Any 3D printing enthusiasts?

[kat.ingalls]

I've been interested in 3D printing for a long time, but have never really had a chance to experiment. We just got a MakerBot Replicator 2 in the Autodesk Portland office, and I'm excited to get it set up and start using it! Especially with Fusion 360 🙂

I'm sure there's a lot of us that are 3D printing hobbiests. Would love to hear your experiences, any tips you have for a newbie, and definitely looking forward to seeing your 3D-printed creations in the gallery!

[Anonymous]

Adam - thanks for the tips, very helpful. We are up and running. Any advice on things to print which help keep the replicator running smoothly? Seems there are a lot of clips etc on thingiverse.

mike

[Anonymous]

I've only had mine for a couple of months, so I haven't yet needed to replace any components (knock on wood). The main thing is just keeping things lubed up and using blue tape that's had the polish worn off of it. Yesterday I was having trouble getting a part to stick, and realized it was because the tape was too shiny and new. I hit the tape with some sandpaper, and suddenly it worked like a charm.

Keep in touch! Would love to hear what you learn.

[Anonymous]

excellent thanks Adam, we have definitely found the blue tape to be critical.

[kat.ingalls]

Yes... definitely learned that the hard way! Look what happened to the poor demo comb we printed out... You can see the imprint from the base on it. Whoops! :X

[kat.ingalls]

Here she is! You can see how happy I am to meet her. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Very nice!

Going to pick up my CubeX tomorrow! Apparently I will be the first one in the UK 😄

[Anonymous]

I don't think they will let you get away with acetone vapor polishing in the office but you can get some beautiful results by melting the surface layers of ABS prints with acetone vapor!

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@kat.ingalls wrote:

Here she is! You can see how happy I am to meet her. 🙂

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[kat.ingalls]

Congrats! Let us know how it goes!

[kat.ingalls]

Hmmm... Maybe a weekend project? 😉 Thanks for the tip!

[Anonymous]

I've been using Fusion and then 360 with a Makergear M2 for the last several months. It's not a replicator so I'm not sure how similar my experience will be but for me it's been love-hate, vacillating between absolutely amazing and incredibly maddening.

Beautiful designs that wouldn't be a problem with a CNC are often unprintable with fused layer deposition (or if they are printable, the quality is unacceptable). With a bit of practice, you can factor the limitations of the printer into your designs and come up with very nice pieces, though. I foolishly started with relatively complex pieces but I'd recommend baby stepping through simple, conservative designs, gradually pushing the envelope.

I'll second and third the comment about lubrication. After awhile, my printer started making a horrible sound and the belt would slip a few times while printing leaving all subsequent layers shifted by a few mm or even as much as a couple cm (very frustrating when the print takes 12 hours). I'm not sure what the Replicator uses, but for my printer, I replaced the aluminum bushings with «self-lubricated» brass ones (which still require frequent shots of 3-in-1 oil) and that made a huge difference.

Calibration is a big factor as well. I was getting sloppy parts with one of my spools of filimant and it turned out that although it was labeled 1.75mm it's actually 1.8mm. It doesn't sound like much, but that 6% difference in cross section and flow rates really matters.

These might be very printer specific, but I've had a lot of trouble with my z-axis stop and bed leveling. It seems the print head has to be very close (order of ~ 0.1mm) to the substrate to get good adhesion and quality. Just a bit too high or too low and the quality of the parts goes down or (more annoyingly) the parts peal off of the surface mid-print. Obviously if the bed isn't very level, that separation might be perfect in some areas but too great or small in others and so larger parts are very sensitive to that adjustment. Further, vibrations move my z-stop so I have to re-calibrate that with almost every print.

It's clear that a lot of good engineering has gone into the M2 but there are some frustrating issues. I'm curious actually if the Replicator is more stable or if that's a general issue with «cheap» 3D FLD printers at this time. I'm guessing / hoping that at Autodesk, you'll at least have enough people dialing things in on the printer and sharing knowledge that your experience will be more overall positive than mine has been.

There is no doubt though - when it works, it's awesome to hold something in your hands that came out of your imagination.

