3DPrinting

I've been custom designing pegboard inserts for all of my workshop items to clean things up. Figured since I release most of the things I create to various communities, these should be no different ;)

https://nowsci.com/pegboard

As you know, I started designing custom 3D-printed shoes for myself. This is a follow-up.

So, I spent some time modeling a basic, thin-walled shoe. Nothing fancy, just a quick something to test the fit and do my first TPU print - although I'll probably start with test pieces before printing this doozie.

One shoe fits on the bed of our Prusa Mk4 - barely.

It's a 17-hour print. Yikes! I think I'll probably do this over the next week-end, otherwise my colleagues will kill me.

The support is mostly inside the toe box and promises to be a real b*tch to remove:

The shoe is very close-fitting, but I've left 2mm all around inside: if I mess up, or if the TPU shrinks like I think it will, it has a chance to remain wearable. If it doesn't, I'll simply put a sock on.

Stay tuned 🙂

Our Prusa Mk4 only has one extruder and no MMU. But I was playing around with filament change in the middle of a print to have several colors in a single part.

So I drew a small part with 3 characters connected by a common "bridge". Printing the characters face down, I tried inserting a color change at the first layer of the bridge in PrusaSlicer:

This works fine: the printer parks the head in the lower right corner of the bed, ejects the filament and wait for a new filament to be fed. Then it purges for a while and somehow manages to cut the purged filament clean and continue printing. A bit sketchy but it works.

Then I tried a 5-color print with multiple colors in X, Y and Z. Obviously the filament needs to be changed mid-layer for most of the layers. I defined 5 virtual extruders in PrusaSlicer, added a custom tool change G-Code to force a filament change with M600. After a bit of messing around with layer thicknesses, I managed to limit the print to "only" 16 manual filament changes. A bit annoying but it's okay for an experiment:

When I launched that print, it started out well, printing the first layer of the green "5" digit.

Then it hit the first M600 instruction, proceeded to eject the filament, and horrible noises from the extruder ensued:

https://toobnix.org/w/5M5n1ZxxPjHgp9uPWUKu8s

I could NOT free up the filament for the life of me, and the printer wouldn't come out of the menu to resolve the problem. Eventually I had to reset the printer and apply force to finally clear the problem.

Fortunately, no damage occurred and I could reload new filament as if nothing had happened. I thought it had been a bad fluke, so I restarted the print and it did it again.

Before I file a bug, anybody knows if I'm doing something wrong here?

The printer is running the latest firmware as of today - v6.1.3, released in September 2024.

I've started my next project, which is to design and print myself custom shoes. I'm gonna start with something simple: pool shoes.

Pool shoes are typically designed to be close-fitting and put as little material around the foot as possible. So they're ideal to iterate through the design of my shoes to find the perfect fit without wasting too much filament. And I need a new pair anyway...

I ordered a bunch of TPU with different Shore hardness and the rolls have arrived. So now I'm designing the shoes.

I have no experience with TPU, but a colleague at work does: he told me he tried to print a remote-control-like flexible sheet of rubber buttons that was 2mm thick, and the sheet readily delaminated when he pulled on it.

I want my pool shoes to be as thin as possible - apart at the front where I need protection. So bearing in mind what my colleague told me, I opted for a wall thickness of 2.5mm. Do you think this is enough?

As for supports, the printer I use at the moment only has one extruder head (it's not mine) so I'll have to print them out of TPU too. Is there a good strategy to limit the amount of material used and maintain structural integrity on such a large print? I'm thinking of drawing the supports myself inside the shoes to control exactly where they will be and limit wastage.

I wanted to print some tokens for a boardgame which need different colors. I don't need that much colored filament. I came across that set while searching for cheap filament. Is that a good deal or would it be better to just buy full spools, even if I dont know what to use it for?

There's nothing super special about this print in particular compared to what people usually post here, just a simple Santa figurine requested by a makerspace patron. However, it's made from 100% pure PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a natural polyester byproduct of common soil bacteria. Unlike PLA, it is fully home compostable. It can break down in any biome, in a very reasonable timeframe. Also unlike PLA, you can make it by feeding the bacteria stuff like old fast food fryer oil, and other waste products. The print settings are pretty similar to PLA, but it has some significant differences in material properties, like being less brittle.

There aren't a whole lot of people making 100% PHA filaments, but if you can find it, definitely give it a shot! It's our staple filament at the makerspace I work in. Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like an ad or something, I just really like this stuff and want it to catch on.

Oh also! The flexible version looks and feels really neat if you run it through a vibratory tumbler:

Really clever

Well, not really sunglasses, but rather clip-on shades for my 3D-printed glasses

But here's the thing: they're FULLY 3D-printed. The "lenses" are in fact the finest and thinnest mesh I could print with our printer - basically one 0.1mm layer of 0.4mm lines spaced 0.4mm running horizontally, and an identical layer of lines running vertically right on top of it.

