All posts in 3D Printing

Prusa Mendel Update #5: It’s alive & printing!

John / February 16, 2012 / 3D Printing, Video / 4 Comments

After a night of fixing various problems, I finally have my Prusa printing objects that actually resemble objects!

It’s no where near calibrated nor perfect but it’s working reliably now that I have the J-Head hotend installed along with Greg’s ‘Guidler’ extruder along with the motor strain relief bracket.

I had to fix a number of alignment issues with my belts, adjust a pulley, reseat and level the print bed to get to this point.

This is a quick printing wire clip which turned out really well considering I haven’t really calibrated anything yet beyond levelling the print bed:

The one on the left is literally the first thing I tried printing (before I fixed a number of issues) and the one on the right is pretty close to what it was supposed to be. It’s a little smooshed as I grabbed it while it was still warm.

Printing in PLA is quite different than the ABS I’m used to…it’s very oozy. I’m going to need to install a fan to cool the print faster.

It’s SOOOO much quieter than my MakerBot!

I’m excited to finally have things up and running. Now I just need to start calibrating the printer.

UPDATE: Received a fresh roll of transparent green PLA and added a temporary light to the extruder. I’d originally tried printing on glass with a cold bed, then a heated bed and then settled on cold blue painters tape.

The first few layers always seem to have issues sticking. Perhaps my Z height needs to be lower (squishier) or it’s a temperature thing. The green PLA seems to be more cotton candy like with stringy micro filaments that get caught under the nozzle and wreak havoc.

The cube on the left was literally the first thing I printed when I installed the new spool of green PLA and turned out nearly perfect. Glassy bottom, not too smooshed 1st layer and the top is nice and smooth. The middle one was a combination of things including a filament feed issue (spool not rolling freely) and the last one was the last thing I printed yesterday on blue painter’s tape. It’s decent but not quite as nice as the 1st cube.

I was tired of printing cubes so I thought I’d try something relatively fast to print, and was a trickier item to print due to the shape of the text. I’ve printed tons of these geeks on my MakerBot so I know how they are supposed to turn out (in ABS at least):

Unfortunately it didn’t finish printing. Just as well too since there were problems with it due to the errant blobs of PLA causing the hotend to skip and the alignment was off on the text layers as it went higher.

It stopped printing because my laptop keeps cutting out (like it’s completely powered off with no warning, kernal panic, just off) randomly while printing (after 7-10 minutes of printing), killing the print. I’m guessing it’s a USB communication error (tried both ports & my USB cable already has ferrite cores on each end of it) or line noise from the wiring. It was much worse when I tried to tidy my wires up by bundling them together but once I undid that, it got better (longer prints) but it still happened with this print. My desktop doesn’t seem to have the same problem though but that’s not nearly as convenient to use as a controller for the printer.

Maybe it’s time to get the SD Ramps board installed so I can print without needing it connected beyond starting the print.

Lastly, I found these RepRap coins which are a nice alternative to the calibration cubes. They print fast, are a little tricky and print well:

UPDATE #2: Last night I finally soldered the pins to the SD Ramps board I had ordered with my electronics originally and the headers to the RAMPS (along with the important D1 diode under the X/Y drivers to allow for computerless operation) in the hopes that this would solve my issues (or make it moot) with my laptop not staying connected:

Julian’s post was very helpful in navigating my exact configuration. This involved disconnecting everything and removing the RAMPS 1.4 board to solder onto it which gave me the opportunity to detangle some of the wires which may have been causing my line noise issues. I also labeled each wire before removing it to make it easier to reconnect.

I had originally planned on wiring the SD Ramps instead of the normal header way but ended up going with the headers as it was easier and a more robust connection that I had originally thought. To my great surprise, upon plugging the SD Ramps into the arduino mega, it worked! I then reconnected the RAMPS and all the wiring and reflashed the arduino with Sprinter with added SD support (by uncommenting one line of the configuration code) and hoped for the best. Booted everything up and again, to my great surprise, Pronterface recognized there was a SD card connected and allowed me to load up some of the gcoded files I already had on it. The hot end heated up and away it went printing. I then disconnected the printer in Pronterface and unplugged the USB cord and the printer kept going. A few minutes later I had my first untethered calibration cube printed…and it was nearly the best one yet! Yay!

I got a little cocky and then reconnected everything again and tried to print the geek keychain. It works flawlessly until about 5 minutes into the print and then some blobby PLA caused it to skip again and I ended up reconnecting to the printer to stop it – unfortunately there is no other way to stop the printer when it’s going by itself other than to kill the power.

