Welp. Against my better judgement, I pre-ordered the Prusa SL1 + wash/curing unit kit. Should arrive in June.
I've been getting the Maker Box "Everything" (warning, affiliate link) for the last few months, and had always been on the fence about what the print with 50-60g of a given material. Just to start using some of these, I decided to print out test swatches, and found a fully customizable one on Thingiverse.
|snip pic|
This is one and a half sets of the "Easy" package, with 3D Fuel Standard PLA and FilaCube PLA2, with the only changes I've made to filament settings in my slicer are for cost/kg and printing/bed temps.
How much filament are you getting per month from MakerBox? As in, how many mini spools of what weight?
I like the idea of the swatches and the box to hold them. I'm way too unorganized to do something like that, but do see the utility of it. I didn't realize Thingiverse had a way to do customizable objects - pretty cool
The top layer(s) of your prints seem odd, almost like the hot-end was scraping the already printed material.
-BEP
"How much" is one of the FAQs the Maker Box folks get - they try to shoot for giving 16.5m of filament per sample. They go by length, not mass, because they've also sent me filaments that have different density than typical all-plastic PLA. For standard style PLA, it's between 50g and 60g per roll.
I actually went to the next step and have SCAD installed, so I can open the source file, make tweaks and customizations, and then render/export a custom STL for each sample.
And lastly, I have no clue. I initially blamed that filament brand, but I'm seeing it in all the others I've printed so far. This is the first "project" I've tackled since finishing the MK3S upgrade, so I think I have to tweak some retraction settings to reduce the pimpling when doing a move.
Meanwhile, the next thing I'm working on is a new, stiffer camera mount, and have hit a layer shift on one print, a piece skip off the bed and start printing spaghetti, and now I'm on my 3rd printing attempt for half the parts.
I've printed a few dragons, so far. I posted 2 upthread and have printed a few more since. Here they are. Some aren't actually glued together so the seams aren't good. Others are glued and the seams still don't look good, but they generally have clear E6000 in those seams that make them smooth for painting. Also, I haven't really cleaned any of them up and some have had horns or spikes misprint that I will fix later.
The pics are not that good; the lighting is horrible. Flash used with some, not with others.
The 5E campaign I'm running started with the Pathfinder module "The Dragon's Demand" and has progressed into a custom campaign that has the party encountering multiple dragons as they try to "Save the World", as Heroes are wont to do. I'm printing these off to use for the various encounters.
Printing in black seems fine, until you need to take a pic. I think this one is the Fire Twin from the Lost Dragons Kickstarter.
I think this one is the Ice Twin from the same KS.
I don't remember which one this is from TLD KS, but I like the model, even though the base looks too big in person.
This one is from the Fat Dragon Games Kickstarter and is a killer model. Completely supportless.
This guy is the Water Dragon from from TLD KS. I was "meh" on this guy until I printed him. Now, I really like it.
This guy is also a Lost Dragon, I think maybe the Blue Guardian. I haven't printed his base, yet.
-BEP
This is Abe ( Angry Ball of Eyes ) which is also from the Fat Dragon Kickstarter. He looks great close-up at the resolution I printed him:
This is a Hill Giant. I don't know his origin story:
And this is a weird bone golem. I printed this one on the Mini while the Tornado was busy with something larger:
I think everything in these 2 posts was printed at 0.12mm layer height, except for Abe, who was at 0.08, and the Bone Golem, who was at close to 0.12. The magic number for the Mini is a weird one - 0.1313mm.
I've printed a few other things, but they aren't handy to take a pic of right now.
-BEP
I finally went through the MK3S upgrade kit and installed the nylock bed leveling mod on my Prusa MK3. Overall it was pretty simple. The nylock bed leveling mod is crazy easy, and everyone should do it.
Things are printing better than ever! I've had a lot of bed adhesion issues with the MK3 compared to my MK2, and the new airflow and more level bed seems to have solved it for the most part.
This is with a .25 nozzle at 0.1 layer height. The color change on the tentacle pads was always a challenge, as they would pop off pretty easy in a certain section of the bed.
Finally finished building my MK3S kit this week and everything seems to have gone together pretty well! I'm actually surprised by it as I would expect to have done something that would have to be fixed or adjusted. Guess I got lucky!
I played with the Z height and then printed the full bed-leveling sheet to make sure that it all worked out well: https://help.prusa3d.com/article/TPG...
So far so good!
Now I'm going to start picking up some new PLA colors. I'd like to experiment with PETG eventually, but for now, I'll stick with PLA.
What brand of PLA do you folks like? At my previous company, we had good luck with Hatchbox PLA and eSun PLA+ (add 10 deg to the extruder temp when using this stuff). How about PETG?
