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My attempt at 3D printing racks (7 Viewers)

3D printing is definitely a hobby in itself. The technology is improving rapidly, but there are still a lot of issues with the budget machines. I keep discovering new ways for things to fail! Just this weekend I had my bowden tube tear off at one end and overnight I had my first print with a layer shift. It can be frustrating sometimes, but it's pretty cool if you don't mind tweaking stuff.
 
The only home one I would recommend for home without a ton of tinkering is the prusa ones. A friend has had one running almost 24/7 for about 2 months now

the mini is an awesome deal if it is big enough for your needs
 
Amish Rabbi said:
The only home one I would recommend for home without a ton of tinkering is the prusa ones. A friend has had one running almost 24/7 for about 2 months now

the mini is an awesome deal if it is big enough for your needs
Click to expand...
Out of curiosity, what's the cost/difference and size/difrerence in a prusa and prusa mini?
 
The PRUSA i3 kit is $750 and the mini kit is $350. The fully assembled and tested i3 is $1k.

The Chinese ones have similar build volumes to the i3 but at prices that range from below $200 and up.
 
I think mini racks are going to be the next big thing! :LOL: :laugh:

IMG_20200122_093500402.jpg


I made this little one to try some print settings, and it's kind of fun.
 
Agreed with the past several posts about buying a printer. As with most things and technology improving - at first it may appear easy to jump in and just do stuff like this yourself, but unless you just enjoy the technical aspect of things like this you are far better off letting someone like @One Eyed Dollar do the leg work for ya. It will be a better product. He seems to have a passion for it and to be enjoying the process. I will definitely be a customer when the time comes :D
 
One Eyed Dollar said:
My latest 3D printer project is to make some racks. One of my goals is to print some custom-sized racks that will hold my 8V china clays that are too tall for normal racks. But to start with, I decided to model a copy of the Paulson rack as closely as I could. It was a good project to learn some new 3D modeling software, and it took me longer than I expected, but I'm happy with the result. I still need to do a few tweaks to the model, but I made a rough prototype print and the results are good. Here are some pictures. Keep in mind that this print is at very low quality to make it faster. Next I'm going to do a nicer print with a smaller layer height, so all the curves will be much smoother.

The chips fit nice and snug!

View attachment 380950View attachment 380951View attachment 380952View attachment 380953View attachment 380954View attachment 380955View attachment 380956View attachment 380957
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Love this.
Do you have one that sits 50 chips x 5...?
 
Kewellguy1979 said:
Love this.
Do you have one that sits 50 chips x 5...?
Click to expand...
I haven't designed one yet, but it would be easy to do. Is this related to your other post about the case with the cracked insert? Feel free to send me a PM with more details and pictures, and I'll see what I can do.
 
Another frustrating failure last night, ugh. My print got about 25% done and stopped extruding. The hot end is dead and won't heat up. Luckily it's still 2 weeks from the end of the warranty, so hopefully it will get fixed for free. I already got a new motherboard last year and the service was very good for that. I can't print for now, but I'm going out of town for the weekend for my son's Scout campout anyway, so the timing isn't bad.

Plus I have a new larger printer arriving next week! :wow:
 
Darson said:
Ooh! Which one did you go for? I'm still saving but the more I read, the more I'm likely to go for a Sidewinder X1.
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I went for the Creality CR-10 V2. The Sidewinder still makes me a bit nervous after reading/watching more reviews, and the Creality has more of a track record.
 
One Eyed Dollar said:
I went for the Creality CR-10 V2. The Sidewinder still makes me a bit nervous after reading/watching more reviews, and the Creality has more of a track record.
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I need to do some more research - the main plus of the Sidewinder is the near silent operation compared to the original CR-10 but I heard the V2 is quieter and also has a dual screw feed. Then I guess the difference comes down to direct drive vs the Bowden tube.

I wonder if you've experimented with this but most prints seem to be using a ~0.2mm layer height - I wonder if it's possible to use a larger nozzle to speed up the print but leave a more coarse finish. For me, the coarse finish is not that big a deal for something like chip racks but busting out dozens is.
 
This guy had some good info on the Sidewinder, and he seemed to have spent more time with it than some of the early reviewers that just unbox it, run a test print, and make a video.


Direct drive seems cool, but isn't all that necessary with PLA. It's more useful for flexible filaments so you're not trying to push a rope through the bowden tube. I'd rather just work with a bowden tube than deal with the handle snapping off my direct drive or it getting jammed with filament and having to tear it down.

I've been experimenting with printer settings and nozzle sizes to try to print faster with decent quality. For some stuff the 0.6mm nozzle with a 0.28mm layer height does just fine. But for printing racks in their normal orientation, the curve of the racks gets really rough. I don't even like 0.2mm layer height for that. I'm pretty happy with 0.15mm layer height with a 0.6mm nozzle for racks, as long as you iron each layer. I've also tried printing racks on their sides, which makes the curves super duper smooth, but then you have to add a bunch of supports and the inside edge of one side ends up rough, which will rub on the face of the chips.
 
I'm testing a .6 nozzle and .4 layer height right now on the stuff I sell. It is cutting the time to less than 50% of what it was with .4 and .2

I wouldn't do it for racks that way though, not with the curve

have you tried doing a version of my design but with a 3D printed face? then it is all vertical so you can increase layer height
 
Amish Rabbi said:
I'm testing a .6 nozzle and .4 layer height right now on the stuff I sell. It is cutting the time to less than 50% of what it was with .4 and .2

I wouldn't do it for racks that way though, not with the curve

have you tried doing a version of my design but with a 3D printed face? then it is all vertical so you can increase layer height
Click to expand...
That would work very well too. I thought about something like that, printing it in a few pieces and designing it to snap together. I might explore that some more, because it would make for super smooth curves. For big prints the 0.6mm nozzle is amazing.
 
since it is printed I would go with socket head screws + counter bore on the print so they are flush. Chips are heavy! I wouldnt trust snap together like that, unless glued
 
Amish Rabbi said:
well my decision was made. another prusa on the way
Click to expand...
Nice!

I'm getting my new printer dialed in. I swapped the extruder for a dual gear, switched to Capricorn tubing, printed a case for my Raspberry Pi, got OctoPi set up, and hooked up my webcam. I'm running a long print now and figuring out the best settings for this new printer. At first I had massive underextrusion until I remembered that I had to change the esteps for the dual gear extruder, doh!
 

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