[Closed] Cheap 3d printer kits - Experiences?

Have a look on Thingiverse, there are loads of Pi cases & camera mounts. Obviously depends on your particular printer!

I had a fancy segmented, articulated arm to hold the camera at first (still visible on the pic attached to the left Z motor!) but actually in practice it wasn't great, the Pi cam has no autofocus so you need it a fixed distance really. Now using a much simpler mount which attaches to the front left corner of the bed, way better for monitoring/timelapses etc.

I did have my Pi case attached to the frame but I've taken it off at the moment as I added a relay module to control the lights I've stuck onto the inside of the frame so need to come up with an integrated mounting solution for that as well. I think I will end up printing a new extended front control panel, with space for a touchscreen for the Pi as well as the Pi itself & the relay module. This will neaten up the cable routing for the camera as well now I've got that mounted at the front.

https://imgur.com/a/3kvpLwD

How have you mounted the pi cam to pi and pi to the printer?

Ummm.. Not very well! I designed a mount for my Printer/PiCam. The problem is the PiCam focal distance seems to be 50cm and I need it to be 20-25cm. I tend to get blurry photos, also the FOV isn't great, so unless I'm printing dead centre, you only see a little bit of the print.

The problem is the PiCam focal distance seems to be 50cm and I need it to be 20-25cm.

Thanks. Not too bothered about messing with raspberries and pies at the moment 😉 Just not sure which cheap ip cam to get. As always there's good and bad comments about them all on amazon.
At the moment i use a webcam connected to my pc using yawcam but id rather not have to have my pc running. I'll just take a pot shot on one probably.

I've been trying to source the cc3d filament but not much joy in the UK. The polyalchemy stuff looks pretty nice but pricey! The Polyalchemy merlot looks very nice and the silver and the purple rain. Got any pics of something you printed with it?

IP Cam wise, I have a couple of yi cam 1080p dome cams - they're very good (don't use them with the printer tho).

I tried to get octopi working last night - got it all installed on the pi ok, but it's not detecting the printer (CR10 Mini) when i plug it in - any ideas?

The Polyalchemy merlot looks very nice and the silver and the purple rain. Got any pics of something you printed with it?

I tried to get octopi working last night – got it all installed on the pi ok, but it’s not detecting the printer (CR10 Mini) when i plug it in – any ideas?

Yeah i wonder if it's the cable - i've ordered a couple of ones off fleabay.

Printing he fang mod today.

@ stumpy01
Used your thingiverse calibration test to tweak my Ender 3
Nice and simple. (posted a make as SpuggyDee)

@ stumpy01
Used your thingiverse calibration test to tweak my Ender 3
Nice and simple. (posted a make as SpuggyDee)

Ha! Nice One. I got a notification earlier and wondered if it was someone from here!

[img] [/img]

Managed to model the snowdown horseshoe in Blender, then extrude in Fusion, and then slice in Cura. The bit in Fusion was a total pain in the cock, as my 9 year old computer was starting to creak!

Will make a little oak plinth for it I think.

Thanks zilog6128. Is that Polyalchemy Elixir Gold Rush? Looks good.

@Ewan

I had Astroprint running and connected for a while with the cable that you've got. It took me a little while to get it to connect to the printer and it was all to do with the baud rate. As soon as I typed in the correct value everything connected within a few seconds. I can't remember what the rate actually was but might be worth checking that you have the correct rate set in Octoprint

Managed to model the snowdown horseshoe in Blender, then extrude in Fusion, and then slice in Cura.

I probably should have saved a link; perhaps I have somewhere....but I found a website that lets you create 3-D geometry of any location in the world. You can add a vertical scaling factor etc. & export it - probably as an stl. I meant to do a few places, but have never got round to it.
I'll have to try & dig out the link.

Your print of Snowdon looks good; what layer height were you printing at?

