In my previous post titled Low End FDM for Miniatures, Hobby Parts, and Messing Around? I received a ton of fantastic recommendations, but ultimately went with the A1 mini due to its price at the time, ease of use, and several other factors. It came in today, and I've already made 10 different prints on it. The Benchy came out...
I'm glad you got something that is meeting your needs so far! Lots of people going the bambu route as of late. If you want a tool that just works, it's a brilliant machine, and if later down the line you do get more interested in the hobby side of things, you'll a. already have basic maintenance and use experience, b. have a bulletproof backup printer when things on your project inevitability hiccup and stop working, and c. be able to print your own parts if you decide to go a self built route.
Hey, that's a pretty good price. I'm not a fan of bambu either, but for someone who just wants to print stuff I don't think it's a bad deal at all. That's less than my stock Neptune 3 and probably a hell of a lot more reliable
That's lower than I expected. When I was last shopping for a new potential printer, bambus were starting at around $400. Good piece of hardware for that price, if you're not crazy into the hobby aspect of printing and just need it to aid your other hobbies. Have fun with it!
I usually just use it to find some sort of peer reviewed recommendations (ie YouTube reviews) - it's usually pretty easy to tell there who's being genuine
I read through the Orca Slicer manual on github, but I don't understand how the retraction test works. I have no idea how I'm suppose to distinguish the results. Would anyone like to explain in layman's terms what it is I'm looking for?
Extrusion works by the motor pushing the filament forward, causing pressure behind the nozzle, and the filament melting and extruding out the end. When your printer wants to stop extruding ( ie moving to a new part or section to print without printing anything in the middle), it makes a retraction to pull the filament back, releasing the pressure behind the nozzle, and stopping the filament from extruding out.
In a perfect world, a full retraction would not be necessary; not pushing the filament forward should stop the pressure buildup, and stop the filament from flowing. However, we don't live in a perfect world, and so backing the filament up a small amount is necessary to stop it from flowing.
Finding out exactly how much you need to back the filament up is the purpose of this test. Back the filament up too much, and you can create clogging issues, extrusion issues caused by the filament not being at the end of the nozzle at the beginning of the extrusion, and (slightly) increased print time; don't back the filament up far enough, and filament will continue extruding out the nozzle, causing stringing.
The test works by having you lower your retraction distance to a very small number ( a lot of tests will have you disable retraction altogether, ie 0 mm), and slowly increase it from there. The idea is that the bottom of the tower will look like hot garbage, and slowly improve as the retraction increases; what's the quality stops improving, you know that that is your ideal retraction distance.
If you have a Bowden tube setup, a good retraction Tower would have values ranging from 0 mm to around 10 mm. Direct drive extruders need far less retraction; 0 to 2 mm in 0.2 mm increments should be good. Again, you're looking for the first setting that gets rid of stringing.
Let me know if you need any help or have further questions! Retraction can be really tricky to understand mechanically, but can be important for improving print quality and reducing the need for post-processing.
I don't use orca slicer so I'm not familiar with how it works specifically, but are you sure that the retraction settings are actually changing between different sections? I made the mistake when I first started it just loading the model and letting it print with default settings from my slicer. If the GitHub doesn't specify exactly how to enable the retraction tower settings, I would look up a guide on YouTube. If you've done temp towers, it'll likely be set up in a similar fashion.
If your test starts at 0 and you don't see any difference, it definitely it not working as intended; 0 retraction with result in a huge stringy mess, and going to the next step will be a significant change.
Edit: also maybe make sure that you are using the correct values for testing according to your extruder setup; if you are using a direct drive retraction tower on a bowden setup, the changes will be too small to make any discernible difference, and the lowest setting on a bowden test will likely be too high for a direct drive.
Do some poking around for your printer and slicer - for your printer, you need to know if you have a direct drive or Bowden tube setup, and for your slicer, you need to figure out how to modify the standard gcode.
Looking at some pictures online I'm pretty sure your printer is a direct drive. Again I'm not familiar with your slicer so I don't know what your model looks like, but typically retraction tests will be a tower with different values printed on the side indicating how far the retraction distance is. For a direct drive, these values should be pretty small, likely topping out at just a couple mm at most.
A search for " <slicer name> retraction tower setup" should get you numerous tutorials for your slicer, just follow those guides and input a range appropriate to your setup and should be good to go
So I wanted a small, and thin friction hing for another project, and I couldn't find the metal ones that they use for the iPad's Magic Keyboard case. So I design my own the parts I had on my desk....
