3D Printing - A useful thread

[tauzero]

Some more detail here: https://3dprintingspace.com/t/cr-6-se-usb-problems/82/2

 

Probably applies only to the CR-6 SE which I presume is now obsolete.

[rwillett]

After a fair few hours with the Prusa Mk4, I can confidently say that the firmware integration with Octoprint is a f***ing joke. There are so many gotcha's about how Prusa have made it difficult to integrate that it is utterly pointless even trying to make it work if you want to do pauses or change filament. Just to be clear this is 100% the fault of Prusa who are being utter d1ckh3ads about integration.

 

Prusa are claiming that they are working on the integration but being a cynical git, my money is that they are trying to push the childlike PrusaLink into the Octoprint area and will try and moneterise it. At the momnent PrusaLink is a broken childs toy and Octoprint is a professional system that works exceptionally well. PrusaLink looks neat but has almost no functionality and is so slow on uploads. I've abandoned Octoprint for a the moment on the MK4, it's still on the MK3, and am seeing if PrusaLink can even do simple stuff.

 

There are also lots of issues with the MK4 filament sensor. It does not play well (or at all) with Octoprint and is a very big step back from the MK3 filament sensor which just worked. Somebody at Prusa cocked up big time with the new Hall Effect sensor which half the time just doesn't work. I've an open ticket with Prusa over this and if the MK4 keeps playing up, its going back. I suspect my lawyers, "Sue, Grabbit and Run" may get involved at some time.

 

Rob

[rwillett]

After a lot of thinking, I have decided to keep the MK4.

 

The issues I had/have are:

 

1. Display integration with Octoprint is a joke, but by putting a cheap TFT display and case on the Raspberry Pi, that replaces the MK4 display screen. I just don't look at the MK4 display now. Simple and cheap fix. Need to tidy desk as well

 

2. Using the TFT means I don't use PrusaLink which is not fit for purpose.

 

3. I still have problems with the filament sensor not detecting that I have removed the filament when it runs out. What actually happens is that the filament sensor is at the top of the extruder, it detects that the filament has finished, but there is still circa 10cm of filament past the sensor on the way to the hot end. This seems to work very well and I haven't had more than one problem. Once the sensor has detected no more filament, it moves the head to the bottom right corner and will retract the remaining filament, about 10cm, back out of the top of the extruder. This works fine. I then have to put new filament in,  the sensor keeps saying that there is still filament in the extruder when its ejected it, I have to put in and pull out a strand of filament 5x to 50x before its acknowledges there is no filament actually there. It thinks there is but there isn't. Tried blowed compressed air and made sod all difference. It does work but it's annoying constantly pushing in the filament and taking it out.

4. The other issue, the BIG one, is that Prisa have not implemented the Gcode command to inform Octoprint that the filament is out. I have an Octoprint plugin that detects this command then emails me so I can having dinner downstairs and get a simple message to change filament. No need to keep my eyes glued to the printer. This is unacceptable from Prusa as it's just a firmware update. I'll be writing words to Josef Prusa on this.

 

The upside to the Mk4 is the speed and quality.  Its 2.6x faster than my MK3 due to the Input Shaping. I used the six pieces of my V3 headless as samples and used PrusaSlicer to work out how long each piece would take on a MK3S+, a MK4 (without Input Shaping) and a Mk4 with Input Shaping. So TR, Top Right, would take 794 mins, 766 mins and 295 mins below.

 

 

The speed of the Mk4 without Input Shaping is pretty much the same as the MK3S+, its about 5-6% faster, which is not worth an upgrade.  When you turn on Input Shaping, the difference is dramatic, it's all software (apart from a tiny accelerometer) and suddenly the MK4 is 2.6x faster, so an 88hr print (yep thats how long some things take, and I have done things that take even longer) now takes 33.5 hours. The quality is still excellent as well. A 50 hour timesaving is fantastic. I now time the long ones overnight and can do 2-3 pieces during a (long) day. When it took 88 hours, everything had to be perfect and I had to be around to change the parts, no longer.

 

The other thing that I now know, thanks @SamIAm, is that I have a chance to upgrade my MK3S+ to use Input Shaping and possibly get the same speed up. Still investigating that one, but if so, it's a no brainer.

