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I know there are a few people on here using 3d printers - any recommendations in terms of models? The first use case I have is to create a new surround for a car stereo which is a non-standard size...
Thanks,
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gryphon
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I'll follow this with interest! I've been getting very tempted lately and have been looking at ender 3s, prusa i3s - the prusa having been recommended by a mate who gets very good prints out of his. We have a few ultimakers at work and they are very good printers but are pricey for what you get! Printing in ABS and finishing up with 20min in an acetone vapor bath (just a sealed container with some acetone in the bottom) can give some really good surface finishes too - at the expense of any sharp corners if you leave it in for too long. Worth looking at if you're printing visible pieces like stereo surrounds though so thought I'd mention it. This was a test piece. Ignore the rough surface - that was the surface it was sitting on in the bath. The rounded corners show the potential with a bit of trial and error though.
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cb11acd
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I haven't looked into the latest ones for a while. But I would either go for the prusa i3 (the official one) shop.prusa3d.com/en/ or if you want a budget either the ender 3 or creality CR10(s). I have an ender 3 pro and produce prints just as good as the ultimaker we had at work. What you pay for is ease of use and reliability.
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scimjim
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Also following.
That’s quite a difference in prices (c£200-£900) - and there’s are different size options in there too.
Is the £200 difference between a prusa i3 mk3S kit and a fully assembled printer, really worth it? Is it fairly simple bolt together stuff?
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dom10a
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Creality3D CR-10S looks like the winner if you are looking to print big stuff. Up to 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.5m working area.
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gryphon
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Last Edit: Jun 9, 2020 11:52:56 GMT by gryphon
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cb11acd
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Also following. That’s quite a difference in prices (c£200-£900) - and there’s are different size options in there too. Is the £200 difference between a prusa i3 mk3S kit and a fully assembled printer, really worth it? Is it fairly simple bolt together stuff? They are faily simple to assemble. The enders and the creality printers are kits as well so they will also need assembly.
Prusa is a really nice bit of kit, and if I had the money I would have gone for one of those. There are a few upgrades you can make when you get it for the others. For example a glass print bed, stiffer bed springs etc really improve reliability. Loads of support for all printers mentioned too so you won't be left to figure anything out.
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Thanks for the replies so far - the Ender-5 was the one that I’d been considering: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07KT67PPC/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_9X53EbCRM8YDVThe ability to add an outside case further down the line, etc.. seems to make sense if I end up trying to print ABS. I didn’t realise before staring to look how much of a scene there is for them...upgrades and mods is making me think about Hop-Ups for Tamiya RC cars 🙂
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moglite
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Following this with great interest. Would any of the printers mentioned be able to print decent 1/43 model cars ? I've got a few models I'd like in my collection that can't be bought. I appreciate drawing the design in the first place isn't trivial, but for the printing is this achievable ? That design is available to buy for 15 Euros which seems fair enough compared to the cost of some 1/43 models The only technical thing he seems to say is "All parts should be printed at 0.1 layer height, for smallest parts 0.35 extrusion width is recommended" I had a look at the Prusa for example, and 0.1 layer height seems okay, but they do a 0.25mm nozzzle. Is this close enough ?? Could I print that on a Prusa or the other cheaper printers listed here ?
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1967 Morris Oxford Traveller 1979 Toyota LandCruiser BJ40 1993 Daimler Double Six 2007 Volvo XC70 2.4D
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So while i'm still doing some research i'e been taking a look around other elements of the 3d printing world (can see I'm going to get sucked in).
I was having a go with some different programs for creating object files from scratch. Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com) I played around with last night...and it was vaguely familiar from my days of playing with Unreal Engine :-) Subtracting from objects, etc.. It's free/only needs a browser and certainly seems a good starting point.