Is it perfect? No. The image through it is kind of "pixelated" But it's surprisingly acceptable. It looks like this when looking through them:

In real-life, it's quite a bit darker than this. But the photo shows fairly accurately how it looks like seeing through them.

It works because the mesh is very close to the eyes and totally out of focus. And although it's not optical-grade, the price is unbeatable 🙂

If you want to try printing it yourself, the model is here. It's meant to be printed with a 0.4mm nozzle and a 0.1mm layer height - including the first one.

Double-check how the slicer slices the first two layers, where the mesh lives, because it easily tends to "simplify" the lines by not printing them, which is obviously not what you want.

EDIT: as others have pointed out in this thread, don't use these shades as actual sunglasses without sticking some UV filter over the mesh on the inside. They're not eye-safe as-is. I made them more for the challenge of making them than anything else.

I made a case to protect my darts when taking them somewhere. Here are some more images. The case was made to fit a specific model and it's not very parametric till then end, so I'm afraid it's not super useful for others.

It was made in #FreeCAD 1.0 which was super smooth!

Bear with me for a moment, because I'm not sure how to describe this problem without just describing a part I'm trying to print.

I was designing a part today, and it's basically a box; for various reasons I wanted to print it with all the sides flat on the print bed, but have bridges between the sides and the bottom to act as living hinges so it would be easy to fold into shape after it came off the bed. But when I got it into PrusaSlicer, by default, Prusa slices all bridges in a single uniform direction--which on this print meant that two of the bridges were across the shortest distance, and the other two were parallel to the gap they were supposed to span. Which, y'know, is obviously not a good way to try to bridge the gap.

I was able to manually adjust the bridge direction to fix this, but I'm kinda surprised that the slicer doesn't automatically choose paths for bridging gaps to try to make them as printable as possible. I don't remember having this issue in the past, but I haven't designed with bridges in quite a while--it's possible that I've just never noticed before, or it could be that a previous slicer (I used to use Cura) or previous version of PrusaSlicer did this differently.

Is there a term for this? Are there slicers that do a better job of it? Is there an open feature request about this?

Basically just wondering if anyone has insight into this, or any suggestions for reading on the subject.

Thanks!

It is a well explained and documented build with a nice synchronized 895 based idler shaft type gearbox subassembly.

Be forewarned, this is a visual example, but is not open source. The files and code are posted on cults 3d for $20. This is not an endorsement. The project does not appear to be an On Shape subscription bait scam, but I have no affiliation, have not purchased, and have no way of knowing what is included behind the pay wall.

Personally, the visual example is all I need and could easily reproduce this in FreeCAD. This build is hardware intensive in the M3/M4/bearings sense but still budget standard. They are using 2mm aluminum welding rod for the track pins. The microcontroller is the Arduino Mega2560 with cheap motor driver modules, battery, RC control scheme, servo for the gear shifter, and some RC car dampers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOjda40t6Ng

https://howtomechatronics.com/projects/making-a-beast-of-a-3d-printed-rc-tank-with-dual-speed-gearbox/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEgwnhLHy3g

I've been having some serious issues getting PETG to print well, and I was wondering what settings other are using with success? I'm using a bedslinger in an enclosure and normally i print PLA with 200mm/s.

What are you doing for nozzle/bed temp, cooling fan, printing speeds etc? enclosed/open?

What is your printer capabilities normally for e.g. PLA?

The bowden tube between the extruder and hotend somehow got unscrewed, and the extruder just kept unspooling filament around the room, as the printer kept happily going on.

Here's a photo from farther out:

Something I've noticed when watching my resin printer work is that a lot of time is spent every later lifting the plate well after I hear the model unstick from the FEP.

It's not a huge deal on smaller prints, especially ones that can be printed with "vroom" settings, but on larger models that are being printed at 1-2mm/s lift speed, several hours are spent just waving the model in the air for no reason...

I had the idea of making a test model that is essentially an intentional suction cup in the center of the plate (where FEP stretch is most prominent and required lift distance should be highest). I would print this model multiple times, with slightly lower lift heights each iteration, until it fails to release from the FEP. I'd add a safety margin and set my raise height to that...

Does anyone see any fault in my logic, or know of a better method of achieving what I'm after?

As one of my first ever self designed Prints and 3D Models, I wanna do a big organiser for my Kitchen! This is my current progress on that:

One of my friends gave me a word of caution to use the right filament when it comes to storing things like Sugar, Pepper, Salts and Tea Bags with Printed Plastics. So I wanted to ask if any of you have Good Safe Filament Recommendation for this type of thing? I heard PETG is supposedly safe, is that true? Thanks!

