The peculiar world of 3D printing. Printers and CAD in a world of Craft Knifes and Pencils.

[Stabliofarmer]

I might as well start the topic I've spoken about in the purchases topic. If admin want to do the fancy thing where they move posts to different threads then I think what was discussed in the purchases topic would make a nice start to this one. 

Anyhow, in the mean time... 

Printer 

Printing

Printed wheels

Edited October 5, 2021 by Stabliofarmer

[catkom3]

Interesting you should mention take lots of pictures James, As I have recently discovered this scanning tutorial useing just your phone / camera and a PC, How you would obtain loads of images of the bottom of your object beats me though, But it does look better than any affordable 3D scanner I have seen so far,??

Regards

Joe.

 

 

[Tractorman810]

will try that thanks, 

i must be a bit mad but 

[catkom3]

Well done James I was wondering how best to do this.

Regards

Joe.

[aaron moore]

Good to see more of them getting around, prints turned out well.

Would advise covering the printer in a plastic or something to protect it, especially where youd touch when setting up a print etc, the resin gets absolutely everywhere, once it gets onto the touch screen reading it becomes a disaster 

[catkom3]

Hope this is ok James, If not I can get a MOD to create a new thread for 3D printed items, None of these are for sale as when downloading 3D files you agree to abide by all copyright rules and regulations, but anyway 3D printers are cheap and good, I got mine as a Christmas pressie,??? Very handy for makeing things like bales as you can rescale anything, The big bales I have made could very easily be resized as conventional small bales or upscaled to Hesston size, A little PVA glue and a sprinkle of the appropriate coloured flock and you can have hay or straw bales, Needing tatties boxes fairly simple the container and pallet for the IBC is straight forward, the cage though is a wee bit more difficult, The tyre is printed in flexible filament ( TPU ) and as you see squishable, And a diesel bowser is always handy for those long nights at the harvest.

Regards

Joe.

[Tractorman810]

So would this printer you have bought  james ? be  considered as a tip end home one or is it more mid range 

[catkom3]

Basically Sean the vast amount of FDM 3D printers are very similar, 4 stepper motors, same as CNC machines and all perform pretty much the same way, What creates the prints a is the slicer it " slices " the object and tells the printer what to print and where to print, My printer is / was made by Creality who produce thousands of good easy to use machines, my printer the Creality Ender 2 is no longer made by them, possibly because it's a 12 volt machine and all new ones are 24v, it is a huge learning curve but any printing issues can normally be resolved by typeing in your problem into Youtube and it's a safe bet someone will have produced a tutorial to show you exactly how it's done.

Regards

Joe

PS as I said ones as good as the other, once you get one upgradeing is easy enough, Here's one like mine.

Edited October 6, 2021 by catkom3

[catkom3]

Any printer on this page would be considered a pretty decent printer these days, If your slicer is set up ok they would all produce really good prints, And the slicer is factory set, You can if you want easily change setting, But that all comes with practice.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=fdm+3d+printer&_sacat=183062&rt=nc&LH_ItemCondition=1000

Regards

Joe.

[Stabliofarmer]

2 hours ago, Tractorman810 said:

So would this printer you have bought  james ? be  considered as a tip end home one or is it more mid range 

Joe certainly knows more about the printer market overall than myself. 

I'm not sure theres really a range, all the hobby printers seem to be around the same price with resin ones being slightly dearer than fdm. The next jump up is to industrial printers, bar one or two resin printers with large build volumes. 

When it comes to FDM v resin while Joe is clearly getting good results from FDM they appear more hassle, particularly from what I was reading and hearing say three years ago, but more importantly the layers are so much more visible. For me resin was the only option to achieve immediate results that could be used directly as master patterns. Fdm would require hours of filling and sanding, neither of which I enjoy! 

[Stabliofarmer]

FDM does of course have its advantages. As Joe's shown coloured filimanets can be used and are available in a wide colour range, resin is more limited. Also there are a greater range of mechanical properties available in filament such as rubber effect. 

It will be interesting to see the cost comparison between a resin and FDM part. I will contact Joe and give him a stl to put in his splice software and we'll see how the price compares. Off the top of my head the wagon wheel print was 35p.

[catkom3]

Cheers James, there is definitely room in this hobby for both Resin and FDM printers, Very interesting to see you mention three years, FDM printers are still basically the same as they were when desktop printers became available, What has changed dramatically is the number of people useing them and sending feedback to the slicer producer, Long story short, I got this printer Christmas 2018 and started useing Cura at the time version 3.6.0, now just over 2.5 years later I'm useing 4.10.0 that's a lot of updates in a very short time, But the extruders used on FDM printers really need updateing as there is not a single printer out there capable of printing flexible TPU straight out the box, the good news there is you can useing your own printer print a brand new extruder part and fit it yourself.