Nice! This is really impressive for a first prototype print. I've been printing for over a year, designing small brackets and such for maybe 6 months, and most of my designs are just one solid piece. Something with moving parts is awesome!
Can we ask what the project this is for is, or for a link to this model?
Hi everyone, a week ago my printer (heavily modified Neptune 3) started randomly shutting down in the middle of prints. I come back to a print with the "Klipper reports: SHUTDOWN / Lost communication with MCU 'mcu'" error message....
Pi is not OC'ed, but I did just realize that it's running on a power supply that came in a cheap starter kit and not the nicer one I'd ordered, so maybe that's an issue. You would think the Pi would report under voltage if that were the case though, no? When Klipper errors out, the pi doesn't shut off or report any issues.
I will say that I've completed two 4 hour long prints with all external USB devices disconnected, and when I tried a duplicate of one of the completed prints with the klipperscreen device (on a new nice cable) and my webcam (connected but not enabled via crowsnest) it failed after 3 hours.
I suppose it could be a power issue based on that. That's the same article I linked in the OP; my klippy.log shows that it loses connection with the MCU, then a few lines later I get the EOF error.
Printer is finishing the third 4 hour print with klipperscreen device unplugged. Really leaning towards this route, I'll try swapping my nice power supply in when I get home and see if that helps.
I found this instruction of assembly pretty entertaining. "Break it and try again without breaking it".
Actually have the SB already on the current printer. It was having extrusion issues for the better part of 3 months and I built it as a last ditch effort to save the printer from the closet. After building that I realized how much I loved the voron designs and once the printer started acting up again I made the decision to just start piece mailing a 2.4
Stealthburner ended up fixing your clog issues entirely?
More or less. You can check my post history, made a lot of fuss about it here trying to get it squared away, in part it was caused by some magically reoccurring issue where my printer boards were reporting incorrect hotend temps (sometimes off by as much as 70°C). But even after fixing that side of things my old setup kept clogging; kept diagnosing back and forth between extruder and hotend, decided why not build a stealthburner and replace both, if that doesn't fix the problem then I'm part way done with building a voron.
I'll start doing something. And it starts to actually get done. Then I'll throw in another task and it's getting done too. I'll realize that I'm getting stuff done, and excitedly try to get more stuff done.
But once I realize that I'm getting stuff done, I "wake up" and it all falls apart, and I'm left with 6 tasks at 75% completion.
I'm a first time DM and I struggle with this a lot haha. There are times where I feel a roll is appropriate, so I do it, and whatever is supposed to happen fails, then I realize.. "what the hell is supposed to happen if that doesn't work?" so it just kinda happens anyways.. IDK if my players have caught on..
That's where my problem comes from. I'm not experienced enough to know immediately where failure is acceptable or not; rather, I don't always have backup plans or ideas for when things that should be able to fail, fail. So I roll, and it fails, and it should fail, but I've got no idea what happens when it does. So it doesn't fail.
I think I'm getting better at improv-ing events and making backup plans. It's still difficult for me to find the balance between the story I want to tell/ have prepared vs the story that my players wind up creating, but checking in with my party here and there tells me everyone's having fun and only rarely does anyone feel gipped or abused by dice rolls.
Thanks for spelling it out like this. I think I've been too focused on "doing something" and keeping the game going, that I don't stop to think before doing some things. Ie rolling before I know what will happen with a failure. I'll try to take more quick pauses to think things through, and worry about smoothness of play later.
This is another thing I fear, that causes me to do probably unnecessary rolls. I want the story/ gameplay to have at least some semblance of believability, so I don't want everyone risking their life on a curiosity because they know I won't kill them, but I also don't want to "punish" players every time they take a step off the walking path.
I'll admit it right here: sometimes I roll the dice just to give the illusion of risk, when in reality I'm buying time to make up the results of what someone just did.
I really like the "who succeeds" idea. In events where I roll a fail and have no idea what to do with it, I can just have the outcome only happen for certain characters, or tweak the "success" so that it isn't quite so successful. Haha.
I was a drama kid and as such am usually the loud, boisterous one when playing DnD (as DM or player). I've come to terms that most of my friends are going to appreciate my roleplaying, but respond mostly out of character, and that's fine.
But when someone does respond in a character voice, it feels so great!
Yeah I feel you. I'm doing two campaigns right now, one is my first time as a player and the other is the first time as a DM haha, as a player I'm a bard so the face of the party and my old-school improv skills are getting tested for sure!
Personally I find fleshing out your character's backstory makes playing them a lot easier. If you know your character inside and out, you don't have to translate an event into their "language" and think about what they would do or say from their perspective, you just let the thing happen and the character will tell you how they respond.
