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yogi-bear

I took the plunge and bought a 3D printer

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I have printed hinges as well . 

Yes on the cooling to remove the prints . I put on glue & can get two or more prints out of it .

But , it won't print ( or lay down the print ) properly on the 1st step . does the start line heads to centre &

then prints , but won't lay down properly , it take me's a few goes . So i was thinking it's the bed cooling

down . So when bed is up to temp , it's all level & then it works . As i set bed up when temp it hot . 

I'm sure i need to get them brackets , to stop it from moving . But i will set bed temp up 1st &

get that up there , then run my print . So the glass should have temp in it by then , so when the software

takes over & get the extruder temp up & bed temp up << this should have the temp in glass all ready etc . if ya 

know what i mean .

I have not printed for so long i can't remember the temps i had & the things i was doing :( ..  

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ok, so after not printing anything for at least 6 months, I thought it was time to give it a go, but ran into problems. The biggest issue being after about 6 or so layers, the printer would stop, and go a little berserk. After reading some forums it looked like I'd have to at least re-wire the servos and maybe a new controller board. Searching for parts, I can across the Anycubic I3 Mega and thought that given the cost of parts and the amount of time I'd have to spend trouble shooting, it would be a better option. This unit set me back $385 AUD delivered, and if I'd waiting 4 days, another seller had them for $40 off.

So that arrived the other day and I've had a couple of days to play with it. Its definitely better built that the previous one, with an all metal frame. Its not enclosed though, so I might build a case for it.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-1.jpg

 

The extruder is a lot better too, it being all metal. Build area is average at 205 x 205 x 205 mm.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-3.jpg

I've printed a few things now, its currently to a tie fighter for my son. These are a jack stand I like to test print with, this latest one fitted perfectly, previous ones on the last printer would be a little larger and not fit as well. This was printed with a 0.2mm later, so its a little rough. It will do 0.1 mm

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-4.jpg

 

One of the things I'm liking about this printed is the build platen. Its got a special coating that helps the print stick when printing, but as it cools, you can easily remove the prints. This was a bit of a hassle with the last printer. Part adhesion was achieved by using hair spray, and although was by and large reliable, was still a hassle, had to be cleaned frequently etc.

All is not completely rosy, I've tried to print a snorkel for my Pajero, something the last printer definitely struggled with and that too is failing on this machine. Still overall its been easier to level and is definitely printing more consistently. Prints adhere pretty well to the bed, but I have had a couple of issues that I think tweaking the settings will resolve. 

So now I am trying to tweak the settings and then I can go back to trying gradually more complex parts. 

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1 hour ago, yogi-bear said:

ok, so after not printing anything for at least 6 months, I thought it was time to give it a go, but ran into problems. The biggest issue being after about 6 or so layers, the printer would stop, and go a little berserk. After reading some forums it looked like I'd have to at least re-wire the servos and maybe a new controller board. Searching for parts, I can across the Anycubic I3 Mega and thought that given the cost of parts and the amount of time I'd have to spend trouble shooting, it would be a better option. This unit set me back $385 AUD delivered, and if I'd waiting 4 days, another seller had them for $40 off.

So that arrived the other day and I've had a couple of days to play with it. Its definitely better built that the previous one, with an all metal frame. Its not enclosed though, so I might build a case for it.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-1.jpg

 

The extruder is a lot better too, it being all metal. Build area is average at 205 x 205 x 205 mm.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-3.jpg

I've printed a few things now, its currently to a tie fighter for my son. These are a jack stand I like to test print with, this latest one fitted perfectly, previous ones on the last printer would be a little larger and not fit as well. This was printed with a 0.2mm later, so its a little rough. It will do 0.1 mm

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-4.jpg

 

One of the things I'm liking about this printed is the build platen. Its got a special coating that helps the print stick when printing, but as it cools, you can easily remove the prints. This was a bit of a hassle with the last printer. Part adhesion was achieved by using hair spray, and although was by and large reliable, was still a hassle, had to be cleaned frequently etc.

All is not completely rosy, I've tried to print a snorkel for my Pajero, something the last printer definitely struggled with and that too is failing on this machine. Still overall its been easier to level and is definitely printing more consistently. Prints adhere pretty well to the bed, but I have had a couple of issues that I think tweaking the settings will resolve. 

So now I am trying to tweak the settings and then I can go back to trying gradually more complex parts. 

So this maybe the next printer i should look at ?. Of course i will let you see how it goes . The print of axle stands look great .

