I want to hound people for getting a Bambu. Look at the bullshit we're dealing with on 2D printers because they aren't open source with standard parts.
While good printers, the amount of waste those Bambus produce just don't make them feasible in my eyes. If you use 4 colours, they waste about 44cm of filament while you haven't even started printing.
all very accurate but I want to add that eveb if you want to resin print in your bedroom you wont be able to. It's not only that it's toxic but the smell is so strong that, at least for me, it's impossible to be around it. My printer is outside in the garage and when it's printing you can still smell it inside the house.
I can feel my cells mutating in real time
Wear gloves, eye protection, and an appropriate mask if you’re going to do any sanding. Carbon fiber is a great material, but if you breathe in the particulates from sanding, it could cause lung damage. I would imagine there is similar risk if it gets in your eyes (hence eye protection). The gloves suggestion was there because you feel concerned about skin contact.
The standard, “print only in well ventilated areas” always applied, because heat + polymers = noxious gases.
Here’s some good info that may give you what you’re looking good for:
The printer is a a Voron 2.4 running klipper with a chamber thermistor, controlled bed fans, and an exhaust fan so it will do a decent job regulating it's temperature. The electronics are outside the chamber and there are acrylic panels under the blanket and hoodies. Should it come to it, klipper has thermal runaway protection. There's also a smoke alarm right next to the printer. I suspect this will be a pretty uneventful print.
I let the printer heat soak for an hour and a half before giving it a go and barely cracked 60 °C, so all should be well. This is a Voron, so the electronics are out of the chamber, have a cooling fan, etc.
Other than looking somewhat janky, this isn't that different than the insulated panels I'll be swapping on to replace the current acrylic panels.
I guess I'm not clear what the source of ignition would be? The chamber is fairly well temperature controlled, so it's not likely that something inside will overheat. The cloth that's draped over outside of the printer can't come into contact with any hot bits thanks to acrylic panels. The chamber itself is currently sitting at 59 C after the print has been going for 10 hours (plus 1.5 hours of preheat before that).
Agree on venting, I need to duct my exhaust fan to the outside.
A space blanket is a good idea. I have a few lying around and will add one. Bonus points for being a radiant barrier (eg should help get things warmer again). I'm surprised that mylar will help prevent the spread of fires.
All the electronics inside are very much capable of combustion.
Your power supply inside the printer body for example can very much fail and burst into flames.
And tbh it's not that uncommon for that to happen with 3d printers. They're often made with very cheap parts and prone to cheap work on the inside bits.
Add on how much of a high wattage load they meed to handle for extended periods of time and yeah, sometimes the inner wiring bursts into flames and the whole thing goes up.
I always recommend keeping a cheap lil smoke alarm directly overhead any 3d printer, seriously. Those fuckers can very much spontaneously burst into flames lol
The electronics are housed in a (reasonably) sealed airspace below the print bed and have two fans blowing across them. Here's a link to CAD/STLs/some pictures: https://vorondesign.com/voron2.4. If you want to poke around GitHub, you can do so here: https://github.com/VoronDesign/Voron-2. No printer is perfect, but Vorons are fairly well thought out and I didn't skimp out on components when I was sourcing parts. All wiring inside the enclosure is either PTFE or silicone insulated.
I do get where you are coming from with outlining all of the precautions you have taken, and I agree that the print is 99% likely to go just as fine as all your other ones, but there's no amount of planning or prepping you can do that will change the fact that putting a pile of flammable articles over a massive source of thermal energy is indeed a fire hazard.
This is coming from someone with a very not ideal setup that does not have great fire safety precautions. (It's inside a wooden hutch with a curtain draped over it for heat retention... 😬) I understand that my setup is dangerous, and I accept those risks. You aren't making yourself any safer in denying your own.
EVGA had PSUs that blew up. Samsung is still too afraid to put ultra fast charging in their phones because they were blowing up. AMD GPUs were starting fires like 10 years ago. Just because you bought nice parts, doesn't mean you aren't dumping a ton of power through very delicate and fragile components that at any second could decide to kill themselves and everyone around them.
Not trying to say you shouldn't do this because it's your setup and you know it better than people online, just that you should keep in consideration when making these decisions that none of the things you've explained will matter if a large capacitor goes pop, and if it's under a pile of sweaters you'll probably have a much bigger problem to deal with than you would have otherwise.
Ultimately, if the printer is going to go up in flames the source of those flames won't originate at the cloth draped over the acrylic enclosure. The chamber barely cracked 60 °C, which is well below what smaller Vorons, especially V0s, will hit with only acrylic panels. Yay lots of surface area I guess.