[Oceanconcepts]

I've stuck with commercial services for the moment as it looks like FDM printers in the affordable price range don't as yet have the resolution we need (and mostly because at the moment I don't need another learning curve to deal with), but in researching the subject I ran across these guys:  http://trinitylabs.com  who are local in Portland, and seem to have a fairly robust looking mechanism, using leadscrews rather than belts.   When I have some bandwidth available I plan on getting one. 

[Anonymous]

I am quite a newbie myself but I am super excited that I found Fusion 360. I have built a Prusa Mendel with two friends (and it took way too long - whish I had bought an UltiMaker) and was looking for a tool chain to start creating models. We are still at the begining and adjusting the printer. On the software side it is even worse. No one of us has _any_ experience with CAD tools but from my first test with Fusion, most things seem quite intuitive. I have also tried FreeCAD and ViaCAD - both tools while inexpensive, lack very much on the usability side.

So far we plan to create models in Fusion 360 and export to .STL. Then check the file with Netfabb Basic (or Meshlab). Then use Slic3r to create G-Code and use Replicator-G to finally start printing. The only thing missing is a nice G-Code visualiser. I found a few browser based ones but nothing that shows me the exact path of the extruder. Right now I am testing Cura (from UltiMaker) and Pleasant 3D.

Oh and here is something else. When you have set-up your Replicator, you could create a "print server" that is accessible via your intranet. This way everyone in the office can queue printing jobs (and watch the progress via video stream):

• http://www.repetier.com/repetier-server-download
• https://plus.google.com/110130855001142142895/about
• https://www.botqueue.com

Stefan

[sickforska]

I'm currently printing with a Solidoodle 2. I've got it printing nicely all the way down to .1mm (100micron) layer height, but I haven't tried anyting higher resolution than that.

To those who say desktop 3D printing can't do what commercial printers can, take a look at this.

From what I know, commerical FDM machines print at about 25 Microns, but some desktop 3D printers are going as low 20 microns.

Obviously there are technologies that haven't been brought to this realm of 3D printing, but I'd say we're on a good way for prototyping.

[Oceanconcepts]

Those are some very impressive prints you linked to.  I think 3D printing is about where personal computers were when they were just coming out of the kit phase (I'm old enough to have been there when they did). I'm very excited to see what directions this technology takes. 

Our needs for resolution are kind of unusual, as we need to make containers for electronics that will withstand considerable pressure without leaking- so we need very smooth surfaces and tight tolerances over a distance to create good O-ring seals between components. So far I have been able to (just barely) prototype these using (commercial) SLA and (in house) CNC processes, taking the resulting parts and making silicone molds that allow the casting of duplicate parts in urethane. I have no doubt that 3D printers of some technology will be able to make this process far more flexible soon- maybe the time is already here.   I'd love to start trying, if only there were more hours in the day.

Ron

[michaelpgeyer]

Adam - thanks for the tips. we've successfully printed several things now and are learning more and more about how to get the ideal results.

Have you seen any issues where particular files have issues or is everything generally pretty much expected to behave the same once you've got the .stl?

Thanks
MIke

[Anonymous]

Funny you should mention, I'm having trouble getting a few STL's to print properly right now. Some guy generated them using the Shapeways 2D->3D converter, and they don't seem to want to print properly. I'm sure there are lots of potential issues if polys overlap in funny ways.

[sickforska]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned Netfabb in here yet, but it should be able to find and repair any holes and non-manifold faces automatically. If it can't, it will highlight them and you can go in and fix things manually.

[rishivadher]

you can also fix stl holes with meshmixer

http://www.meshmixer.com/ is very good

[cekuhnen]

you can also use the free basic version of netfabb, I had much better results with that software than with meshlab!

[Anonymous]

I haven't used a printer myself. I'd love to get one but I just can't justify the cost. However I have had a couple of models printed via Shapeways. One is a thing to wrap my earbuds cord around so it doesn't get tangled and the other is a sculpture of a kneeling woman that i did in 3D-Coat. You can see some pictures of the woman here:

https://plus.google.com/photos/109632571914583407108/albums/5867146177120945329

Here are some more of my models, you can see how the earbud wrap came out on there too.

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/philnolan3d

https://plus.google.com/photos/109632571914583407108/albums/5867146177120945329