I printed one & came out great . BUT that's the only one that worked . Bridging failed most of the time , for me on our old

printers . "Yer" the adjusting of bed & gluing bed to keep prints to stay , More so on ABS as that warped .  Looks like a 

great printer & i have noticed that alot of them are going exposed ? .  Maybe better ABS , PLA quality ?. 

I also thing our old printers , With plastic arms with wood frame , didn't help ?.  But were great fun & had to start 

somewhere ! ..  Thanks for the Update Yogi .. 

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I'd say definitely worth a look at. Some of the reviews compared it to the Crealty CR-10. I don't know that one, but it apparently has a good reputation and a bigger build area.

The one we got, I'll still try and get that going again at some point, but its going to take work. Rigidity is probably a big issue, and a better hot end. The hair spray sticking I could probably cope with. Agreed though, it was a start and it seems tech has improved a bit and prices are  better.

I've also found a Holden Monaro and Ford Escort RS2000 thats printable, so I might try them as a basis of something that I can vac form or cast from and vac form. 

Monaro - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2931131

Ford Escort RS2000 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2914461

 

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So did you buy it from E-bay or shop ?.  I will hold off for now & see how you go . I'm keen on another one as

I liked printing & seeing how they come out . But the fixing all the time & things failing after some time printing 

was peeeing me off .  So thinks for the upday M8 . 

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I bought from what I think is the any cubic official ebay store -> https://www.ebay.com.au/usr/anycubic-official?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754

 

So Wednesday night I printed a Tie Bomber. It wasn't too bad, but there were a few stringy bits that came off. Still overall not too bad. But you can see a bit of a black blow on the front. Apparently they test before hand, which is good to know, but its not good that some filament can remain in the system to contaminate future prints.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-5.jpg

 

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-6.jpg

 

I tried some different prints last night. I thought I'd try something a little smaller, so went for a LEGO storm trooper. I wasn't able to print this on the last printer and on the new one it almost printed, except one spot keep lifting. This happened to me on 4 attempts, same area kept lifting. Each time I had re-levelled the print bed too, it kept wondering off a little too. I do need to get some rubbing alcohol to clean the print bed properly, so not too sure if thats part of the issue. Was a little annoying though that the print bed kept shifting though. I suspect though part of the issue is where I have the printer, its one our colder rooms, and also that the screws to adjust are very sensitive.

I eventually was able to print another back end to the Tie Bomber. Print was more stringy though than previous prints. I have been playing around the settings, so I'm hoping its just a setting though.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-7.jpg

 

This one you can see a slight warping in the base.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-9.jpg

I'll be able to do more tests on the weekend

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I'm also thinking it could be softwear issues on some prints ?.  Let alone extruder temps & bed temps & room

temp .  Atleast your printing things , way better than the other printers , so far . 

The string is too hot extruder temp & OR speed ?. I'm sure .

 

Looking good so far , just some settings & you should be good to go :D  .   

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yeah, I'm pretty sure I was running it a little too hot, it was set to 205C, now trying it at 200C, and I've made the retraction slightly longer (6.5 mm) and I'm also slowing down the print speed of the bottom layers a little more so they cool more before new layers are added.

I had a lot more success today. I didn't have to level it at all, and apart from the first print, everything has stuck well. But I am still printing at 0.2 mm.

I re-tried the Tie Bomber and it was marginally better. There was still some stringiness on the sides but that breaks away pretty cleanly, no warping.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-11.jpg

 

So I gave a pair or Recaro racings seats ago. Much longer print, just over 4 hours. I did notice a lot of stringiness across the seat, but I then realised I'd had supports option on and that was the cause. It all cut out easily and cleanly.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-12.jpg

Oh yeah, with the printer, you get what seems to be a decent sprue cutter, some tweezers and a metal spatula for releasing the prints. If you let the prints cool though, they can be lifted off with no effort.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-13.jpg

 

So now I'm at the beginning of a much longer print, some things for the Pajero. At 15 hours, this one will run all night and includes a scale esky, a jerry can, a tool box, gas cylinder,  battery, a luggage trunk, a nuclear waste barrel and some hubs to cover the wheel nuts. So far its started well. Instead of just a skirt, I opted for a raft this time.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-15.jpg

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Looks great M8 , I did read about the printer and it has resume if there is a power cut etc . 

So you can stop print & then start it again .  I'm looking at getting one some time and did some light

reading about some of them .  But atleast thing's seem to be printing more better than the old one's .

Are you using ABS or PLA ? .  Time will tell and playing with settings . Thanks for upday . 