To late to edit my post - but found it!

http://jthatch.com/Terrain2STL/

Oh, and this one lets you change the aspect ratio of the bounding box that might be useful.

http://touchterrain.geol.iastate.edu/

If you want to cut out a whole country, there is some info here:

https://www.prusaprinters.org/how-to-print-maps-terrains-and-landscapes-on-a-3d-printer/

and a website that appears to let you download svg files of countries, that are mentioned in the link above, for cutting out an entire country:

https://mapsvg.com/maps/

If you scroll back some pages, you can find my map work and some instructions.
It's based on LIDAR data from the government. Each file is a square km. I found the number of triangles too much to edit in fusion though, so I printed them as 1sqkm tiles and turned it into a puzzle:
[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/791/39464865950_15470e403b_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/791/39464865950_15470e403b_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/238nKHh ]Relief-map-14[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/thingswelike/ ]Alex Simon[/url], on Flickr

Is that Polyalchemy Elixir Gold Rush?

Quick Q for the 3DP Boffins of the forum, if I may? Not world ending, but I'd like to find a fix.

My printer (or more likely Cura) settings have been a bit off since day 1. Prints are not centred on the print bed on the Y Axis - I have to drag the model towards the very front of the bed in Cura in order to get the resulting print somewhere close to the middle of the bed. I'd guess it was somewhere in the region of 60mm off.

I have checked the bed dimensions in Cura (correct) and the nozzle touches 'home' perfectly in the bottom left corner of the bed.

Any ideas? Printer is a Tevo Tarantula in case that makes any difference, and works very well in every other regard.

AlexSimon

Subscriber
If you scroll back some pages, you can find my map work and some instructions.
It’s based on LIDAR data from the government.

For reference, it's page 10 - I just had a look.

I can't get some of the links to work.

The environment survey data page, just returns a blank page - I wonder if that is the work firewall stripping out some plug-in or functionality? I tried in Chrome & IE, but got nothing.
I did strip back the link & then searched for LIDAR, which have me this link (if it works!):

https://environment.data.gov.uk/searchresults;query=lidar;page=1;pagesize=20;orderby=Relevancy

but I wasn't sure where to go from there.

The accutrans link works fine: http://www.micromouse.ca/

The WikiTech instructions page didn't work, so again I stripped back the link until I got to the root & then found this page, which I think is the one required:

https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/3D_printing_of_digital_elevation_models#Dealing_with_ArcInfo_ASCII_grid_.28.2A.asc.29_files

I love the youtube video for how to print onto wood! Great idea!

I had Astroprint running and connected for a while with the cable that you’ve got. It took me a little while to get it to connect to the printer and it was all to do with the baud rate. As soon as I typed in the correct value everything connected within a few seconds. I can’t remember what the rate actually was but might be worth checking that you have the correct rate set in Octoprint

Turned out it was the cable. I think it's a power only one. New cable and it will works fine with the Pi.

Your print of Snowdon looks good; what layer height were you printing at?

Re: the LIDAR data, I looked at that (along with the OS Terrian 50 data set), but it doesn't seem like Snowdon has been LIDARed - that surprised me, but seems to be the case (feel free to let me know if someone finds something different!).

I got my terrain data from https://terrain.party/ - seems to be astrim data. Will check out the other links.

Next landscape on the list is to make a rectangular one of the Bernia Ridge in Alicante (climbed it and proposed to the mrs a couple of years ago, so will make a good present).

siwhite Subscriber

Quick Q for the 3DP Boffins of the forum, if I may? Not world ending, but I’d like to find a fix.

My printer (or more likely Cura) settings have been a bit off since day 1. Prints are not centred on the print bed on the Y Axis – I have to drag the model towards the very front of the bed in Cura in order to get the resulting print somewhere close to the middle of the bed. I’d guess it was somewhere in the region of 60mm off.

I have checked the bed dimensions in Cura (correct) and the nozzle touches ‘home’ perfectly in the bottom left corner of the bed.

Any ideas? Printer is a Tevo Tarantula in case that makes any difference, and works very well in every other regard

I can't be sure, but I reckon you have 'origin at center' ticked....