Recently my micro SD card failed and I had to to a full reinstall of klipper.

When I first set it up, I found a guide with pictures and all the software setup specifically for the ADXL345 and Pi Zero 2, but I can't find the guide anymore.

Everything's already wired, but I definitely don't remember how to set everything up.

I'm in the process of replacing all my single-color christmas lights with addressable RGB LEDs, but the 12mm "bullet" form factor of them is different from the traditional incandescent mini lights, the 5mm wide angle LEDs, etc.:

You'd think they'd make C6/7/9 bulb covers that attach to them, but I have yet to find any for sale, anywhere. As such, I want to 3D print some, along with 12mm bullet pixel-sized replacements for my snowflake lights:

What's some good filament I can get that will be reasonably clear and stay that way (without yellowing or getting too brittle) for several years' worth of Christmas seasons, despite UV/rain/cold exposure?

(Bonus question: anybody know a good way to model the facets in those "strawberry" lights? The C7 bulbs on Thingiverse, such as this one, are all smooth, LOL.)

Edit: by the way, to be clear (pun intended): I don't need optical clarity like the lens guy; scattering the light is fine. (In fact, doing that on purpose is kind of the point of modeling a faceted C7 bulb instead of a smooth one.) I just want to make sure that whatever part of the filament that doesn't manage to be transparent is white, not tinted some dingy color.

I do happen to have some Inland "natural" PLA laying around and did a test print in that. It's not too bad -- only a little bit yellow at the wall thickness I'm using -- but I fear for how it will hold up over time.

Hello,

I put my homemade 3D printer in the garage when I moved 2 years ago, the filaments I had were maybe 2 years old and worked well.

I bulk bought them on aliexpress or maybe alibaba.

Now, the printer needs a refreshing, a bit of all kind of electrical & mechanical stuff and also figuring out how to run it from my new computer, and I wonder if I should buy some new filament so that I won't have to care about any old filament problems or what do you think? Is my filament dead or maybe ok?

Thanks!

Edit: thank you all!

I'll go with buy a new high quality one to get everything up and running, and then I'll check out the quality of the old spools. Who are stored open, but in a airtight box with a kilo of, now grey, alibaba deciccant pellets.

I designed a part that has compartments for small neodymium magnets. The compartments open up on the side of the part, but ideally the entire part should look smooth and featureless, and the epoxy I use is not the same color as the PLA. Also, I'd like to be able to fish out the magnets later, and epoxy is a bit too final for my taste.

So I'm thinking of dropping a small dollop of melted PLA into the openings to seal them, then file / polish them smooth. It would be sticky enough to hold the magnets in place yet easy to pop off with something pointy or sharp if need be.

And to do that cleanly, I figured I'd get me one of those cheap freehand 3D pens as a kind of precision "glue gun" for PLA. And it occurs to me that I might also be able to use it to "weld" small parts together, and hand-write things on parts with a different color filament.

I'm not much of an artist so I have no use for a 3D pen as an artsy tool. But it seems like a useful thing to have alongside a 3D printer, and they're not that expensive - even the more expensive Mynt3D 3D Pen Pro, which is the one I'm eyeing.

Does anybody know if those 3D pens can be used for small manual reworks / assembly of PLA parts?

Like the Ender 3 V3 SE at $200 and the Ender 3 S1 Pro at $250.

They don't seem to have any interesting deals on consumables, sadly.

You might recall that I tried printing this fake lens last week and found it quite challenging.

So today for S&G, I figured I'd try to print it in two halves like so:

Then instead of gluing or epoxying them, I joined them with acetone: it's quite a thin profile, so it's a good test of the strength of the bond.

Well, I let it cure for half an hour just to make sure all the acetone inside the bond had evaporated, and it certainly is plenty strong! Strong enough to take a vigorous chemical polishing - with acetone also - while applying a fair amount of pressure and stay in one piece.

I polished it by hand for 5 minutes and it's even a bit lens-y now 🙂

I'll let it cure for another 24 hours for good measure, then tomorrow I'll mount it in the lathe and I'll polish it some more with acetone, to see how clear I can make it.

It's never going to be any good of course, but it's interesting to see how much it can be improved, if only to find out what I can do with PLA.

I just stopped a failing print and noticed some weird extrusions happening (not english native speaker, also I'm a 3d printing noob, don't know whether that's the right word). You can see it in the image. Any tips to improve printing quality?

I'm printing on an Ender 3 V3 SE. This print was with standard settings.

EDIT: as a clarification, this isn't why I stopped the print. It failed to adhere to the print plate at some spots. Redid my z offset and hopefully that solved it.

Like every year I am absolutely clueless what to gift my loved ones (and of course always too late getting/creating them).

Thats why I'm asking you guys, for inspiration - what, if any, are you printing this year as gifts for your loved ones?