3-D Print General - Feeding Printers Filament

Yeah it's cool. I almost bought a voron kit because I have a bunch of AliExpress coins and could get a fystec down to like $300 or so.
I went down a rabbit hole with mine. Fysetc is great for really cheap components until you realize you likely need to replace half of what they send. For example I had to replace the main board on the kit they sent me since it was defective out of the box. It's rough out here
 
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I went down a rabbit hole with mine. Fysetc is great for really cheap components until you realize you likely need to replace half of what they send. For example I had to replace the main board on the kit they sent me since it was defective out of the box. It's rough out here
That's pretty much exactly what I heard. Ended up just modding a really cheap Tronxy.....but ran out of time/space so now all my projects are sitting on shelves.
 
I went down a rabbit hole with mine. Fysetc is great for really cheap components until you realize you likely need to replace half of what they send. For example I had to replace the main board on the kit they sent me since it was defective out of the box. It's rough out here
For cheap starter components, Creality is p good.
Might be TOO cheap, quality-wise.

(I absolutely DETEST their hot-ends)
 
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Okay friendos, I’ve read the thread and I don’t think I saw this question directly asked so here I go:

I’d really like to get a printer that can print actual metals (copper, aluminum and very occasionally iron/steel, preferably), is this even doable or feasible? Should I be looking at a C&C machine? I got the budget for the right tool, depending upon what my options are here.

Reason I ask is the things I’d like to print are pretty small (plumbing parts, conduit caps, etc) for the farm but they need to have maximum strength.

Reddit (lol) insists it’s not possible or cost effective, I’ve seen some commercial options Google showed me but I’m wary without some sort of review.

Please let me know how retarded I am here
 
Okay friendos, I’ve read the thread and I don’t think I saw this question directly asked so here I go:

I’d really like to get a printer that can print actual metals (copper, aluminum and very occasionally iron/steel, preferably), is this even doable or feasible? Should I be looking at a C&C machine? I got the budget for the right tool, depending upon what my options are here.

Reason I ask is the things I’d like to print are pretty small (plumbing parts, conduit caps, etc) for the farm but they need to have maximum strength.

Reddit (lol) insists it’s not possible or cost effective, I’ve seen some commercial options Google showed me but I’m wary without some sort of review.

Please let me know how retarded I am here
Unfortunately (as I would love home metal printing to be a thing) it's not there yet.

The second issue would be how good are you at CAD, people get it in their heads that they can just print whatever doodad they need for around the house but in reality you have to design the fucker, print it, realise your design is gash, refine and reprint etc.

You'd probably be better off with a lathe with digital readouts, not even necessarily CNC.
 
Okay friendos, I’ve read the thread and I don’t think I saw this question directly asked so here I go:

I’d really like to get a printer that can print actual metals (copper, aluminum and very occasionally iron/steel, preferably), is this even doable or feasible? Should I be looking at a C&C machine? I got the budget for the right tool, depending upon what my options are here.

Reason I ask is the things I’d like to print are pretty small (plumbing parts, conduit caps, etc) for the farm but they need to have maximum strength.

Reddit (lol) insists it’s not possible or cost effective, I’ve seen some commercial options Google showed me but I’m wary without some sort of review.

Please let me know how retarded I am here
If you've got an extra $500,000 to drop on a sintering machine, sure, it's possible. Of course, powdered metal is insanely toxic so you'll want at least another barn to go with it.
The question is how long it will take you to buy $500,000 of plumbing supplies at the hardware store, and if that hypothetical point is even within your own lifetime.

I also don't know if printing molten metals is possible, they might be too runny. I have aspirations of printing mold negatives for casting aluminum, but I wouldn't just blob it on the ground and expect it to look like a pipe fitting no matter how careful I was. (This implies finish machining anyway.)
 
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You'd probably be better off with a lathe with digital readouts, not even necessarily CNC.
That’s actually an excellent idea, thank you. I had thought about it but I didn’t know if 3D printing was that far along and was a better choice.
If you've got an extra $500,000 to drop on a sintering machine, sure, it's possible. Of course, powdered metal is insanely toxic so you'll want at least another barn to go with it.
The question is how long it will take you to buy $500,000 of plumbing supplies at the hardware store, and if that hypothetical point is even within your own lifetime.

I also don't know if printing molten metals is possible, they might be too runny. I have aspirations of printing mold negatives for casting aluminum, but I wouldn't just blob it on the ground and expect it to look like a pipe fitting no matter how careful I was. (This implies finish machining anyway.)
Google showed me a few things it claimed could do small scale sintering at a $50k price point but I am ignorant so I figured I would ask. What you’re saying definitely makes more sense though, if I was to do precision finish machining a lathe would be a great choice, I have done little items with a small workbench Grizzly before and I’ll bet the tooling could cut copper easily enough.