Stay tuned as I attempt to solve this problem…my guess is that my extruder calculations in the Sprinter firmware needs to be recalibrated. Brad’s also suggested that I switch to Marlin which I may also do in the coming days.

Reprappers of the world unite

John / February 7, 2012 / 3D Printing, Hacking, Technology / 2 Comments

This past weekend, I hosted the guys from our Fraser Valley RepRap group at my place so that we could actually setup our machines to print and tinker. This is something we’ve wanted to do at our regular meetings but the folks at Boston Pizza, while very accommodating, probably wouldn’t be too keen on us printing stuff on their tables during our meetups.

Brad (aka Sublime) was the first to show up with his Prusa Mendel shown here printing a part on my coffee table:

and he also brought along a nearly complete prototype of his fully printable, mini 3d printer. Look how cute it is! Note the pop can for scale inside.

Check out the super tiny hotend he made (although he is considering using a J-Head after seeing the ones we recently ordered):

Derek also brought along his Citadel Mendel prototype printer:

It was pretty cool to see so many printers in one place (my living room & kitchen counter) and that 2 of them were incredible prototype designs.

With Eugene’s help, I also got my new J-Head hotend setup:

Just need to wire it up to my Prusa and (finally) start printing.

This is definitely shaping up to be the year of 3d printing…it seems every day major media is covering different aspects of how this technology is changing the game.

UPDATE: Brad has just posted about his mini printer with a lot more details and specifications. Sounds like it is getting a lot of (justified) attention in the RepRap community.

UPDATE #2: Brad has named his mini-printer “Tantillus” and it now has a wiki page on the reprap site

Prusa Mendel build update #4

John / January 18, 2012 / 3D Printing / No Comments

In my last update on the building of a Prusa Mendel reprap 3d printer, I finally got everything working in with the printer…if only for a few minutes.

I’ve yet to actually print anything recognizable thanks to a number of challenges along the way.

Once I got the software sorted, I tried printing some calibration cubes. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as the extruder got clogged with PLA almost immediately. It seems I was trying to force the filament into the hotend faster than it should have been. So then I had to disassemble it, clear it out and try again.

After rebuilding the hotend, the X axis belt was loose so in the process of tightening it, I managed to break all the PLA bushings that were supporting the X axis. I had already fixed these recently so was pretty much done with them at this point. Fortunately, I received some LM8UU linear bearings (from Mixshop.ca which are smaller than normal ones for some reason) and printed some replacement parts (in blue – I couldn’t be bothered to swap colors to match the previously printed green ones).

I liked the design of the Prusa 2 parts but wasn’t prepared to cut my smooth rod to make it work so I modified a derivative version of the Prusa 1 idler to fit my LM8UUs (which I posted on Thingiverse in case it would be useful to anyone else). I now have a hybrid X axis since the motor mount is this one (with the awesome integrated endstop trigger) and the idler is a modified Prusa 1 version for LM8UUs.

It all works so I’m happy and I don’t have to worry about snapping off any more bushings. I opted to stick with the old X-carriage as it’s opening is large enough to allow me to remove the extruder and hotend without having to disassemble it (although I may swap in this open x version once I track down the bearings…which leads me to my next issue:

Seems that once again, I was pushing too much filament into the hotend and I may have had a problem during one of my rebuilds with the teflon tape getting compromised which lead to the ‘leakage’ of PLA above the PEEK block in the photo above.

This should be easy to fix and I’ll try it all again very soon. Once again, the folks in the local RepRap group I belong to helped out very quickly by helping to diagnose the issues just from some photos so I hope to be finally printing by this weekend.

One final thing for Reprap users on Mac OSX – Kliment has released a native OSX app version of Pronterface which I found on his Github while troubleshooting getting a new version of it running…this is great as it means I don’t need to run a couple of command line scripts in order to get Pronterface going anymore. Works like a charm!

A Visit to Seattle’s Hackerspace: Metrix Create Space

John / January 13, 2012 / 3D Printing, Hacking, Travel / 2 Comments

During the recent holidays, I spent a few days in Seattle. One of the things I’ve wanted to do there for awhile is visit Metrix Create Space, Seattle’s hackerspace.

Conveniently, they have a regular 3d printer night on Thursdays and that happened to be the night I had free to visit.

Upon arriving, I was greeted by Matt, the owner of Metrix and he gave me a tour. It’s definitely a maker’s dream space with lots of room, tools and even a sushi place upstairs that delivers to nerds in need.