I still use Hatchbox with almost no problems.
I've had real good luck with 3D Solutech PLA and PETG. It's cheap and available on Amazon.
I still also use Hatchbox for PLA
Thanks, I'll check out 3D Solutech. I was getting worried about Hatchbox since some of the colors that are in their catalog aren't available either on Amazon or on their web site (green, purple...) I did email them about the missing colors and the response I got was that they can't keep their filament in stock....it's just selling too quickly!
I've also found that Mika3D's silk PLA prints reasonably well on my MK3S as well. I got some of this:
https://www.amazon.com/Metallic-Prin...
to have some shiny gold and silver filament. Note that these aren't full-sized filament spools but are smaller than what you'd normally find. Still, it worked well enough except for one print where the silver got jammed sometime overnight and the extruder couldn't push it through. It took me a bit of pulling to get it out afterward but the printer's been printing fine ever since (including with the Mika3D silver).
I used these to print this for my son:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16...
and it turned out pretty well! Pretty much like the photos in the link above, actually.
Well, I guess I was mostly lucky with my printing of the Mika3D silk silver PLA. I've been using standard settings that I would normally use for Prusament or Hatchbox PLA and I finally hit a wall when printing a part that failed every time. This part involved moving the head across multiple places and it would appear that during the multiple retracts, the head was far more likely to jam. After 5-6 attempts I gave up for the night and put in some (non-silk) silver PLA from Hatchbox and it printed perfectly.
Doing some research I found the following:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FixMyPrint/...
and then dug through the reviews of the silk filament on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Copper...
and found stuff like this:
So I was originally going to give this 1 star due to constant jamming of my extruder with only this filament. However, after extensive testing I have gotten the settings dialed in to the point where I no longer have issues printing. I am using an original Prusa i3 Mk3 w/ 0.4mm nozzle and have to use the following settings in order to keep this filament from jamming half way through the print:First layer temp: 240C
Other layers: 235C
Bed Temp: 55C
Extrusion Multiplier: 0.95
Fan Speed: Min 30% Max 60%(disabled for first layer)
Z-hop: Disabled
Retraction length: 0.5mm
Retraction Speed: 40 mm/sI also set my extrusion width to 0.7mm for perimeters and infill, although I am not 100% sure that this was necessary.
Hopefully these settings will help if anyone else is having issues with the filament jamming part way through their prints. I believe what was happening was when the filament would retract it would cool and expand enough that it clogged the throat of the hotend, printing at these settings allow enough "intentional heat creep" to prevent that from happening.
I'm going to give the different settings a try and come up with a new profile for it in PrusaSlicer
Most things I print are going to get painted at soem point so I mostly just print in Hatchbox black and it just always works. I tried Amazon red and it would not adhere to my MK3S bed.
Yeah, Hatchbox is awesome. I just wish they had more colors in stock!!!
I hear you on painting vs. using different materials. I've not been much of one for painting though and so I'm trying my luck with the different colors and materials right now. We'll see how that goes.
The good news is that the part I was having problems with JUST finished perfectly after I created a new filament profile for Mika3D. I think the settings in the above Amazon review were maybe from an older version of the Prusa Slicer since I couldn't find all of them. Here's what I changed:
First layer temp: 240C *DONE*
Other layers: 235C *DONE*
Bed Temp: 55C (not done-left at 60C)
Extrusion Multiplier: 0.95 *DONE*
Fan Speed: Min 30% Max 60%(disabled for first layer) *DONE*
Z-hop: Disabled (not done -- can't find it)
Retraction length: 0.5mm (not done -- can't find it)
Retraction Speed: 40 mm/s *DONE*
So, it ain't cheap (prolly twice the price of "cheap" filament), but I picked up a spool of this SpiderMaker matte PLA.
This stuff is absolutely amazing. I've never had any kind of filament print so well. I tweaked nothing and used my lowest quality, fastest settings and it came out better than 90% of my prints.
Got a blob while trying to print and after heating the head to 270 and pulling it off I noticed it had melted the head temp sensor cable. 
Had to purchase another one (only 10 bucks) so we'll see how hard it is to replace.
I think from now on I'm going to always wait the first 10 or 20 mins before leaving a print to make sure the first few layers are sticking. It is always the model also. I've had two objects where I've tried to print and every time it blobs up instead of doing the spaghetti thing.
I think from now on I'm going to always wait the first 10 or 20 mins before leaving a print to make sure the first few layers are sticking.
This is my SOP. And even then, I don't trust it fully. I had my wife check it today since she is home sick and send me a couple pics of the print just to make sure it's fine.
