTinZ. I'm using the 140x140 mm printer plate which fits my printable area quite nicely.

The prints stick extremely well to the surface even when printing cold (PLA). Although too little clearance between the hotend and the surface might have it stick too well on thinner prints so be careful.

Failed print, not because of the printer plate though.

It is great to be able to lift out the whole printer plate instead of having to fiddle inside the printer when removing the print. Detaching the print from the plate is surprisingly easy. Instead of having to use a sharp knife you just twist and bend the plate and the print pops right off - as long as it's not too flexible.

The above part is 120mm in diameter and that's the biggest footprint I've managed to print to date. Previously the parts would always pop off before the print was done - even with a heated print-bed and using kapton or blue tape.

A funny thing is that when I removed the plate and placed it on the table, before removing the part, it was quite warped by the print. The finished part is a bit warped, but in this case it won't matter, but it's something I'll have to look into in the future.

Having dialed in the new E3D v6 hotend the new setup is starting to look quite nice - best quality prints so far :)

The quantum mechanics of 3D printers

Sometimes it would one could believe 3D printer have quantum properties. You have to actively observe it to get the expected result. Whenever you look away something goes wrong...

Another Rebuild

It seems most of the posts on this blog has been about me rebuilding my 3D printer. Well, hopefully this will be the last one in a while as I have several other projects that are in need of parts and I'd rather spend time on them than on another teardown/rebuild.

I were quite happy with the performance on my previous extruder mechanism, although it was supposed to be temporary. Combined with the J-Head I got very nice prints for a while.

When the extruder broke down I tried a couple of e-bay replacements but did not quite get the performance (or fit with my printer) I was looking for. At the same time the J-Head started acting up (leakage and stuff) so I needed to find a replacement for that as well.

After a bit of research I ended up buying a Bulldog Lite Extruder from their Indiegogo campaign and was pleasantly surprised that they shipped them right away with no waiting at all. Although a bit heavy it's beautifully machined and well put together. The "Lite" comes without the gearbox which makes it a bit lighter, but is only suitable for 1.75mm filament. Secondly I ordered the E3D v5 hotend which has gotten great reviews. Going with an all-metal-hotend made sense this time around since there's no peek or PTFE that can melt/be deformed.

One thing about about the Bulldog / E3D combo that isn't perfect is the mating between the two. They are both fabricated to follow the J-Head "standard" so you can just slide the stem into the extruder, but there's quite a bit of slack along the z-axis so I made some shims out of regular plastic. 4 of these did the trick.

It took me a while to get everything put together, as I also switched the printer firmware from my stock Sprinter firmware, delivered with the SUMPOD, over to the latest Marlin.

Now I finally have a working printer again. And I must say, I'm very pleased with the quality of the prints as well as the new functionality in Marlin. The printer even sounds better!

My first print were a camera stand for one of my Raspberry Pi's. This print was sliced with .3 mm layer height so it's a bit rough, but I opted for speed before beauty this time. I've made the design available on Thingiverse as well.

Until next time!

New Spool Holder

I had some 8 mm carbon rods laying around and figured my 3D printer needed an upgrade for the spool holder. The rods are nice and long (50 cm each) and I originally intended them for a quad copter build, but I found rc-helicopter tail-rotors made of aluminum to be a better fit for that project.

Finished contraption.

The whole printer/spool holder assembly is quite high, but it saves space on the table at least. It's this high by design since the y-axis moves back and forth and having a bit of distance between the print head and the spool is good in that case.

Closeup of the spool holder.

For the center rod I used a threaded rod. This makes the centering of the bearings easier and also adds to the stability by allowing us to tighten the hold around the bracket from the vertical rod a bit.

Oh, and it rolls so much better than my last try. The design can be downloaded from Thingiverse.

Largest print yet

I finished a 15-hour print yesterday. As it didn't finish Sunday, we had cinema tickets and I really don't want the printer to be running when I'm not in the room, I had to pause it and continue yesterday.

Designed in Autodesk Inventor

Pausing the print didn't pose a problem, except for the operator error. I wanted to increase the distance between the print head and the part, while the head cooled down, and indadvertedly pressed move z 10 mm in the wrong direction... The print head buried itself well and good into the model, but when I reversed the direction the damage wasn't too bad. After a bit of cleanup the next day I could continue the print. Kinda lucky there.

The print came out pretty good, except for two layers around the point where I paused and that's totally my fault. By being more careful I'm sure pausing a print will cause no artifacts in the future.

This print took quite a while and I'm pretty sure I can increase the print speed since it clocks in at about 14 mm/sec at the moment. If only there was an option in Slic3r where it would speed up on longer stretches and then slow down around bends or where it goes back and forth rapidly. One for the wish list.

Oh, and what is it you might ask? Its a new stepper motor holder for the y-axis on my Sumpod.