Here is the new FREE extruder, The black part on the left

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3844646/files 

And here is a photo of it after it has been sliced, I'm putting this up mainly for James as it has the amount of filament used and price, That is as fine as my printer goes 0.06mm layer height.

Regards

Joe.

[Tractorman810]

if i went and bought one it would be the filament one i suspect,  just looks easier, and for what i would consider doing a bit of filling ect wouldnt be the end of the world. that said i have a pair of duncan cabs i got from someone, clearly done in filament as ones blue one red and theres not a line on either of them?? so i asume they are done on a higher grade printer maybe ? 

[catkom3]

Don't go running away thinking a more expensive printer will give you better print's Sean, A more expensive printer will most likely have dearer "silent"  fan's and motors but they ALL have to use the same limited number of slicers and that is what actually dictates how good the print will be, Filament is another element in good quality prints, most are fairly good and as little an adjustment as 5 degrees up or down in temperature can make a difference as can speed and the quality settings you use, My machine has 7 setting's Extra fine to Extra course, The very best filament I have used is Silk Silver, which is almost chrome like and the layer line are hard to see, check the photo and click it up to full size, In case your wondering the two large nuts on the right, One goes up and down the bolt clockwise the other anticlockwise, The smaller nut goes both way's,???

Regards

Joe

[catkom3]

I had forgotten all about this guy, He really knows how to set his machine up, Fantastic print's.

Regards

Joe.

 

[catkom3]

There you go Sean, Brand new state of the art Creality Sermoon D1 printer only released in June, And I must say one of the best looking printers I have ever seen, The only draw back I can see is these machines will be very thin on the ground could be difficult getting hint's and tip's on it,

Regards

Joe.

https://www.creality.com/goods-detail/creality-sermoon-d1-3d-printer

[Stabliofarmer]

On 10/6/2021 at 11:53 AM, aaron moore said:

Good to see more of them getting around, prints turned out well.

Would advise covering the printer in a plastic or something to protect it, especially where youd touch when setting up a print etc, the resin gets absolutely everywhere, once it gets onto the touch screen reading it becomes a disaster 

This is fast becoming a very valid point! None of the slick YouTube videos show anything about having to get the resin back out of the tank or what to do with it. I'm yet to remove the protective film on the touch screen and think it will be staying put!

[Stabliofarmer]

23 hours ago, Tractorman810 said:

if i went and bought one it would be the filament one i suspect,  just looks easier, and for what i would consider doing a bit of filling ect wouldnt be the end of the world. that said i have a pair of duncan cabs i got from someone, clearly done in filament as ones blue one red and theres not a line on either of them?? so i asume they are done on a higher grade printer maybe ? 

This forced me to do abit of reading as I'm sure Mark Phelan? who makes the cabs and Britains parts etc has a resin printer. It turns out you can add dies to resin to print in colour, there is also a range of solid coloured resins out there (thought it was just translucent stuff available in pretty colours).

Personally I struggle to see how the Elegoo could be any easier, and while Joe demonstrates that FDM can produce nice prints its when you get down into tiny parts that resin wins out, I'm printing wheels with 1mm wide hex head bolt details that are coming out perfect. The real elephant in the room is CAD, while there's an insane amount of downloadable files out there something really specific will always need drawing. A large part of my job is now CAD design so it hasn't been a big put off for me but it does limit things for alot of people.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Stabliofarmer

[SPN]

Thanks to Joe and James (and Sean) for the above thread. Very informative

[catkom3]

15 minutes ago, SPN said:

Thanks to Joe and James (and Sean) for the above thread. Very informative

Cheers Stan, 3D printing must be one of the biggest hobbies right now, Which appears to be taken up with folks in their 30's ish, the weird thing about that is none of them seem to have ever built Airfix type kits, as one of the most often asked question's is, I've just printed these two pieces, How to I stick them together,???, 3D printing also has some practical uses, My old battery powered pepper mill packed in recently, so I thought, I wonder, And sure enough there on Thingiverse a lovely Pepper grinder which actually works better than the battery one, I printed it in wood effect and copper filament the printed out a big P to stick on top, The tolerances are so close it's held together with friction,.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2511131

Regards

Joe.