There is an array of cool tools to use including 3d printers, a laser cutter, a giant CNC machine and lots of soldering/laptop workstations.

One of the things I had read about Metrix is that they have been making clonedel parts for 3d printers which are basically molds that you use to create objects out of whatever material you pour into the molds. It was cool to see the setup in person and check out the quality of the parts:

There was also a couple of reprap printers built with the clonedel parts:

They also have a vending machine filled with arduino microcontrollers and other geeky toys, snacks (including MREs!) and electronic kits. I ended up buying a bunch of things for myself from the machine:

Since this was a 3d printer night, Matthew brought down his CupCake:

(aka a FakerBot since it was a copy of Makerbot’s open source design that they made at Metrix) which he had modified to make it quite similar to my beloved Thing-O-Matic in how the Z stage operates.

I brought some of my prints and we compared parts. His modified CupCake was printing incredibly well…just as good as my Thing-O-Matic and much better than the output I had seen from stock CupCakes, thanks to his mods (which he posted on Thingiverse shortly after my visit).

I love how the CupCake has all the electronics and wiring on the OUTSIDE…so much more accessible:

It was a very fun way to spend a Thursday night in Seattle…I highly recommend checking out Metrix if you’re in Seattle as they offer lots of interesting workshops and a really cool atmosphere.

Using Tinkercad to design a 3D printable model

John / January 10, 2012 / 3D Printing, Technology, Video / No Comments

One thing I get asked all the time about my 3D printers is where do I get the models that I print? I follow Thingiverse daily to see what others have created but sometimes you need something very specific. So you have to create it yourself.

One method I’ve used is 2D extrusion which how I made the page keeper gadget for a coworker.

Another method is called solid modelling. There is a relatively new website, called Tinkercad, that gives you the tools to create 3D objects right in your browser, for free. It is built on the WebGL platform so requires a modern browser (and in some cases, modern graphics cards) to run it…I used Chrome as Safari doesn’t currently support WebGL.

Using a number of different shapes you can add or subtract the shapes to build up your design.

You choose the height and the size of the shape using direct numeric entry or a slider.

Choosing the workplane allows you change the level or angle you’re working on.

The measure tool allows you to create a positionable ruler to assist with measurements of your design.

The top left menu item, “Print 3D”, is how you export your model. You can either export it to an *.STL file (which is compatible with other 3d software packages as well as the software I use to print with my 3d printer) or you can send it to a 3d printing service like Shapeways.com if you don’t own a 3d printer. They’ll print it for you, in a number of different material options and ship it to your door.

Here’s their quick start tutorial that should give you a better idea of how it works:

I wanted to design a mount that would allow me to attach my GoPro camera to a remote control quadcopter. I couldn’t find a design on Thingiverse so I toyed with modifying some other GoPro mounts on there for the purpose but nothing looked like it would work any better than simply duct taping the camera down.

I also didn’t want to modify the quadcopter at all so opted to use the same mount point for the battery which already has velcro to hold it in place. I did find a mount online that someone designed and printed with a 3d printer who was selling it but there wasn’t any good detail photos of it so I had to come up with my own version and used my calipers to measure everything.

It took a few iterations before I found a design that worked:

The final version (I had to print two of them):

Here’s the results of this mount attached to the quadcopter with GoPro camera installed:

Turned out pretty good! Now to design one that fits underneath the quadcopter for an unencumbered view.

Another cool thing about Tinkercad is that you are given a permalink to your design that you can share. Then others can make a copy of it and make other things with it. I did this with something I found on Thingiverse, a tool holder for my 3d printer, that was a cleverly designed mount for tools that are commonly used when operating the 3d printer. I thought the same object, minus the tool parts, would be great for mounting my webcam onto the printer. The creator of the tool holder had used Tinkercad to create it so it was easy to duplicate it and then erase the unneeded bits to make this:

So I made a couple versions, a big and small one depending on what you wanted to attach to the platform.

So far, I’ve been really impressed with Tinkercad. I’ve found it the easiest way to get designing something, without all the usual technical stuff. It did take a little getting used to and it was a little tricky to figure out the workplane stuff, but once I spent a little time with it, it got much easier. I also now have two different designs that I have successfully printed and are working great.

There’s also a newer beta version you can try out at labs.tinkercad.com.

