OC3D 3D Printing enthusiasts
- Thread starter Warchild
- Start date
So another observation I have noticed. May differ printer to printer but..
I printed a model four time, model itself is irrelavant but think of it as a simple, long narrow block. Now when I printed with the block so its longest length was orientated width ways on the printer the layers and quality were much more inferior to printing the same object with the longest diameter length ways on my printer.
In other words layering with the same slice (high quality) having the longest length on Y Axis, resulted in a much poorer quality than orientating the object on the X axis.
Any of you noticed this? perhaps its a common known thing? the X axis printed object had almost flawless layers.
The Y axis object seemed to have anomalies/imperfections throughout the layers.
I printed a model four time, model itself is irrelavant but think of it as a simple, long narrow block. Now when I printed with the block so its longest length was orientated width ways on the printer the layers and quality were much more inferior to printing the same object with the longest diameter length ways on my printer.
In other words layering with the same slice (high quality) having the longest length on Y Axis, resulted in a much poorer quality than orientating the object on the X axis.
Any of you noticed this? perhaps its a common known thing? the X axis printed object had almost flawless layers.
The Y axis object seemed to have anomalies/imperfections throughout the layers.
WYP
News Guru
Are your belts tight on both axis? To me, it sounds like you may have a loose Y-axis belt.
Got to work on my printer over the last week or so...
Printer Model - Monoprice Maker Select Plus (Wanhao clone)
Preferred Filaments - Monoprice PLA
Preferred slicer - Ultimaker Cura
Preferred design software - Fusion 360 (I've only modified designs)
Mods - Added Z-Stabilizers, New Y carriage, Glass bed, Spool holder
New additions - BLTouch and holder, ADVi3++ Firmware, LCD Holder
Here's the stock extruder area. The BLTouch will mount to the left of the front fan.
This is the BLTouch Smart v3.1
First thing I needed to do was print a holder for the BLTouch. I found this one and printed it off before the BLTouch was delivered.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2988339
Unfortunately, it would not fit on my printer so I modified it slightly in Fusion 360 so it would fit.
The holder on the left is from thingiverse, the one on the right is my modified bracket.
It's hard to tell from the pic, but I moved the long support rectangle then trimmed the two sides of the actual holder. This was enough for it to fit now.
Now it was time to do the wiring.
Bottom of the printer:
Shot of the board where the BLTouch connects....no pins
After removing the board I was able to solder some pins
5 Wires attach to the BLTouch
Added some hot glue so they don't come lose during printing. I also disconnected the z-min sensor and removed it from the printer. The BLTouch is my new z-min.
The longer wiring that came with the BLTouch was unfortunately too short so I had to extend it.
Then I put everything back together and turned it on. It still seemed to work and the BLTouch did turn on. The stock firmware though cannot do anything with it so I had to swap firmware to ADVI3++. I used Octoprint to update the firmware on the mainboard, but you also have to update the LCD. There is a microsd slot on the back of the LCD.
This meant I had to disassemble the printer again plus take the front off in order to get to the back of the LCD.
Afterwards, it all fired up like it was supposed to and the sensor worked! To save myself some hassle in the future though, I printed a new LCD holder that would allow access to the microsd slot without having to disassemble the printer again.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2369322
LCD
LCD in the holder
Attached bottom view
SD Card slot!
During all of this I also set up a new Octoprint with the RPi3 instead of the RPi1 I was using. Some of the "stepping" I was getting on prints can be attributed to that. Apparently it has a hard time keeping up whereas the RPi3 is much faster and doesn't have this issue.
Now onto printing some more parts for my 3d printer!
Printer Model - Monoprice Maker Select Plus (Wanhao clone)
Preferred Filaments - Monoprice PLA
Preferred slicer - Ultimaker Cura
Preferred design software - Fusion 360 (I've only modified designs)
Mods - Added Z-Stabilizers, New Y carriage, Glass bed, Spool holder
New additions - BLTouch and holder, ADVi3++ Firmware, LCD Holder
Here's the stock extruder area. The BLTouch will mount to the left of the front fan.
This is the BLTouch Smart v3.1
First thing I needed to do was print a holder for the BLTouch. I found this one and printed it off before the BLTouch was delivered.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2988339
Unfortunately, it would not fit on my printer so I modified it slightly in Fusion 360 so it would fit.
The holder on the left is from thingiverse, the one on the right is my modified bracket.
It's hard to tell from the pic, but I moved the long support rectangle then trimmed the two sides of the actual holder. This was enough for it to fit now.
Now it was time to do the wiring.
Bottom of the printer:
Shot of the board where the BLTouch connects....no pins
After removing the board I was able to solder some pins
5 Wires attach to the BLTouch
Added some hot glue so they don't come lose during printing. I also disconnected the z-min sensor and removed it from the printer. The BLTouch is my new z-min.
The longer wiring that came with the BLTouch was unfortunately too short so I had to extend it.
