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#realJSOP26-Jul-20 23:42

26-Jul-20 23:42

Well, I'm a car guy, so working on something until it's right is kinda my thing. There are a lot of things to consider:

0) Initial construction - for me, that means making sure the gantry is trued up as it goes together.

1) Ensuring you have a level bed - while you are not absolved of manually levelling the bed the first time, there are several auto-leveling systems available that help out later on.

2) Make sure your filament is feeding correctly. The printer I chose has a problem with a cheap plastic extruder, and I've oredered an all-metal extruder to replace it.

3) If your printer uses a bowden tube to feed filament, make sure it's properly connected/seated to the hot end.

4) It appears that you need an enclosure to ensure that the printer's environment is as stable as possible. This is even more important when you try to use ABS, carbon fibre, or other more exotic filament material.

Making sure the hardware is right is key. If you know your hardware is good, all you have to worry about is the slicer configuration.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013

StarNamer@work27-Jul-20 4:25

27-Jul-20 4:25

Been there, done that (apart from building an enclosure Smile | :)

davecasdf27-Jul-20 5:29

davecasdf

27-Jul-20 5:29

( Your mileage WILL vary ) I spent years as a machinist, so parametric CAD is how I think, some will prefer the "push pull prod" methods. There are several free 3-D cad systems out there that will handle single parts OK. Pick to your way of thinking.
Yes, an enclosure seems important, but I still got warp problems ( as the upper layers cooled - shrunk I was making an angle bracket camera mount 1.25" sq. flat base - not what the thing loves ).

Lost all my first tries to separation from the plate. Even after using a glue stick / blue tape I had two pop free ( One at done enough to work ).

PVA glue stick and or good ( paper ) painters tape can help for grip and separation. ( At least with my print surface. )

Oh, I used a piece of thin stiff plastic, ( a feeler gauge would work well ) for leveling, much better feel than a sheet of paper.

Have fun, keep your powder - oops FILAMENT dry.

H.Brydon27-Jul-20 18:00

H.Brydon

27-Jul-20 18:00

If you have a plastic extruder, you have the Ender 3. The Ender 3 Pro has a metal extruder already.

You don't really need an enclosure unless you print ABS and even then it is somewhat optional.

Levelling the bed is the biggest PITA I've had to deal with. I don't know how it keeps getting out of alignment.

I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey

#realJSOP27-Jul-20 22:39

27-Jul-20 22:39

I have a pro, and the extruder is definitely plastic.

I saw that a 3-point levelling plate is available for the ender 3, and that most "top-end" printers use that style of levelling. Seems to me that if it were that good, creality would have used it, because they wouldn't have had to spend money on a 4th adjustment wheel, spring, and screw. I've watched a number of youtube videos about it,but the jury appears to be still out on it.

I saw one guy had made a quick-swap tool holder and one of his tools is a DTI. Pretty clever...

Lorenzo Bertolino26-Jul-20 20:32

Lorenzo Bertolino

26-Jul-20 20:32

I have an Ender 3, hooked up to a raspberry with OctoPrint on it, modeling with Fusion 360 and slicing with Cura, I love it

I didn't order any upgrade except for the glass panel, because I messed up the height on a print and bore a hole in the plastic one Cry | :((

But I printed a lot of upgrades Big Grin | :-D

#realJSOP26-Jul-20 23:54

26-Jul-20 23:54

I'm gonna do the same thing RE raspberry pi. I'm using a Pi4x2 because it's faster, more RAM, and faster networking.