[catkom3]

Interesting to see these images posted on Facebook of an up comeing 1/50th scale P&H 5700 cable shovel the largest of it's kind, there were only five of these huge shovels ever built, One of them was mounted on a barge and sunk just off the coast of Norway and is still there I believe, But interestingly all the steps and hand rails are SLA laser printed, And this model will most likely sell for at least £ 3000.?

Regards

Joe.

[Tractorman810]

On 10/7/2021 at 8:28 PM, Stabliofarmer said:

This forced me to do abit of reading as I'm sure Mark Phelan? who makes the cabs and Britains parts etc has a resin printer. It turns out you can add dies to resin to print in colour, there is also a range of solid coloured resins out there (thought it was just translucent stuff available in pretty colours).

Personally I struggle to see how the Elegoo could be any easier, and while Joe demonstrates that FDM can produce nice prints its when you get down into tiny parts that resin wins out, I'm printing wheels with 1mm wide hex head bolt details that are coming out perfect. The real elephant in the room is CAD, while there's an insane amount of downloadable files out there something really specific will always need drawing. A large part of my job is now CAD design so it hasn't been a big put off for me but it does limit things for alot of people.

thats a good point you make with the cad side of it james, if your used to it its easy, sure theres simple stuff out there, but that side does put the damper on it, i can manage most stuff on a laptop for work, so no slouch, but cad does frighten ? me to some degree as all i tend to use is an i pad, my laptops not that great in all honesty, hence why i use the i pad

[Janval]

As far as I am aware resin seems to be the bees knees when it comes to detailed prints. Although I do use filament myself, for farily small pieces as well. But it does require a tiny bit of sanding in certain areas. I do however print in kits, so i have to spend some time to assemble everything afterwards, whereas resin printers can print bigger models as one piece.

Not the best image with regards to resolution, but this is an example of one creation that I've made fom filament.


Another one (the spikes are brass)


This Igland winch shows a bit better, due to the color, how it looks without any sanding. I cannot remember the exact print settings I used, but I think they were above standard. The settings used will change the overall look of the build, but usually I've found that quicker prints in fact just work better than longer ones for certain bits. The pattern is clearly visible here and would not be covered by paint.

These were made with long print times, multiple files put together. As I built them I changed the files continuously as I found ways to solve any issues printing them. So I'm looking forward to the next run. They are suffering a bit from a unlucky paintjob unfortunately, but overall they look nice for filament prints. All the side panels are around 1mm:



I'm not in any way a pro when it comes to printing as I only use free software and play around to learn, but a reasonably cheap filament printer can be very useful if used correctly.  My nozzle is a 0.4mm one, so when margin of error is taken into consideration it does sadly mean that it just won't do good on smaller bits than 0.5 (which is the smallest I've dared to put on really. A smaller nozzle might be able to, but haven't gone that far yet.

But I agree with James on the CAD side as well, most of the time is spent on actually making things on the PC rather than drawing and trying to cut pieces. Sometimes it can be a pain, but when I have time off and can focus on it for a day or two I've been able to knock up a fair few models. I add some stuff with brass/plasticard if needed though, and CAD really is very good in terms of seeing how it will actually work/fit together in the end. So it also adds another dimension to building, as you can see it in the flesh before it's built and locate problems/issues on the go.

Edited October 12, 2021 by Janval
Added statement about CAD

[catkom3]

30 minutes ago, Tractorman810 said:

thats a good point you make with the cad side of it james, if your used to it its easy, sure theres simple stuff out there, but that side does put the damper on it, i can manage most stuff on a laptop for work, so no slouch, but cad does frighten ? me to some degree as all i tend to use is an i pad, my laptops not that great in all honesty, hence why i use the i pad

I'm led to believe this is an easy CAD system Sean, Not got around to having a go yet myself, But probably plenty of tutorials out there to help with any problems.

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=designspark/designspark-mechanical

Regards

Joe.

[Janval]

A really simple alternative is Tinkercad or similar products, it's all online and very simplistic/intuitive. It does come with drawbacks though, but if you're new on the subject it is really easy and fun to start on. Costs nothing either.

[catkom3]

6 minutes ago, Janval said:

A really simple alternative is Tinkercad or similar products, it's all online and very simplistic/intuitive. It does come with drawbacks though, but if you're new on the subject it is really easy and fun to start on. Costs nothing either.

Yes Jan, I've looked at others before, But I have never seen the RS Designspark before so posted that link as an alternative to the more familiar CAD software, I have just watched a short RS video, And even although it was Spanish it did look fairly simple, PS, Nice Facebook page.

Regards

Joe.