It will be very interesting to see how everyone reacts (or doesn't) to some "better looking" insulation. The sources of ignition won't be any different, but I bet that people will be much more comfortable looking at insulated ACM panels that were built for purpose.
We aren't saying that the clothes are going to cause the printer to catch fire.
If the printer did catch fire, those clothes are going to make it a million times worse. You're correct when you say most of the printer is not flammable. If your printer caught fire normally, it might run out of fuel before the fire was able to spread anywhere else in your house. If there's the tiniest flame now, those sweaters are going to create a ball of inferno. It's the exact same reason why every space heater says not to dry clothes on them, 99% of the time nothing bad will happen but if something bad does happen that 1% you don't want to literally add fuel to the fire.
People are going to be fine with the "better looking" insulation because as you said insulation is made for this purpose and is usually fire retardant.
It's a dangerous setup man. No if ands or buts about it. I'll say the same thing again, I'm not here to tell you to change anything because mine is dangerous too, but if you're going to do stuff like that it's really important that you understand what you're doing (and why it's dangerous). I get that people online tend to try to find issues with everything, but sometimes people aren't just complaining because something "looks bad", and in communities like this it pays to look into stuff before assuming you know better than everyone trying to tell you the same thing.
I tried this once and decided thhat it's too risky. Do not do this.
Rsein printers are not for bedrooms. You'll constantly smell that stuff and think that you're poisoning yourself. Also: spills will happen and you don't want that stuff spilled on your regular desk or on some object of daily use which then needs to be put out in the sun, just to be safe.
This. I started with FDM at my computer desk in my bedroom. The noise is one thing, but I moved to resin and took the whole lab downstairs. Even in that space, without proper ventilation? I tried it once, and immediately put up the vent system I had on hand.
Simply put? It's a non-zero risk that isn't worth it. Hell, there might even be someone here that's close enough to print stuff for you until you can set something up yourself. 🙌🏽
I feel like you’re taking this all a bit too seriously. Here’s a suggestion: if you don’t think the contests are fun or worthwhile, don’t submit anything and don’t look at the winners and especially don’t print any of the submitted designs.
At first I was with you.
You’re mad that the contest was moderated?
Unsafe bath toys? That sounds bad. Your reason? Rubber bands and small parts? Okay well I don’t think that’s a problem if your kid is over the age of 3 or so. If less than 3, no reasonable parent would be leaving them unsupervised in the bath anyway.
PLA is great for quick proof of concept and handles exposure to water just fine in lots of cases. User discretion isn’t an unreasonable ask. The 3D printing community is an intelligent group, typically. If you love the print but your PLA version failed after a while, print it using something else?
Voters voted on the submissions they liked the most. Get over it.
Voters voted on the submissions they liked the most. Get over it.
Honestly I stopped reading. Something about a paid part integration that you got mad about because it’s heavily discounted and you can submit photos even if you don’t have one or something?
Anyway. I’ve been finished on the toilet for a while now. Gonna go sit on the porch and drink coffee and listen to the birds and never think about the terrible, terrible injustices with Prusa’s contests again.
p.s. I think the contests are awesome and I love how Prusa engages the community and gets people thinking about new ideas.
Not really. In most jurisdictions, only gambling type sweepstakes (ie a random draw) are governed that tightly. Fan voted things like this are more or less unregulated. Plus, you have to read (and understand) the legalese fingerprint fine print to determine legal responsibilities. I'd be surprised if there weren't language in there a that absolves them of almost all legal responsibility.
Moderating models for safety is a problematic idea. Prusa then bears liability in the event that a model fails. 3D printing works only because it's the person who physically makes the print who has the ultimate responsibility to determine if it is safe and fit for purpose.
If you don't like the competitions, don't take part. Personally I view them as a nice way to encourage the community to share ideas.
More the opposite. The sloppy way they moderate it to the point where they don't even bother to remove comment spam below the contest description page.
Voters voted on the submissions they liked the most. Get over it.
Voters voted on the submissions they liked the most. Get over it.
That's not how it works. There is no public vote.
Honestly I stopped reading. Something about a paid part integration that you got mad about because it’s heavily discounted and you can submit photos even if you don’t have one or something?
Btw. I don't take part in them but it is still very ugly what they do. Similiar you don't need to buy Nestle to understand that Nestle might be problematic in some aspect.
Unsafe bath toys? That sounds bad. Your reason? Rubber bands and small parts? Okay well I don’t think that’s a problem if your kid is over the age of 3 or so. If less than 3, no reasonable parent would be leaving them unsupervised in the bath anyway.