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yeah, the printer has a sensor you have to pass the filament through that will stop if the filament runs out. I haven't tried that yet, and I think it only works if printing from SD card and not when connected to the computer. I'm wondering how well it works because if there is a long time between prints, the nozzle needs to be primed again, but I can't see anyway of doing that in the settings. Maybe it does it on resume.

 

I'm currently just printing with PLA at the moment, but it will do ABS once I use up this roll of filament.

My overnight print turned out pretty well I think, all 0.2 mm layer height though.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-16.jpg

most of it separated pretty easily too. I was very happy with the hubs, I couldn't get any to print on the old printer. It would usually fail halfway through, coming off the print bed and turning into a mess. Maybe the rafting setting is better optimised, but adhesion of the prints on the Anycube I3 is proving to be really good. I'll post more pics of the what I am doing with these in my misc build thread.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-17.jpg

 

The only real issue was the base of the gas bottle. There was too much support material printed and made it very hard to get off with ruining it a little. I'm sure I can optimise this though.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-18.jpg

 

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-19.jpg

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Paint the gas bottle & make it a little rusty/ old used looking  & it would look great . 

WOW , what a big difference to this printer & our old ones . 

I was looking at Anycubic 4Max , but i think i may just get the same as yours . 

I didn't think much for the raft ( support ) stuff . Always left stuff on prints . 

How long did it take for your printer to arrive ?.  

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2 minutes ago, matman said:

Paint the gas bottle & make it a little rusty/ old used looking  & it would look great . 

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking

2 minutes ago, matman said:

WOW , what a big difference to this printer & our old ones . 

Yeah, I think the printers are steadily getting better over time.  And the little differences in this one makes it a lot better.

2 minutes ago, matman said:

 

I was looking at Anycubic 4Max , but i think i may just get the same as yours .

It seems you can’t wrong with the Anycubic ones at the moment. At least YouTube is good for getting a good lot of reviews.

 

2 minutes ago, matman said:

I didn't think much for the raft ( support ) stuff . Always left stuff on prints . 

Yeah, I was trying to avoid rafting, but I think it’s a necessary evil sometimes.

2 minutes ago, matman said:

How long did it take for your printer to arrive ?.  

I ordered on a Saturday night and got it the following Monday week, so about 7 days

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ok, small update. I've been doing increasingly longer prints. Initially I had a heap of issues, couldn't get prints to even start, as the machine wouldn't start heating. In the end it turned out to be the SD card. So after sorting out that out, I've continued trying to push the machine.

This is the front, doors etc, just over 22 hours of printing.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-20.jpg

 

Then I tried a Y-Wing, lots of fine detail, really too fine for this machine. I think I can do a little better though.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-21.jpg

 

I'm still having to mainly print with rafting, but these cleaned up alright. Everything is in PLA, and I'm finding that a little brittle, so once the roll is done I'll switch to ABS.

3D-Print-Test-Anycubic-i3-22.jpg

 

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Nice , so you building HQ parts ?. 

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1 hour ago, yogi-bear said:

I am indeed! I found it on Thingiverse, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2931131 so I thought it would be a good test for the printer. The guy has also setup a RS2000 Escort that I will try too.

Ok . I will have to look for the escort :D  .  Thanks ..

Looks like the printer is running good . 

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9 minutes ago, matman said:

Ok . I will have to look for the escort :D  .  Thanks ..

Looks like the printer is running good . 

yeah, seems good so far, definitely better than that CTC clone. I just ran out of filament and it paused the printing, but balls up the switch over, so ruined the last 5% of the rear end of the Monaro. I'm going to switch to ABS now and see how that goes.

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1 hour ago, yogi-bear said:

yeah, seems good so far, definitely better than that CTC clone. I just ran out of filament and it paused the printing, but balls up the switch over, so ruined the last 5% of the rear end of the Monaro. I'm going to switch to ABS now and see how that goes.

Well this will be interesting , too see if it lifts/curls etc . As you know that was the biggests problem i had , till i used the uhu

glue blue stick , that helped . Hope it all goes well .

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Interesting to see what you guys are up to. I'm a little tempted to get a printer, but I don't really have a need for one, although I'm pretty sure I could find stuff to print! meantime I've found 3dhubs.com cheap and convenient for a few little pieces that I've had done. The printers are getting cheaper though, I was looking at an Ender 3 which is less than $200 USD, seems pretty decent for the money.

