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3D Printer Essentials? (Or maybe better named as "Adventures in Newb 3D Printing" )

lowfat

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Heh.... people claim to have not used any supports, but for the life of me I can't see how they'd do it on certain parts.... guess that's a big part of the learning experience as well... :)

I skimmed through the parts, nothing stands out that needs supports. Only overhangs over ~ 50 degrees really need supports. You can bridge a long ways w/o supports w/ good cooling. I'd suggest to use a fan nozzle that coves at least 180 degrees around the nozzle if possible. Maybe upgrade the part cooling fan as well. I replaced mine within the first week w/ a powerful af Nidec.
 

sswilson

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I had problems with the hole in the middle of the large knobs (spring style), or should I have tried to print those standing up on their side like they come initially?

I tried them facing up and I tried them facing down, either way there's a hole in the middle of a hole that's got nothing to print on.... currently printing them up with support for the spring surface.
 
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lowfat

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I had problems with the hole in the middle of the large knobs (spring style), or should I have tried to print those standing up on their side like they come initially?

I tried them facing up and I tried them facing down, either way there's a hole in the middle of a hole that's got nothing to print on.... currently printing them up with support for the spring surface.

That is a bad design, that could have easily been fixed by filling the screw holes first layer completely solid. That way it would bridge. Then it would have something solid to print the other layers. That part will probably print, but you'll need a hobby knife or something to cut off some of the parts that were printing mid-air.

Also the part w/ the threads will be a problem. You'd probably need to run a tap through it afterward.
 

sswilson

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I considered letting it do it's thing and trying to clean out the "air print" afterwards but wasn't sure how many layers it would take to start printing properly so I stopped the print once I saw the issue, and decided to throw support internally (It literally just got to the 1'st layer above it between my last post and your response... :) ).

And yeah... I was thinking that all it needed would be something similar to a brim across the first layer that could easily be pierced with a pointed jeweler's file.

edit: The overhangs and bridging on test prints I've done have turned out pretty well.... slight (very slight) imperfections right at the top of the rounded doors on Benchy and the all-in-one completes the 80, but starts getting a bit messy underneath about midway through 60. The bridges (up to 25mm) were all fine as well.
 
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sswilson

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I've really got to take some time and figure out how to do the "live" leveling while a print is ongoing.... had a devil of a time getting the led mount to print the first layer, and it seems pretty obvious to me that it's related to how much of the bed it covers, and differences in level between different areas. I did manage to get it started, but that involved removing some initial buggered up "framing" on the first print and allowing those to be picked up on subsequent layers.
 

sswilson

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I'm also not convince there isn't something weird going on with this particular roll of filament... I just changed to the roll of grey I started with (and printed without doing any kind of calibration other than levelling) and it was overextruding first thing this morning, got it dialed in to within .5mm and awfully close to 20mm / axis but then found it was overextruding by 5mm this afternoon.

I dialed that in again, but now this evening the current print has rough surface prints and the lines look like they're once again underextruding. I tried to bump the flow rate up in octoprint, but it doesn't look like that's an adjustment that can be made during an active print.

It's starting to feel like another one of those days when it'd be best to set my tools down and get a fresh look at it another day.
 

sswilson

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This is the "live" leveling I was thinking of.... prints expanding squares on the print bed and if you can disturb the print line then you tighten up that corner a bit... stir and repeat as necessary.

edit: I've stopped using chep's print for leveling the corners, it's got some kind of a weird bug that periodically puts movements between the corners into molasses mode. I've found another one that does essentially the same thing but doesn't have that issue. :)
 

lowfat

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IMO you should update the firmware to vanilla marlin use mush manual mesh levelling. It w/ baby stepping will make the first layer so much easier once you've created a mesh. It won't anything except for your time.



EDIT: Hmm. I wonder if thermal runaway is still disabled. If so you absolutely need to update firmware asap. This is dangerous.

EDIT2: No bootloader by default? Then you'd need to buy an Arduino Uno, can be had for super cheap from Aliexpress tho.

EDIT3: Maybe possible w/o buying an additional Uno....
 
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sswilson

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Heh... so looking into this, even if I decided I wanted to buy a bltouch I'd still have to use an arduino to flash a bootloader onto it? I don't suppose the improved stepper motherboard has a bootloader?
 
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