When you laugh at our jokes, or respond (in or out of character) to our banter, or lean in with keen interest during an epic monologue, you feed our energy with yours. I can't get into a back-and-forth with a brick wall; even if you just laugh and describe what your character does instead of acting anything out, if I know you're having fun with it that gives me the mental fortitude needed to keep acting ridiculous.
Being the only one in character is one thing, it's a little awkward at first but once everyone knows it's your thing it's fine, but if you're the only one in character and everyone else just kinda deadpan responds it's an instant vibe kill. If there's someone in your party that is always in character, even if nobody else is, that means you make them feel comfortable enough to express their character, and that isn't nothing! I know they appreciate you letting them channel their character.
I had a similar realization recently. When I was younger I'd be excited for something for months at a time, but now that I'm older I can't really look forward to something until it's right there.
I've been trying to look forward to small things lately, even if it's something small I'm doing for myself like a nice dinner. It helps
At least so far. The first go round had the nozzle crash into the tree support, resulting in a layer shift. The good news is that the print stayed very firmly stuck to the bed....
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.
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.
Stuff could be anything, digital or physical, but the idea is of discussing and doing it as a hobby without any pressure or push to make it a business or side-gig. Nothing against that, simply that communities/groups with that atmosphere are easy enough to find as-is.
If we talk about low-end China printers then the answer is they might not be as safe
Bambu had to recall one of their printers for a faulty bed heating wire that either was causing or had the high likely to cause fires. We have robots with flame swords that we've trained to not burn our house down. Yes some robots are better built or trained than others but it's still a robot with a flame sword nonetheless.
The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge....
Oh I love that. It happens a lot in political discussions when you don't 100% agree with someone's point.
"I don't think defunding the police will solve the issues we're facing" means getting called a boot licker and that every comment you've ever made that doesn't scream "I hate cops" is about to be linked to for proof that you're a Trump loving Nazi.
I've been using one of the Pandora services, but I've been getting a little annoyed with the stations (which I presume I would get the same annoyance from other services, too). So I'd like to be able to create a station and add songs that I own and that wouldn't normally be in that station. (And I know you can add artists to the...
As someone else has stated, you can add music you own (or at least, music to which you have files for) directly in to Spotify, though I'll say the reliability is "ok" if you are listening on multiple devices. My guess is they don't host those files the same as the others. Maybe if you have a server or computer that's always on, you can put the file on that, and add it to Spotify on that device, maybe Spotify will just feed you the file from your computer
I see, well if you're more in the self-hosted side of things other people have given some suggestions that seem like it would work well for your needs.
I used to have a huge collection of music I'd accumulated and only played files locally, but I've gotten lazy over the years and am a Spotify boy now. I will say that it's been irritating me to no end with how bad shuffle is; my main playlist has over 500 songs in it and I know there's at least a hundred or so that I haven't heard in months because Spotify's "shuffle" thinks it knows what I want to listen to more than I do.
I've never really had issues with wet filament. I primarily print in PLA, and while it's a pretty hot button debate, I lean towards the evidence of PLA not being effected by moisture. A user here ran an experiment and posted the results of leaving a spool of filament in a bucket of water for 24 hours and the running a print with it still in the bucket, I think they just put a sponge in front of the filament guide to get rid of the water droplets but it printed exactly the same before and after the soak. Ever since I saw that, I haven't bothered with bagging or drying any of my PLA outside of printing with it inside the enclosure (where humidity drops to single digit percentages during prints).
Of course, mileage will vary from user to printer to filament. But in my experience, with filament from a handful of major suppliers ranging from a few weeks to around a year old, as long as it's not snapping when I try to move it, it'll print fine.
Yup, went over those a few times throughout the posts, multiple thermistors, multiple ports on the board, several configs in Klipper. All of them identical behavior.
I did not, but yesterday I put marlin on the stock board (the first one to start doing the temp thing), and it's doing the same thing, so the pi isn't the problem.
I also tested the printer's power supply with my multimeter and it's stable between 23.8v-24.2v.
My house electricity is a little dodgy, my lights flicker for a half second when a high draw appliance turns on (AC, refrigerator, etc), but nothing in the house has ever been damaged by it in the 5 years I've been here, so I don't think it's strong enough to kill multiple boards, especially since it's after a PSU. I suppose moving forward I can run the printer off a surge protector (I was running straight from the outlet because I was testing power consumption a few months back and never switched it back).