 

 

 

 

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10 hours ago, Mark_C said:

Interesting to see what you guys are up to. I'm a little tempted to get a printer, but I don't really have a need for one, although I'm pretty sure I could find stuff to print! meantime I've found 3dhubs.com cheap and convenient for a few little pieces that I've had done. The printers are getting cheaper though, I was looking at an Ender 3 which is less than $200 USD, seems pretty decent for the money.

that does look like good value for money and reviews well enough. Although it seems like it could do with a couple of tweaks, which I think might be planned for the next version.

I've never really checked out 3dhubs, but I've found lots of useful stuff on thingiverse.

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ok, so been printing a bit more. When I use rafting, lots of success, but a little bit of stringiness. That I should be able to fix with settings though. But its working, so I will change things slowly.

This last week I've been mainly finishing off this Monaro print. Only real issue was the front window pillars, and they were long, thin and angled, so should have maybe used more supports. I'm going to use this Monaro as a test for resin casting in 4 sections and then making a fibreglass version. Much like you would do when making a fibreglass kit car. So the next step is to bond it all together, smooth and try and cast a negative.

I've got a Escort RS2000 printable shell, that will be next in line to print, well after some Star Wars prints for my son. I'll do a similar thing with the resin casting, but setup it more so that I can vac form in say 2 or 3 sections.

If I can get them to work, I'll then revisit the Volvo! And there is still the Cortina and Mk 1 Escort. I think there is too much detail for the plaster to cope with and still do repeated vac forming and get all the detail. I have a 3D model for the Mk 1 Escort, but the Cortina is still a problem.

And here are some pics of the Monaro. I was wondering which series it was modelled after, but after looking online, it looks like a maybe a HJ Sedan series, but made to look like a 2 door, but the rear pillars are all wrong. So that will need correcting. 2 Door would be nice, but I think that will be more work at the moment then what I've got.

Monaro-Build-1.jpg

Monaro-Build-2.jpg

Monaro-Build-3.jpg

 

Monaro-Build-4.jpg

Monaro-Build-5.jpg

 

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Awesome work so far! What size nozzle and what layer height are you printing at? I've been experimenting with a wider 0.8mm stainless steel nozzle for extra speed but I've recently started messing around with a really low layer height which means drastically slowing things down again. The plus point is that I should be able to get better resolution on the finished print when using lower layers... or I would if I could keep my printer working. My Bowden coupler broke as I was just getting things going. :(

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4 hours ago, Malakite said:

Thats absolutely awesome- looks very complicated though :-)

cheers, but I didn't design them! All my files, except of Ford Escort grill I made last year I have downloaded, usually from thingiverse. Now that my 3D printer is fairly sorted, printing isn't too much trouble.

 

2 hours ago, VagabondStarJXF said:

Awesome work so far! What size nozzle and what layer height are you printing at? I've been experimenting with a wider 0.8mm stainless steel nozzle for extra speed but I've recently started messing around with a really low layer height which means drastically slowing things down again. The plus point is that I should be able to get better resolution on the finished print when using lower layers... or I would if I could keep my printer working. My Bowden coupler broke as I was just getting things going. :(

cheers, I'm using a 0.4mm brass nozzle and printing with 1.75 mm filament at either 0.2 or 0.1 mm layer height. I'm printing with PLA at the moment, but have done ABS. I do want to try other filaments, like the TPU or clear ones.

It is annoying when parts break, so I make sure I have spare parts of everything. As good as I am finding the Anycubic, I'm glad they supplied a spare hot end with it. I've replaced it once already, although the one I replaced just needs a clean up. 

 

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2 hours ago, yogi-bear said:

I'm using a 0.4mm brass nozzle and printing with 1.75 mm filament at either 0.2 or 0.1 mm layer height.

Cool. That's what I started off with, like everyone I guess, until I recently saw a vid on printing D&D miniatures. I'm not into that sort of thing but it came up on my YouTube feed so I thought I'd give it a look. Apparently you can get really detailed prints with a 0.4mm nozzle by reducing layer height down to 0.04mm or even 0.02mm (Yep, you read that right!) depending on your printer's "Sweet Spot" or "Magic Number" (or something). You'll need to drop the print speed down to under 20mm/sec and, as I've found, it'll still seriously increase the amount of pressure between the feeder and hot-end (hence the broken Bowden coupler). I'm in the middle of upgrading to direct feed which should eliminate that problem but, in hindsight, I think I should've waited until I'd finished upgrading everything before experimenting. :lol:

If you decide to try this out when printing your RC bodies or Star Wars models please post up your results. I think they'd probably turn out awesomely.

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