And this:
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The term Toxic "containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation "
If you are concerned about the hazards of ABS in 3D printing, then by all means donāt use it. If it was truly toxic, Iād be dead by now, and ABS printing would be outlawed.
We are going to be putting many things into the Glowforges with unknown risks, and burning them at very high temperatures. Even wood. Sure the filter can catch a large part of the hazardous stuff- Carbon is amazing that way. (Iāll be venting mine) Iām sure with filtration or venting there still are many unknowns.
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OK, not sure your point here. Under your definition smoking cigarettes and asbestos arenāt toxic. It takes 30 years to develop mesothelioma from asbestos and something like that for most lung cancers to develop, and you havenāt been 3D printing ABS for 30 years. Injection molding is different, if thatās what you are doing, than 3D printing for UFP and VOC generation.
But that being said, not sure your point, since this isnāt a discussion on the GF, which is a sealed box with airflow control (and has either a filter for the off-gas or exhaust of toxins), but 3D printers which in general are open boxes (and even the semi-closed designs for ABS heat retention leak like a sieve) and spew toxins all over the room. For ABS the heating produces styrene as a VOC which is a known carcinogen for instance. Nylonās and PETG produce less toxic (we think) materials which are bronchial irritants but donāt seem to be carcinogens. I have an enclosure around my 3D printer with filtration (similar to the GF) since I donāt want to find out 20+ years from now that I wanted that in 2016ā¦
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Wow, this thread has made it quite a ways in 17 hours. Good thing the first reply warned it would be so big 
The big thing to remember with a printer isā¦ it doesnāt matter what you pick. It matters what you do.
By that I meanā¦ I have a Printrbot Simple Metal (was about $400), and I have a Monoprice Dual ($700 or so) and I have a Form 1+ (About $3,000)
I got the Printrbot first. It can only do PLA.
I knew nothing about printing, first prints were trash, but I knew they would be. I learned a lot, I tweaked a lot, I got the printer to work quite well (then it would break catastrophically and I would start all over, rinse and repeat x5)
It taught me a lot, and while I was researching I saw tons of information about ABS, so I looked for something that could do ABS, and while I was at it, dual extrusion for disolvable supports. So I got the Monoprice.
ABS is a pain to print with at any significant size. The cooling and warping is obnoxious. I hated using the printer, nothing came out good. So I hated using the printer. But, as you see in comments aboveā¦ this IS a good printer.
The big difference? I wanted it to work well right away without me doing anything. I never invested all of the time to tweaking the settings and learning what I needed to do so that the print would come out properly.
My printrbot is still what I use the most. I know I can make the Monoprice work well, but I do not want to give it time. I upgraded my Printrbot so that it can now do basically any filament I desire. It works and works well. I know the machine inside and out.
Soā¦ just buy whatever you can get easily, and spend time working on the thing and learning it. Upgrade later if you find there is a reason to upgrade. The bulk of any changes you want to make you CAN make, since you will have a printer and a cutter at your disposal. The rest is just longer rods, or parts on hand because you can zombify your own printer.
So much great information! Sorry for typos I use my phone and this page wont let me use sswype Im not used to hunt and peck anymore ^^
The silicone molds I make are for soap and plaster, so while detail is important its not like making medical or technical equipment.
As for jewelry, Im not a jewelry maker, I just want to make some simple plastic (or other printable material- Im not melting metals) pieces or things to embed in soaps (my dragon egg soaps are super popular but ordering plastic dragons etc from overseas is a pain and Id love to make my own. Someday maybe make metal jewelry from molds and do glass pieces but that seems like a lot of serious work and knowledge and pricey equipment.
Definitely concerned with fumes. Im a bit of a hippie with the natural stuff (no parafin candles or fake fragrances etc). So using ABS depends on the new flat/condo/apartment and how my workroom will be. Hopefully there will be a dirty/sub kitchen.
So a pronter like printrbot can take other filament like bamboo or something? I totally dont get that but it would be incredible and totally go with my natural products theme I have going. Will search about those other filament options too.
I dont mind finnicky work I kind of like it. So with my ability to use tools and figure things out and boyfriends IT background Im hoping I can make it all work.
Talking about how ABS can be given an acetone vapour (I didnt know it would be a vapour I just assumed qtip and gently going over the pieces) am I to assume that prints dont typically come out smooth and that you can easily see the layers? Ive seen different prints with different visibility and I dont really get that.
Thanks so much. Was so happy to wake up and see some great info!
The bamboo/wood/bronze/etc are all PLA based (essentially PLA mixed with filler). So basically like a smoosh-in at Cold Stone Creamery.
For example ColorFab has a bunch of different PLAs with fills.
There is an intriguing new Hemp based plastic (similar to PLA which is corn based) from 3Dom along with their famous beer based filament. Of course if you like Coffee there is Proto-Pastaās coffee filament.
Oh, and if you do use the bronze fill, make sure to check out the tutorial on how to polish it on Adafruit, which involves a rock tumbler and brass and steel screws. Note it has real metal in it so you can also age it (it corrodes just like real bronze - awesome for cosplay weapons, etc)
Whaaaaat! So awesome. I dunno how easy they will be to ship here but hopefully an APO works. Bronze seems crazy awesome but cant get a tumbler! Will look at all of this.
The coffee one recommends baking it after printi, similar to fimo or sculpey. Is this standard with PLA and what is the point?
Also with these programs is it best to take an already designed piece and play around altering it or would it be more valuable to try building from scratch? Im sure they all have tutorials included.