The other area of interest was around 3d scanning...and using an Xbox Kinect sensor to create 3d maps of existing objects. It just so happens I have an old Xbox lying around that never gets used :-D
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madmog
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Jun 10, 2020 17:23:07 GMT
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I'd been planning on getting a 3d printer for about a year and had tried to put some time into learning a 3d cad program so I could actually design what I wanted to print before buying a printer. Then with Covid I saw people printing 3d visors and bought an Ender 3d pro and printed out the plastic part of the visor on it. Ie the 3d equivalent of printing a 2d pdf file made by someone else that can't be edited. Filament printers are really the wrong tool for mass production but by running it almost 24/7 the weak parts failed and were replaced. The bad news is that you are always tweaking parameters trying to stop failures. In fairness, part of that was trying to get the things out as fast as possible. lowest quality, fastest setting that would do the job. The good news is that upgrades are available and cheap. It's frustrating though when production stops because something has failed and you can't figure out what. Or you are waiting for the replacement part. I don't know how the Ender 3 compares with other filament printers but it's cheap at less than £200 and if it sparks something in you you can always donate it to a school and buy something bigger/ better as you're only in for £200. With parts bigger than the printer you can often make smaller parts that lock together. If you are only going to print very occasionally consider paying someone to print the design. Saves all the hair pulling and faffing with parameters. That said, most people on here are tinkerers and will have that mindset. With filaments there's a new kid on the block called PETg. Similar properties to ABS but not stinky. PLA is easiest to print with but might biodegrade over time. Nothing sticks to PETg, not glue, not paint. I've hopefully added below a picture of 3 test cats. Two are PLA and one is PETg. Ruler for scale. In the foreground is a pipe I've knocked up and printed in low resolution because it won't be seen. The cats are hollow with a 3mm 'wall' thickness. But the wall is itself not solid but two skins with mesh inside. I couldn't break these with my bare hands or pull them apart. For stronger you could make your object thicker or solid. Or use a carbon fibre filament. I think I have a half a cat somewhere that would show how it's constructed. For your speaker parts probably just make solid. Between your CAD program and the printer you need another piece of software called a slicer. The Creality one is not much good but Ultimaker Cura is fantastic and free. Easy to use too. It's where you would set all the printing parameters. Too much to go into here but it's easy.
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Jun 10, 2020 20:46:59 GMT
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I have been toying with the idea of getting a 3d printer for some time now, but every time I have money left over from buying car parts, I just can't seem to justify the spend.
I keep looking at the Creality CR10 S5 which is one of the biggest and can print at 500x500x500mm which is unreal.
Realistically I think buying something smaller to begin with is the better option, may aswell start out small and see if I would use it rather than buy the best I can and realise that I have no use for it at all.
Think the next thing that worries me slightly is that there are so many different changes you can make with the slicer and I don't want to screw any parameters up, do they have a revert to factory setting?
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My Garage: 1989 Mercedes Benz 190e 2.5-16 1997 Mazda RX7 FD 1992 Suzuki Samurai SJ413
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madmog
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Jun 10, 2020 21:01:22 GMT
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The printer only has a few settings and is pretty dumb. Most of the settings you adjust are in the slicer. The printer doesn't remember settings from one print to the next.
Eg off the top of my head, on the printer you can adjust the nozzle temperature, the bed temperature and the speed and you might do so mid print to fine-tune based on what you see.
On the slicer you would adjust to say what type of plastic you are using Eg PLA, ABS, PETg, Whether solid parts of the printed object are to be hollow, solid or a supporting mesh. Whether the printed object needs a raft or brim to stop it detaching from the bed or not. Whether the shape of the printed object needs some sacrificial supports. Also, you would tell the slicer what printer you are using.
I've never permanently altered settings in my printer.
In short the slicer makes a gcode file with all these settings embedded for that print. The printer remembers nothing of this after the print.
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madmog
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Jun 10, 2020 21:09:25 GMT
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To get comfortable, download some .STL files from Thingiverse or export as .STL from your CAD program. Download Cura it's free from here: ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-curaPretend you have whatever printer and import the .STL file into Cura and play with the settings. Ie see how much of a difference to printing time a solid thing is compared to something with a 20% mesh. See what the default settings are for different plastics. Cura has a lot of parameters built in for branded filaments. Also see how nozzle size and print quality affect time.
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cb11acd
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Following this with great interest. Would any of the printers mentioned be able to print decent 1/43 model cars ? I've got a few models I'd like in my collection that can't be bought. I appreciate drawing the design in the first place isn't trivial, but for the printing is this achievable ? That design is available to buy for 15 Euros which seems fair enough compared to the cost of some 1/43 models The only technical thing he seems to say is "All parts should be printed at 0.1 layer height, for smallest parts 0.35 extrusion width is recommended" I had a look at the Prusa for example, and 0.1 layer height seems okay, but they do a 0.25mm nozzzle. Is this close enough ?? Could I print that on a Prusa or the other cheaper printers listed here ? Not to that level of detail.