Catalyst – the 3D printing revolution

John / December 14, 2011 / 3D Printing, Video / 3 Comments

ABC Australia science show story on DIY Reprap machine in Bath UK. Great introduction to 3D printing.

via The Future is 3D

Prusa Mendel build update #3

John / December 8, 2011 / 3D Printing / 3 Comments

Figured it was time for a build update on my Prusa Mendel 3D printer. I had some friends over this past weekend from our RepRap user group and we ended up spending the whole day tinkering with the printer.

With huge help from Brad and Eugene, we were able to get everything wired up and the motors moving.
It was pretty cool to finally get to this point and have things generally work as they were expected. The only issue I noticed was that the Z axis was inverted so it was simply a matter of flipping the connector around.

It wasn’t without some casualties though…we managed to break off 3 different PLA bushings while testing things.

If I was doing this from scratch tomorrow, I’d definitely skip the PLA bushings and go for LM8UU or brass bushings…the PLA bushings plus the epoxy is just a pain in the butt.

When testing out the Z axis motors, it became apparent right away that that original couplers weren’t going to work. The threaded rods wobbled like crazy and I may have stripped the plastic parts when assembling. Fortunately I had a set of the updated couplers printed which worked really well after a quick trip to Home Depot for some tubing.

At Brad’s suggestion, I swapped out the original belt clamps for the new ones in the 2nd Iteration of the Prusa files as it’s taller, has grooves for the belt teeth to hold it and helps the belt line up better with the motor and bearings on the Y axis.

I had printed some M3 nut thumbwheels for use elsewhere and they came in handy for leveling the build area on the aluminum thick sheet I have.

Brad also soldered the wires to the heated build plate PCB (Mk1) after my failed attempts…seems my new soldering iron tip wasn’t heating up enough but Brad was able to make it work. The PCB works great and gets toasty hot pretty quick.

The RAMPS 1.4 board almost fully wired up…just missing the extruder and thermistor connections:

Note the fancy fan with blue leds – everyone seemed to like it and wanted to get one for themselves. It’s an Antec SpotCool Fan with 3 speeds and is SUPER quiet. It’s mounted to the Prusa frame via this simple mount.

We also had quite the adventure figuring out how to make a usable hot end out of the parts I had from Mixshop. The brass barrel was too short so we cut down the PEEK block and also milled out the heater block with a drill bit and some fancy dremeling by Brad.

Not a lot left to do: mount the endstops, clean up the wiring, finish building the extruder/hotend and check everything is tight and level. Hopefully this weekend I should knock those off the list and possibly even get to the point of extruding some plastic! I can already tell that I’ll have lots of calibration to do…it’s definitely not as solid yet as my MakerBot is so the fine tuning will be critical to getting some decent prints with it.

Also have to say thanks again to Brad & Eugene…they were a huge help and I’m not sure where I’d be without their assistance at this point. One of the things that’s good & bad about RepRaps is that there are an infinite number of ways to build them…having Brad & Eugene share their wisdom was awesome and really sped up the build since I didn’t have to make some key decisions because they’ve already been through the process.

UPDATE: Here’s a couple videos of the motors running. The extruder is just clamped in place (for now) for testing purposes. Yes, it’s a printed clamp :)

I’m currently running the Sprinter firmware on the RAMPS and using PronterFace (running on Mac OSX) to control everything but it also works with Replicator G:

So much quieter than my MakerBot! Although the motor speeds in the videos are pretty low…it can go MUCH faster.

UPDATE #2: Success! Last night the bot extruded it’s first plastic (PLA). The hotend worked perfect right out of the gate (once I had all the wires properly connected), it just needs to be tidied up with some kapton tape. Next step is to calibrate and actually print something:

I was a little disappointed though. I had read that PLA (which is basically cornstarch) smelled like candy when extruded in this manner…sadly it doesn’t…in fact it doesn’t smell like anything although I haven’t had it printing for hours…perhaps it will be more noticable once I start printing objects.

UPDATE #3: Printing! Sort of!

Had an issue with the Z-axis voltage being too low to move the whole extruder (now properly installed), the whole X-axis fell down and the filament was sliding off the hobbed bolt teeth (results of which are in the video above). I’ve printed a filament guide that should help with this so I hope to actually be printing something recognizable tonight.

My original plan was to use Replicator G but I’m quite liking PronterFace with SFACT installed instead of the regular Skeinforge. It’s almost like the Print-O-Matic settings options I have for my MakerBot and aside from my filament issue, the above print is done with no calibration at all! It definitely looks correct when it’s going thru the motions.

AllThings3D.com is alive!

