3D Printers

[ChrisBardon 517]

Anyone have any experience with the Snapmaker 2.0?  I'd never heard of them, but it came up in conversation today, and it sounds like a great idea!  Getting the printer, laser cutter, and CNC router in a single apparatus seems like a really good deal, and even if it's just OK at all three, it's a good way to get experience with each tool. 

[dogbert 1,376]

10 minutes ago, ChrisBardon said:

Anyone have any experience with the Snapmaker 2.0?  I'd never heard of them, but it came up in conversation today, and it sounds like a great idea!  Getting the printer, laser cutter, and CNC router in a single apparatus seems like a really good deal, and even if it's just OK at all three, it's a good way to get experience with each tool. 

 

I've no direct experience, but the original Snapmaker was a definite 'jack of all trades, master of none' from what I've read. All3DP has a good review of the new model, looks like it's improved, but still not a great 3d printer - https://all3dp.com/1/snapmaker-2-3d-printer-review-specs/ - all3dp's a good review site from what I've seen of it.

[ChrisBardon 517]

Well, I'll find out later this year.  Ordered one for Sept delivery.  Could have just gotten a standalone printer, but getting the laser etch and CNC router heads makes it basically 3 tools, right? 

 

If nothing else, it's covered by the money I've saved not commuting these past few months...which is a little depressing in and of itself, but hey, new toy on the way!

[Orpheus 87]

Look forward to what you think about it. While I liked the idea of a 3 in one to some extent, I was worried about giving up quality. I was also more interested in it as a a laser and cnc router than as a 3d printer.

I'm probably going to be looking into a resin printer soon. Too many Battlefleet Gothic ships, and custom Sisters of Battle I'd like to have. 

[dogbert 1,376]

This is my new favourite Reddit - "functional prints", i.e. not some silly model to put on a shelf + waste plastic with. 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/new/

[ChrisBardon 517]

That's awesome!  Still waiting on my snapmaker A350 to ship, but there are a few things on there that look like cool ideas.  Always wondered how well PLA would hold up to make replacement parts for things, but it looks like someone is printing Dyson parts on there.

[dogbert 1,376]

PLA doesn't like high temperatures, but other than that, it's held up okay for me. 

[ChrisBardon 517]

So my Snapmaker A350 finally showed up this week.  It left China Oct 20, shipping by sea, which I knew would take a while, but it sounds like there were some additional delays, some COVID related, some importer related, and some UPS related.  In any case, everything arrived, and seemingly undamaged:

 

I've only used the 3d printing function so far, but will probably dig into the CNC/Laser stuff next weekend.  Too many things I want to try printing first.  Ended up starting with a benchy to see whether everything worked as expected:

 

Seems OK so far.  Next was a wall mount for Xbox controllers that seems a little narrow.  It works, but if the controller isn't centered, it'll fall off.  There are several other designs to try though:

 

Then I tried printing a Gloomhaven character box, which I think turned out pretty well (even if it took 18h).  Tried out a different brand of filament this time:

 

[dogbert 1,376]

That's big!!

[ChrisBardon 517]

The big ass enclosure definitely adds bulk, but yeah, it's a pretty big print area:

This should give you an idea of the overall size:

 

Tried the obligatory "plastic crap that sits on a desk" print, and also wanted to try out something that had print in place flex, so I made a dragon:

 

24h print, and a little harder to get off the print sheet, but otherwise turned out really well.  Doing a different controller wall mount now, and will probably print more of those Gloomhaven boxes for the other in-play characters after that.  Should keep the printer running pretty constantly all week

 

 

[Robot Monkey 510]

Wow!

[dogbert 1,376]

Flexi stuff is just so damn awesome, isn't it? I try not to print stuff for the sake of printing stuff (we are consuming plastic after all) but everyone needs one flexi thing just to show off. 

I'd argue a "squircle"/ambiguous cylinder is also worth printing once to have around to break people's brains. I have one of these on my desk at work. 