In Cura, go to Preferences>Configure Cura>Printers & then hit the 'machine settings' box to the right of the white pane.
If 'Origin at Center' is ticked, untick it.

If that's not ticked, then I dunno..... 🙂

Those relief maps are genius- also the only 3d printed thing ever where layer ridges just look totally fine, because they just end up looking like contours. Nice!

Discovered in today's big print that if I run my machine up to maximum height, it collides with the roof-hanging filament thing I made and jams, ah well, 24 hour print down the drain in the 23rd hour.

Discovered in today’s big print that if I run my machine up to maximum height, it collides with the roof-hanging filament thing I made and jams, ah well, 24 hour print down the drain in the 23rd hour.

That's a shame those relief map links have broken.

Looking at that link you sent, on this page:
https://environment.data.gov.uk/dataset/e9edb9f6-d563-4a5e-a425-c72c5eac919c
Click on the download button next to where it says Survey Download.
Then there's a new interface which looks a bit more sophisticated than before:
https://environment.data.gov.uk/DefraDataDownload/?Mode=survey

I've done another one since for someone who commissioned me off here (actually it was my son that was commissioned in the end as I was too expensive lol).

It hasn't been given as a gift yet, so I'm waiting to publish the photos.

If you get stuck, let me know by PM.

Just looked for Snowdon and I can't see any LIDAR data either.
Also looked for Betwys and nothing. It does say only 70% of the British Isles is covered. A bit weird that they don't have data for areas frequently flown past by jets though!

Yeah - guessing they only do bits of interest to flood defences. The mapping seems to be strips, so the summit of snowdon is probbaly of marginal interest to flood defences (tho i'm surprised they don't want to know about the entire watershed).

AlexSimon - cheers for the update.

Did you pay for that Accutrans program?

It looks like something I need to have a proper play around with at home in the evening, rather than at work ;o)

No, the bits you need are free. There's only about 3 operations you need to do.
This gives you sea level as the bottom of your tile:

• Open the asc file.
• As it's opening copy the 'min' height number, then ok.
• Choose Dem > Convert to 3D (less water), then ok.
• Choose Tools_1 > Extrude Pseudo 2D surface then paste your number into the 'Thickness' box and then check 'Flat Bottom' and hit 'Extrude' before you hit 'ok' (but remember to do both).
• Save as .stl.

Quick question for the PETG fans- if you're in an enclosure, what's a good air temp? Finding it randomly hard to find any info online. I've produced some nice functional parts but they're not as pretty as I'd like so I'm just working through all the settings.

zilog6128

You are not the first to make that mistake! Pretty common occurrence on the FB groups, not something you’d really think about until it happens

It's worked out well in the end, finally relocated the filament spool so that it generally is a bit less in the way, and also did some minor setup changes, added a new filament guide and eked out a bit more print area size (officially it's 150x150x200 but I've got it up to 165x155x220 now basically by doing away with the safety margins, just losing a wee bit for the glass bed clips now)

PS, thing what I am printing- a bit of wargame terrain for a friend of mine. Chose this queasy pink carefully, it's worked out great

[img] [/img]

We've struggled getting PETG to print well at work on our Ultimaker and that's using Ultimaker filament and settings.

But I think AlexSimon had good results with the bits for his CNC router, so he might be able to offer some suggestions.

That terrain thing looks interesting! Seems to have printed well.

What fang are you using on that printer?
I'm currently printing a Bullseye fang from the bloke who designed the Petsfang.
It'll be my first proper mod to the printer, really. Everyone seems to be running some kind of fang, so I thought I'd get in on the act, although I didn't wanna go to the trouble of soldering on a new fan. Apparently this Bullseye fang makes best use of the relatively small amount of puff from the stock cooling fan.

Looks good Northwind!

My PETG settings were fairly stringy, and it was prone to warping without Elmer's, but not bad otherwise. I don't have an enclosure, but I was trying to print in zero temps, so I put a plastic sheet up in front of the printer (it's on a shelf so a little enclosed).
But I've only ever tried the one PETG filament (Real Filament of Amazon), so I don't know how universal the settings are.