I have an OLD logitech cam that is supported in OctoPrint that I'm going to add to it now that we're moved and the printer is set back up. I couldn't find a pre-made mount for it so I used TinkerCad to model one. I'll be printing it soon and will hopefully be able to monitor my jobs remotely.
-BEP
Coolness.
Is the material/resin strong enough to be used to wetform leather? I have a couple ideas the require making forms and I think printing them would probably be the easiest way to do it.
Coolness.
Is the material/resin strong enough to be used to wetform leather? I have a couple ideas the require making forms and I think printing them would probably be the easiest way to do it.
I'm sure there are printable materials that work. Here is a list of some of the more common materials people print with.
What do you recommend for gluing PLA parts together? I printed a lightsaber stand for my daughter (along with a pair of Ahsoka Tano's lightsabers from the Clone Wars series) and I used black Hatchbox PLA. However, when I superglued the stands into the base, the fumes or something coming from the Loctite Super Glue (the gel control stuff) that I picked up at Home Depot caused white "burn" marks to appear on the surface next to the joints. I tried cleaning the marks with acetone but that just caused the surface finish of the PLA to smudge and look bad. I ended up having to pitch the entire part and I'm going to reprint it tonight and tomorrow.
Any advice on good glues to use? I'm hearing different things on various forums. Some say CA is good others say that the quality of the CA matters.
I think super glue is really the best method and you really need a small amount for it to hold. Like a couple of dots will work. I've used that type in the past but I use Bob Smith Industries Insta-Cure+ now.
Where'd you get the Ahsoka Tano files?
Here are two options:
From the Clone Wars (this is the one I used):
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11...
From Rebels:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16...
I'm a huge fan of this fellow's lightsaber models:
https://www.thingiverse.com/CaseStud...
I've printed a couple more and they're all really cool! I've been using Mika3D SILK PLA filament for the silver, gold, and bronze parts and Hatchbox PLA for the other colors as needed. I used Prusa Galaxy Black for the DarkSaber.
Here's the stand I printed for my daughter's Ahsoka sabers:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28...
and the stand I've been printing for the single sabers:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11...
I did a color switch right after the "Star Wars" logo started to print and I swapped in Hatchbox gold. It looks pretty sweet!
For the Mandelorian Dark Saber, I printed these risers to go with the base in the previous link:
If anyone has far too much time on your hands...
I am interested in printing models off of thingiverse and had a few questions. I love 3d models, but am too cheap to buy a bunch. Would be fun to print and paint them instead:
1. Prusa has a mini, in general would this be large enough for sculpts ($350 vs $1000)?
2. Is Prusa kind of the go-to right now for performance quality? I will have to look up some sources.
3. The file format... Is this universal for downloading projects or are more projects usable/available for certain types of printers?
4. Do they go on sale during holidays? Is it worth waiting?
5. Other sources than Thingiverse?
Thanks.
What do you mean by "3D models"?
-BEP
I am interested in printing models off of thingiverse and had a few questions. I love 3d models, but am too cheap to buy a bunch. Would be fun to print and paint them instead:
1. Prusa has a mini, in general would this be large enough for sculpts ($350 vs $1000)?
2. Is Prusa kind of the go-to right now for performance quality? I will have to look up some sources.
3. The file format... Is this universal for downloading projects or are more projects usable/available for certain types of printers?
4. Do they go on sale during holidays? Is it worth waiting?
5. Other sources than Thingiverse?Thanks.
I'm a 3D printer noob so please take what I say with a very large grain of salt. I look forward to reading the answers from the more experienced among us.
1. Can you specify the size you're interested in printing? Then you can look at the volume of each (the Prusa MK3 kit is $700, btw...just build it yourself)
2. There are a ton of printers out there plus tons of Prusa clones. I was impressed by the Prusa MK3 that my previous job had so I just went with that. I've not been disappointed thus far. You have one small data point among many. 
3. STL files seem to be the standard for 3D printers? Not sure. What you can use depends on your slicer software, I suppose. I've only ever used STL files and that seems to be what's available in everything that I download from Thingaverse.
4. Probably, depending on where you shop. I didn't want to wait and wanted to get started ASAP.
5. Probably, but I never look anywhere else ATM.
3. STL is a standard for printable models, but the standard for printers is gcode, the result of software "slicing" the model into layers with instructions to the printer on how to print the layers. Most printers speak gcode, but you should always check which slicing software is supported before you buy one.
Although it's not what I ultimately went with this time, the Ender series seems pretty well regarded if you have the space, don't mind noise, and are ok with an open chassis. Some assembly required.
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