EmilieEvans
@EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml
- Comment on CNC Kitchen – What is the best way to dry your desiccant? (microwave) 4 weeks ago:
China. That’s where you can still get the Cobalt indicator.
The upside is the fantastic color change, which is why some still prefer it and why it is probably still being made.
In Europe there is an alternative blue indicator that is cobalt-free, but it is more of a blue to brown/very dark red colour change, so not great either especially after a few drying cycles.
- Comment on CNC Kitchen – What is the best way to dry your desiccant? (microwave) 5 weeks ago:
the granules are blue when dry and turn purple/red when they no longer absorbs humidity.
Don’t buy those. Orange gel is the “new” blue.
The reason why the blue gel was phased out decade(s) ago is the CoCl2. Along all of the hazards are H350i and H360F (cancer and reproduction [aka. your plan to have kids might not turn out that great]).
While orange gel doesn’t have as good of a color change it is significantly lower risk and shall be used.
- Comment on Is a dremel 3D40 worth it in 2024? 1 month ago:
3D40 at couple hundred bucks? Absolutely not. 3D40 for $50? No. 3D40 for free? Yeah. Just don’t expect much out of it.
- Comment on How to mount a 3d print to a motor axis? 2 months ago:
For production parts look at other materials. Polycarbonate might still be within the range of your 3D-printer.
For attaching: If you can’t clamp then look at gluing it in place. If you need it detachable maybe drill a hole in the shaft and use a R-clip.
- Comment on How to mount a 3d print to a motor axis? 2 months ago:
What is the plastic of your choice?
PLA, PETG, … behave like a very slowly flowing liquid as such the print will deform/expand (creep).
- Comment on 2 min benchy - YouTube 2 months ago:
Interesting 3D printer design.
Using 3 linear rails to mount the bed. I suppose each linear carriage is one “corner”/point and all three of them to define a plane without overconstraining the buildplate but you keep all of the rigidity of the linear rails.
The issue I see is that the three linear rails in one plane are overconstrained so it is still is a pain to setup (especially on an ender 3 like frame construction).
What is the reasoning for using two motors instead of one powerful in the middle?
- Comment on Should I distill IPA (isopropanol alcohol) at home for 3D-printing? 2 months ago:
Heat set inserts are an interesting topic. You don’t need them if the screw is only installed once. Sure enough you can drive a metric screw into a 3D-prind and form/cut the threads but better are self tapping plastic screws. For nut vs. insert: It depends. if you can get away with a square nut (e.g. DIN 557 | don’t use hex nuts like DIN934) they are quicker to install. Make the cutout slightly undersized so the nut is fixed/wont move when the screw is installed.
If you use inserts consider the flange type to get a very nice aesthetic: e.g. de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006135129074.html
Removable plastic rivts are also a great fastening option. Push pins with integrated spring are equally briliant. Parts with snap fits are awsome but very diffuclt to design as the tab needs to flexible to be pushed in place but still strong enough to not break (layer adhesion).
Warping is indeed a big selling point for these materials. Major selling point/driving force I belive is still the esthetics of them as they provide a surface finish which can be sold (without post processing) without looking like a FDM 3D-print. Less warping, improved properties is more of a nice to have for most applications.
don’t seem to be, at least at the hobbyist level
This can be sad about a dozens of constructions. ISO1234 /DIN91/GB91-2000 splints are everywhere in the industry but nobody in the hobby space knows about them.
It’s pretty common to see cheap bearings in 3d printed parts, actually mildly interesting to me that bushings don’t seem to be
For bushing vs. bearing: It always depends on the application and industry.
. Do wonder though about the wear of 3d printed bushings, surfaces won’t be smooth,
Talked a while ago to somebody that run studies on FDM printed bushings. The verdict was that print orientation/layer adhesion was a limiting factor with their setup.
- Comment on How to mount a 3d print to a motor axis? 2 months ago:
Clamp it.
- Comment on Should I distill IPA (isopropanol alcohol) at home for 3D-printing? 2 months ago:
On the composite filaments, abrasive filament sure sounds like a great thing to make wear surfaces out of!
Most people are moving torwards glass- or carbonfibre filled materials for one reason or another (e.g. asthetics). If the 3D-printed part contains a bushing than it is the same material. Often it is enough to just stick a metal rod through it. No need to worry about sourcing and installing bushings.
Also for the Igus materials (e.g. Nylon with PTFE) it is a composite. Anyway. If you have a real need for a high endurance than you can’t 3D-print. Injection molding is king and if this isn’t possible at least use a hybrid manefacutring (additve + subtracte) to get the appropiate surface finish and tolerances.
- Comment on Should I distill IPA (isopropanol alcohol) at home for 3D-printing? 2 months ago:
You can’t blame him.
