Great prints and resolution. Printer?
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I now have a printerbot (the old laser cut ply kind) and haven’t had the time to tweak it into a working state lol. If only it were as simple as design and hit a big greenish button (wow i got specific there didn’t I ;))
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But GlowForge isn’t that either. It seems to be load file and assign each colour to an operation, position the design on the material, then press the green button. Whereas with a 3D printer it is slice file and then load the gcode and print. A 3D printer is a simpler, faster, more automatic workflow than GlowForge. Granted GlowForge is a lot simpler than other laser cutters but no laser cutter will ever be simpler workflow than a 3D printer.
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Which is kind of where I ended up. Sure I could make some things that would be useful but the time to create the design, print it, tweak it, reprint it, fuss with the air print that came out, reprint and then use it tended to be way more than heading to Google to find what I needed and order it. I found that most of what I thought I was “inventing” was actually commercially available already or could be modified from something commercially available for a lot less time & effort.
I’m a tech early adopter but couldn’t find a compelling use case. Funny, but the first one I bought cost what my GF cost 
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Darn you people! So what do you suggest for an entry level printer?
I think the first part of my hesitation is an apparent misnomer of printed parts having no strength.
The second is I have always designed parts to be produced on the machines that I have, and that often includes work arounds. So I think I might just need to remove those mental design barriers. [quote=“palmercr, post:30, topic:4525”]
It did take 5 hours to print but I didn’t need to watch over it.
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Although I could CNC that In five hours it would involve me for a lot of that time.
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I have a Lulzbot Mini and one of the things I like most about it is that it just worked straight out of the box, and has kept on working. I have no room for another hobby that involves spending more time futzing with the machine than actually using it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: I often use the analogy that some people buy a motorcycle to ride it and other people buy a motorcycle because they want to spend the weekends taking it apart and putting it back together. (I know nothing about motorcycles but this is what I observe) Both are valid, but in my case I was willing to pay for the convenience of a printer that spends more time printing than being taken apart. That being said, they’re all still a bit fussy.
I also have a CNC router, and that’s the thing that never gets used. There’s a huge overhead for me to do a project on it. Just clamping the piece down is an exercise in frustration, and then I have to deal with tool paths and end mills and feeds and speeds and touch plates and zeroing and the thing not being level enough and sawdust everywhere and a decent chance that I didn’t get everything perfectly set up and it runs into something or cuts into the waste board or doesn’t cut deep enough etc. etc. Whereas with the 3D printer, most of the time it’s download a file from Thingiverse, load it into Cura, save out the gcode, and print. I made at least 40 of those little trees and not a single print failed.
This all ties into why I jumped on the Glowforge and why I’m still holding out for it rather than a laser I could get today. I want a machine that’s as reliable as possible, so when I only have a few hours on a Saturday to work on a project, I can actually work on it rather than replacing the water pump or realigning the mirrors. I hope, after all the anticipation, it works out that way!
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So for those who have not seen the video I made, when my colleagues scoffed that I could produce a structurally trough part on my 3D printer to replace a stainless steel retractor blade (that could also survive autoclaving, and was FDA approved material) watch here.
Now, let’s not get too carried away. 3D printing requires a lot of tweaking and in many ways is an art (just like laser cutting and especially CNC milling. All of them have many, many variables including material, environment, design intent/complexity, etc. I think the GF will be complex in real life (sure if all you want to do is “xerox” a drawing onto wood, sure, but beyond that those beta-projects are more than that).
The challenge with that is that there is always another generation coming that will be better. Sort of like computers, there is always a cheaper/faster/better variant coming. With any technology you should adopt because it meets a need you have currently with a cost/benefit ratio that is acceptable. Of course when it is for work the equations may change but still same concept.
The challenge with this concept is “things which should be made of plastic” is a very fluid definition. I face this all the time, with “it’s been made of xxx for 200 years, why change?” which may be because steel is exactly the right material, or just that making it out of “plastic” (whatever that means) was really hard by say injection molding. With the retractor blade above (the video) I heard that I couldn’t make it out of plastic (in that case Nylon 910) because it wasn’t as strong as steel. That is of course true, but given the printed model has an >5000psi tensile strength and a modulus well over 60000psi, which exceeds the strength of the bone it is retracting against, who cares. Sure I can’t retract a car off the patient, but for spreading ribs, since it is tougher than the patient, it’s enough. And I am producing shapes that short of a 5-axis CNC you couldn’t (and if required could go beyond that)
And finally I will note that the largest learning curve (after learning basics of 3D printing) will be CAD. Sure just printing other’s designs of thingiverse is one thing, but designing your own is way, way steeper as a learning curve versus the printer itself. It’s like printing someone’s PDF on your laser versus doing an incredible design in illustrator. It took months for me to become really, really proficient in CAD (I now teach classes at the hospital). And it’s not just learning the tools (that’s not that hard) it’s learning what works as a design (since you are both the CAD guy, manufacturing guy and the industrial engineer on your own projects).
