CAD & 3D Printing Thread

[NTP66]

Printed out a 3 piece watchtower for my daughter's articulated dragons using dual color silk PLA, which took about 21 hours in total to print. Depending on where you stand and the light, it's either blue or green. Came out wonderfully.

[NTP66]

Which printer did you buy, and any thoughts on this one?

I'm looking for a middle of the road 3D printer to see if this is something I want to do as a hobby. Don't want to go too basic in case it's something I like and would need to upgrade, but I don't want to go too advanced just yet. I also like it's being featured as a "silent" printer since I have somebody on the other side of the wall of the townhouse.

I have a Bambu Lab P1S Combo, and would highly recommend it. It's on the more expensive side, but the quality of the product is amazing. It has some quirks, like no 3rd party integration (i.e., OctoPrint, etc.), an awful webcam which you can see from my videos, but the print quality and speed is unmatched.

That 5M Pro looks like a clone of my printer, actually. I read that there is finally wifi support for using OrcaSlicer, so that's a huge win - OrcaSlicer is my favorite by far. The price on that is pretty good, too, for what you get. My concern would be the issues with the hardware reading some of the reviews. I don't care about the quick change nozzles, because swapping them on my P1S is a 3 minute job, and really, you won't be swapping nozzles often if at all. The bed size on that FLASHFORGE is also smaller (220 vs 256). May not matter, but I can tell you that it made a difference for me for larger/longer prints.

I will say that if you think you'll really get into this hobby, it may be worth looking at something a little nicer up front so that you don't wind up upgrading after 3-4 months like I did. Granted, my X2 was under $150, but if I knew now what I did back then, I'd have gone straight to the P1S. Another benefit with Bambu is that I guarantee you will find more mods/parts for Bambu printers than you will FLASHFORGE. MakerWorld is their 3D model site, and there are tons of models to download, including profiles that you literally just click print on since they've been validated for your specific printer. The biggest benefit is actually the AMS system - Bambu's 4-color filament holder. If you decide that you want to do multi-color prints down the line, you can buy one and immediately do that with no other changes.

Sorry for the long post, but in case you're open to other options, Creality just announced a new 4-color filament system: https://all3dp.com/4/creality-announces ... d-printer/. May be worth waiting to see what happens with that and the price point before deciding, because Creality is a huge brand with a large support community. I can't find the article now, but I swear I read that the new filament system will be compatible with the existing Creality K1 printer. The K2 Plus listed in that article is a huge printer, and likely not what you're looking for.

[iamjs]

Creality was another brand that I remember seeing that I was considering. I’ll have to look at that once I get home.

[iamjs]

Any thoughts on the K1 Max?

[NTP66]

Any thoughts on the K1 Max?

Big print volume, but for that price, I’d rather have what I have now P1S Combo. I think the jump from 220 to 256mm is warranted, but harder to justify 300mm. Creality is very popular, though.

I will say that the K1 Max does have spaghetti detection and lidar, which can come in handy. It’s one feature I wish my P1S had. There are 3rd party utilities out there that allow you to use one of these AI detection apps to monitor your prints, but they all require additional hardware.

[iamjs]

So I ended up grabbing this off of mac.bid for under $200, warranty protection included. I have your post bookmarked so I'm not asking the same questions later should I decide to upgrade.

[NTP66]

Under $200? I'd consider that a deal for sure. Welcome to your new obsessive hobby, haha.

Side note: It's driving me nuts that Amazon links are broken again.

[DigitalGypsy66]

We have several 3D printers in our building for our campus makerspace. I'd never really seen a small one before, only the large industrial ones that are used at our local technical college.

So to print my wife's Taboo card holder you shared with me, I decided to look into how to use them. I have to take 2 hour long training workshops - one on how to use AutoFusion 360 for design and the other workshop on using the Ultimaker Cura software.

The CAD class was obviously very basic and I won't be designing much from scratch. Even the makerspace tech student that ran the session says he doesn't do much with CAD. But the Cura software is pretty awesome. We have an Ultimaker 3, a 3 extended, and a 5. Plus a couple of Creality units we didn't train on. The software even tells you the estimated time it would take to print your model, and obviously changing settings will improve the printing time.

It was mind boggling the options available, dual filaments, colors, etc. Ultimaker forces you to use their filament to keep the warranty active (for commercial/educational users?), but it can read the reels and tell the material and color.

I've got to figure out when to get in there and actually print the two pieces of the card flipper. Pretty cool stuff.

[NTP66]

Source of the post AutoFusion 360 for design

Eww. I love onshape.com, FWIW.

Source of the post AutoFusion 360 for design and the other workshop on using the Ultimaker Cura software.

Double eww - OrcaSlicer FTW.