If we could trust parents to supervise their children we wouldn't need any of these regulations. Reality is we can't. And even if you're a parent who is responsible with their children, many others are not.
I want to get started 3d printing, partially because I bought a house and farm and need to replace some little bits and bobs that don't necessarily need to be super strong. It just seems a bit too much to try to figure out right now.
I went a little crazy on 3d printing during covid. I had a single printer prior but purchased two more. I haven't printed on ANY of them in like 2 years. I end up just printing stupid shit or because I go so long between printing wasting way too much time to get everything dialed back in. Now I don't even know what my slicing settings were and I would have to probably start from scratch. I should probably just sell my printers....
I printed a lot of custom stuff that I designed for specific uses in Fusion 360 when I got my computer, and for about two years afterwards. But I don't have any more custom stuff that needs to be printed, and I don't have a D&D group any more, so my printer has been sitting for about six months. I'd say it's a success though, since I made everything I need, and it'll still be there if I ever need anything else.
This was the second half of my problem honestly, I can't for the life of me figure out how to 3d model stuff. I've gone through tutorial after tutorial so clearly it's me.
I actually have stuff I'd like to print but I'm not competent enough to model it. I'm the n00b just printing stuff I can download from the internet. Or was I suppose....
There's a learning curve for sure. A lot of the tutorials on YouTube aren't very helpful. Some are downright awful. This guy's channel really helped it click for me. You can just start by following his lessons and at some point it'll click and then you can start designing really basic stuff like drawer organizers, which are essentially just cubes, and then work your way up from there. It does take time though.
Yeah I went through his channel too but something about it just doesn't seem compatible with my brain, lol. Like I said, I really should just sell my printers. They haven't been used in 2+ years and are just sitting here taking up space and collecting dust.
Yep, tried those too. I do appreciate the suggestion though, truly. It's just not something I'm cut out for it would seem. I really do need to look at selling my printers and getting out of the hobby. It was fun for a while, now it's just a chore. Which is probably why I haven't done it in 2+ years, lol.
Having a 3d printer is super convenient for any home or shop repairs I need to make. I have so many curtain spacers and custom hooks all over the place now. The key is to get some hours in Fusion or some other good CAD software so you can whip up custom parts in minutes. You may get it wrong the first few times, but a couple minutes of tweaks and then you have a new part printing while you go back to working on other stuff.
The Swedish Maker just put out a video about how transformative 3d printing has been for his workflow. https://youtu.be/p2bClWmKHRM
That's fair, there is a bit of information overload online when looking into it.
If you want my two cents, find the cheapest print with auto bed levelling (mingda magicians are good and cheap) and just start playing around.You don't need to know much to start, and you learn what you need to as you encounter problems.
That's how I got into at least, and now been printing for like 5+ years.
For the record, chopped strand fiber in a fdm printer doesn’t significantly increase strength- especially along layer lines.
It might increase tensile strength of the load is parallel to the layers, but that’s about it. In every other direction, the fiber doesn’t cross layers, and delaminating is the primary failure mode.
The strands would be more like glass fiber than asbestos- you wouldn’t want it in your lungs, but then it shouldn’t really be airborne.
A better option might be graphite filled, which will still get you that look, and help lighten the part without losing strength. Still would not want to sand it without ppe, though.
I used it in a project 5 or 6 years ago, and my experience was basically this. It's strong in the direction of the layers but brittle between layers. Works great for some applications, but I'd definitely experiment with it before committing to use it on anything where the strength of the print matters because it's really only useful in two dimensions.
If you want a high-strength part and you have carbon fiber and a 3D printer, what you want to do is 3D print a mold and then apply the carbon fiber and resin to it by hand (either laminated or "forged").
The filament is impregnated with short strands of carbon fiber (aka chopped strand,)
Basically, what you’re doing is using a 3d printed part as a core to shape the carbon fiber- which is a very useful trick- similar to shaping pink insulation foam and skinning that over. (Pink foam is fairly lightweight and very easy to shape- a resistive wire or wire heat gun cuts like butter. Especially useful if you take copper power wire and bend it to form.)
Wow .26mm of disparity is a lot for such a crucial part. It may not be a high end printer. But seriously? At $280 USD I'd expect the pulley to be tighter tolerance.
