Note To Self - Clear the bed

Tuesday night I went to bed with my printer going - about 40 minutes left on a print. It finished beautifully. I had one more piece left to print in my upcoming project reveal! I have mentioned it a few times, but I will post pics and a write up when it's done.

Wednesday morning I set up the print in Cura, the software to control the printer, because i have just enough time to finish a 3-hour-print before work. Then I walked upstairs to make a quick breakfast. I usually catch up on my stories and eat a leisurely breakfast, snuggle the puppers, catch up on my Words With Friends, etc, morning stuff. I turned the TV on for the last round of Holiday Baking Championship, turned the tv back off without worrying about my DVR, cleaned my dishes and came downstairs. I figured I would have some Netflix and MTG card sorting before work.

"Let me check on that print and see how sexy it is," I told Charlotte the dog. I look at the printer and can't quite get my head around what I am seeing. Half of the print is completely finished. but the arm is jumping and twitching in a hardening puddle of plastic, the bed, I immediately notice is making a weird noise.

Why is the arm still down low, if half the print is already 2 inches tall?

Have you guessed?

I didn't take my print from Tuesday night off the bed before I tried to print again.

That's right, I literally tried to print over my print, so I could have a print while I had my print.

The second half of the story: I peeled the Cronenberg abomination print from the bed, strip it, clean it, sigh deeply. (If I can interject on my own story on my own blog, the raft on piece one came away perfectly, like safefty guard on electronics... too bad the burned and weirdly melted pieces messed it up) I guess I could get the smaller of the two parts reprinted before work. Before I do that, I remember the weird clanking noise and check the screws on the bed for tightness. Everything's tight. I decide to print a calibration test - the standard 3mm square provided by printrbot.

Oh my. There is something definitely wrong with the bed's axis. I played with the pronterface - trying to move the x axis, hearing only thumps and whirring. I start to worry. I grab my coffee and set up shop in the office instead of the living room - it's going to be a long morning...

The story has a semi-decent ending, I promise. I unplugged it, disconnected from computer and removed the bed, dusting it off, nothing looked broken, the toothy belt that moves the axis was a bit loose. I cut the zip tie and tightened it, rezip-tying it.screwed all the screws back in, tried again. same problem.

I do it again. This time when I have the bed off, I live dangerously and turn it on, use the pronterface to move the x axis. it seems to be moving the belt, no thumping. I turn it back off and kind of "floss" the area, pulling the toothy belt back and forth for about 30 seconds. Reassemble the bed, turn it all on, try to move the x-axis. It works fine, the bed moves, no grinding, jsut the normal "whurrrr" as it moves.

I print another calibration square. this time it works perfectly.  I write up a post and it's time for work!

During my down time on the phone i set the printer to go, printing the bigger piece, and then the small piece, It finishes about 30 minutes after I am done working and I tacky glue the two pieces together. The tacky glue worked just fine on the smaller pieces from the day before. I just gotta wait on that, and then I can takes pictures and write up my next piece!

Lucky no.6

Hello Print Fans!

I have great news! in my 6th attempt to print Magic:The Gathering EDH/Commander Art Deco Deck Box, designed by mitchel1682, I finally completed print! It's not perfect. I had to trim some pieces and sand down some edges, but  it completed! 

I printed it in the Antique Bronze filament from yesterday's review.   I finally got to print the lid! It fits! I was able to jam 100 sleeved MTG cards into it, but it wouldn't hold the commander too, which was a little unfortunate, i probably would have stretched it couple mm.

Let's review:

Documented Attempt #1: ABS, cracked, horrible, gray ABS.  My mistake in settings, which caused the print to last 39 hours, that actually stretched into something close to 45 hours, set me up for a horrible disappointment.

Somewhere deep in hour 43 the printer stopper, built up a melted plastic bead, which attached to the extruder and yanked the very flimsy, fragile edge away. I watched in dismay, through my webcam setup and had to remote in to my computer to make sure the printer turned off and cooled down. It was a sad day, for sure. When I got home, I cleaned up a small amount of spaghetti, and hacked the edges off so that the print was nice an even... and I use it as a pen/garbage holder in my work area. I didn't have the heart to throw it away.

In addition to my bed print setup, I also don't have the right environment for ABS, as you can see by the warping and cracking.

Attempt #2: PLA, infill set to 100%, expectation for print. . 24 hours. I set up the print  and walked away to make breakfast. came back and thought "24 hours is really high for how big this is..." and realized I could probably set the infill closer to 10%. I didn't take a picture, as it was only about 20 layers deep.