[ChrisBardon 517]

4 minutes ago, dogbert said:

Flexi stuff is just so damn awesome, isn't it? I try not to print stuff for the sake of printing stuff (we are consuming plastic after all) but everyone needs one flexi thing just to show off. 

Yeah, I think it's great that you can actually make something like a print in place hinge like that.  I've also been looking at articulated camera mounts that people have made for octoprint that are pretty impressive.  That might be another project to tackle soon, since I have a spare NUC PC and a spare webcam around. It sounds like octoprint support for the snapmaker is pretty limited, but I'd at least be able to get monitoring/timelapse support out of it. 

 

Finished printing a new wall mount for controllers overnight that seems much better than the first one I found:

 

Kind of nice to get those off the desk actually. 

 

[Orpheus 87]

Really looking forward to you digging into the laser and router side of this. I almost bought but didn't have the space at the time.

 

[ChrisBardon 517]

On 2/1/2021 at 10:01 AM, Orpheus said:

Really looking forward to you digging into the laser and router side of this. I almost bought but didn't have the space at the time.

 

Might need to start smaller on the CNC.  I was looking at these (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4541930) since my daughter is a HP nut, but fusion was having issues calculating tool paths.  Seems like the learning curve is much higher on that stuff, which is fine.  Plan is to dig into this stuff over the weekend. 

 

Still printing though.  Trying to make character boxes for all the active Gloomhaven characters we have around in quasi-organized piles.  I like being able to run these two at a time:

[ChrisBardon 517]

Started messing with the CNC, and the first test went OK.  Second test...broke a bit because I messed up and hit "run boundary" when I shouldn't have.  Bit hits clamp, bit snaps off.  Second test...broke another bit.  This time the workpiece slipped, and the bit hit the side of the board and snapped.  Bought more bits on Amazon...

 

This weekend, I tried again, and as a bonus, I found some helpful writeups on the Snapmaker forum to show how to do CNC tool changes.  I didn't realize that you could set the X, Y, Z for the home point independently, so I tried creating something with a 3.175 mm bit to start, and then a 1.5mm one to finish.  I don't think I'd use this plywood for anything "nice", but I had some scrap around, so I'm trying out some different materials.  Hard to see from the angle, but there are several different offset heights, but pretty much all flat edges (no curves on the Z axis).  Going to try some MDF next, which I anticipate will machine reasonably well, but make a whole lot of dust in the enclosure

[Robot Monkey 510]

Holy hell, Kitchener Waterloo! That brings back some memories!

[Kranix 73]

Waterloo Math alum here.  Shout out!

 

Might have to warn the Tie guard in case you're working up to printing tech that will allow you steal the tie.

[ChrisBardon 517]

1 hour ago, Kranix said:

Might have to warn the Tie guard in case you're working up to printing tech that will allow you steal the tie.

 

Small world...I was actually kind of surprised that I had that vector around, given that I finished there almost 20 years ago, but I did, and I had a good reference from a plaque that's in my office for the depths used on a 3d version, so it was a decent test. 

 

CNC attempt with MDF and a different design went OK, but I think the details were a little too fine for a 1.5mm bit. 

[ChrisBardon 517]

So after this weekend's CNC fun, I wanted to finally get a webcam set up to monitor what's going on with the snapmaker.  I had a spare NUC PC that I set up with Octoprint and used a spare webcam on, and then modified this mount design (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4716778) with a new top that fit my camera:

 

I'm just using the basic timelapse in octoprint, and it works OK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCH1A6ffjs8

 

Took some doing to get everything up and running on octoprint, and I may not use it to start jobs anymore because it means the filament runout/power outage protection on the built in controller don't work anymore, but I like the idea of being able to monitor what's going on remotely.  It's already saved me from one print going horribly wrong with poor adhesion. 

