And so it begins

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Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Ooooooooouuuu I need more space.

but seriously.... I am just now getting bold enough to print cokecan sized stuff... and leave it printing.
constant fear is to return to something like this...


Left a fractal vase printing while I was at work today...


Definitely one of the biggest things I have printed.
 
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Patriot

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I find myself being more comfortable and trusting with longer prints while I am at work.... this leads me to my next upcoming mod, remote monitoring with either octoprint or astroprint.
I am working at drafting so of my new found maker friends to come make guides with a makers section and explore with us the possibilities that 3d printing brings to our homes.

In the first month of owning a printer I have found that it can be frustrating at times but it is also extremely enjoyable to have made something that can make life nicer. Being able to spool up spare parts for various things in a variety of materials is incredibly awesome.

The wood particle is my new favorite due to how nicely it prints.

but for now... Jawa on... (friend made the model)
 
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IceDragon

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Apr 14, 2016
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Hi Everyone. Thanks for the invite to the group Patriot. This is awesome. First off a little background I've been 3d printing for about 3 years now and have worked pretty closely with several groups to help my company get up to speed with it. My experience has been with primarily three printers: Makerbot's X2, Fusion F306, and (my personal system) HIC I3 Aurora. I've printed mostly with with three types of filament, PLA, ABS, and PLA/Wood. I'm slowly expanding into others with the help and recommendations of users like Patriot. My focus right now is building a coreXY system to replace my I3. The I3 has been great, but my needs are starting to get beyond the scope of what it can do well (mostly size and speed). As much as I don't like being a tinkerer I've heavily modified my I3 to the point that it's not even close to the initial specs it was shipped with. It's about 5 times faster and has more professional grade hotends and shuttles on it as well as a slew of custom made parts that were designed by me for the purpose of speeding it up and gaining more precision. Here's a couple of shots of my rig. If there's anything I can help you guys with please don't hesitate to give me a shout. I'm glad to find an active group of 3D printers to interact with.

This is the pico B3 hot end that I've upgraded to. It's much faster and capable of temps up to 500C. I've yet to find a use for the higher temps, but I'm sure in time it'll come in handy. In the meanwhile it clogs a LOT less than my previous J-head that came with it originally. I used PLA for the mount because it has less give and tends to make for a more precise print than ABS, but the only reason I can get by with that is that the hot end stays oddly cool to the touch near the mount even when the tip is at 300C. It's impressively well designed in that regard.

Here's a ghost I printed for a friend awhile back. I thought it was a neat project done in a couple of different plastic colors. .. and yes the lens is actually 3D printed with clear PLA. :) It's a thingiverse download.

Last but not least here's one that I did as a precision test. I printed it at 300% speed with PLA.

While it's not perfect it's a lot closer than I expected.
If any images don't show up just go to my server: Index of /3Dprinter and you can view them from there.
 
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IceDragon

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Apr 14, 2016
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This is one of the largest prints I've done to date... just for the fun of it. I'm a fan of the American McGee Alice game. Someone on thingiverse figured out how to pull the cat's geometry from the game. It doesn't look half bad at almost a foot tall.


 
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halfelite

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Oct 10, 2014
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After using the printers do you think the dual head is worth the extra money? I have been eyeing both the monoprice single and dual head. This will be my first printer. But I dont want to buy the single head if in 3 months I will want to grow to the dual head
 

Patriot

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After using the printers do you think the dual head is worth the extra money? I have been eyeing both the monoprice single and dual head. This will be my first printer. But I dont want to buy the single head if in 3 months I will want to grow to the dual head
From what I have read... dual head makes leveling that much harder...
I think I will want dual head on my xycore but they will be retractable and hopefully avoid the leveling issues.
 

IceDragon

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Apr 14, 2016
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After using the printers do you think the dual head is worth the extra money? I have been eyeing both the monoprice single and dual head. This will be my first printer. But I don't want to buy the single head if in 3 months I will want to grow to the dual head
I completely agree with what the other person said. My MakerBot 2X was a dual head as is my F306. I'm not a fan at this point. While it's nice to have the two color possibilities there's some inherent issues that aren't being talked about and should be.

1) They're a son of a @#%@ to level. Even using measuring tools with the accuracy to go 3 decimal places in on mm it's imperfect and one head will usually drag over what the other one lays down... in many cases pulling it up.

2) Because of the dragging problem cleaning the tips to make sure there's no dried on plastic from the previous print becomes a necessity. Sounds easy, but it's really annoying to keep up with and you will forget resulting in bad prints and wasted plastic.

3) ... and probably the most annoying, is that different types of plastics with different melting temps do not bond well. So using things like flex with ABS or PLA are a great concept, but don't work nearly well enough. The only thing I've found to be an advantage is things like the dissolvable supports, and that's only when you're building on top of it. If the print depends on the support to stick to anything other than the printbed and other plastic to be laid down on top of it, then it's a roll of the dice whether or not it'll stick right.