I started on a Voxelab Aquila X2, which is basically a Creality Ender 3v2. Moving to Bambu was eye opening in terms of capabilities. Painting my models for true multi-color prints is amazing. I tried Cura, but just don't like it. It's not user friendly, uses oddball terms compared to other slicers, and doesn't have the integration I'd need for my new P1S. OrcaSlicer, on the other hand, is community developed based on PrusaSlicer, which is also the basis for BambuSlicer (the company that makes my printer). The roll out new, awesome features constantly.

Are you going to use one of those designs I posted, or create your own? I actually think it'd be pretty cool to design it yourself, and get to know Fusion 360 (or onshape) while you design it. All you need are the card/stack measurements, and you can basically recreate the original photo you shared.

[NTP66]

FWIW, one of the great features in onshape is that everything you create is public. So if you don't care about somebody copying your design, then it'll work nicely for you. Searching the public repository, I found this:



I can export that to an STL for you if you'd like.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Very cool - as long as it works for the recent Taboo cards, converting it would be great. The OG version of the game comes with a flipper, but the new versions do not. And the new cards don't fit in the old flipper.

[NTP66]

Very cool - as long as it works for the recent Taboo cards, converting it would be great. The OG version of the game comes with a flipper, but the new versions do not. And the new cards don't fit in the old flipper.

Can you measure a few things for me? The actual card dimensions, and the entire stack of card's dimensions?

[NTP66]

I enclosed the rear/top portion and chamfered the edges like the rest of the model. Here's a quick demo of the assembly in motion:

[DigitalGypsy66]

Nice. I'll get the cards measured when I get home. Thanks!

[DigitalGypsy66]

OK, the cards are 5.5 x 8.6 cm. The entire deck doesn't need to fit in the flipper, and the older version of the game has card storage depth of 2.5 cm or so. It needs to fit maybe 20-25 cards?

[NTP66]

OK, the cards are 5.5 x 8.6 cm. The entire deck doesn't need to fit in the flipper, and the older version of the game has card storage depth of 2.5 cm or so. It needs to fit maybe 20-25 cards?

You're also going to need to get used to measuring everything in mm. Got it, let me verify the sizing in the model.

[NTP66]

Okay, DG, this is done. The blue piece in the one picture is a representative of a deck of cards and how'd they'd sit inside.

Link to the STL files (I separated the base and lid), as well as the 3MF file in case you wanted to open the project I saved in your slicer:

Print the base standing up to eliminate the need for supports on the underside of that top/back section. I added a 5mm brim to both, and used tree supports for the lid connectors; no other supports should be required.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Nice! Thanks! I might go plug this into the software to see print time and try to get an approximate cost.

[NTP66]

Nice! Thanks! I might go plug this into the software to see print time and try to get an approximate cost.

If the cost is something stupid, let me know and I'll just print it out for you and send it to you, if you'd like. The cost of the filament for this print is pennies.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Yeah, it's like 80 grams for the base. They charge us $.066 per gram.

1:20 on the lid and 3:40 for base. As the makerspace is setup for often derelict students, I have to be in the room monitoring it for most of the time unless I can pull the faculty card with the makerspace director.

[NTP66]

Yeah, it's like 80 grams for the base. They charge us $.066 per gram.

1:20 on the lid and 3:40 for base. As the makerspace is setup for often derelict students, I have to be in the room monitoring it for most of the time unless I can pull the faculty card with the makerspace director.

6 hours?! What kind of garbage printers are you using? I can get it to under 2 hours on my Bambu.

[DigitalGypsy66]

That's with the Ultimaker 3. We are ordering Bambus for the new building this summer, however.

[DigitalGypsy66]

So stage one (the lid) is done:

Very durable, solid feel to it.

Lots of issues with printing, of course. First of all, I picked a blue filament to print with. This was an older filament and had absorbed a lot of humidity which clogs the nozzles. They have to dehydrate reels from time to time, and even have a specialized machine just for that. Who knew?

I decided to go with pearl white filament, which is used often enough as to not get over hydrated. Once the printer started to outline "Taboo," it crapped out again (different machine, too!) Feed gear on that machine was jamming filament. So back to other machine, and you can see the finished product above.

[NTP66]

Source of the post They have to dehydrate reels from time to time, and even have a specialized machine just for that. Who knew?

This is like the default answer online to any print issue - "did you dry your filament?". It's also why I love my AMS. Four spools sit in a closed environment with a ton of desiccant in there pulling the moisture out. I have never seen the issue you described, even on the old printer.

Those arms look underextruded. Does your campus have somebody who maintains those printers and the slicers (including filament calibration)?

[DigitalGypsy66]

That particular machine was the first I used, and when it jammed, the staffer cleaned it out while I got the print job started on another machine. When that went down with the bad feeder gear, I went back to the first machine - which was newly cleaned. They do get heavily used and they have reels and reels that are sitting open or poorly sealed, hence the wet filament issue. Especially living in swamp ass humid SC.