John / November 27, 2011 / 3D Printing / No Comments

I’ve been busily printing Prusa Mendel RepRap parts for people on my MakerBot for awhile now and decided to finally setup a proper online store for them and other printed objects at AllThings3D.com

After playing with a bunch of different storefront options, I’ve decided to just use a simple PayPal order button for now. There is just too many options and settings to sift through before I’d feel comfortable running one of these stores so I thought I’d keep it simple to start.

There is also a capacity issue as I can only print so much with only one printer online (the 2nd, my Prusa, should be online in a week or two) so it’s currently only offering Prusa parts at the moment with up to a one week lead time.

I plan on expanding the printed item offerings (and the storefront) at AllThings3D.com as soon as feasible. I’m also planning on detailing my Prusa build on the blog over there (as well as here still) to help illustrate using the parts I’m printing to build a 3D printer…hopefully a value add over other sellers of the parts, and definitely better than what you get on eBay.

Look what I made

John / October 27, 2011 / 3D Printing / Comments Off

My first truly designed 3d printed object!

Kinda.

I have created other things (mostly font based objects) but this is the first thing I literally sketched out and ended up with a physical object.

It’s taken awhile to finally get up to speed on all the different tools and techniques required to do this (and I’ve still got a lot to learn)…and it technically wasn’t even my idea to start with.

Let’s say I was inspired by another design. Yeah, that’s it.

What is it? I call it the “Page Keeper”. Inspired by something my coworker showed me (a low res photo) and asked if I can print her one.

So I tried. It actually seems to work too!

This lead me to post my first truly, designed from scratch, 3D object to Thingiverse (my face doesn’t count since it was technically scanned and printed unaltered).

It’s easy to see why going from idea to physical object, in a short period of time, in your own home, is so gratifying.

Let’s hope my coworker likes her new Page Keeper.

Prusa Mendel: build update

John / October 20, 2011 / 3D Printing, Technology / 3 Comments

It’s been awhile so I thought I’d post a quick update on my Prusa Mendel build progress.

Technically, I’ve got everything I need to assemble the 3D printer…just a lack of time lately. I’m hoping to fix that this weekend though.

I’ve got all the electronics now and just need to wire them up.

I ended up going with RAMPS 1.4 that I bought preassembled from Ultimachine. They seemed to have the best reputation and easiest shipping options for me. I also got my heated build platform from them as well. I’ve got the RAMPS mounted to an acrylic mounting plate from Lulzbot.com (I bought just the plate, not the kit, by mistake so had to find some compatible hardware to mount it and fortunately, they posted the mounting clamps on Thingiverse so I was able to print them myself) as I liked how it looked. It also has room to hold an LCD or keypad which I’ve also purchased although I haven’t landed on specifically which firmware to use yet that will ultimately dictate these extras usefullness. My plan is to ultimately be able to print from SD cards using the LCD/keypad combo directly but that’s another hurdle I’ll tackle when the main build is finished.

A friend cut some glass and I now have a 20cm x 20cm heated build platform…nearly double the size of my MakerBot’s!

The Y-axis motor has been mounted as has the lower thick sheet, belt and bushings.

I’m still concerned my bushings are too stiff so will be attempting to loosen them up this weekend using the heat gun on the smooth rod trick I’ve heard about.

And lastly, I’ve figured out what I’m going to do about the extruder and hot end. In the photo, it’s just sitting on the rods for the X-axis and not mounted nor fully assembled. I’m going with Greg’s Accessible Wade’s extruder and the standard hotend for the Wade’s that I got from Mixshop.com. I’ve been waffling back and forth over which diameter to use for the extruder given I have so much ABS plastic filament and PLA is generally harder and more expensive to get in Canada. But I’ve decided to go with the 1.75mm PLA filament for now, as I had originally planned. I bought the parts to make two complete extruders (one in each diameter) so I could always swap it out at a later point if I decide to change my mind.

The biggest challenge during this process is the constantly evolving Reprap community. While I’m half way through my build, a number of revisions to parts I’ve already printed have shown up that makes me ponder reprinting the new parts vs going with what I have and swapping out later. Also, as you can see from the various parts listed, I’ve had to literally source parts from all over the place. Places like Mixshop and others are now starting to put together complete kits for sale but I guess the benefit of sourcing things from all over, it gives me more control over the options that I build into the Prusa.

It’s definitely not for the faint of heart and unfortunately it’s a fairly technical process…but it is a hell of a lot of fun to work on.

As a side note, I just sold my first complete set of Prusa printed parts to someone locally so they can start building their own 3D printer:

I’ve already started printing another set. Contact me if you’d like a set to build your own 3D printer.