Lorenzo Bertolino27-Jul-20 1:14

Lorenzo Bertolino

27-Jul-20 1:14

I found it's not really needed (I have both a 3B+ and a 4(4GB)), the 3 is more than enough, only thing to be careful about is power draw, the raspberry, the webcam for recording timelapses and the printer board (even when powered on by itself) make it very easy to go over the limit (it always was a warning and it never crashed but it might be a thing to keep an eye on), this considering a 5V3A micro usb power supply.
I don't know if things are better for the pi 4

#realJSOP27-Jul-20 1:47

27-Jul-20 1:47

I also have a Pi3b+, and if I decide to use that, I'm gonna draw power from the printer's psu with a purpose-made power converter from th3d:

Raspberry Pi - 3 Amp Direct Wire Power Adapter - TH3D Studio LLC[^]

StarNamer@work27-Jul-20 4:31

27-Jul-20 4:31

I have Fusion 360 set up so I can use 3D Print under Tools to send straight to CURA and then the OctoPrint plugin in CURA so it can send straight the Pi 3B+ and start printing.

The Pi is powered off the printer's PSU (via buck converter) and also controls relays to switch the 24V supply to printer on and off.

H.Brydon27-Jul-20 18:05

H.Brydon

27-Jul-20 18:05

Be careful with buck converters. I did the same thing you did and discovered that many buck converters (specifically the ones with over current detection) have a small ~0.1 ohm resistor between input negative and output negative terminals to detect the amount of current flowing (which IMHO should be on the positive line). If the Pi is connected to the printer via USB cable (which it will be), you will get strange current flow on the negative rail and some weird things happening.

I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey

Lorenzo Bertolino27-Jul-20 20:28

Lorenzo Bertolino

27-Jul-20 20:28

Thanks for the info!
Do you know if removing the power wires from the usb cable would solve it or would it make it worse by throwing off the data lines?
How could I make it so that it won't do funky things?

StarNamer@work27-Jul-20 21:21

27-Jul-20 21:21

Thanks.

My Pi is actually powered via pins 2 & 6, not the USB. I am aware this bypasses the input fuse so has a slightly increased risk. I'll take a look at the buck converter circuit and see it it has low value resistor. I'm also looking at redesigning the case I printed so I can power the Pi via the USB and access the HDMI!

Member 1033461026-Jul-20 22:09

Member 10334610

26-Jul-20 22:09

I have an old Prusa, it's paid for itself many times over. Check out Tinkercad | From mind to design in minutes[^] for a very easy way to design stuff. You will have teething problems but stick with it and try to fix one problem at a time. Don't use super cheap filament it nearly always causes problems and level your bed before each print. Have fun!

Caslen27-Jul-20 0:35

Caslen

27-Jul-20 0:35

I have the same - as anyone else will tell you levelling is a real faff but extremely important, choice of filament can also be tricky, I've had cheap stuff that age hardens in no time flat making it unuseable, also different colours from the same manufacturer that require different settings to get a good print - strange but true! I'd start with PLA and get some smaller quantities from different manufacturers until you find something that works well. I have a couple of test objects that I print regularly to check everything is ok - a 30mm cube for checking dimensions and visually checking print quality, also a 150mm x 150mm square 1mm thick for checking levels after adjusting, thickness can be measured all around with a vernier and it doesn't take long to print. Printing larger objects always seems to be a problem for me, I'd suggest a test object (150mm topless cube?) with 5mm walls before tackling anything complex. FreeCad and Slice3r have been good to me, both free, reasonably easy to pick up (I've never used CAD before) and fairly flexible.

Dave Lessard27-Jul-20 7:42

Dave Lessard

27-Jul-20 7:42

I run a Creality CR-10S Pro. It's been exceptionally reliable. Rare to have print failures. As others have said, without CAD modeling you might be bored quickly. I also recommend Fusion 360, free version for the personal user and lots of resources to learn it.

I use KISSlicer and Cura for slicing, different types of parts behave differently. KS will take learning but I believe the toolpaths are higher quality than Cura and others. Cura has some great features, especially for generating better supports.

Material is all over the spectrum, spend a little more and you will get a little more. I prefer Paramount 3D filaments, good price and high quality.

Here's a make I did on Thingiverse with the CR-10s Pro.
Makes of 3D Printable Jet Engine by LayerShaper - Thingiverse[^]

Good luck!

H.Brydon27-Jul-20 17:58

H.Brydon

27-Jul-20 17:58

Yeah I have an Ender 3 Pro. Clever observers will note I haven't been doing much of anything else the last several months. I've been spending all my time printing things. Just emptied my second spool of filament.

