3-D Print General - Feeding Printers Filament

[Just Some Other Guy]

So...how's everyone's printing going along? Took a long break from the Mars because I got tired of piecing larger prints together.

That all changes today. There *should* be a Saturn waiting in an Amazon box when I get home from work.

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

How's the laser sintering 3d printer game these days? I was super interested in it like 6 years ago but all they did back then was fail. When you did manage to get a print off, though, the quality was incredible. Evolving tech or dead pipe dream?

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

How's the laser sintering 3d printer game these days? I was super interested in it like 6 years ago but all they did back then was fail. When you did manage to get a print off, though, the quality was incredible. Evolving tech or dead pipe dream?

Couldn't tell ya, that shit's way out of my league lol. Honestly, it seems the only thing those expensive printers do better is on the software side.

LCD printers have completely taken over the hobby segment of resin printing for good reason: cheap and reliable. If there's anything I've learned with my OG Mars, 99% of failed prints are gonna be your fault for overlooking supports/model placement.

 

[Temporal Refugee]

• Creality claims that you can upgrade firmware by sticking the bin file on the SD-card and boot up, this is not true for my machine and neither can I do the upgrade through Cura. It's probably lacking a bootloader, but I'm not buying the extra hardware to try and flash that shit.

Updating through Cura is for the older 8 bit boards (and maybe some early 32 bit boards) after flashing a bootloader with an Arduino. The SD card method is the de facto method for the E3P. A few questions about your attempts at updating that way:
1. Was your SD card formatted to FAT32?
2. Was the filename unique or just firmware.bin? E3Ps won't flash a firmware with the same filename twice, so if you used a generic enough name it might not work. Marlin compiles with a time/datestamp in the filename for this reason.
3. What happened when you tried to update? Nothing at all? It's pretty hard to tell as the biggest thing that happens is a slower than usual bootup unless you go digging. Other than that, I noticed some slight menu changes and the chinkspeak "Print from TF" now says "Print from media."

Also, trying to level this fucking bed has been a huge migraine, even with a BLTouch. I finally replaced the garbage stock extruder and hotend, plus I picked up another Pi to run Octoprint. When I try mesh levelling I keep getting an M112 or hilariously fucked results.

 

[SmokeyMcRunFast]

How's the laser sintering 3d printer game these days? I was super interested in it like 6 years ago but all they did back then was fail. When you did manage to get a print off, though, the quality was incredible. Evolving tech or dead pipe dream?

Selective laser sintering or selective laser melting is going strong in the commercial and industrial setting. I know both aerospace and medical are investing heavily in them. I’m not sure about the hobbyist scene.

 

[Isam]

Updating through Cura is for the older 8 bit boards (and maybe some early 32 bit boards) after flashing a bootloader with an Arduino. The SD card method is the de facto method for the E3P. A few questions about your attempts at updating that way:
1. Was your SD card formatted to FAT32?
2. Was the filename unique or just firmware.bin? E3Ps won't flash a firmware with the same filename twice, so if you used a generic enough name it might not work. Marlin compiles with a time/datestamp in the filename for this reason.
3. What happened when you tried to update? Nothing at all? It's pretty hard to tell as the biggest thing that happens is a slower than usual bootup unless you go digging. Other than that, I noticed some slight menu changes and the chinkspeak "Print from TF" now says "Print from media."

Also, trying to level this fucking bed has been a huge migraine, even with a BLTouch. I finally replaced the garbage stock extruder and hotend, plus I picked up another Pi to run Octoprint. When I try mesh levelling I keep getting an M112 or hilariously fucked results.

1. Yes.
2. Yes, it was a new timestamped name.
3. Nothing at all. No version number changed, nothing else either.

I've since bought a silent driver board and upgraded that successfully through the same SD-card. This board had a bootloader pre-installed.

 

[Cool Dog]

So how far along are food printers now? last thing I saw were some guys printing food with gelatin pixels, they had 8bit sushi on some tech expo

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Decided to go with an Epax E10. 1st large scale print finally done. Definitely has a steeper learning curve than doing prints on the smaller 5-6" units.



Next up will be gap filling and finer sanding.

 

[Gar For Archer]

How's the laser sintering 3d printer game these days? I was super interested in it like 6 years ago but all they did back then was fail. When you did manage to get a print off, though, the quality was incredible. Evolving tech or dead pipe dream?