It's perfectly fine to handle. Carbon fiber in FDM 3D printing is largely a lie. It's not that there isn't carbon fiber in there, it's just that it's chopped up so finely that it's practically pointless by the time it's printed. At best, all it does is destroy any printer not set up to handle it. It's basically like printing sandpaper. Honestly, I'd avoid it entirely; same goes for glow-in-the-dark. Only reputable supplier I know for GITD is Das Filament, which ball-grinds their glow powder before inclusion into the stock.
If you're interested in real carbon fiber in FDM prints, the only people to really see are Markforged.
People give the Ender 3 a bad rap all the time, but it's honestly a great little machine. I far prefer it to the $2500 printer we have at work that has "automatic everything" and can't easily be adjusted to manually correct its bad settings.
With that said, how far have you gotten with it? Do you have any software installed? Have you tried printing anything (and was it successful)? You didn't give much clue as to where you're stuck. Yes you need to take some time to learn how to fine-tune the settings, and yes it can be frustrating because there is SO MUCH to learn about 3D printing, but once you get over the hump you can start cranking out all kinds of fun things.
Not the person you responded to, but I had mine set up. I had the software installed, I (thought) I even had the bed leveled, but every print either failed to stick to the plate, or eventually stuck to the nozzle. I ended up with a lot of spaghetti. I got frustrated and decided to take a break. I'd come back to it fresh, and see what I could do.
Assuming proper level, mess with temp settings and maybe try a layer of glue stick glue. Helps big time with first layer adhesion but it gets messy if you don't clean it off. Though my bed is a mess and it still prints OK lol.
One thing I learned is that Creality's QC is absolute garbage. When I first got my printer I also picked up a glass plate. Everything stuck perfectly to it, hardly any fuss at all. After several years the coating wore out and I bought a new one. Total trash, nothing would stick without heavy usage of hair spray and I eventually gave up on it.
If you want to try again, look for PEI beds. If you have one with the magnetic base, there are several with the PEI already mounted on a spring-steel plate. PEI is one of the best surfaces you will ever find to print on, although I believe one type of filament (I think a variation of PLA?) sticks too well and can damage the PEI trying to take prints off... but I've used regular PLA, PLA+, and TPU with great success, and have heard that ABS also works well on it. Just keep it clean with 90% ISO and you'll eliminate at least one problem.
Of course there's also the whole thing with bed leveling. I run into a lot of people who think the paper method is the whole process for leveling, when really it's just to get your printer dialed in close enough that you don't ruin the bed when you actually begin to do the leveling. Getting the leveling wrong is by far the most common reason why prints don't stick well so do your best to nail that aspect. You want the nozzle gap about 3/4 of the nozzle size, so for a standard 0.20mm nozzle you would want a gap of about 0.15mm for your first layer (but still use 0.20 in the slicer) to get that proper smoosh. My leveling method involves using a 5-point bed-leveling test print, and you can judge the gap by eye from that. Takes quite a few iterations to get all the corners dialed in, but you shouldn't have to do it often.
Speaking of which... another common complaint is the loose bed springs. You want to Crank those puppies down almost completely closed, then adjust the Z switch to that new position before starting the leveling. Tight springs means you almost never have to readjust the leveling knobs. I check mine about once a year.
PEI is one of the best surfaces you will ever find to print on, although I believe one type of filament (I think a variation of PLA?) sticks too well and can damage the PEI trying to take prints off…
That's PETG. I avoid using smooth PEI plates like fire when PETG is loaded. Even after swapping the filament to PLA, little bits of residual PETG can still stick leaving a shadow on the plate. Textured PEI is mostly fine, but single layer stuff like brims are a pain to get off.
OK so you want to watch this video and learn how to manually do bed leveling. However if you really want to go over the whole machine (perhaps even tearing it down and rebuilding it so you know where everything is an can assure that it was assembled correctly) the you want to start with this video.
Once the machine is set up, it's time to install slicing software on your computer. Cura is a popular and free option, with support built in for the Ender 3 (you have to set up a new machine in the software and tell it what model you have). Following that, find something to print! There are many sites like thingiverse where you can download models from, but you want to start with something small to work out the bugs without wasting a lot of filament. Look for something like a calibration cube ("calicat" is my favorite) which will provide information on how well you have your machine set up.
Also to consider... if you live in a humid environment and you were given filament with the printer that is NOT in a sealed bag, you should be aware that filament absorbs moisture from the air and "wet" filament will print like hot garbage. Insanely cheap filament like the $12 stuff you find on Amazon can also cause problems, so stick with stuff more in the $20 range until you have some experience in working with your machine.
