Has anyone looked at the new Prusa XL? I am salivating over never having to fight with my printers again.

That's impressive. That will significantly expand the market beyond hobbyists and small corporations with dedicated interns to babysit their 3d print farms.

Holy balls, that's a pretty impressive machine!

Given the number of print failures I've seen in Stratasys and other professional printers, I seriously doubt any consumer printer will be fiddle-free. It's a pretty tempting option over the Voron, though. Price is similar, but less assembly and initial setup time would make it significantly cheaper for me. Gonna have to take a hard look at it. First pass, there's going to have to be an enclosure for it for me to buy. Not sure how the frame will do with a heated volume. The geometry looks like it'd warp.

coleasterling said:

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Given the number of print failures I've seen in Stratasys and other professional printers, I seriously doubt any consumer printer will be fiddle-free. It's a pretty tempting option over the Voron, though. Price is similar, but less assembly and initial setup time would make it significantly cheaper for me. Gonna have to take a hard look at it. First pass, there's going to have to be an enclosure for it for me to buy. Not sure how the frame will do with a heated volume. The geometry looks like it'd warp.

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Their announcement post for it mentions that an enclosure add-on is coming in the future. And I'm wary of the frame too... why go with a cantilever arm like that? Hopefully that middle post location can be adjusted, or a second post could be added to box it in.

I love the swappable heads. I will never care about doing 5 color prints but the ability to auto swap in a laser engraver (at some point in the future) is pretty cool.

I don't really care about the multicolor prints, but I like the idea of using 1 head for PVA supports and 1 head for actual printing. Dunk in water when finished, and you're saved the problem of cleaning up rough spots

https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011959100-How-to-dissolve-Ultimaker-PVA

darn.

Anybody here using an enclosure for their printer? I keep getting significant warping on my prints, even with PLA and the bed set to 70* C. The only thing I can think of is that my basement (where I have set things up for the time being) is pretty chilly, like 55* F (13* C), and I'm wondering if the temperature difference between plate and ambient is just too great to print without one.

I'm getting good adhesion to the bed, I had to wait for it to drop 20 before I could get the print to pop off, but I will admit I'm not 100% convinced my first layer is perfect. But given the adhesion I'm getting, I'm thinking temperature induced warping.

This is what i used with my Prusa Mini for probably 100+ hours of printing ABS. It worked great. It's just 1/2" rigid foam insulation board taped together.



I've since moved on to the Ikea Lack printer enclosure for my Mini.



Still need to add lights and some other odd bits here and there, but it's a pretty sweet setup.

boy09 said:

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Prusa Mini

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How do you feel about the mini? In hindsight, would you rather have spent the difference on the mk3?

Hard to say for sure because i've never used an MK3, but i have zero regrets about buying the mini. I wanted something that just worked out of the box that i wouldn't have to tinker with all the time (that's what the Ender 3 is for) and would just spit out prints without having to worry about it. And i didn't really want to spend $800 on an MK3. The mini is exactly that. And the volume of the mini isn't that much smaller than the MK3, 18x18x18 vs 25x21x21.

I did have 1 piece that was lost in shipping, so i had to get that replaced, and my kit came with a faulty bed leveling probe, which took about 4 hours on chat support to get resolved, but once those issues were ironed out, it has run like a dream. All in all, it took about a month from the day i received my kit until i was actually able to print. It was frustrating, but Prusa support was great.

Looks like a lot of my issue may have been my bed not being fully up to temperature before starting. I've had 3 successful prints in a row now with no warping and terrific adhesion to the bed, and I made 2 changes: I have let the printer pre-heat for 1 hr before each print, and then I've turned off part cooling until I've got 20 layers or so down. My reasoning on the preheat is that the sensor is only reporting the temperature of the metal heating element, not the glass, and glass isn't a conductor.

I'm probably still going to invest in an enclosure of some kind (DIY or the Creality one) as I want to do ABS and ASA, but for now I'm just printing stuff left and right and enjoying it. Gonna try reprinting a RPi Zero case tomorrow as I'm trying to get Octoprint setup.

I've printed a few useful things like tool drawers for my Ender 3 Pro and an integrated enclosure for my OctoPi.

But this is my first real print of my own design for a real purpose and not just something to look at. I installed some cabinets in my fishing shack and covered some wall outlets. I didn't want to extend the box so I made a custom wall plate:

It was a test print so I used the cheap translucent green filament I got on Black Friday.

Will need to modify the design b/c I didn't account for the screw heads that hold the outlet to the electrical box.

The Delrin dust from the X-Axis rollers is contaminating my light colored builds. I guess I'm going to switch to linear rails next to eliminate this issue.

Sure you don't have the carriage on too tight? I've never had that problem.

I probably over tightened it when I reinstalled the direct extruder. I don't like that it's just a cam adjustment with no way for any precision tensioning.

Looking online it seems to be a common issue. I'll just blow off the wheels before each print until I install a linear rail.

If any of you all extrude your own filament, let me know. I sell plastic resin to injection molders primarily but more and more to the companies making these reels.

I wouldn't mind sending small amounts of hard to find materials, or materials anyone is curious about, if freight was paid for by the recipient.

I might be able to answer some material questions also. Not a PHD in polymers or anything but have experience.

Was touring a vendors manufacturing facility in Missouri a few weeks ago when I found this beast of a 3d printer.

Big enough for me to stand in at 6'.

What technology prints that large? SLS maybe?

Had an issue with my Z axis hanging for a layer or two. It's a result of buying a cheap dual z axis kit and then sending a stepper motor with miss matched impedance. I had bumped the motor voltage from 0.566v to 0.923 but after this build fail, I bumped it again to 1.07v. Hope it doesn't burn anything up before I can get a new motor installed.


ETA: I also installed a Y axis rail as I slowly start replacing the Delrin rollers. I have a bltouch but leveled the bed manually afterwards to within an inch of it's life so the z motors wouldn't have to work so hard. Here is it partway through the second layer of the reprint. Excuse the messy bed. White PLA skirts and single layer fails are hard to get up.

The bed leveling visulation plugin is awesome to get the mechanical level. On the mark and let bltouch to trim it in

I'll go load that one. Thanks for the tip.

lb3 said:

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What technology prints that large? SLS maybe?

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Oh yea has to be I would think.

watching

Working on my Mando Armor now. Sizing may be a little off but it'll work for a hobby/halloween costume! All prints on an Ender3Pro in PLA. Also still have a lot of printing and finishing to do before it will be ready but a good start.

I've always wondered...do you have a headband or something inside the helmet so it doesn't wobble all over your head? Armor's looking great so far!

In my master chief helmet I have some egg crate foam that just sits in there and it does wobble a little but not too mad. Considering doing some kind of expanding foam in this one once its all said and done to form fit my head better. Still have to research it some!

I would be tempted to model my head and try to make a custom fit helmet. Glad I'm not into costumes because it would suck hours and hours of time.

Kinda like the script I wrote to help with one of the voting threads on Premium.

Any glue recommendations for PLA? I tried a CA from DAP that has normally worked well for other things, but it didn't do so hot with PLA.

You mean to glue PLA parts together? If so, I just buy cheap dollar store super glue. Will sometimes cause the PLA to haze some and I always give it plenty of time to cure. On my helmets, I then coat the inside of the helmet with a pour on epoxy that makes it rock solid.

Yep, that's the purpose. I should have some of that around here, but honestly if that stuff works then what I used really should have. Maybe I did poor surface prep or something...

Anker coming out with a 3D Printer, looks to be FDM but not much information available yet.

Judging by the picture in that link, it's either a tiny build volume or it has an absolute unit of a hot end.