 

Quality is also high, I am now printing at 0.1mm because it's so fast.

 

Rob

 

[rwillett]

Also been testing out how strong PLA glues are.

 

I have loads and loads and loads of test pieces so I thought I'd see how strong my preferred glue of choice, FloPlast is.

 

Glued two flat bits together at right angles and put a lot of effort in to breaking the joint.

 

The joint held and the plastic broke. Thats good, so I feel comfortable with using FloPlast as a glue.

 

Just for information.

Rob

 

 

[SamIAm]

4 minutes ago, rwillett said:

The other thing that I now know, thanks @SamIAm, is that I have a chance to upgrade my MK3S+ to use Input Shaping and possibly get the same speed up. Still investigating that one, but if so, it's a no brainer.

According to Prusa and also https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisRiley the Mk3.5 upgrade allows doubling print speed + some quality improvements.  It seems this is due to the new mainboard being faster and using the new firmware with the Prusa IS (The main components like frame, rods, motors of the Mk3S+ are not swapped out) but it comes in at £326 (I've got the older soldered heatbed so need a replacement); A new Pi5 with nice touch screen + accelerometer + bits comes in much less ... and whilst it won't support the new generation of Prusa firmware, it will still provide the nice Octoprint integration.

 

Sam x

[rwillett]

36 minutes ago, SamIAm said:

According to Prusa and also https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisRiley the Mk3.5 upgrade allows doubling print speed + some quality improvements.  It seems this is due to the new mainboard being faster and using the new firmware with the Prusa IS (The main components like frame, rods, motors of the Mk3S+ are not swapped out) but it comes in at £326 (I've got the older soldered heatbed so need a replacement); A new Pi5 with nice touch screen + accelerometer + bits comes in much less ... and whilst it won't support the new generation of Prusa firmware, it will still provide the nice Octoprint integration.

 

Sam x

I think for the cost of an accelerometer (£9 or so and a decent touch screen £40+) I can test all of this out and see how it works. I can actually do it for £250 but happy to try Klipper out and revert if needed.

Rib

[T-Bay]

I keep fancying dipping my toe in the 3d printing thing. What do people think is a realistic minimum spend entry point to get something worth having, won’t drive me crazy, doesn’t require 7 years and a PhD in computing to use, could print small items? For info I am a middle age bloke who uses a lot of computer applications of varying quality/ complexity in his job but the last time I did any programming was pre-millennium and that wasn’t a massive amount.

[rwillett]

1 hour ago, T-Bay said:

I keep fancying dipping my toe in the 3d printing thing. What do people think is a realistic minimum spend entry point to get something worth having, won’t drive me crazy, doesn’t require 7 years and a PhD in computing to use, could print small items? For info I am a middle age bloke who uses a lot of computer applications of varying quality/ complexity in his job but the last time I did any programming was pre-millennium and that wasn’t a massive amount.

 

I'd buy an Ender 3 Pro or similar. get the latest version as it's cheap and does a good job for the price.  They are between £200 and £300 depending on the version and the functionality. Get a magentic mat so you aren't messing around with glass beds for your first printer. Some people will argue that it teaches you about the basics of printing, so does winding your own bass strings, make it easy for yourself. If you can afford a printer with automatic bed levelling, thats the one to go for.  Do not be fooled by adverts of bikini clad men and women (I'm not sexist) oozing about these incredible prints. They might not be telling the truth. Also do not be seduced by no name brands.

 

Get a few rolls of the same brand of filament, preferably PLA or PLA+. Ignore PETG, ABS, TPU, CF and anything else. Some of these are difficult to print, some of these are very difficult to print and some of these are toxic to print with. get the same brand so you can learn what temperatures work. 3d printing is very temperature sensitive. My printign values in my house on my Prusa are going to be different to yours on a different printer and bed. Get the same brand as you have a fighting chance of doing the same print twice.

 

Ask questions, ask lots of questions in this thread. I think this is the main thread for this sort of thing on Basschat unless I'm told otherwise. When you think you have asked far too many questions, keep asking. You can make a lot of simple mistakes doing all this, I know as I made most of all of them. I may have even invented some new mistakes all on my own. I'm good like that.

