3D Printers

[Aaron Murakami]

@Tom and others...

I saw John's DaVinci printer/scanner and it works really good.

Did some searching and they definitely have much higher resolution printers such as:

http://us.xyzprinting.com/us_en/Product/Nobel-1.0 and others.

Are those going overboard for printing these kind of parts for the monopoles, etc.?

They use the gel and its an interesting process and that one and similar printers do make some really high quality prints.

I do like the built in scanner option that John's DaVinci has and I might get the same one.

Any comments?

[Tom C]

oh man what a can of worms. davinci printers have rfid in their spools you have to buy their filament. I pay 18 dollars for 1kG of filament, they charge twice that for 600 grams. if you want a locked down printer, proprietary filament and a single not open source slicing engine, its the way to go. its a fantastic printer, but it gets spendy. I have a rostock max and a robo R1 both are highly customizable, and there are many slicing engines that will drive both. 3D printing is still the wild west of technology!!my rostrock max was a pain to get working and there was a very steep learning curve. that is really where its at, either steep learning curve, or locked down proprietary systems.

would I get a delta printer again, nope not for my first printer.... but if I had learned on a Cartesian printer, a rostock max delta ore a Kossel would be in my future for its huge build diameter and height.

there is another aspect to this, a kit or fully assembled, kits are cheaper and you learn the printer inside out.... what kind of board is driving the printer, a mega or a ramps, or a smoothie or an azteeg, what is the software, it could be arduino or marlin, depends upon what you are comfortable with. these are all variables...

there are 5 or 6 free slicing engines out there, cura, skeinforge, slic3R, mattercontrol, repetier host, and Microsoft has one that comes with windows 10. there are paid for programs like simplify 3D also.

tons of free cad programs, I like 123D myself but it has problems, all of them do, the point is to stick to 1 till you master it.

its not a simple answer. John got up and printing quickly with his printer, but he is tied to the filament that Davinci will supply. on the other hand if they supply it, it will work, you don't have to mess with filament settings, speeds or feeds, or any of the variables purchasing your own filament comes with. I have purchased filament that was garbage, a waste of my money. I also have filaments I absolutely love.

there are tons of forums out there for this stuff

forum.seemecnc.com

reprap.org

mattercontrol wiki


Tom C

[Tom C]

this is pretty amazing!
https://store.structure.io/store#skanect

Tom C

[Notsure]

I've had a Solidoodle printer for about 3 years now. It works great. I had to replace a drive belt from wear but that's about it. I use the blue painters tape on my print bed.
Lately, I have been experimenting with coil forms. Treating the EMF as light, using optics principles. It seems to be working, winding coils as lenses so to speak. A wedding cake design, gluing the two pieces together as convex or concave. Using bifilar windings on each. I glue a disk on the smaller end, and wind up to each step in one direction, the same direction for both.

[Aaron Murakami]

PROBLEMS DRAGGING YOUR WORK ACROSS THE TABLE?

Been playing with my DaVinci AiO and it works great.

Printed perfect the first few times but did have problems with the nozzle dragging around a few things after that. At first, thought I didn't have enough glue, but that definitely wasn't it. Found the nozzle was too far from the plate. Not sure how it raised that much after it worked perfectly for a few times.

Did the autocalibrate and the measurements do not reflect the reality of the gap, unfortunately. The gap is larger than what the measurements say. After some research, I found a bulletproof way to level the table to a precise gap every time.

It is explained in the first post: http://www.soliforum.com/topic/8408/...for-beginners/

Basically, you start at the back left corner and keep sliding a piece of printer paper under the nozzle and raise it up until it just grabs the paper. Repeat at the back right corner then repeat at front and center. Do all three again to tweak it since one setting can change the other 2 and you're done. Since then, the printing is perfect every time and it is way quicker than bothering with autocalibrate and way more accurate.

The post from that forum says that the gap should ideally be about 1/2 of your bead thickness so if 0.2mm, then the gap should be 0.1mm. The paper is about 0.15mm thick so is perfect for most applications and works on .1 and .2mm just fine.

In any case, if you're new to this like I am, this manual method of using a piece of paper as a feeler gauge is quick and accurate and is great at relieving stress. lol

[Aaron Murakami]

This is the printer I have and it is truly plug and play - amazing how easy it was to setup and start printing right away.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B00OCG91IK

I bought that one because it is the exact one that John Bedini is using to print most of his recent monopole tests and I watched a lot of things come out of that machine.

I still have to learn how to use the cad program better, but there are thousands of things you can download for free all over the net and print.

Anyway, here is a little article about the 3D Printed Monopoles: http://emediapress.com/2015/08/24/3d...nopole-motors/

[HeavensPavement]

Bed leveling and nozzle height..
Aaron that is almost exactly how I do it.
Im using a Prusa I3 XL( extra large).x205mm y 300 mm z200 mm
slightly different set up using Cura 15.4(dropped Reptier host with slic3er..too buggy)
i home the Z with paper.
once bed is level then i check Z axis often and adjust a hair at a time with z axis end stop adjuster.
It was a fun/challenging experience I went through.
Well worth it

[Tom C]

paper is the easiest way I know. I run a rostock which is a delta printer. I can do a quick check every few days as it does not need calibration only when something goes whacky. the ROBO I have coming is supposed to have bed leveling in it but most auto calobration programs are terrible. mattercontrol has one built into its software... dont like it at all, nothing beats manual calibration for now.

Tom C