Then I put everything back together and turned it on. It still seemed to work and the BLTouch did turn on. The stock firmware though cannot do anything with it so I had to swap firmware to ADVI3++. I used Octoprint to update the firmware on the mainboard, but you also have to update the LCD. There is a microsd slot on the back of the LCD.
This meant I had to disassemble the printer again plus take the front off in order to get to the back of the LCD.
Afterwards, it all fired up like it was supposed to and the sensor worked! To save myself some hassle in the future though, I printed a new LCD holder that would allow access to the microsd slot without having to disassemble the printer again.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2369322
LCD
LCD in the holder
Attached bottom view
SD Card slot!
During all of this I also set up a new Octoprint with the RPi3 instead of the RPi1 I was using. Some of the "stepping" I was getting on prints can be attributed to that. Apparently it has a hard time keeping up whereas the RPi3 is much faster and doesn't have this issue.
Now onto printing some more parts for my 3d printer!
1. Go to Insert -> Insert Mesh -> Choose your stl file -> OK.
2. Hit OK on insert mesh dialog
3. On the left, right click Document Settings and choose "Do not capture Design History"
4. Expand Bodies on the left. Right click MeshBody1 and choose Mesh to BRep then hit OK on the box that pops up.
From there you should be able to do some edits.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
Damn that sounds like a ton of steps just to edit something. Seems like a bad UX/UI experience.
Yeah, not the most user-friendly, definitely room for improvement. Can't complain about the price though for personal use.
Yeah its far from friendly. Even the middle mouse button isnt mapped to rotate anything.
Avet
Active member
Out of the free CAD software Fusion 360 is one of the best in my opinion (always open for new suggestions). I have tried quite a few free tools and they are far from intuitive. It can't be compared to Inventor, Solidworks, or Catia but however expensive you get what you pay for with those.
The learning curve can be quite steep for Fusion 360 but for everything enthusiasts would do like designing a distro plate, case mods Fusion delivers.
Have you tried using Blender for designs (3D printing with Blender)? I have barely scratched the surface with Blender but I think it is one of the must-know applications, like Photoshop for example. An extremely powerful tool.
Wraith
Bettyswollocks
Blender is a dream to use, takes a bit of getting used to but once you've mastered the basics of modeling it's so quick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBqYTgaFDxU
I also recommend BlenderGuru for tutorials, this one is great as it's for the new UI.
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So I got lazy and didn't level my bed. I could see when it was printing the brim that there were some gaps in between the lines. Anyway, 65% in this happened.
I guess the lesson is always take your time. I leveled the bed and started again. This time the first layer was squishing fine, no gaps. One problem though, I was really low on black filament and had no more spools of it. I thought for sure I would run out before the print finished, but to my surprise I had some to spare!
That's the finished print with what was left on the spool.
I guess the lesson is always take your time. I leveled the bed and started again. This time the first layer was squishing fine, no gaps. One problem though, I was really low on black filament and had no more spools of it. I thought for sure I would run out before the print finished, but to my surprise I had some to spare!
That's the finished print with what was left on the spool.
g0ggles1994
Active member
Not sure whether to post here or in the Sale/Wanted section but I need something 3D printing and would like to ask any of you guys if you could? Naturally, I'll cover the material and postage costs as well as some extra for the trouble.
SPS
Moderator
g0ggles1994
Active member
g0ggles1994
Active member
Right, I've been building a new system recently. It's retro, but not 8-Bit era retro, it's from the Windows 98 - XP era.
I got a bargain Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and GPU bundle using an AMD Athlon 2800+ on Socket A/462, but there was a slight issue; the CPU cooler sounded like a jet engine and decent Socket A coolers are near impossible to find. In the end, I thought to keep the original heatsink and design a new mount to add an 80mm fan on top, I originally trialled it with an old Arctic cooling fan I had lying around which worked, but was also loud. Naturally, if you want quality fans, what do you get? Noctua of course!
Big thank you to WYP for printing this for me since I can't get a 3D Printer ...yet.
Some thoughts on it, I measured the diameter of the mount as 80mm, neglecting that fan measurements are the overall measurements, not the actual fan size so that's a lesson learnt for future. Also, I think I've made it a little too high. I originally did this so there's not a huge amount of compression when the airflow is squeezed into the heatsink but I think I could shorten it without causing any issues.
I got a bargain Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and GPU bundle using an AMD Athlon 2800+ on Socket A/462, but there was a slight issue; the CPU cooler sounded like a jet engine and decent Socket A coolers are near impossible to find. In the end, I thought to keep the original heatsink and design a new mount to add an 80mm fan on top, I originally trialled it with an old Arctic cooling fan I had lying around which worked, but was also loud. Naturally, if you want quality fans, what do you get? Noctua of course!
Big thank you to WYP for printing this for me since I can't get a 3D Printer ...yet.
Some thoughts on it, I measured the diameter of the mount as 80mm, neglecting that fan measurements are the overall measurements, not the actual fan size so that's a lesson learnt for future. Also, I think I've made it a little too high. I originally did this so there's not a huge amount of compression when the airflow is squeezed into the heatsink but I think I could shorten it without causing any issues.
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