Bluewing

Isn’t amazing what slicers can do? There ain’t no guard rails where we’re going!

Ha! Years ago, I once spent nearly 2 whole days trying to unknowingly splice PLA and PETG together. All because I was an idiot and didn’t read the spool labels. I just assumed, with the obvious results and damage to my ego…

Always, always buy Gates belts. And belt tension is a real issue with CoreXY printers. And I consider the belts to be consumables that need to be replaced on a schedule. If you’ve been running those belts for 2 years, replacing them will make you happy again.

As an old toolmaker, Welcome to the world of understanding your process! And knowing the limits of that process.

I wonder what he actually expects for a tolerance day to day. A +/-.1mm IS doable if you’re careful. But there is enough randomness in the FDM process, even outside the slicer, that I wouldn’t bet the farm on any 1 random piece hitting that tolerance. Let alone repeating that level of tolerance every time over say, 100 parts.

As I know from reading various outside sources and have heard, there have been NO actual fires reported and verified caused by the NTC failure in question. Just some scorch marks and a bit of localized melting.

This does not mean that a fire is impossible, but that you would need to have an exceptionally bad day for the fire resistant plastic of the housing and board to catch fire.

This issue does not affect the mini. That’s a different control board. I own a mini.

What you are thinking of is the NTC thermistor that was failing. That part was meant to limit the inrush current when the nozzle was rapidly heating. Its failure will just stop the nozzle from working at all. Which is precisely what should happen at failure. It is suspected they either got a bad batch of NTC thermistors or they were pushing the inrush current too close to the max rating. Bambu replaced a fair number of control boards and took the hit for not addressing these failures by not recalling the affected batch and replacing the offending board.

The plastic housing of the printer is a fire-retardant, high-temp polymer. And as far as I have read and know from my following of the issue, there have been no reported and verified fires caused by this particular problem. Just some scorched plastic and a bit of localized melting with the blown NTC.

But there does remain a non-zero chance of a real fire because of bad NTC. But it needs to be ignited by dust or little bits of filament that invades every nook and cranny on every printer in existence. If it bothers you and you are worried, clean your A1’s insides every year. Make it a routine maintenance thing.

Disclaimer: I do own an A1 mini (which is not affected by this issue). While my mini does exactly what I originally bought it for (before the ongoing attempt of Bambu to crash the plane), I’m under no illusion that Bambu is not a company I wish to support.

Chamber pressures for the 5.56 Nato is 58,000psi. And 9mm is 35,000psi. It takes a pretty good piece of pipe to contain those pressures. Your average seam welded pipe is around 4000 to maybe 10,000 psi.

Zip guns made from hardware store pipe are just barely good enough to contain a low pressure 12ga bird shot shell.

An application of hair dry heat will make the white marks go away.

Deltahedra is fast-paced for sure. I enjoy his tutorials also. Another person you can check out is AllVisuals4U. He makes short and to the point tutorials also. He keeps them to 5 to 6-minute videos.

Depends on what your goals are. Despite my inability to grasp Blender, it’s a great piece of software for those organic and artistic designs. And to be fair, it can do a bit of CAD work with an add-on. But it soon hits a limit for that kind of work.

But not everyone can “see” the different type of workflow and end results that each type of software is good at. I certainly cannot see that Blender doughnut well enough to make it. Even with my hand being held in the video tutorials. But I can take that same doughnut and turn it into a torque converter for an automatic transmission. Go figure…

Still, I keep trying to make that Blender doughnut despite my lack of success so far. And I encourage you to keep trying to make something with CAD. Don’t give up. We’re going to win someday!

I understand. But I made an “executive decision” for the video link because most people like to see some the improvements in action. I felt that it would get more people excited and would be quicker for them to get through.

The extensive change log is on the FreeCAD github page if you want to read all about it. Download FreeCAD 1.1 while you are there!

And I highly encourage everyone at least skim through that page to see all the changes as they get the time to do so.

I think the 1.1 release is the end step of the original plan started back at the .18 release of fixing the major underlying issues that FreeCAD had. And the mitigating of TPN and the need to redo a fair amount of code to make FreeCAD better. That effort led to the 1.0 release. And the 1.1 release is the result of the cleanup and optimization of the code in FreeCAD. Which is the final step in the roadmap. And the video talks a lot about those improvements in stability, speed, and simplification of use.

I used SW professionally for years before I retired and SW was suddenly not free to use for me anymore. Personally, I found the switch to FreeCAD was pretty easy for me. But the ease or struggle to learn something new varies a lot between people.

Best I can tell you is to forget everything you “know” from SW as best you can. And when you get frustrated that what you are doing in FreeCAD doesn’t work like SW, try to remember we ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto. That’s how I had to approach things.

Good Luck! I’m pullin’ for ya!

I’ve been using it since it was a weekly release, (now I mostly use the 1.2 weeklies), and it’s been very stable even on a low powered mini desktop with 8 Gbits of shared RAM. I think they are finally finishing up the timeline that was set out when they went after the TNP mitigation and general cleanup of the disaster that was .1X series of FreeCAD with the 1.0 release.

Spoiler Alert: I think the 1.2 Weekly releases are even better yet. So give that a shot if you are willing to put up with occasional breakage and problems. The more users of different skills with different hardware can really help speed the killing of bugs if you report issues. Besides, it’s just plain fun!

Keep trying and keep practicing. Install FreeCAD and practice with MangoJelly tutorials to learn.

One thing that often makes it hard for people switching to any new CAD is things don’t work the same way. So do your best to forget the way you used to do things. Fusion isn’t FreeCAD and FreeCAD isn’t Fusion. You will need to learn new things. So don’t expect it to work the same way.

The next thing that is very helpful is to find models to practice and gain confidence and skills. MangoJelly tutorials are great to learn from, but you need varied practice to gain skills. Here are 50 models you can practice with to gain confidence and skills using any CAD program. Other practice models can be found if you do some searching.

Good Luck!

It’s ok to not get it when it comes to parametric CAD. I can’t get the hang of OpenSCAD. And don’t get me started on Blender. Years of trying, and I STILL can’t make that doughnut…

I have used Fusion and can get what I want from it. But I have an intense dislike of the clown car UI.

So sit down and watch MangoJelly’s tutorials and practice them. Enjoy that smooth Aussie voice. It takes time to learn new things so don’t give up. We’re pulling for you!

He’s very good. He is one of the developers of FreeCAD. MangoJelly tends to be my go to though.

It’s pretty simple don’t watch it then. No one, least of all me, is going to force you to watch it.

It’s more that stainless steel is cheaper than brass these days.