The CNC is amazing though. Loving it. Cut some acrylic today for the first time and it went really well! For the moment I find it much more exciting than 3D printing as it does stuff with wood, but whereas I completely ignore my 3D printer once I set it going, the CNC needs constant monitoring - easy to start fires apparently

The fang is a random thingiverse- but pretty well developed, I think it's about a 3rd remix and it works on all the recent creality printers. So nice to have a user scene again after the total desert of the Anet A4. It's actually my most succesful PETG print so far, it was stringy as hell and a wee bit boogery but it cleaned up easily. I don't know why but I always print my printer parts in orange.

(the ender has awful stock fans so it was no hardship to upgrade to a couple of decent 40mms- much quieter as well as better flow)

TBH I'm really pretty pleased with the print quality- that's PLA in that pic but my ABS is pretty much the same. The PETG I'm nowhere near, it prints strong and straight but absolutely plastered in defects in any large part. Usable but fugly

But I usually print at .12mm so it does make the prints pretty slow, that's 22 hours in (with thick walls and base but only 20% fill). Those organic looking terrain parts are really picky, there's no straight edges which does help but layer lines just look terrible on it- but the model is ace, I've scaled it from about 50mm to that 220mm beast.

I just saw how much baked on crap there is on the hotend! I am ashamed.

Well, the Bullseye fang printed remarkably easily. I printed with supports on the build plate only with a support overhang angle of 70 degrees.
Annoyingly, the designer recommended setting a support density of 40% (although wasn't any clearer than that) and realistically this was massive overkill - a great deal of the print time was taken building up a pad of support material underneath the main horizontal part of the duct itself.

I think I need to give my printer a bit of TLC as the print quality seems to be suffering a bit lately & I am not convinced I've got my retraction settings quite right.
The intention for this was to print it well enough to get it installed & if it works well do another one much slower and at higher resolution (probably 0.1) to get a better finish; which the improved cooling should help with.

[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4843/46951579362_ca907f36fc_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4843/46951579362_ca907f36fc_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2ewX7M1 ]Bullseye Fang for CR10 Mini[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/me96kka/ ]STW stumpy01[/url], on Flickr

There's something really satisfying about designing, building cncing and 3d printing an assembly and then screwing it all together with stainless hardware. It just makes it look 'proper'.

This is a dust shoe for my CNC - just need to buy a cheap dust pan brush and silicone in all the bristles.

Really pleased with how it's all come out although all my internal edges need a little working - they always seem to come out undersized.

^^nice. Yeah, it's very satisfying when you put a series of parts together into your own assembly.

A colleague of mine has done some tests with pausing a print in the gcode at a certain layer height to insert nuts into hex pockets & then print directly over them to encapsulate them & provide robust fixing points. It worked pretty well.

Regarding the brush strip - could you not get something pre-made, like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Flexible-Brush-Strip-for-CNC-Dust-Shoe-1-Metre-length/323692003138?hash=item4b5d8bff42:g:M10AAOSwb8Vb5L9j:rk:1:pf:0

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brush-Vacuum-Cleaner-Dust-Collector-Engraving-Machine-Dust-Cover-for-CNC-Ro-E5M7/323523514531?epid=6025184781&hash=item4b538110a3:m:m5zbkMyAnYC8463bAicmwHQ:rk:5:pf:0

Those ebay links could well work. I didn't fancy waiting for China post, but one of those in the UK. But then I can get a brush for £2. Hmmmm. I might just go the DIY route. A few youtubers have done it successfully.
My first thought was a draught excluder, but people have said they are too short usually.

@stumpy, this is a trivial one but I reckon you might have a mismatch between stepper... ur, step size, whatever that's called, and layer thickness, just from those occasional thicker layers you have that look like z banding but not quite.

