Tag: 3dprinter

“Dad, the fence is down again!”

We live in a rural area and have animals. As anyone with animals can tell you, there is always something breaking, always something to do. Whenever possible, I like to have my boys (ages 10 and 13) fix it. I think it teaches them responsibility and gives them problem-solving skills. 

In this particular case, a fence bracket had broken. I could easily have gone to the store to pick one up for a few dollars. But miss out on this great opportunity to teach my boys something? Nah, not me. I had been looking for an opportunity like this. Something that needed to be custom made. A part that was pretty straightforward, but did need to be a certain size for it to function properly. This bracket needs to fit right, but it would also be forgiving. After all, it’s just a fence.

My boys had tinkered in Fusion 360 before, but it had always been just to create random toys and things that didn’t have a specific function.

“Go get my calipers from my toolbox and meet me outside.” We talked about how to measure parts to make sure they fit together and how to make sure that you have gathered enough dimensions. Then I turned it over to them to design. After many trips outside to confirm measurements, we had a design. Then we 3d printed one. It worked, the very first part off of the printer worked.

Whether they end up as engineers or not, these boys will have some valuable skills.

For Christmas, I’m making the famous leg lamp from “A Christmas Story” for one of my family members. He’s always been a big fan of the movie and the leg lamp has become a running gag between us. 

However, making the lamp does pose a few unique problems. One issue is that I will need to run an electrical wire through the leg itself to provide power to the led light that I will put in it. I figure I have two options, I can either put a hole through the leg in the cad and then print it that way, or I can change the print settings. What I’m trying first is to create the leg with 0% infill, but I’m increasing the number of exterior walls to compensate. Hopefully this provides a leg that is still structurally sound, but allows me to put the wire through the inside of the leg.

There are a lot of ways to find interesting things to print using a 3d printer. Thingiverse, or other stl repositories are abundant with files to download and print on the printer. You can commission an artist to create something for you. Join a Patreon group that creates figurines for your tabletop game. But, sometimes you can’t find what you are looking for online or just want to create your own.

There are many available tools, with more being created all the time. But, there are two that I use consistently.

For functional parts, such as when I create 3d printed widgets to replace broken things around the home or when I create photo stands for my family, I use Fusion 360. It’s subscription based, but it still seems to provide the most tools and provide the ease of use that I’m looking for. In fact, it’s so easy to use that I often have my 10 and 12 year old boys make stuff instead of doing it myself. I look at this as a valuable learning experience for them, especially if they ever end up in some type of engineering role for their careers.

For more artistic parts, I use Blender. Blender has a pretty steep learning curve, but there are tons of online resources available to help with that, including many video tutorials. 

Ringing. Ghosting. Wavy walls. They all are the same thing and they all come from vibrations in your printer. A loose belt on a printer can cause a significant degradation of your prints. When I see that I have wavy walls, I start by checking to make sure that my belts are tight and that my rollers function smoothly and that they are tight too. From there, I cycle the motors back and forth, one axis at a time. Make sure that the look smooth. The human eye is not great at approximating large distances, but fantastic at noticing small changes, such as a roller that has a slight bump in it at a certain point in the axis.

Once I am convinced that my printer is mechanically as good as I’m able to make it, I pull out my software tricks. I enable resonance tuning in Klipper and run the resonance tuning test part. I typically get different values for the x and y axis, as they tend to resonate at different frequencies. This does a pretty good job of removing any remaining vibrations out of the system.

During the summer, many places are hot and dry. As the weather cools off and most places start to have more rain, your filament can pick up some moisture too. This can cause stringing, zits, blisters, or voids in your print. You can avoid this by making sure to store your filament in a dry location and dehydrating it before you put it on the printer for use. 

Someone recently wondered why they were losing details on their prints that they were making with their FDM printer. To be fair, the best way to get really good details in 3d prints is to use a resin printer. They are just better at it. However, if your situation dictates that you use a FDM printer, there are a couple of things that you can do to get a little more detail from your prints. 

First of all, reduce the layer height. Many slicers have a default layer height of 0.2mm. This means that you will definitely be able to see the layer lines and lose a significant amount of detail. Each machine is different, I’ve found the best setting for mine to be 0.08mm, but you should experiment with different settings to see what yours is. Most FDM printers are more accurate in X and Y than they are in Z, so this will resolve a lot of your problems.

Another fix that you can try is to reorient the print. Lithopanes, for example, are usually printed vertically. Even though the structure is more stable laying flat, it’s difficult to obtain the detail needed for a lithopane in that orientation.

One side of print looks great, the other looks horrible.

A user recently posted this summary on a help forum. Temperature and cooling play a big role in part quality of 3d prints. The user had their PLA hotend temperature set too high. Additionally, they were underextruding and had their retraction settings incorrect. 

Many 3d printing problems can be resolved by going to the basics. Calibrate X, Y, Z, and your extruder. Make sure your bed is level. Run a retraction tower and a temperature tower. Make sure your filament is dry.

When you get layer shift, check your belt tension first. There are other contributing factors, but this is by far the biggest cause of layer shift. As your printer gets broken in the belts will tend to loosen up. Also, as the weather changes things might move around and loosen up too. Most belts on hobby printers are kept tight with a cam. Each one is different, but they all have the general idea that you tighten it by rotating the cam until the belt is tight. 

Sometimes you just need something to put up on your mantle. It has no functional value to you or your family, It’s just for looks. In this case, you can enable “Vase Mode” in Cura. The official setting in Cura is “Spiralize Outer Contour” under the “Special Modes” settings group. This setting gives you no infill and only a single pass wall thickness. It’s not very strong, it really is something that is just for looks.

After a while, everything wears out, 3d printer components included. I noticed, not too long ago, that my bowden tube kept slipping out of the pneumatic fitting attached to the extruder. Whenever the extruder would feed filament it would push the tube out too.

Upon investigation, I found that there are little “teeth” inside of the pneumatic fitting the keep the tube in place. Pushing down the little plastic ring disengages the teeth and allows the tube to slip out. Over time, the teeth had worn out and needed to be replaced. On most extruders, this is a simple fix. Just find the right size pneumatic fitting and replace it.