Wait what? Selective laser sintering is (and has been) a reliable 3D printing process for way longer than that... it’s just incredibly expensive and messy, and will likely never see home use - at least not in the foreseeable future.

It’s a great 3D printing method that’s unique in its ability to reproduce pretty much any shape with no need for supports, and the resolution is so fine that the prints are effectively anisotropic. This allows for very thin, yet flexible parts to be printed, but the surface texture is rough and grainy. This makes it great for functional and mechanical applications, but less desirable for aesthetic prints (e.g. models) because it’s hard to post-process and smooth out.

 

[Desu Vult]

A really stupid question.

I have a chinesium Prusa knockoff that's software limited to 270 C (IIRC), although physically capable of higher temps w/ its all metal hotend. The supplier fucked up my USBasp order, so it's likely two weeks before I can try to flash it.

Is it possible or practical to trick the printer into higher temps by simply adding an extra resistor into the thermistor circuit? Would it fuck up the PID tuning somehow?

 

[Vecr]

Yes, it would mess it up for sure. Could you try to flash on firmware without that problem?

 

[Desu Vult]

No bootloader on that thing, so guess I'll just have to wait till the programmer gets delivered...

Edit: what I originally meant was, would it mess up the PID tuning process. As in, would it be possible to put in the resistor, then run PID tuning, and have the printer work somewhat stably on its "new normal".

 

[Vecr]

Possibly? Would you have to do manual math to convert the temperatures though?

 

[Desu Vult]

Might give it a try. Have a few days off, the board is out of box already due to a melted connector, and the only filament I have left atm is a 1kg roll of polycarbonate, so... Would probably have to do the same with heat bed too (only goes to 120).

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Just noticed that Epax has rebranded their "hard" resin as "draft" while keeping the same properties. At only $22/kg (even lower in bulk quantities), I decided to grab a couple and see how it is. Waaaaay cheaper than the Siraya Tech Build I currently use @ $38/kg.

Also of note is that both of these stores don't seem to charge tax for me in my state which can be a pretty good savings.

 

[Desu Vult]

A really stupid question.

I have a chinesium Prusa knockoff that's software limited to 270 C (IIRC), although physically capable of higher temps w/ its all metal hotend. The supplier fucked up my USBasp order, so it's likely two weeks before I can try to flash it.

Is it possible or practical to trick the printer into higher temps by simply adding an extra resistor into the thermistor circuit? Would it fuck up the PID tuning somehow?

Update: well sheeeiiitttt, it actually works. 3.0k in series with heatbed thermistor and about 240R for extruder. An old 12V Wanhao i3 printing polycarbonate just fine, and hasn't even burned down the house yet.

Shows 240C for extruder which I guess is probably about 300 actually. 130 at bed according to an IR thermometer registers as 110 on printer.

 

[Toolbox]

Anyone got their hands on those metal forge printers yet? It's been likely two years since I've heard any news about them though I haven't really been looking.

 

[ZMOT]

Anyone got their hands on those metal forge printers yet? It's been likely two years since I've heard any news about them though I haven't really been looking.

sls? sintering metal powder?
still expensive since mostly aimed at industrial customers, so it starts at a few thousand dollars, and the process highly depends on what you wanna do. post-processing/cleaning etc seems to a bitch as well.

 

[SmokeyMcRunFast]

Anyone got their hands on those metal forge printers yet? It's been likely two years since I've heard any news about them though I haven't really been looking.

Dealt with an SLM machine awhile back. Unless you have six figures to drop on a printer I don’t see anyone here having one. Materials tend to run about $200-500 a kg and will probably not get any cheaper.

 

[Toolbox]

Dealt with an SLM machine awhile back. Unless you have six figures to drop on a printer I don’t see anyone here having one. Materials tend to run about $200-500 a kg and will probably not get any cheaper.

sls? sintering metal powder?
still expensive since mostly aimed at industrial customers, so it starts at a few thousand dollars, and the process highly depends on what you wanna do. post-processing/cleaning etc seems to a bitch as well.

Not exactly what I meant, but good info to know. I saw a video a few years back about a printer that actually melted down metals in a forge then layered them in typical FDM format. It was said to cost less than 1000 dollars at the time based on what it was being manufactured from, or in that range. Guessing a lot of the problems with sintering tricked down to this device especially in it's crudeness and it didn't take off.