I've ordered a new board to come in tomorrow. Once installed I'll run the printer exclusively off the surge protector, we'll see if we can't make this board last longer than a week 😉
I had the semi joking idea of designing a breakaway cable that would simply plug and unplug all of my printer peripherals into the motherboard at once. That way, when I break one every week, it's a simple drop and plug process.
I have a new board coming in tomorrow that I'm 90% positive will work just fine. I'm running low on suspects for what could be causing the failure, but I'm going to take a few precautions with this one (using only a surge protector, for starters) and see if it makes any difference in longevity. I guess I'll make an update if it dies again, or maybe again after a month of continuous work. There are a few people that have been in every thread, I'm sure they're curious as well haha
I'd be really surprised if slightly dodgy power would damage 2 unrelated boards in a super specific way and damage nothing else.
This is my thinking as well, but I've got zero other ideas.
I've already cut the wires on my heat cart and thermistors, so swapping those parts around is easy.
I've seen printers with a PCB on the hotend, but I'm not sure I understand what it is that the PCB does; is it simply a port hub between the main board and the hotend to make parts easier to swap out, or does it do any actual "thinking"? If it's the former, I think I've more or less accomplished this with the connectors. If it's that latter, I have no idea how I would go about configuring that to work with the SKR, but it would probably solve my problem by moving the "temp calculation" job off of the main board. It would at least tell me for certain if the board is what's reporting the incorrect temp.
Follow-up On My FDM Purchase Advice Post
In my previous post titled Low End FDM for Miniatures, Hobby Parts, and Messing Around? I received a ton of fantastic recommendations, but ultimately went with the A1 mini due to its price at the time, ease of use, and several other factors. It came in today, and I've already made 10 different prints on it. The Benchy came out...
Common printing questions
Retraction Test
I read through the Orca Slicer manual on github, but I don't understand how the retraction test works. I have no idea how I'm suppose to distinguish the results. Would anyone like to explain in layman's terms what it is I'm looking for?
I design and 3D Printed the smallest friction hing, I think is possible at 10mm ( lemmy.world )
So I wanted a small, and thin friction hing for another project, and I couldn't find the metal ones that they use for the iPad's Magic Keyboard case. So I design my own the parts I had on my desk....
[Troubleshooting] Random EOF shutdowns from Klipper.
Hi everyone, a week ago my printer (heavily modified Neptune 3) started randomly shutting down in the middle of prints. I come back to a print with the "Klipper reports: SHUTDOWN / Lost communication with MCU 'mcu'" error message....
Any thoughts on a fully printed voron?
Hi guys, been thinking about this for a couple weeks now but can't seem to find anything online about anyone who has tried it....
Before you turn back into a pumpkin ( lemmy.world )
Fudging rolls is the path to the dark side... ( startrek.website )
Quick, reward this with some inspiration! ( lemmy.world )
Nesting capabilities of slicer (overview)
Short overview of how good the nesting capabilities of various 3D slicer are....
Google ad on a magazine from 1999 ( i.redd.it )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/22055566...
What are you currently excited for?
The birth (or death) of a relative, the release of a new program, game, series, movie, the date you were dreaming about, could be anything
I found a way to keep my chamber temps up for long/big ASA prints ( lemmy.world )
At least so far. The first go round had the nozzle crash into the tree support, resulting in a layer shift. The good news is that the print stayed very firmly stuck to the bed....
Where to find online communities of people making stuff mainly as a hobby?
Stuff could be anything, digital or physical, but the idea is of discussing and doing it as a hobby without any pressure or push to make it a business or side-gig. Nothing against that, simply that communities/groups with that atmosphere are easy enough to find as-is.
Automatic Fire Extinguisher for 3D Printer Cabinet ( lemm.ee )
Hey 3D printing fellas,...
Qualified experts of Lemmy, do people believe you when you answer questions in your field?
The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge....
What, like Pandora, Spotify, etc is out there that I could add music I have on my phone/etc?
I've been using one of the Pandora services, but I've been getting a little annoyed with the stations (which I presume I would get the same annoyance from other services, too). So I'd like to be able to create a station and add songs that I own and that wouldn't normally be in that station. (And I know you can add artists to the...
My makeshift enclosure filament holder. Very happy with this set-up! ( lemmy.world )
Hi guys, it's The Clog Guy, thought I'd try to share something other than problems......
[Troubleshooting] Big stringing problem with flsun SR and Orcaslicer ( lemmy.nz )
Ok guys, I'm breaking down and posting here to see if anyone has any ideas. I'm greatful for any advice....
[Troubleshooting] Clog Guy is back, and things have completely ceased making sense.
Hi guys. Please check my previous post for any background questions, I don't have it in me to go over everything again....