Our education system doesn’t train us on this. After high school, you might never heard IPA before or know what peroxide are. You don’t even know enough to understand how to read these hazards/datasheets (assuming you know that these documents even exist).
From a technical standpoint it looks easy: heat it up, let it condense, done.
It is all over social media for a while now. Further suggesting it is good practice/safe to the viewer.
Most people never experience what power even a small volume of 1L of alcohol vapor can have. They also never experienced that they would fall in shock if it goes wrong. Unable to do anything for a minute or two. Recently did the math on a 30L IPA vapor tank to smooth “large” Polymaker Polysmooth prints (just the energy set free in an explosion). This was the moment I looked for alternative options as it was a scary number asking for serious engineering to keep it safe.
In my opinion resin manufacturers are to blame too. Downplaying the hazards of resin 3D-printing. In the previous paragraph, I mentioned how the education system doesn’t prepare us and as such also the influencer/reviewer might not know. Even assuming best intentions they echo/amplify the message that resin printing is safe.
Providing a recent example how misinformation spreads involving an influencer I won’t name and Prusa’s response: https://old.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/1ekn24x/are_cf_filled_filaments_dangerous_prusament_lab/
Toxicology is rocket science. Understanding (understanding isn’t the same as accepting without questioning) what somebody says without being an expert is (near) impossible and even between experts there is often a discussion on what the results mean/what action shall be taken.
I don’t question the results Prusa published but I highly disagree with the message:
TLDR - our Prusament filaments with carbon fibers and prints made of them are safe The National Institute of Public Health used two methods of measurement. The skin irritation (image 1) and cytotoxicity (image 2) tests involved 30 volunteers (aged between 29 and 70 years) wearing prints made of PCCF and PA11CF materials taped to their skin. The measurement results showed that none of the volunteers had the slightest irritation even after more than 72 hours of wearing the print on their skin. [...]
If you would test with loose asbestos fibers the test would likely also pass and I hope we all agree that asbestos is dangerous. So right from the start, we have an oversimplification (average Joe isn’t interested in 5 pages of what was measured. He is looking for simple answers) or Mr. Prusa wasn’t aware of the context of these results (context is critical for toxicology!).
What I believe has happened here: Prusa Research did the responsible and tested if their workplace conditions are safe for the employees. This means this data is likely specific to factory conditions and production steps. What then happened is that this unnamed influencer posted a sensational video and Prusa took this data and posted it as a response completely out of context.
As most people probably trust Prusa Research they now likely feel like it is certain that Carbon fiber-filled materials (in every application) are safe while the actual truth is nobody knows a good answer at the moment.
The next step is people printing parts like bushing out of these filaments. Bushings more or less grind themself which means we now might have fine carbon fiber dust and damaged fibres which might be a health risk (again: nobody knows exactly if there is a safe level and what this would be for these composite filaments).
- Submitted 2 months ago to 3dprinting@lemmy.world | 14 comments
- Comment on Designing a new printer 2 months ago:
The benefit of core XY is that you don’t have a heavy motor riding on the X-axis allowing you to push higher speeds without increasing the rigidity of the y-axis. The downside is the long belt which will stretch a tiny bit meaning a lower accuracy.
With core XZ you don’t gain anything as the z-axis is generally not high dynamic meaning the weight doesn’t matter at all but still need to eat the downside of a long belt. In my opinion, it is just a stupid gimmick people fell for because is looks novel or cool.
Also core XZ is a bed slinger. With small objects, this is not an issue. The higher they are and the less rigid the print is the bigger the issue of the 3D print itself deflecting gets. With the usual 20cm height and the usual helmet and the like this aspect doesn’t matter at all.
- Comment on Designing a new printer 2 months ago:
Do you have a big budget to buy parts? You can do work in CAD? Copy the Pantheon HS3 design approch. Always question design decisions. In the broader picture of 3D-printer is the HS3 still engineering pron: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooE0Xc6jPBY
- Comment on Do you think the Creality K2 Plus is worth waiting for? 3 months ago:
Do the math.
Buying new might be cheaper than upgrading the ender 3:
hotend+extruder: orbiter v3 110€
stepper (not sure why you would want): 2x (5-phase 0.72° stepper and 5 phase stepper driver): 200€ [2 phase 0.9° would be significantly lower cost but even less of an upgrade]
cooling fan: larger 6023 blower: 13€
enclosure: Not great for a bed pusher. Core XY is compact. Regardless approx. 100€
Between those, you would already look at approx. 425€ in parts and still have the basic Ender 3 frame and electronic that if you haven’t done might want to upgrade to.
- Comment on Prusa MK4s launch (TLDR) 3 months ago:
If you bought the MK4 there will be a free voucher excluding shipping cost. Depending on your location this means $10 for the upgrade.