I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey

StarNamer@work28-Jul-20 4:14

Gauging interest on a .NET project/article

28-Jul-20 4:14

I've an Ender 3. I've had it for about 6 months.

I've emptied 2 spools and am well on the way to emptying the 3rd and 4th. I just counted that I have 13 spools of PLA open and stored with another 6 unopened in boxes.

Well, you've got to have a choice of color when printing! Smile | :)

Red (2), orange, yellow, green (2), cyan, blue (2), purple, pink, white (2), black (2), gray (unopened), gold, silver & transparent.

honey the codewitch26-Jul-20 7:12

26-Jul-20 7:12

I recently created several demonstrations of message queues, and demonstrations of custom async/await scenarios.

Some time ago I created self-hosting service executable, which presented a neat way to control your service, install/uninstall it as a service, or simply run as a normal console application that blocks until it receives a kill signal.

I've been thinking of combining them into a kind of inherently asynchronous service framework where you can create these little self hosting hybrid service/CLI apps and then your code inside them can do things like spawn background workers that report back to your primary thread like they do on winforms so everything is synchronized between threads.

The trouble is, I think most services people are writing these days are internet facing and on the ASP.NET, node.js or similar platform rather than being like daemons.

I'm not even sure if this would be that valuable.

And if it is, do you have any ideas you'd like to see in it?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Real programmers use butterflies

Richard MacCutchan26-Jul-20 7:24

Richard MacCutchan

26-Jul-20 7:24

Any well written article is worth publishing. Even if you think the subject is somewhat specialised it may still contain things that people can use elsewhere. You will only really know if it's worth it by the votes and feedback.

honey the codewitch26-Jul-20 7:31

26-Jul-20 7:31

True. I guess I'm just curious if people write service executables like this anymore. Smile | :)

Real programmers use butterflies

Forogar 27-Jul-20 3:38

Forogar

27-Jul-20 3:38

In my last job I wrote several of them. Many solutions to the projects we were working on were solved using Windows Services.

I developed a template (not a Project Template, just a chunk of code to start from as it didn't work right for me) and started off all my Services from that. It was basically a stub Service with a DLL that did all the real work. This way I could easily run it in debug via a debug stub.

I always wanted to expand the "template" to handle all cases but I never had the time.

My new job never seems to use Services and does everything via web-initiated console programs. This is a culture thing mostly -they could do a lot of this stuff with Services but it seems I am the only person here who has had any experience with them and no-one else wants to touch them with a barge pole. oh well.

- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

honey the codewitch27-Jul-20 4:18

27-Jul-20 4:18

Thanks for your input! Smile | :)

Today I half decided I might take a break from programming for a bit, so I might delay the project but we'll see

Real programmers use butterflies

Forogar 27-Jul-20 5:09

Forogar

27-Jul-20 5:09

When I was about 10 years old, through until about 16, I made models. Airfix aircraft kits and Tamiya tanks. It was fun!

Recently my wife suggested I had another go as it was something entirely different to programming - although it still needed attention to detail and a lot of patience. It is fun! Smile | :)

Why didn't I think of this before? Sometimes a change is what we need to move forward.

Actually, after having a model buying binge on eBay and Amazon, I found I had a lot of fun building a model-making bench in the basement. I refreshed a lot of woodworking skills I used to have and finally made use of nearly every power tool I owned (some hadn't been used for ten years, but I thought I needed them at the time). Wink | ;-)

Ahh... the smell of polyurethane in the morning!

Anyway, it's up and running and is the best thing I have done for simple relaxation for years. My personality does not enjoy drinking for it's own sake, or sunbathing on a beach (a stupid thing to do right now anyway), or any of the more outgoing, traditional things. I have to be doing something - and model-making does the trick. I am also learning new techniques via YouTube videos that just didn't exist when I was young. Cool | :cool:

- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

honey the codewitch27-Jul-20 5:43