Current goings-on
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I haven’t posted any bloggy things in a while, and I know folks start to worry if I haven’t posted in a while. So,
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fluffy rambles (3D printing)
Rambles that are fluffy, by fluffy
Resin printer updates
I’ve finally gotten a handle on my resin printer and have gotten some successful prints! Here’s some of what I did to get it to a good state:
- Replaced the stock FEP sheet with an nFEP sheet (although that’s mostly because the stock one was leaking a little)
- Added some PTFE lubricant to the LCD screen (to aid with cleanup in particular)
- Increased the exposure times; first layers went from 30s to 45, and subsequent layers went from 2.5s to 4
- Started using Chitubox on Linux because it performs way better than the Mac version (not really anything to do with the printer itself, but, y'know)
- Ground down the build plate some more
- Figured out a better way of angling prints
Resin printing adventure
So far I haven’t gotten a fully-successful resin print, but I’m inching closer and closer.
The current issue I keep running into is that it’s very difficult to separate a print from the bed, and I think I need to give up on having a good clean bed-adhered surface. It’s better to give all prints lift and support, probably, even if that means having more tiny surface defects on the side facing the build plate (which is better than having an entire shattered print when I inevitably resort to a hammer to separate it).
I also ran into a problem where somehow a bit of resin got underneath my FEP film (hopefully due to my own carelessness and not due to a leak I haven’t found on my vat!) and some resin got caked to the LCD. Fortunately, Phrozen’s suggestion of soaking it in 91% IPA and then using the plastic scraper to get it off worked just fine.
Anyway. For now I’m still stuck trying to sun-cure my prints, but hopefully I can figure out a decent cheap curing station setup. I’m thinking of building a curing box using UV LED strips but it’s so hard to find reliable parts for that sort of thing. I also ordered a cheap curing station off Amazon but I’m not expecting great results from it.
In the meantime, my FDM printer is working again, and now that I have a decent supply of isopropyl alcohol I can actually get prints to stick to the build plate!
I might have a problem
I haven’t even put printer #3 through its paces yet, and I’ve just bought printer #4. Fortunately it’ll be a while before it gets here, and also I’ve been wanting a ceramic printer for even longer than I’ve been wanting a resin printer.
But, jeeze.
Anyway I both bought the printer and an extra bed, and also an extra extruder assembly with the notion of possibly converting a larger-format printer into ceramic printing. Or food printing, which this is apparently usable for too!
More updates!
- My resin printer arrived today. It was a bit obnoxious to get a working print and holy heck it’s a messy process even when it does work, but this’ll be fun to mess with. (Yes, I now have three 3D printers. Only the resin one is actually operable right now, but the Artillery Genius has some repair parts on th eway, at least.)
- I accepted an offer on my condo. It’s a lot less than I was hoping for but it’s still plenty of money. When that sells I can start working on building out the studio, which is the linchpin for getting a bunch of my other house ambitions underway.
- I’m having one heck of a fibro flare and this makes it very hard for me to actually focus on work. But also there’s a stress factor involved. Hopefully that all sorts itself out soon.
- Because of the aforementioned flare I’m also not making much progress on getting my living room or kitchen in any sort of order. But I’m still slowly chipping away at that glacier.
- Cannabis isn’t really helping with the fibro right now, either.
Miscellaneous goings-on
I’ve been on guanfacine for a few days and so far I’m not noticing that my focus has changed any, but on the plus side my blood pressure is great now. So, that’s good.
I don’t know if it’s from the naltrexone or the guanfacine but my dreams have been pretty vivid and weird, but usually in a good way. Unlike when I was on the Wellbutrin and my dreams were vivid and stressful.
3D printing wood
A week ago I bought some wood-filled PLA, and I’ve been experimenting with it a bit to see how to make it actually look like wood.
The first thing I printed (a Pocket Operator case) just looked like it was printed with boring beige filament, even after being sanded:
Mosaic Palette 2S on an Artillery Genius
A few days ago my Palette 2S arrived, and I’ve been having some amount of fun with it. I won’t do a full review of it (there are plenty of those on YouTube, after all) but I’d like to talk about some of the things I’ve learned and how I have it set up.
Some positive things
I need to remember to look at the good stuff that’s going on right now, so here’s some good things.1
OctoPrint et al
So, my main reason for wanting to get a Canvas Hub was to have easy one-click print support that works with the Palette; after playing with Slic3r a bunch last night I then realized I also wanted OctoPrint for its print queue functionality to decouple the print process from Slic3r (which turns out to be rather unstable at times, at least on the Mac). But it turns out that Palette’s OctoPrint plugins work with plain ol' OctoPrint, too. So I looked into building an OctoPrint node… and then realized I was overcomplicating things, since OctoPrint doesn’t actually need dedicated hardware1 — it just needs to be on a computer that’s physically close to the printer and has multiple USB ports available.
My desktop computer is physically close to the printer and has multiple USB ports available.
So I looked to see if OctoPrint runs on macOS, and yes, it does; there’s nothing Linux- or ARM-specific about it, as it’s all written in Python. The macOS-specific guide is an okay starting point, but I saw a few things that could be a bit simpler, so here’s what I settled on.
(Also note that these directions should also work for Linux and even Windows users! There’s no reason to build an OctoPrint hardware node if you already have a computer that lives nearby your printer!)
The printer arrived!
So my new 3D printer arrived today. I went with the Artillery Genius, since it seemingly had the best blend of features and physical characteristics.
So far I like it, although wow the out-of-box experience could be a lot better. Not from the printer so much as from the software that drives it.
Time to upgrade my printer
So, I’ve had a Makerbot Replicator Duo since late 2012; I bought it used at a significant discount (“only” $1200!) and it’s served me pretty okay. But over time, better, cheaper printers have come along, and my Replicator has gotten pretty unreliable. Actually it’s been pretty much hobbling along for the last several years:
- The heated print bed stopped heating, due to it shorting out due to a well-known design flaw in the print bed connector1
- One of the last firmware updates made it only compatible with Makerbot’s own proprietary software, which was very soon discontinued to upsell newer Makerbot versions
- The left extruder stopped working at some point; the right extruder barely works
- The hot end really needs new nozzles but the design is such that replacing the nozzle is very easy to crossthread/ruin the hot end2
- And really it’s never been all that great, it was just pretty much the only game in town when I bought it
So anyway, yeah, this upgrade is long-overdue.