I had the same- I'd set it to .1 layers but the stepper resolves at .04 so every third layer it was mismatched. Changing to .12 gave no loss of quality because it just meant all the layers were .04, but gave it more consistency. Sneaky! (your sizes may vary due to belt tooth sizes and that)

Alright chaps, what do we know about nozzle size? As above, I pretty much always print at .12 with a .4 model (my ABS rafts are fatter, at .8, but they print 1/3d as fast). I've a feeling I should downsize the nozzle, since I'm never running it at capacity anyway and it's probably losing some detail, basically I'm painting with a big brush. Any thoughts? I know some materials get bad tempered with really small nozzles but I'm thinking maybe just a .3 for a slight change.

I've never done anything other than 0.2 layers with a 0.4 nozzle.
I considered buying a 0.6 because I was getting clogs with my wood filament, but never got around to it (and was a bit scared of changing a working system).
Would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this too.

I mostly print little parts (on a little printer!) these days so I think that's why I've gone so biased towards thin layers. It's also a really easy way to add quality without all that tiresome "doing it properly"

@northwind - yeah, I'm aware of the 0.04 multiples thing. Thanks for mentioning it though.
This was set to 0.2 so should have been OK.
That was a particularly bad print to be honest, very ugly and I'm not sure why. I suspect that this Hobbyking filament isn't the best quality - and the green colour really shows up any issues.
I think one thing I need to do is get some grease on my Z-screw.

Regarding nozzle sizes - on our Ultimaker 3 at work we have 0.25, 0.4 and 0.8.
The 0.25 gives very fine detail, but Jesus it is slow. If you are printing small figures and stuff, then give it a whirl. You could always set up a suitable profile in Cura with a smaller nozzle and see what difference it makes to print time.

I really like the 0.8 nozzle to be honest. For most of my practical widgety bits, I reckon a 0.8 or perhaps 0.6 would be a good idea. But it's obviously a lot coarser than the 0.4 nozzle! You sacrifice detail, but gain speed!
If I was doing a lot more printing or perhaps selling things, I'd probably have a second printer set-up running a larger nozzle.

Have you looked on Youtube? There are some good videos comparing nozzle sizes and how the quality changes.

Ah, sorry bud, I misread your post and say the "go down to .1" comment as if it were "this is printed at .1"

I think the thing I'm trying to figure out most is the impact of a smaller nozzle other than print quality- it's hard to get a solid answer on whether it'll be genuinely slower, since I'm essentially printing down to that level despite having a normal sized nozzle. I suspect that I might actually be sacrificing quality but not gaining speed (I mostly print at 75m/s but I have my walls set slow, it makes such a difference on this printer)

Well, anyway, I've just started a nice model which should be a good testbed- doing it with the .4 now and I'll swap to .3 and do it again tomorrow

I guess the speed difference comes very much down to 'it depends' based on what you are printing.

If you need a strong part, so want walls that are ~1.5mm thick, you'll need 4 walls to achieve 1,6mm with a 0.4 nozzle and 6 walls to achieve 1.5mm with a 0.25 nozzle.
And if you have a lot of bottom/top layers, they will take significantly longer with 0.25 nozzle as your area covered per second is smaller. A 0.25 is effectively covering 60% less area per second. (0.25x1.6=0.4)

This is where the 0.8 nozzle really comes into its own if you don't need the detail. A 1.5mm wall can be despatched in 2 walls, the top/bottom layers are covered twice as fast and printing at a 0.4mm layer height is trivial.

Very true, if I was printing larger or structural parts that'd definitely become a much bigger issue. It's pretty hard to take general info and adapt it to your own specific case I find.

OK so, if someone really didn't want to learn a proper modelling software, but had some very minor changes they wanted to do to an stl (literally just chopping bits in two for 2-part printing), what would be the simplest and least effort way to do it? I used to have some free software that I used for this stuff but I'm damned if I can remember what it was

I've never done it, but I think meshmixer is the one that everyone uses.
If you search for something like "STL split with meshmixer" on YouTube, there are plenty of vids...