Artsy thingy: check!

I guess it had to be done at some point. Artsy print, accomplished. Twisted flower vase by Yellasing.

Came out pretty good considering I had to scale it down to around 30% of the original size.

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...

A Calendar of Tales

I kind of rediscovered Neil Gaimans "A Calendar of Tales" project today. I've read all the stories before, but not seen the videos: which are too good not to share. Enjoy!

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!

Lunar Fligt vs The Rift

I hereby declare Lunar Flight to be my favorite Rift experience. It has by far been the best and most pleasant (read: least nauseating) experience. That might also have to do with me finally getting around to calibrating the correct IPD (inter pupillary distance) for my Rift.

Most likely the slow movement of the lunar lander and the static cockpit around the player is the main contributor in my case.

I really like that you can look around the cockpit as well - and when you look directly at a button you can activate it by pressin Y on the controller which is nice.

At first I tried to hook up the SpaceNavigator, which would be perfect for this, but it seems a bug in Unity only let's me register one axes (Z-) so until that's fixed I have to rely on the Logitech F710 gamepad.

However; it's not an easy game/simulator - so far no success, only crashes.

Now if I could only get to try out the famed Eve Valkyrie demo...

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.