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Oh, and perfect example this morning was in this topic, where his problem (woodworking) was solved by 3D printing:
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It’s actually on the 3D printer at home right now. We will see how it turns out!
10 hour print. I’m kicking myself for not doing solid fill for extra stability
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This is exactly the type of experience that attracted me to the glowforge initially. The promise of an easy workflow compared to traditional lasers (I only have experience with a K40).
Some people like fiddling with the tool, some care about using it. I am in the latter camp
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OK, thats strong! WOW! I’m guessing user error or wrong material choise in the failed parts I have seen.
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Impressive video! Couldn’t believe you could tow the car (or was the camera angle tricking us and really it was just rolling downhill?!)…
I kid of course. That’s awesome. What’s the best machine out there that is cheap and doesn’t require a lot of fiddlin’? In your opinion that is…
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Possibly it does when printing things designed by somebody else, like the human body
I mainly print my own designs that are functional rather than aesthetic. The filament width and layer height are inputs to my parametric design, so it is always suitable for my printer and I always use the same settings from a small selection of profiles. Usually 0.5mm by 0.25mm to work well with metric dimensions. So for me all the tweaking and experimentation was done years ago. I just design and print now.
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I guess that proves the strength of 3D prints!
As for my comment about waiting a generation or two, I absolutely agree that mindset can prevent someone from ever buying any technology product. I have been in IT for 25 years as a professional and 35 years as a hobbyist. I have bought a lot of technology items when that equation you mentioned (“it meets a need you have currently with a cost/benefit ratio that is acceptable”) has balanced out. I then make it a practice to NOT look at the state-of-the-art in whatever technology that was for a least a year so I don’t kick myself for not waiting longer.
In the case of 3D printing at this time for my needs/wants, your equation just doesn’t fall in favor of purchasing right now. It seems like it’s getting closer every day. That’s the only reason I haven’t purchased one yet.
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Am I understanding correctly that when you design, you make sure the wall thicknesses are some factor of your filament width (0.5mm…when extruded?), and that the height of each feature is a factor of your build height (0.25mm?). Thanks…just trying to get a better idea on how people use these.
Had a bad experience with all the hobbyist kind of 3D printers so maybe it was user error…but most of it involved making sure the print bed was leveled all over, the nozzle to bed height was correct, the z-axis zeroing being repeatable, and getting the first layer to stick to the Kapton tape. It all seemed a bit clunky for my liking.
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I live in CAD, and design my own devices, and almost never print other’s designs (at least random stuff off thingiverse). You mean to tell me every time you switch vendors/colors of a material everything works perfectly? I mean we all have prints that print perfect in silver and then fail in white for instance (because you don’t have enough silver on hand). Or some grunge on the bed you didn’t see affects adhesion on some part. And when I design, I do think about printability of the design, but even so there are always tweaks (like did I print it here in winter with relative humidity of 10% or summer with 80% - and yes, I do have a drybox).
As an example, here is a model I did as a demo to show colleagues environmental factors, where I took both off the bed immediately and placed the left one on the table in my office and the other (on the right) placed it near the cold window of my office. The fibula curved towards the cool window. Both prints looked identical on the print bed. I’m not saying that I don’t have a very high success rate, but still things need tweaking.
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Now I am curious to what you are looking for if it is something specific.
I ask as I held out for years and finally pulled the trigger in 15 when I found one that would self-level and handle all the new filaments straight out of the box.
I know that 0.5mm by 0.25mm layers print well with a 0.4mm nozzle, they span gaps well, etc. Any wall needs to be either two filaments wide or more than three and any Z feature needs to be a multiple of the layer height, so having them simple fractions of a mm is convenient when I specify dimensions in mm.
Yes the bed needs to be level and stay that way or you need a Z probe and auto levelling. I do both. My older machines are made of MDF and use auto levelling, which I pioneered in the RepRap world. My new machines have Dibond frames which are stable when not moved around.
I print ABS and PLA onto glass and use a very high temperature for the first layer and do it very slowly to make it stick. I also pioneered printing on Kapton but moved to PET tape and then glass.
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Loved your post about the fake wire BTW. That is seriously scraping the bottom of the costs savings barrel! The magnets say it all. Luckily you weren’t carrying power over those, but rather sensing!
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It all comes down to the fact that I don’t know what I’d use it for. There were a lot of good ideas listed above but none that I have been sitting around wishing for. I’m sure I’d find things like fabricating replacement parts for things that break around the house/shop. And having it for the sole purpose of giving my 15 year old nephew access to it to give him the opportunity to let his creativity fly is worth a bit.
My research (including several threads on this forum) led me to believe the lowest cost 3D printer that would have the features and reliability I’d expect is around $900. If I had to put a dollar value on my envisioned use cases, I’d be at around $500. The printers I have seen in that price range appear to be finicky, require tinkering, and/or have too many limitations on build volume/features.
And it’s not like my CNC router, vinyl printer/cutter, craft cutter, dye sublimation printer, heat presses, graphic design projects, woodworking projects, and photography don’t keep me busy enough.
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