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Printing in your house

Discussion in 'Helpful Tutorials and Tips' started by iflyos, Aug 29, 2012.

  1. iflyos

    iflyos Member

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    Just a quick FYI for those wanting to print in the house: ABS smells bad when being extruded. PLA, being corn sugar based, smells more like maple syrup, and is less offensive. The ABS isn't to bad, but If I am running a large print, I open the door to the outside from my shop, to minimize the complaints from "she who must be obeyed."

    Also, if you are a brave experimenter, there are several other tool chains to play with. Sketchup works just dandy for designing in 3d, and since we are all use to it, stick with it. However, Tinkercad is neat for a quick, design anywhere, web based solution, adn some of the locals are loving Blender as well as openScad.

    I strongly recommend using netfabb cloud service to "validate" your STL files prior to slicing. It WILL save you headache. Just hit the netfabb website and click on the cloud services. http://cloud.netfabb.com/
    upload your stl, and it will process it, and give you a link to download your processed file.

    For slicing the model, I like slic3r 0.9.1 Its fast, and works great, after you set it up for you machine parameters (easy to do)

    For the actual "CAM" (as it were) interface, pronterface cannot be beat. Yea, you have to install python and some of it's libraries, but it is a very effective program, and you can run multiple copies of it to control multiple printers from one PC. We do this at the Hackerspace all the time.

    Though my personal 3D printer is a MendelMax, I will help out with advice where I can. I am using Sanguinololu electronics with open source stepdrivers, so my electronics are somewhat less than standard, but I do use Marlin firmware, so maybe that will be of some help..

    Y'all are gonna LOVE having a 3D printer. I keep finding things to print. Heck, I even took mine to a fly-in this past weekend (a buddy brought his as well) and we printed commerative coins for the event, as well as a bunch of other stuff, including a wedge to help one of the attendee's get his drawbar to sit properly in his receiver hitch, and a couple of pilot figures for some Star Wars fans :D

    Tim
    (you know..that guy in the corner, surrounded by dust bunnies!)
     
    iflyos, Aug 29, 2012
    #1
  2. 66tbird

    66tbird Moderator Staff Member

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    You guys building these up are going to be in for some real design to reality fun when your done. I was one of those that just couldn't wait and build another machine so I went the Replicator Dual.

    I'll second what Tim said about ABS with one caveat, if you hangout in the 'not that bad' of fumes for an hour or four your going to have a day of 'hangover' symptoms.

    If your a SK (sketchup) user you'll get real good in short order. Another needed plugin is 'solid inspector'. That plugin is needed to check that you have actually created a solid from a complex part. Use in conjunction with the x-ray view mode. Once you have a complex solid you can do all the fun things solids can do, like merge, union, split, etc. Always use the clean up plugin after any of the solid toys.

    Netfabb, always use it to fix and reduce triangles before sending the file to be sliced.

    I use replicatorG for my slicer for convenience because of the number of settings and slicers to tinker with and the great set and forget default profiles.

    I'll also gladly offer help to the group for any question relating to ABS and how it prints. I'm fives months into the show and gone through 8lbs of plastic with hundreds of prints. MBI has great support and free parts for stuff that fails within a year so I've been printing almost 24/7 with a couple prints running over 22hrs each. (The skull at 0.1mm layer on an .35mm nozzle at 100mm/sec)

    All these machines are basically the same and the software is just getting better and better. The only real thing is to level the bed very well in relation to the nozzle at all locations, and have well designed and sliced model.

    Have fun.
     
    66tbird, Aug 29, 2012
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  3. iflyos

    iflyos Member

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    Good point about leveling the bed. You have to remember it is level with reference to the nozzle, not "absolute" level as indicated by..well, a level.

    The easiest way to do this is to check the height of the nozzle with a piece of typing paper. you want just a bit of drag on the paper, when it is between the nozzle and bed. you should feel the drag, but not be able to bunch the paper up when you push it . I know...allot of things tell you to go one nozzle width from the build plate, but the paper method works great.

    Anyway, set the z height in the center of the bed, then do each corner bu adjusting the bed height in each corner. After that, go check the height in the center again. after a couple of cycles of this, you will have a great starting place for bed leveling. If you wanna get serious, mount a dial indicator to your x axis carriage(without the hot end and extruder mounted), and use it liberally :D

    You can get the bed to within 50 microns of perfectly flat with respect to the nozzle if you spend some serious time on it...and it will show when you start doing .1mm layers on those prints you want to look extraordinary!
     
    iflyos, Aug 29, 2012
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  4. TigerPilot

    TigerPilot Well-Known Member

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    Great point, guys. Excellent advise and instructions. Thanks! :banger:
     
    TigerPilot, Aug 29, 2012
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  5. 66tbird

    66tbird Moderator Staff Member

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    If your machines can run the Jetty Sailfish firmware you'll want to do it. I just upgraded from MB 5.5, which I had running very nice and accurate, to Sailfish and it is a whole new level of perfection for my machine.

    The original stock MB firmware ran at most 40mm/s, then 5.5 came out and it doubled to 80mm/s but 70mm was a prefect print and the bot was smoother than the first fw but still shook things up some.

    Now with Sailfish its got more features to tune with and on my first print I did my best edumacated guess on my bots settings for a 20mm calibration cube printed at 100% infill doing 150mm/s print speed in ABS. It was so fast and so very smooth it just kind of happily sang a song while printing. The print looked great when done with only a tad of edge and corner flash that a few strokes on a 220 block fixed. I grabbed the trusty calipers and sized that 20mm up.

    20.08 × 20.03 × 19.92 tall (it's a bed height issue when using a 100 micron layer) It's all good enough for me. That's my second twenty minute upgrade that double my performance and I'm bushed. :doubleup: If those guys had a donate button I'd hit it hard.
     
    66tbird, Nov 3, 2012
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  6. kram242

    kram242 Administrator Staff Member

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    Sailfish is only compatible with makerbot electronics :? shame
    Here is a talk going on about Marlin and Repetier and Sailfish
    http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?4,161 ... msg-161397
    Looks to be a lot like Marlin and I know what you mean Marlin is fast!!!
    Mark and Trish
     
    kram242, Nov 3, 2012
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  7. 66tbird

    66tbird Moderator Staff Member

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    That explains why my reprap friend is writing a conversion code to simplify his work flow. Now I get it :oops: I can't use repetier (only as a viewer) and he can't print (or hates modding code) from repG. He is dead set on it and is going to get his machine to use sailfish. I just didn't know he was writing the code to do it. It just sounded like a done deal. I know he (has/had/used) Marlin, but when sailfish came out he bugged we for weeks to install it saying it's going to be fast.

    edit: in a post a few down from the one on the forum linked? I believe that is what my friend Bob is seeking.
     
    66tbird, Nov 4, 2012
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