 

Start small and learn. Learn how to bed level, learn about temperatures for PLA and PLA+, learn the workglow of going from a model to something printed. You will need a printer, a slice (new term, this takes a model and slices it into layers for your printer to print. Your printer is pretty dumb, until recently your microwave could probably outthink it. You dumb phone certainly could and your smartphone is at Einstein level. The slice takes a complex 3d model and converts this into information that your coffee machine can understand. (and thats more intelligent than your printer). Your slicer has to communicate with your printer so use an SD card that you know works. If you are lucky your new printer may have an Ethernet port or WiFi port. This makes life a little easier.

 

Once you have a sliced model, you load it into your printer, tell it to print (you have read the instruction manual that appears to be written in something that looks and resembles English but isn't quite). Get another good book, something big and heavy and wait. And wait, and wait and wait. 3d printing is not for the impatient. Models take a long time to print, big models take the cube of a small model to print. 8-10 hours, a mere blink of an eye, 20-30 hours, thats not bad, 50-70 hours. Thats serious printing. Start small and stay small is my advice. Only go big when you need to.

 

Ask questions, did I say that before? Ask and ask and ask and watch videos. 90% of the videos on 3d printing are self congratulatory middle aged bearded bankers (spelling mistake) showing you their latest Ironman mask. These are often recorded in a dark basement where they still live with their parents. These are badly filmed, unedited, an awful lot of bad facial hair, bad dress sense with bad 2000's black t-shirts advertising bands no one has ever heard of in Seattle, Wisconsin or Immingham. These are a waste of your life, 20 mins of watching somebody attempt to speak a cohrent sentence with 7 consecutive umms or ahh's, severe camera shake, that could be condensed to 45 seconds is 20 mins you will never get back. Choose your videos carefully, if they have less than 500 followers, go elsewhere.

 

Learn to use a design package. There are loads of free ones. Good ones take time to learn. I am still learning Fusion 360 after nearly four years. In my defence this is not my primary job. Ask questions and put the time in. You do not need to be a programmer or devops to learn Fusion460 or OnShape or FreeCad or SCAD or whatever, you need to learn to think the way they think and sometimes thats hard. Keep trying, it will take time but you'll get there.

 

Ask questions (I might have mentioned that) and keep trying things out. never stop learning, I haven't.

 

Thanks

Rob

 

 

 

[SamIAm]

Great points Rob.

 

I'd probably lean more towards an Anycubic (When I was still musing about restoring my Prusa, I was very close to buying a Kobra 2 Pro ... they had good reviews and are fast), the Enders have a great community but have always struck me more as a tinkerer's machine.

 

I started out using Freecad but when I started designing more complex (not crazy complex mind you) things I ran into massive reliability issues, models would just stop working.  I've been playing with the free version of Fusion 360 for a couple of years now and find it is spot on, very powerful, loads of videos on how to do stuff with it and it has yet to bomb out on me.

 

Youtube videos, despite loads of facial hair, I have found good value from

https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLayers

https://www.youtube.com/@3DPrintingNerd

https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisRiley

content strikes me as sound and I enjoy their presenting styles but of course ymmv.

 

Sam x

Edited June 18 by SamIAm

[T-Bay]

11 hours ago, rwillett said:

 

I'd buy an Ender 3 Pro or similar. get the latest version as it's cheap and does a good job for the price.  They are between £200 and £300 depending on the version and the functionality. Get a magentic mat so you aren't messing around with glass beds for your first printer. Some people will argue that it teaches you about the basics of printing, so does winding your own bass strings, make it easy for yourself. If you can afford a printer with automatic bed levelling, thats the one to go for.  Do not be fooled by adverts of bikini clad men and women (I'm not sexist) oozing about these incredible prints. They might not be telling the truth. Also do not be seduced by no name brands.

 

Get a few rolls of the same brand of filament, preferably PLA or PLA+. Ignore PETG, ABS, TPU, CF and anything else. Some of these are difficult to print, some of these are very difficult to print and some of these are toxic to print with. get the same brand so you can learn what temperatures work. 3d printing is very temperature sensitive. My printign values in my house on my Prusa are going to be different to yours on a different printer and bed. Get the same brand as you have a fighting chance of doing the same print twice.