My understanding is that those who purchase the MK4 and MK3.5 upgrade kit as well as those who picked up a used MK4 printer won’t get a voucher and are ask to pay full price.
- Comment on Prusa MK4s launch (TLDR) 3 months ago:
But- the market has left them behind. XL is a great idea but awfully expensive and maybe not perfectly implemented.
E3D toolchanger launch price in 2019 was 2700 GBP. Adjusted for inflation it is in today’s money 3300 GBP (approx. 3900€). A Prusa XL is 3700€. For toolchangers the Prusa price isn’t out of the ordinary.
The issue is the performance/reliability isn’t there to back this price point. Having to worry about printed parts bending on a 3.7k€ machine is laughable. Having issues with a heatbed is laughable. Support having trouble resolving these issues/identifying what exactly is broken isn’t a great overall picture.
- Submitted 3 months ago to 3dprinting@lemmy.world | 5 comments
- Comment on Req: newcomer guide to SLA printing? 3 months ago:
Yes and if the part isn’t hollow use the slicer to make it hollow.
- Comment on Should every printer have a easy to disconnect toolhead? 3 months ago:
I like to have a bit less squish for nylon for example, more for textured sheets), offsets stored in a config file but you could easily swap that for an actual database if you wanted to.
Duet has Filament macros. Which can be uploaded/changed over the network. Not great but could be done with some glue logic.
Similarly, the config files can be exposed to the network and a server could “sync” them. All of this works but is a crapy solution that requires countless glue logic to make it work.
- Comment on Should every printer have a easy to disconnect toolhead? 3 months ago:
Multihead printing is still in the early days. The software isn’t there: For example, RRF (Duet) would throw error messages for missing CAN boards when you would try pogo pins and only electrically connect the active tool head. The most advanced we have at the moment are toolchangers with 4-5 fixed tool-heads.
RRF/Duet in standalone is very stable and what you want. The flipside is that even through it is flexible with macros there are limits. This is more and more an issue that limits what can be done. Due to stability, I so far reject the idea of switching to Klipper (even duet in SBC mode isn’t stable enough for my taste).
Also keeping track of heads is ugly at the moment. In a perfect world each toolhead would have an EEPROM and the machine would recognise it. Maybe even look up on a server/database what offset and parameter this tool needs so it could be swapped between tool-bays/docks and machines. For example with CNC milling it is state of the art that tool holder have RFID chips for tool identification and data is synced across the production floor (e.g. the shrink/tool setup station provides the tool data to a server and the CNC-mill controller gets the data automatically from this server).
As long as the basic connections are an open design.
If you like to install the same thing I can send you the Gerber, BOM and 3D-files for E3D toolchanger. In a nutshell this does nothing more than beeing “inserted” into the wire. If you want to call it special: platform agnostic. The small black header on the side is the auxiliary connector and is there for toolheads that require 5, 12 or 36V. For good measure three fuses (24V, 36V supply and heater).
Lets face it long term to gain the full ability of 3D printing. It will need to move to a multi material design.
end effector 1: FDM end effector 2: FDM end effector 3: silicon (paste/liquid) end effector 4: subtractive milling *
- Head 4 will be soon upgraded to a rack system that allows to store upto 4 different heads so you can use 4 different subtractive tools (e.g. endmill, ball end mill, dove tail, thread cutter). An alternative to 4 subtractive heads could be 3 subtractive and 1 pick and place (those small vacuum pump are light enough to be mounted on a E3D toolchanger toolhead).
Sad part is that this type of setup will be for the next two decades exclusive to the DIY community or a company with deep pockets and good lawyers due to a removed Stratasys patent on making an electrical connection between toolhead and the gantry/mount.
The part that makes angry is this isn’t even a Stratasys invention at all. Since the beginning of industrial robots, there have been electrical, pneumatic and liquid interfaces between the motion system and tool head. A toolchanging 3D-printer is a motion system with a tool head (e.g. filament extrusion) but this is locked behind a patent for this application.
- Submitted 3 months ago to 3dprinting@lemmy.world | 8 comments
- Comment on Req: newcomer guide to SLA printing? 3 months ago:
Number one priority is safety.
SLA Resin contains chemicals that are safe if handled appropriately and a serious health risk when no precautions are taken.
First of all apply the common rules for chemicals like separate workspace, no food and drink around it, minimizing exposure as best as possible, and not working with them if the available material/workspace is unsafe.
Resin in particular has two noteworthy exposure paths: 1.) Vapors -> well-ventilated space. Ideally a fume hood. This will be the largest challenge and might be the biggest investment. One option is to work outside and only go near it as little as possible. Not great but good enough to achieve a low exposure. 2.) Skin contact -> safety googles, long clothes, closed footwear and gloves. Keep in mind that a glove is only spillage protection and up to 1.5 gloves in a 100 box can be damaged! Use tools to handle the uncured resin parts.
