My Adventures in 3D Printing

[TazMan2000]

I havent personally printed one, but I have started moving away from thingiverse and other free sites and have never been happier with my prints. The files I get just paying a few bucks to designers on etsy or other sites saves so much hassle because the files are actually accurate and well designed/thought out.

Like the old adage "You get what you paid for".

I find the stuff that you pay for is a lot more accurate, but some models still do have accuracy issues. I'm not talking about 'idealized' parts that have improvements added in, but not accurate to filming props, such as E-11s, for example, instead of having "Sterling" on the magazine well, with E-11 or some king of Imperial logo. But, like you I am more satisfied with something I purchased, when I know research went into it.

TazMan2000

 

[Noeland]

Here is a decent model from an artist I've purchased from before.

Blaster pistol ELG-3A from the movie Star Wars | 3D Print Model

Model available for download in OBJ format. Visit CGTrader and browse more than 1 million 3D models, including 3D print and real-time assets

www.cgtrader.com

 

[TazMan2000]

Here's another one that can fire around corners that wasn't in the movie.

TazMan2000

 

[masterjedi322]

With the season premiere of Mando, one of my favorite Patreons, Mystery Makers (mysterymakers | Creating Premium 3D models for 3d printing | Patreon) has been cranking out some fantastic Mandalorian pieces!

First up, is this foundling helmet, printed on the AnyCubic Vyper in eSun PLA+. This one is for the kiddies...

Sean

 

[masterjedi322]

Been trying to organize stuff in my shop, so I picked up this IKEA Kallax shelving unit with optional drawers and cabinet doors.

I was able to get my 2 resin printers and the wash and cure station on it along with storing all of my materials.

I moved my 2 FDM printers to a separate table in a different area of my shop. I have an Octoprint unit that I’m going to set up to control/monitor both of them, so wanted them in close proximity.

Sean

 

[Arky]

I spent the last few days upgrading my Ender- I replaced the carriage with a three point leveling system, new build plate, replaced the stock Ender 3 V1 mainboard with the 4.2.7 version, replaced the bowden extruder with direct drive and installed a BL Touch.

She's done though, and printing better than ever!

Still using that old beat up piece of buildtak the printer came with though... still works great!

 

[masterjedi322]

First test print on the Phrozen Mega 8K after replacing the LCD screen was a success!

These are parts of Boba Fett’s pistol from BoBF, printed in Phrozen’s Protowhite Rigid resin.

Sean

 

[JiminSTLouis]

I spent the last few days upgrading my Ender- I replaced the carriage with a three point leveling system, new build plate, replaced the stock Ender 3 V1 mainboard with the 4.2.7 version, replaced the bowden extruder with direct drive and installed a BL Touch.

She's done though, and printing better than ever!

Still using that old beat up piece of buildtak the printer came with though... still works great!

That looks great! Now do an Ender Xtender conversion on it.

 

[Iskelderon]

That looks great! Now do an Ender Xtender conversion on it. View attachment 1687584
View attachment 1687587

Awesome!
One of my long-term goals for my Ender, though I'd first want to upgrade mine to Klipper so the print times wouldn't explode exponentially.

 

[Arky]

That looks great! Now do an Ender Xtender conversion on it.

Holy smokes! I didn't know that was a thing!

 

[Iskelderon]

Holy smokes! I didn't know that was a thing!

Yes, you can pick between 300 and 400mm upgrade kits, just don't forget that you need to buy the glass/mirror/whatever plate separately with many of these offers.

 

[JiminSTLouis]

Holy smokes! I didn't know that was a thing!

Yup… I had to do it for my 4 foot Jupiter 2. It was a fraction of the cost of a new large printer.

Ender XtendeR

There’s also a support group on FB that’s run by the owner of the company.

Ender XtendeR FB Group

 

[masterjedi322]

Had an interesting issue this weekend. Went to print a bunch of Boba Fett rifle parts on the Phrozen Sonic Mega 8K…

Was supposed to print this…

Instead I got this…

Never really had this problem before... I rebooted the printer and went back to my computer and re-sliced the file. Reprinting now. Wish me luck!

Sean

 

[Godspeed]

Thats an odd one! It looks like the very first layer got stuck on the LCD somehow and thats all that printed for every layer. If you get another wrong print, my guess is your storage device is failing

 

[masterjedi322]

Yeah, it was weird… Good news is rebooting the printer and/or reslicing the file seemed to have fix the issue.

But now I’ve got a different problem. Both my resin printers are producing these…poor quality prints. Lacking details. Supported edges are totally warped. At first, I thought it was just my Mega, but I ran a few tests on my Mono X, and it’s doing the same thing. I can’t even get an exposure test to print with any detail…

I’ve tried the last 4 iterations of Lychee slicer thinking maybe it was a software issue. Will try a different resin next…

While I generally enjoy 3D printing, issues like these drive me nuts…

Sean

 

[masterjedi322]

So after a week of troubleshooting, it looks like I have my first bottle of bad resin…

Once I got crappy prints off of both printers, that helped narrow things down…

I threw some other Phrozen resin on the Mega 8K, and the exposure test worked like a champ, (although perhaps a tad over-exposed…).

Working now with Phrozen and Amazon and what to do next. I have 3 bottles of $70 resin that have been cross-contaminated with one another, so I’m suspect of any of them. I also don’t want to eat the cost of faulty resin.

More to come…

Sean

 

[masterjedi322]

As it turns out, it wasn’t bad resin, but a bad parameter I had set for the resin in the slicer software, Lychee…

Not sure how the parameter got set, but, luckily, a member on the Phrozen FB group caught the error.

Below is a before/after photo.

All better now! Back to printing!

Sean

 

[mrwax]

Whoa, huge difference, and much better than bad resin.

 

[masterjedi322]

Grrr, more of this crap…

Fairly certain this is an issue with Lychee slicer, which is pretty disappointing given how great Lychee has been up until recently…

Anyway, went back and resliced the file and trying again…

Sean

 

[KaanE]

Why don't you use Cura? I have had not a single problem for one year so far.