Whether I’d want to cast it like you’re talking about is an open question too… I’m getting the feeling I was too optimistic here lol
 
Okay friendos, I’ve read the thread and I don’t think I saw this question directly asked so here I go:

I’d really like to get a printer that can print actual metals (copper, aluminum and very occasionally iron/steel, preferably), is this even doable or feasible? Should I be looking at a C&C machine? I got the budget for the right tool, depending upon what my options are here.

Reason I ask is the things I’d like to print are pretty small (plumbing parts, conduit caps, etc) for the farm but they need to have maximum strength.

Reddit (lol) insists it’s not possible or cost effective, I’ve seen some commercial options Google showed me but I’m wary without some sort of review.

Please let me know how retarded I am here
People have been working on projects to make metal printers. Ran into this yesterday with a guy using diesel glow plugs for trying to print with metal. Who knows if it will pan out to something in the future. Sadly for stuff like that though, even if this metal 3d printer comes around, plumbing parts I wouldn't trust 3d printing.

You should look into ASA for conduit caps, it can handle UV exposure. I'm planning to use it for some bowfishing stuff. Just need to build an enclosure and dial in my new hotend.
 
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Okay friendos, I’ve read the thread and I don’t think I saw this question directly asked so here I go:

I’d really like to get a printer that can print actual metals (copper, aluminum and very occasionally iron/steel, preferably), is this even doable or feasible? Should I be looking at a C&C machine? I got the budget for the right tool, depending upon what my options are here.

Reason I ask is the things I’d like to print are pretty small (plumbing parts, conduit caps, etc) for the farm but they need to have maximum strength.

Reddit (lol) insists it’s not possible or cost effective, I’ve seen some commercial options Google showed me but I’m wary without some sort of review.

Please let me know how retarded I am here
Nothing consumer-level yet. Everything on metal printing is industrial, or very experimental and makeshift and DIY and dangerous.

At most, you can find filament that contains metal powder, which gives you results that are partly metallic. Some even allow for melting the plastic off and you're left with a metal print that can be post-processed for smoothing and so on.
But that's good for figurines, decorations, jewelry.
Parts for machines or plumbing? Absolutely not. They'll be too weak and porous.
 
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People have been working on projects to make metal printers. Ran into this yesterday with a guy using diesel glow plugs for trying to print with metal. Who knows if it will pan out to something in the future. Sadly for stuff like that though, even if this metal 3d printer comes around, plumbing parts I wouldn't trust 3d printing.

You should look into ASA for conduit caps, it can handle UV exposure. I'm planning to use it for some bowfishing stuff. Just need to build an enclosure and dial in my new hotend.

I like Runescape autism as much as the next man, not sure how the video applies here though?

I'm deeply sceptical of any system that would work by doing layered deposition of molten metal, I can only imagine the weird stresses you are going to get building up in the finished part.
 
I like Runescape autism as much as the next man, not sure how the video applies here though?

I'm deeply sceptical of any system that would work by doing layered deposition of molten metal, I can only imagine the weird stresses you are going to get building up in the finished part.
My bad, corrected the video. Still working on the first coffee of the day.

You'll just need to build a heated enclosure that keeps 1000c steadily to make sure parts don't cool down too fast.
 
The second issue would be how good are you at CAD, people get it in their heads that they can just print whatever doodad they need for around the house but in reality you have to design the fucker, print it, realise your design is gash, refine and reprint etc.
I want all the folks interested in 3D printing to read this and grasp it. 3D printers are not a toy. They're an engineering device, and to do it right, your workflow will look like engineering: repeated failure prototypes, first working version, and several iterations down the road, a version that actually works properly.

I had to print a D-shaft knob for a washing machine we bought. Fortunately, there was a nice OpenSCAD knob I could use. After three prints at about an hour or so each, I finally got a knob that works. I didn't get a knob that I liked for another couple hours of CAD work and another dozen prints.

It's a lot of work and only for certain personality types. I'm having fun though.
 
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I want all the folks interested in 3D printing to read this and grasp it. 3D printers are not a toy. They're an engineering device, and to do it right, your workflow will look like engineering: repeated failure prototypes, first working version, and several iterations down the road, a version that actually works properly.

I had to print a D-shaft knob for a washing machine we bought. Fortunately, there was a nice OpenSCAD knob I could use. After three prints at about an hour or so each, I finally got a knob that works. I didn't get a knob that I liked for another couple hours of CAD work and another dozen prints.

It's a lot of work and only for certain personality types. I'm having fun though.
A decent digital caliper has reduced failure of my prototypes due to scaling/design errors down to about 5-10% of all failures, I should never have started without one.

Of course, just learning what kind of stupidity your slicing software is capable of will save you just as much plastic, but I'm sure you've figured that one out too.
 