Most printers donāt come with their own program. You make your model in something else, and most of the time you use a slicer not made by (but suggested for) the printer itself. The majority of printers which have their own slicer program I have tended to hear bad feedback about the slicer. I cannot think of any printer which has its own 3d model software.
The printer you buy (and likely assemble) initially will probably be able to do only PLA, maybe PLA, ABS, HIPS and a few other non-exotic filaments. For the more inventive filaments you will need some modification most of the time. Nylon doesnāt stick to most print beds. Essentially anything except PLA needs a heated bed. Many filaments require rather high extruder temperatures (and most older printers donāt come with an extruder capable of that much heat). Cooling needs to be ideal for your filament (some like to cool fast, some need to cool slow). So that can be special fans and ducts.
Vapor smoothing with acetone is an interesting process. You need to be using parts with a relatively uniform thickness (or at least no areas that are remarkably thin). And you have to have a closed container with a controllable temperatures (a large jar with a lid that fits on your heated bed is a common approach). Then a stand which fits inside the container to hold your print out of the acetone liquid, and now you seal things and boil acetone. Keep an eye on the print so you know when to pull it out, and then do NOT touch it until the surface is solid once again.
Yes, without some finishing, any 3D print will have visible layering. Even if you take the insane amount of time to print at your best resolution, the layers are clearly visible. But there are plenty of ways to finish prints to get this artifact cleared up. Or you just accept that as an aesthetic, and enjoy having the lines present.
So most people do a combination of both. Thingiverse is a great place to start. You can see/download.customize (sometimes - depending on format) things other people have made; for instance canāt buy the rock tumbler?. You will see a section called ācustomizableā under Explore, those are things that have parameters (will make more sense if you use parametric CAD to design things), say you have a design for a ring, and you type in the ring size and it scales and add appropriate design to make it consistent for that ring size.
Most filled PLA filaments donāt need to be baked however some of the time for really heavily filled filaments there can be custom needs. Regular PLA, print, cool and go
I will agree with you Simplify 3D is AWESOME! I work for a company that builds Altair 3D printer so I have used most of the softwares out there for slicing and others things as part of my job and Simplify is easily my favorite! It improved the quality of prints over CURA, Slic3r, and Mattercontrol and the others we have tried.
As far as design software I love Fusion, but I also am used to CAD so that is just my opinion. You will just have to try a few free or cheap ones and figure out the style that works for you and then invest the time and learn how to do it well.
You can also polish bronze with just a dremmel and a wire brush and some sandpaper without too much trouble.
There are some great comments here! Its pretty awesome! But I agree, you need to figure out what you want to do with your printer before you buy one. If you want to experiment with the different materials you should seriously consider getting a printer with a all metal hotend/extruder and a heated bed. This will mean you can reach the temperatures you want and the heated bed will be able to reduce the warping and cooling issues to a point. ColorFab and ProtoPasta have some awesome filaments.
So an acetone vapor bath is a container that can be sealed up (we use a tubberware at work) that has a shelf that will hold the printed part out of the acetone. You just pour some acetone in the container, put your part on the shelf, and let it sit for a little while and the lines will start smoothing out. As far as lines on prints it depends a lot on the resolution (how small of layers it can handle) and the shape. If you have a straight vertical wall you can have big layers without being able to see a difference. For curved surfaces the lines are easier to see. There are a lot of products out there to help smooth those lines out.
But in short: figure out what you want to do and get a printer that will be able to handle it. Iāll throw the website for the Altair printer up, its an awesome printer that can do all the materials that we have been talking about and has good volume for its footprint. www.printspace3d.com.
If I could tie this thread back into the GF universe:
What 3D printed materials would be compatible with a GF? By compatible, I mean it will cut (e.g. like acrylic) and it wonāt produce toxic fumes?
Iām guessing the ABS is right out, but maybe PLA? And thereās there the UV resins, some of which are meant for investment casting that will simply vaporize when superheated.
ABS can be cut without dangerous fumes (95% sure I remember that right), but it isnāt a āfriendlyā cut (can come out looking terrible easy).
I have been thinking it is possible (maybe a defocused laser application) to use the laser cutter to finish your prints, smoothing the surface to remove the obvious 3D printing layer effect.
Anything safe in the printer should be safe on the laser. In both cases you are heating the material, and even if only making something liquid, you are going to have fumes.
Not necessarily, heating plastics to their glassing temperature (typically around 200-300C) versus vaporizing it with a laser, produce different effects. Also a lot of these plastics donāt laser cut well from friends who have tried (because you locally heat above the glass temp they tend to droop into the cut yielding a poor edge)
So the printrbot play for example comes with Alu Extruder v2 which altars to be ask metal but aluminum. So this would work for most PLA but from what Iāve read it will have problems with some PLA with certain fillers, like carbon fibre. So Iād have to end up buying a hardened steel nozzle for those materials. Can you just use a different nozzle for different materials on the same printer? A saw an extruder for food and paste so if I wanted to print in chocolate it would just be a matter of switch nozzles/extruders and calibrating? Or can certain machines only print certain things for some reason. I saw people printing in wet and hard ceramic as well. Which is insanely awesome.
The hardened nozzles are cheap (in the scheme of things at $30 and last a long time unless you print crazy abrasive stuff).You can buy a pack of the 3 most common sizes too for detail vs. structural work for most hot ends (0.2, 0.4 0.8mm) which cost me about $30 for a set of all 3 in brass.