General rule of thumb is if you want detail go for an SLA printer that uses resin which is then cured. If you want strength go for filament printers.
You really can get lost in the world of consumer 3D printers as there are thousands. Stick to the ones with large support groups and don't be tempted by the cheap Amazon ones (unless they have a ig support group).
A 500x500x500 bed seems on the face of it a good thing, but levelling a bed that big can be tricky, and a print that big will take days, any failiure mid-way thorugh means usually starting again. I would go for the cheaper smaller one and you can always stitch smaller prints together (print dovetails and glue.
As for design software I have professional stuff and have for years. OnShape is a good free alternative, Fusion 360 is fantastic and free I think, Blender, Meshmixer are allworth looking into.
Once you have the 3D model you slice it with slicing software, I use Cura which is free and pretty good. There are others, its personal preference.
Then ontop of that I also use Octopi which is a RaspberryPi interface so I can send files and monitor the print remotely with a webcam.
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moglite
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Jun 11, 2020 10:28:08 GMT
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General rule of thumb is if you want detail go for an SLA printer that uses resin which is then cured. If you want strength go for filament printers.
You really can get lost in the world of consumer 3D printers as there are thousands. Stick to the ones with large support groups and don't be tempted by the cheap Amazon ones (unless they have a ig support group).
Thanks cb11acd that confirmed my suspicions about that model and resin printers, which as a huge approximation seem to be cheap, small, messy and stinky, but very accurate. I think that might be a project for another day. I too have now got lost down the rabbit hole that is 3D printing. Painting your models seems to be trickier than you'd hope/impossible depending on the filament used - which is a shame.
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1967 Morris Oxford Traveller 1979 Toyota LandCruiser BJ40 1993 Daimler Double Six 2007 Volvo XC70 2.4D
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madmog
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Jun 11, 2020 12:14:07 GMT
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You could get different colour filaments and print the different parts separately. Some printers can take more than one filament at a time though I don't know about those.
You can get 0.1mm nozzles, for the Ender at least. Nozzles look a bit like pointy carburetor jets.
Has anyone on here scanned something then printed it?
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gryphon
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Jun 11, 2020 12:39:29 GMT
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Has anyone on here scanned something then printed it? I've tried scanning things with both phone apps and an ipad ToF camera attachment - phone camera results are universally dreadful (might bear a passing resemblance to a lumpy version of whatever you're scanning) and the iPad one was pretty poor for detail - accuracy at a guess +-5mm. Afraid I can't remember which iPad scanner it was though ( cb11acd can you remember?)
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cb11acd
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Jun 11, 2020 12:48:03 GMT
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Has anyone on here scanned something then printed it? I've tried scanning things with both phone apps and an ipad ToF camera attachment - phone camera results are universally dreadful (might bear a passing resemblance to a lumpy version of whatever you're scanning) and the iPad one was pretty poor for detail - accuracy at a guess +-5mm. Afraid I can't remember which iPad scanner it was though ( cb11acd can you remember?) There are a few scanners around, but different scanners are suitable for different jobs. If you want to scan a car-sized object then really only professional tech will do the job well. Even if you can scan something you then need to fix the surfaces which is again more software, more money.
Scanning smaller objects is much easier as its less processing power and lots of DIY kits out there. Avoid things that claim to scan using phones or iPads, the one we used worked OK but it was buggy.
Plenty of people have converted Microsoft Kinnect cameras to be 3D scanners with varying levels of success. I think the best application for the DIYer would be for example scanning a door handle that you only have 1 of. its small, solid, no overhanging surfaces etc and can be scanned with a DIY kit. You can then put the scan data in something like meshmixer to fix any holes and make it printable.
The problem with scanning large objects basically comes down to mesh complexity. A large object will require more data points/triangles which in turn requires a more and more powerful computer to process. Then to scan a large object you need to walk around it meaning the handheld device needs to be powerful enough or it needs to be wired to a powerful computer. They are also super buggy to calibrate. Its a bit of an art to scan large things well.
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madmog
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Jun 11, 2020 12:48:30 GMT
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Accurate scanning would be great for things like original but unobtainable buttons, knobs, speaker grilles, but not at +-5mm. I know there's stuff out there that is very accurate but no idea of price of the setup.
The printers discussed above have an accuracy of between 0.4 and 0.1mm so that's would be needed from the scanner. In my mind I see a red laser and mirrors spinning around an object but that might have been an episode of Dr Who.
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