Due to the hassle of working safely with it, I have quit SLA 3D-printing and use online services for it (eg. JLC3DP).
How to print?
Experience. That simple. Try, fail, and repeat.
Watch a video on how to setup the printer. Print the exposure test pattern. Go from there.
For a booklet take a look at the Prusa SL1 guide and post/ask if you encounter a specific issue (writing everything down that is to SLA printing would take hours): www.prusa3d.com/…/prusa3d_manual_sl1_en.pdf
- Comment on Stratasys files patent infringement lawsuit against Bambu Lab 3 months ago:
I hope that one day the constant bullying of Stratasys backfires.
Overall the patent system is in dire need of improvement:
- protection for real invention that isn’t trivial: yes
- troll patents and trivial: no
Right now we are at a point where the trivial patents are so dominant that I believe the patent system does more harm than good. Stopping progress/innovation instead of encouraging it.
So why improve if you can just sue your competition out of the US market?
Stratasys: probably doesn’t feel BambuLab at all at the moment
Ultimaker: there is some pressure. Dozens of companies are using BambuLab but they still have a customer group that isn’t yet addressed by BambuLab
MakerBot: Hell yes. Why would anybody buy a MakerBot right now? Their entry-level printer is at the same price point as a BambuLab X1C and gets obliterated by BambuLab’s performance. I also see how education facilities (schools, universities) are choosing BambuLab offerings.
- Comment on Issues using PVA with a Prusa XL 3 months ago:
You should be fine. It is about temperature and time. Don’t keep the nozzle heated up when it isn’t used. Don’t dry it frequently (keep it in a dry environment) and use low temperatures.
190° is the low end of printing temperatures. SainSmart should probably be okay when printed below 210°C
With “special” PVA like FormFutura Helios you go up to 250°C: formfutura.com/product/helios-support/
Regardless BVOH should be the better choice at higher cost.
- Comment on Issues using PVA with a Prusa XL 3 months ago:
PVA would come out in big bubbles instead of thin lines.
Dry the PVA before use and keep it dry.
PVA easily crystalizes and if this happens the $30 filament spool is trash. Also, make sure to drop the temperature by more than 5°C for the parked toolhead. Otherwise (you guessed it) it will crystalize and cause a clogged nozzle.
<Rough time estimate is 5-30 min at PLA temperature with no flow but this number depends on the exact PVA filament variant.
- Comment on [Question] Can You Uncut A STL? 3 months ago:
Import the parts into the CAD software (e.g. Fusion360) and assemble them.
- Comment on What specs should I look out for UPS 4 months ago:
The biggest issue is battery size: If the heatbed cools down the print fails. The heating is the part that takes the most power so the battery has to be large enough to support the entire remaining print duration or power outage.
- Comment on Prusa slicer 2.8 UI changes 4 months ago:
On Windows: I hate it too.
Takes up more space without any benefit. this version looks “modern” but from a usability standpoint, it is worse.
Hope Prusa goes in and makes the toolbar (Menu, Platter, Print Settings, filament, Printers, physical printer) small/less height and gives the buttons something to make them look like a button. Right now it is just text on a grey background. Big steps in the wrong direction in my opinion as it stands but easy to fix.
The addition of the physical printer page/tab is nice. Now I can view the Duet web interface directly in prusaslicer. While the printer are 99% upload and forget from time to time I need to view the control panel to check or adjust a thing or two.
- Comment on For labs acquires Micronics 4 months ago:
A lot of people (probably) would have chipped in and be happy with a half-backed first-generation product. People loved the Ender 3 and even accepted the Anet A8 which would catch fire if not modified because it was all they could afford/buy.
Look no further than Micronics sift bin. It was jankey but it was what it took to hit this price point and people accepted it.
All of the buzz was about SLS being finally headed toward enthusiasts and small businesses. Adoption/market size getting bigger and suddenly good SLS is affordable in the near future. All of this was killed with this acquisition as FormLabs is the wrong company for this trajectory. Even the fact that FormLabs is asking $4k for the * privilege * to use third-party materials is a strong indicator.
Do we expect anytime soon that FormLabs will beat what is already out there? Sinterit Lisa: $10k: sinterit.com/3dprinters/lisa/
My money is on that the next/first budget SLS will be made and engineered in China. I don’t know who will be next but it likely won’t be another startup in the west.
The whole ecosystem here in the West doesn’t favour starting up. It’s not easy to do it in China either, but the whole supply chain is there (as such also the knowledge/support) and the business environment makes it more likely for it to happen there.
- Comment on Commentary on Shapeways bankruptcy, details in post. 4 months ago:
Might be a restructuring:
, the Company may need to file for bankruptcy protection in order to implement a plan of reorganization, or court-supervised sale and/or liquidation of the Company.