Attempt #3: Black PLA - I misjudged how much space I had and places something on the bed to compare how far along the print was. it caught on a screw, halting the movement of the bed, throwing my print off about an inch. I tried to use force to correct, but it didn't work.

Attempt #4: Black PLA - Ran out of filament about  halfway through. Prompting me to start measuring my prints and spools so i know exactly what is on each roll.

Attempt #5. Bronze PLA, an issue I had noticed but wouldn't think of as destructive until this print. The control and power cords, wrapped in soft plastic, hangs down and to the left of the extruder. In the final hour of the print, the cord caught on the overhang and stopped the bed from moving, Causing the entire print to shift, as you can see in the picture.

As you can imagine, this was very disheartening. I ended up snapping off the misprinted bits and throwing it in the bin with the rest of my misprints.Maybe it, too, will become a tool holder someday. Not to mention the bronze filament is twice as expensive as the black or gray filaments, so I just wasted $6.50.

To remedy the issue I ran into here, I used a zip tie to force the cord bundle a bit higher and behind the extruder, so as not to  hit this snag again.


Attempt #6: Perfection! Almost. I didn't use any supports, so the overhang struggled and made me very, very nervous.there was an issue with some "spaghetti" stringing and looping into the print, which caused a couple, fixable issues. I used my cutting tools and sandpaper to smooth it out.

I was also able to FINALLY print the lid. It was a little tight, but my sanding fixed the weird gaps and it fits perfectly!

The Bronze Age - Product Review

I bought some antique bronze filament from blackmagic3d on Amazon.. originally I intended to print a bust of Teddy Roosevelt for my aunt. however my first attempt of printing another project (my cursed deck box) waste 30% of my .5kg roll.

Of course I had to try reprinting it today because I want a bronze/gold deck box! so along with the successful(!!!!) print and the lid for that box, I've used .4kg. I an not sure I'll have enough for Teddy.  I would like a matching life counter, so I guess I will see how much filament Teddy will take up and if it's less than 100g I'll move forward. or else I'll print the life counter.

Wouldn't that be so neat to have a life counter to match my deck box?

To the review!

When I opened it, I was a little underwhelmed, but I liked this filament the second it started printing. I really enjoyed watching layer upon layer going down. I was worried it would look bad or blotchy, but just like the PLA I used in the past, this has gone down even and beautifully. The low percentage of infill I used caused a cool shadowwy ghosting of the details on my deck box. I wish there was a way to melt down and recycle my unused of wasted plastic so I could make more prints. I would love to buy another roll and print stuff that should be gold/bronze!

I am not sure if it is this specific PLA or happenstance, but i had the cleanest separation of raft from object so far - I may have evened out my attack method on it, but it could also be the PLA itself.

I recommend giving it a try if you have $20 and 500g of prints that need to be bronze!

Note to self - stop touching the print bed when it's printing - or "the tale of the cursed stl"

Funny story guys... during my technically third attempt at the Art Deco box I placed something on the bed to compare sizes and it caught on one of the exposed screws and held the bed in place when it should have been moving. This of course caused the entire print to shift about an inch and ruined it at about the same spot that my first attempt was ruined.

On my fourth attempt to reprint ... from the beginning... again I ran out of pla halfway through. I have the remainder of a 100 yard spool sampler that came with my printer, it is translucent white. I attempted to feed it in as the black ran out, but for some reason it just didn't fit in. Honestly I'm not sure if the rest of the white spool would even have finished the print, as I was about halfway through and there wasn't a ton of filament left.

I am hoping that my 5th attempt at printing this Art Deco box from thingiverse will prove successful and I will be able to post some pictures. In the meantime I'll probably end up posting a couple snaps of what I ended up with so you can compare and contrast in the pla vs. Abs.

I considered switching to abs since I have three nearly full spools of abs but I haven't been able to properly calibrate my printer to work with abs. I have gotten it to work a little bit but I end up with an obscene amount of warping and or cracking in my prints. So I now have a roll of black pla in the mail from Amazon it should be here Tuesday the 1st. I also ordered some antique bronze pla it should be here about the same time. This will be great because I have had a request to print a bust of Teddy Roosevelt and I think that bronze wood accent that pretty well.

But that's a future post for days to come. In the meanwhile here's a comparison picture of print in abs and the same print in pla.