4) You'll also get bleed-over colors. So everything ends up having bits and pieces of the other color mixed in. Marlin is written so that if a head is at melting temp it will very slowly ooze a little filament to keep it from burning and clogging. While that's normally not a problem, with a dual head it becomes an issue as you're printing in different colors (let's say white and black filament) you end up with a pepper look as one side catches the oozing drips from the second head. I know things like Simplify3D offer what's called an ooze shield, but to be honest they don't work well in my experience.

Most printers are optimal using one head and swapping between filament, but most people that own printers want to put two (or more) heads on them... before they have two (or more). :)
 
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Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Remote printing update... Astoprint... Fairly easy to update... so much more limited compared to octoprint. I need to find a good solution to make octoprint accessible outside the network, or a good way to vpn home to my erl.



Astroprint uses bits of octoprint...but unfortunately Not mjpg_streamer for video capture, otherwise I could have a live stream of the print rather than a per layer capture... Other options include skype on pi with auto answer and just call it when I want to see. Honestly the most annoying feature lack is no way to focus the webcam...
 
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ttabbal

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Mar 10, 2016
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I love Octoprint. I use it on an Rpi2 with the Pi camera module.

For remote access, I use OpenVPN to connect to a server I have at home. Then it works just the same as it does on Wifi, though slower.
 

cesmith9999

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Mar 26, 2013
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my list of things that I would want printed...

1) replacement fan holders for my SC847 to use smaller(thinner) fans
2) custom 2.5" SSD holder in a 2 * half height bay for one of my old Dell T110's. 6 bays in a vertical arrangement.
3) custom ssd bracket for my SC847 as the boot drive.

I have to be careful... once a 3d printer shows up at my house I will lose it to my wife and daughter... for that artsy-fartsy stuff... I may have to get 2 of them... and start buying stock in the filament companies.

Chris
 
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ttabbal

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Mar 10, 2016
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my list of things that I would want printed...

1) replacement fan holders for my SC847 to use smaller(thinner) fans
2) custom 2.5" SSD holder in a 2 * half height bay for one of my old Dell T110's. 6 bays in a vertical arrangement.
3) custom ssd bracket for my SC847 as the boot drive.

I have to be careful... once a 3d printer shows up at my house I will lose it to my wife and daughter... for that artsy-fartsy stuff... I may have to get 2 of them... and start buying stock in the filament companies.

Chris

The tricky part is designs. If you can find an STL, you can print it. But some of our needs aren't really designed for yet. I have seen a bracket to mount 2.5" drives in Supermicro sleds and a few similar things. I also printed a 2x2.5" in 1x3.5" adapter set that looks like it will work well...

Dual SSD in a single 3.5" HDD bay by Daneel

I also used a bracket intended to mount SSDs to a card slot bracket to hold my RMM3 module up off the motherboard as it didn't come with the slot-mount bracket.

There are a bunch of generic 2.5" to 3.5" adapters, those should work for the boot drive. I was planning to mount a pair of laptop drives there as a boot mirror, but I might just do USB flash. Still deciding.

I'm just beginning to learn the CAD/design part, it's got a steep learning curve, but I think it's worth it. I'm sure I'll find things applicable to this crew that I end up designing things for, I'll share them as I do. It might be worth starting a thread linking to designs that came in handy for us.

And yes, you should get 2 in that case. I'm still a little concerned the wife will discover the artsy stuff and steal the printer. One of my first designs was a stopper for a salt shaker, I think that might lead her down the path that steals my printer. :D If so, I'll get a bigger one! :D
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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The artsy stuff is fun too ... that is the hard part.
Printing a pi case @TuxDude designed right now. In black T-glase, same material as the fractal vase from earlier.
I have printed in TPU rubber boots/caps for a baby swing for my sister... gas cap holder for my car...
Printed a phone case, but the guy who designed it for some reason made it flat on the back when the phone is curved... it won't stay on.

On my todo list is a replacement stove knob, but I have to design that up.... I have a long list of guys in a gaming clan who would love a jawa... its like they want their namesake or something...

And a long list of mods to print out to make the printer stiffer and faster. And of course the parts to a
xy core printer. :D

That said... there are files on thingverse for a ssd stacker...
 
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IceDragon

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Apr 14, 2016
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all this artsy-fartsy stuff is cool and all ;-) (seriously, it is) - but is anyone using their printers to, for example, make brackets for their racks or fan brackets maybe?
Just built a custom Steam OS system and built some of the insides of the case using custom 3D printed brackets to mount an ATX board into an ITX case. At some point I plan to print the whole case game console size with custom cooling routes... but that's a time issue right now. It takes it, and I'm running short on it. :)
 
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TuxDude

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I want to get a printer myself as well - primarily for little brackets, fan-shrouds, etc. The design part I think I can handle - as @Patriot mentioned above I designed a R-Pi case as an experiment in design, dusting off old drafting skills that I haven't used in over 20 years. Maybe we'll end up with our own little collection of part designs here just for making enterprise IT gear do things it was never designed to do.
 
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