You never know. Old filament CAN be used, but it takes special care with the slicer settings and it helps a lot if you have a dehumidifier to dry it out. I live in a dry climate, and have filament at work which has been sitting on the shelf for about 7 years, but I can still get beautiful prints out of it. All of my filament at home is left in ziplock bags but it still gets brittle over time (if you can easily snap the filament, it probably has a lot of moisture in it).
Not op, I got a free Ender 3 from a frustrated co-worker, and am now the frustrated co-worker. I've tried getting a new glass print surface, tried using glue sticks, tried changing print temps and speeds, tried levelling and re-levelling and re-levelling the bed, but I just can't get the print to stick for love or money. It's now been re-homed to the garage, as a parking obstacle for my bicycle.
Honestly at that point I would tear down the whole thing and use this video as a guide for reassembly. The most important thing to do is to make sure the framework is all squared up, otherwise all prints will suffer.
As for bed leveling... A lot of people think the paper test is all you need, but really that only gets you close enough to start leveling the bed. First thing is to tighten all the springs to within 1 turn of being closed, then adjust the Z switch so that the head homes to roughly that same height. After that you use the paper method to get the bed roughly level, then move on to live testing with a 5-point bed-leveling test print to dial it in. Ideally you want the nozzle gap to be about 75% of the nozzle size, so for a 0.20mm tip you would want a 0.15mm gap to get your print to stick.
As I mentioned to someone else, Creality's QC is garbage. My first glass bed had better adhesion than PEI and worked beautifully for a few years until the coating wore out. My second glass bed was trash, I never could get anything to stick to it without using hairspray, and now it sits in its box. I have a PEI bed now, which seems to have solved the problem. If you decide to try using the printer again, don't forget to clean the glass with 90% ISO. Worst case try flipping the glass over to the smooth side, clean it with ISO, then use glue sticks on that surface (you won't get any adhesion on bare glass without the glue or hairspray).
Hey, thanks for the advice. If I have some free time and spare gumption, I'll definitely give it a go. If that happens, I'll let you know what comes of it.
No worries, glad to help. I don't print a lot with my machine any more, but things still come up (like I got a shop press a couple weeks ago and found a knob for the release valve so you don't need a special tool for it ... printed with no trouble and now the printer sits idle again).
Honestly when it works it works wonderfully. Most of my problems with my ender 3 come down to me being a dumbass and not taking care of it properly, and/or just the nozzles they ship with it being cheap as fuck and impossible to cold pull.
No joke my first ever successful cold pull was 2 days ago, because I had finally gotten a decent set of nozzles.
If you want to get really serious about printing there are better options out there, but for the cost they really are awesome beginner printers (to be fair I haven't kept up much with printers, so I don't know many other good cheap ones). I mostly only dabble with printing, but my ender 3 pro that I got like 3 years ago has served me very well.
You may be interested in these links, it can reduce or eliminate the problems which require cold pulls. Basically the issue is that the tubing moves up and down during printing and creates a slack space where the filament gets into a region of the nozzle it's not supposed to reach. This modification uses a short length of tubing inside the nozzle that is pushed down tight, then your regular tubing sits on top of that where the movement doesn't cause any problems. I've never had a single clogged nozzle or needed to do a cold pull in several years since making this change, so I highly recommend it.
Make sure the screws are snug and the beams don't move. Level the bed, Youtube how. Then get a micro SD card and a slicing program. Slice the model, save to card, insert in printer, hit print from file and select the file.
That's like 95% of it. The other 5 is endless struggles and troubleshooting, but you can worry about that when it comes to it lol. Oh also keep filament dry.
I found a printer in the trash that I grabbed, it had motors and frame but no PSU and mainboard. Five years later it is in worse shape than it was because I took the extruder off. I like to make progress on stuff by just increasing the scope so that it is overwhelming.
It's the raspberry pi of printers. It's good for hobbyist and as a learning platform. its very cheap to get/mod and find parts.
But it's not reliable enough for someone who wants printed parts. People who know 3d printing will underestimate the knowledge needed to use one of them.
I'm in the same boat! I got tired of the constant enshittification of Fusion360 and started learning FreeCAD. And wow! it's way less intuitive.
But I think I'll push through, as I don't want anything but open-source for this. The reason being that I don't want the same thing to happen again: I spend an unholy amount of time learning how to use a CAD software, and then it becomes the hottest steaming pile of corporate shit possible and I don't want to use it anymore. That's why I haven't even started looking at OnShape.
With open-source the biggest risk is that the same thing might happen if the project gets abandoned, but it doesn't seem to be the case for FreeCAD (at least in the foreseeable future).
In any case, I'm interested in hearing what others have to say :)
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