 

Ask questions, ask lots of questions in this thread. I think this is the main thread for this sort of thing on Basschat unless I'm told otherwise. When you think you have asked far too many questions, keep asking. You can make a lot of simple mistakes doing all this, I know as I made most of all of them. I may have even invented some new mistakes all on my own. I'm good like that.

 

Start small and learn. Learn how to bed level, learn about temperatures for PLA and PLA+, learn the workglow of going from a model to something printed. You will need a printer, a slice (new term, this takes a model and slices it into layers for your printer to print. Your printer is pretty dumb, until recently your microwave could probably outthink it. You dumb phone certainly could and your smartphone is at Einstein level. The slice takes a complex 3d model and converts this into information that your coffee machine can understand. (and thats more intelligent than your printer). Your slicer has to communicate with your printer so use an SD card that you know works. If you are lucky your new printer may have an Ethernet port or WiFi port. This makes life a little easier.

 

Once you have a sliced model, you load it into your printer, tell it to print (you have read the instruction manual that appears to be written in something that looks and resembles English but isn't quite). Get another good book, something big and heavy and wait. And wait, and wait and wait. 3d printing is not for the impatient. Models take a long time to print, big models take the cube of a small model to print. 8-10 hours, a mere blink of an eye, 20-30 hours, thats not bad, 50-70 hours. Thats serious printing. Start small and stay small is my advice. Only go big when you need to.

 

Ask questions, did I say that before? Ask and ask and ask and watch videos. 90% of the videos on 3d printing are self congratulatory middle aged bearded bankers (spelling mistake) showing you their latest Ironman mask. These are often recorded in a dark basement where they still live with their parents. These are badly filmed, unedited, an awful lot of bad facial hair, bad dress sense with bad 2000's black t-shirts advertising bands no one has ever heard of in Seattle, Wisconsin or Immingham. These are a waste of your life, 20 mins of watching somebody attempt to speak a cohrent sentence with 7 consecutive umms or ahh's, severe camera shake, that could be condensed to 45 seconds is 20 mins you will never get back. Choose your videos carefully, if they have less than 500 followers, go elsewhere.

 

Learn to use a design package. There are loads of free ones. Good ones take time to learn. I am still learning Fusion 360 after nearly four years. In my defence this is not my primary job. Ask questions and put the time in. You do not need to be a programmer or devops to learn Fusion460 or OnShape or FreeCad or SCAD or whatever, you need to learn to think the way they think and sometimes thats hard. Keep trying, it will take time but you'll get there.

 

Ask questions (I might have mentioned that) and keep trying things out. never stop learning, I haven't.

 

Thanks

Rob

 

 

 

 

10 hours ago, SamIAm said:

Great points Rob.

 

I'd probably lean more towards an Anycubic (When I was still musing about restoring my Prusa, I was very close to buying a Kobra 2 Pro ... they had good reviews and are fast), the Enders have a great community but have always struck me more as a tinkerer's machine.

 

I started out using Fusion 360 but when I started designing more complex (not crazy complex mind you) things I ran into massive reliability issues, models would just stop working.  I've been playing with the free version of Fusion 360 for a couple of years now and find it is spot on, very powerful, loads of videos on how to do stuff with it and it has yet to bomb out on me.

 

Youtube videos, despite loads of facial hair, I have found good value from

https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLayers

https://www.youtube.com/@3DPrintingNerd

https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisRiley

content strikes me as sound and I enjoy their presenting styles but of course ymmv.

 

Sam x

Thanks both! Plenty for me to look into. I have a fair bit of experience in the CAD side at least, but checked and my version of Catia is well out of date and prices of new versions are very high for the use I would get from it. Will check with work in case we have any already suited I could use, otherwise it will be open access stuff for now.

[rwillett]

@T-Bay

 

If you know CAD, that's a massive help going forward. The principles are very similar, though the interfaces and local usage changes. Some people like Fusion 360, others OnShape, There are lots of really, really free ones and most have free or cheap options. Fusion 360 offers a free option and doesn't seem to have that many limitations beyond only 10 files available for edit at a time.