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I want all the folks interested in 3D printing to read this and grasp it. 3D printers are not a toy. They're an engineering device, and to do it right, your workflow will look like engineering: repeated failure prototypes, first working version, and several iterations down the road, a version that actually works properly.

I had to print a D-shaft knob for a washing machine we bought. Fortunately, there was a nice OpenSCAD knob I could use. After three prints at about an hour or so each, I finally got a knob that works. I didn't get a knob that I liked for another couple hours of CAD work and another dozen prints.

It's a lot of work and only for certain personality types. I'm having fun though.
If your printing that many times to get a working print. You really need to calibrate your printer. I rarely if ever have issues printing parts with precise dimensions on an Ender 3. Takes a few hours but the results are worth it. Also hope you're using calipers and not just raw dogging it by trial and error.
 
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I want all the folks interested in 3D printing to read this and grasp it. 3D printers are not a toy. They're an engineering device, and to do it right, your workflow will look like engineering: repeated failure prototypes, first working version, and several iterations down the road, a version that actually works properly.
My thoughts exactly, an ender 3 isn't going to turn Joe Public into a design engineer but you wouldn't know it from some of the hype printers get. Unfortunately its much the same as the "OMG guys learn to code! Do you code? I'm a coder, because I went to code bootcamp to learn to code the codes" crowd, you end up with people who can maybe get an Arduino to blink an LED using a library they downloaded but know the square root of fuckall about software engineering and then get frustrated when they try to do anything genuinely novel.

The perfect example is the early days of 3d printed firearms where people were trying to do 1:1 prints of AR lowers in PLA and getting all surprised pikachu when they ripped themselves apart in the first mag, once you started getting people actually designing stuff to suit additive manufacture that's when things started to get interesting. Using 3d printing to produce tooling for ECM rifling of barrels is straight up genius, for example.
 
I've found a couple tricks that help me. One is printing hole sizers for parts I haven't used before. Just measure part, print a bunch of holes in 0.1mm increments to see what works best. Sometimes you want a loose fit, sometimes a tight fit, sometimes an interference fit. Similarly mocking up any anti-rotation keyway or flatted bushings. Used often when I need a new size of heat-set insert that needs to be stress tested. Most of this stuff I do in OpenSCAD so it's as easy as a "for" loop.

Part selection, when you have a choice, also matters. Don't choose the switch with the tiny anti-rotation keyway unless it also comes with a washer with a tang you can model a hole for. If you can get a D bushing then those are easier. Similarly I prefer screw mount parts than panel snap-in parts because they'll have greater tolerances. I had an AC outlet that was only cheaply available in snap-in, so I made a snap-in bracket for it and squeeze mounted it to the front panel.

The last trick I find that helps is printing parts of a model. In OpenSCAD I just intersect the model with a cube for the part I'm testing, if it be mounting holes, a corner with another part, checking to make sure my holes on a vertical surface are still usable, whatever.
 
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A decent digital caliper has reduced failure of my prototypes due to scaling/design errors down to about 5-10% of all failures, I should never have started without one.

Of course, just learning what kind of stupidity your slicing software is capable of will save you just as much plastic, but I'm sure you've figured that one out too.
Problem is that when your model adjusts for tolerance but you also adjust for tolerance (or fail to), it takes a couple more attempts to zero in on WTF is going on.

Some of this is learning curve. I've only melted ~3kg of PLA so far. I still mess up a lot because I'm not practicing this very aggressively. I'm having a lot of success, but I still feel like a total newb so often.

I'm not saying I'm a good 3D printer yet. I'm saying as a software engineer and architect that the disciplines are similar.
 
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I've recently been getting into the 3D printer hobby since I've found a use for it for one of my other hobbies. Made the mistake of getting a Biqu Hurakan since it was so cheap and comes with klipper hardware. What load of shit it is. Ended up getting a Creality Ender 3 ke to replace it and it's really good for my basic needs so far.
 
I've recently been getting into the 3D printer hobby since I've found a use for it for one of my other hobbies. Made the mistake of getting a Biqu Hurakan since it was so cheap and comes with klipper hardware. What load of shit it is. Ended up getting a Creality Ender 3 ke to replace it and it's really good for my basic needs so far.
Also own a KE, and this is after plenty of tinkering with DIY printers and whatnot. It's a really damn solid printer. Only thing I did with mine is add some threaded rods as frame braces since the gantry is a tad flimsy if you really try pushing the speed up.

Also you can throw klipper on the KE. Creality opened the firmware up for it.

The SE and KE completely eviscerate the sub $300 printer market atm.

*Edit* Oh, I will say. Check the screws that secure the linear rods on the Y axis. One of mine wasn't even touching the rod and it was able to wobble a tad...
 
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