 

[ChrisBardon 517]

Next up-messing with mechanical stuff on the 3d printer.  I found this (https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/home/print-in-place-spring-loaded-box) online, and thought it was a really cool idea:

 

 

 

End result wasn't quite as good as the sample, and it took a bunch of force to free the moving parts.  Ended up breaking one of the hinges on mine.  I think the wall behind the main spring was also sticky, since that's a pretty large bridge.  There are some clever ideas in there though, like the back wall that tapers inwards so it can print without supports (mostly).  I've got a couple of ideas for how this could be modified.  I also found this link (

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-designing-a-parametric-print-in-place-hinged-container-using-autodesk-fusion-360-85379) that has fusion files for print in place hinged containers that could be the basis for a few things.  The idea of having something print in place that has moving parts is just awesome. 

 

Looking at something with more gears for the next project.  Printer is going to be busy (although I should probably try the laser on this thing sometime too). 

[ChrisBardon 517]

I wanted to try making something with gears, since I think the idea of 3d printing mechanical stuff is neat.  I also saw this posted on Thingiverse, and thought it looked pretty awesome, so I made one:

There's 25 or 30 gears in this thing, as well as the planet arms etc.  Turn the wheel at the bottom and all the planets (plus the moon) orbit at the correct relative speeds.  Very neat to be able to make something like this from spools of plastic, even if I can't claim any credit for the design. 

 

I did learn a few things along the way though:

-Elephant foot is a real thing.  This is where the first layer or two squishes out and gives you an extra lip at the bottom of printed parts.  This is really bad for mechanical parts that have to fit together, so I ended up having to re-print a few gears that had this on rafts.  Made the bottoms a little ugly, but also made sure the teeth were really exact.

-The tolerances were a little tight in a few places, but a drill, a dremel, and some sandpaper helped with that.

-Having the nozzle too close to the bed results in a really ugly first layer.  I ended up doing the base over again because the top was really rough. 

 

There was probably less than 10 hours of "active" time on this, and a lot of waiting for things to print.  One of those times that having the big build plate came in handy, so I could do all the gears in 3 passes instead of one or two at a time on a little printer. 

 

Next up-something even larger for my son's room. 

[Robot Monkey 510]

This hobby is absolutely fascinating.

[ChrisBardon 517]

For boardgame inserts, is there a good resource that lists which ones are any good?  Thingiverse seems to have no shortage of organizers, but it seems like finding something that's the exact right edition for a game may be a challenge.  I have an old Catan edition that might have slightly different sized cards than the ones in the pictures, so not sure what would fit.  May just use some as inspiration and design my own.  I do really like this idea though (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2945049) and those magnets are cheap, so I may start with something like that and see what I can come up with.  I was actually wondering about printing with magnets the other day, and whether you could put in a layer pause to actually seal the magnet into the print.  I suppose you could (in the right orientation) if you edited the gcode, but you'd have to be really sure the print path of the head was out of the way (and that there wasn't anything magnetic on the head). 

[Rainmaykr 337]

15 hours ago, ChrisBardon said:

I wanted to try making something with gears, since I think the idea of 3d printing mechanical stuff is neat.  I also saw this posted on Thingiverse, and thought it looked pretty awesome, so I made one:

There's 25 or 30 gears in this thing, as well as the planet arms etc.  Turn the wheel at the bottom and all the planets (plus the moon) orbit at the correct relative speeds.  Very neat to be able to make something like this from spools of plastic, even if I can't claim any credit for the design. 

 

I did learn a few things along the way though:

-Elephant foot is a real thing.  This is where the first layer or two squishes out and gives you an extra lip at the bottom of printed parts.  This is really bad for mechanical parts that have to fit together, so I ended up having to re-print a few gears that had this on rafts.  Made the bottoms a little ugly, but also made sure the teeth were really exact.

-The tolerances were a little tight in a few places, but a drill, a dremel, and some sandpaper helped with that.

-Having the nozzle too close to the bed results in a really ugly first layer.  I ended up doing the base over again because the top was really rough. 

 

There was probably less than 10 hours of "active" time on this, and a lot of waiting for things to print.  One of those times that having the big build plate came in handy, so I could do all the gears in 3 passes instead of one or two at a time on a little printer. 

 

Next up-something even larger for my son's room. 

 

The Great Conjunction comes!!