 

The key thing is to work out your workflow and stick to it. My workflow is:

 

1. Design in Fusion 360.

2. Export from Fusion 360 to PrusaSlicer, this is my slicing tool of choice as its very good and links directly to Octoprint. Another option for a Slicer is Cura, these are two common slicers and are as good (or bad) as most others.  Slicers need careful use as slicing is more an an art as you get more complex models. Experience is key for complicated models.

3. I use OctoPrint as my main print server. This is a networked Raspberry Pi  3/4/5 that removes the need to copy files to SD Cards and plug them in to the printer. Octoprint also provides a mass of other useful features as well, but the scope of this is beyond this conversation.

4. Print and learn. basically head back to point 1 and re-define the model.

 

The choice of printer is up to you, but feel free to ask for feedback and comments. I'd be careful about what you choose, all of Sam's points are perfectly valid to think about and consider. Costs nothing to ask

 

Thanks

Rob

[SamIAm]

From the 3D model side, I'd suggest is is very helpful to look at these two big 3D model sharing sites

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/ and https://www.printables.com/

 

Sam x

 

[SamIAm]

13 hours ago, SamIAm said:

I started out using Fusion 360 but when I started designing more complex (not crazy complex mind you) things I ran into massive reliability issues, models would just stop working.  I've been playing with the free version of Fusion 360 for a couple of years now and find it is spot on, very powerful, loads of videos on how to do stuff with it and it has yet to bomb out on me.

D'oh ... this should have said I started out using Freecad ... (Edited now in my post)

 

Slicer wise, like Rob I use Prusa slicer ... it was natural as I've a Prusa printer, but I've used it also for the various 3D printers we have at my makerspace (Anycubic & Ultimaker) and it works very nicely.

 

Sam x

[rwillett]

This was a case for a Phil Jones HA-2 Headphone Amp or was supposed to be

 

Never had one blow up like this before.

 

[MartinB]

Now it's art

[rwillett]

No idea why it went like this. Its supposed to be a case like this. It is quite thin but not that thin.

 

[Stub Mandrel]

I first experienced 3D printing when sent a Dremel machine (targeted at schools) to try out. It produced very good prints in pla, but eventually I had to send it back.

 

I then made a Prusa i3 clone from a kit and with minor upgrades got outstanding results although thermistor and hot end cable breaks were a not uncommon issue.

 

I wrote a book based on my experiences, including things like comparing the strength of different layer orientations, screw thread pullout strength, various ways of joining parts - all with a view to using 3d printing as part of a home engineering workshop.

 

Since the Creality sent me  Halot One Plus, Halot Mage Pro, resin washer/curing machine and a K1 max (ffd), for review/demonstration at a trade show. Yes I am a very lucky bunny.

 

As a result I have become a bit of a 3d printing obsessive. I regularly make print for practical purposes or as models. I  make LOTS of mistakes but work hard to learn from them. I have an article on faults in resin printing in the works...

 

To give an idea of how much I do, I have worn out the LCD screen of the Mage Pro, I think it has had up to 2,000 hours of use but now light leakage keeps making thin films of set resin that get pulled up and tangled in models.

 

Currently I am designing a whole load of military-related model subjects in Alibre Atom 3D with a view to selling the STL files. Lots of fun a bit frustrating as what would print in four hours on the Mage takes over ten on the One Plus.

 

Missiles are about 75mm tall

 

Halot Mage Pro resin printer and washer/curer.

 

1:35 tank hull.

 

 

1:72 jet

 

Case for component tester

[rwillett]

They are great models.

 

The thermistor and heater block are known issues with the Prusa Mk3. I have a bag of spare ones I no longer need so if anybody needs one, just ask. I have used the wire for wirimg guitars as it looks nice

 

The LCD plates are items that wear out, same as the photocopying equivalent. However thats about as far as my knowledge of resin printers go. I also make astrophotography parts, especially made to measure tube rings (http://www.starclamps.com). I had a friend make me a ring in resin. My FDM version is designed to bend very, very slightly to ensure a tight fit on the telescope. The FDM one snapped so I never bothered with resin printing again. However for making very intricate models, resin printing is the way to go. The new models have some insane levels of detail, 12K points or something. Perhaps one day I'll buy one and see how I can make use of it.

 

Thanks

Rob