Month: June 2016

My printer has evolved since I bought it.

I began with this cheap moderately shitty chinese Geeetech/CTC clone of a prusa i3, it didn’t take long before I had noticed that it had issues keeping a consistent quality between the prints.The frame was quite flimsy so I had to keep the feedrates low, and the extruder struggled to push out the filament.But the machine worked well enough to produce upgrades to itself, and each iteration was better than the last. I ordered a steel frame that I transplanted all the hardware to and it solved many of the stability issues.The hotend was upgraded to a e3d clone that has worked wonderfully so far, I had to redesign and print the extruder so it would fit my hardware.My printer originally came with some M8 threaded rods that were made from the fines low-grade chinesium, so I had some very bad issues with z-wobble. A pair of acme leadscrews promptly fixed that.All in all it has been a great learning experience building this printer, and I am looking forward to many more hours of printing!First frameSteel frame with upgradesBonus Batman (PLA, 0.2mm layer height, ~60mm/s, Simplify3d)X,Y,Z mounts and carriage: http://ift.tt/293ofKs: http://ift.tt/1dDWhAc http://ift.tt/28VK7oH

Responding to “Did you make that?” to 3d prints?

So people are noticing my 3D prints at work and I keep getting the question of “Did you make that?” to 3D prints I found off thingiverse.I decided to not make it awkward and just to make it overly simplistic and say “yes” and then clarify about 3 minuets later that I got the design of the internet and printed it off my 3D printer.The question does get me thinking about 3D printing and ownership of prints. No one would ever 2D print a book and say “I made this” everyone would find that to be a lie. But at the same time if you cooked a meal using a recipe and say “I made this” no one would disagree. If you made a bookshelf out of wood from someone elses design and instructions, it would also count as “i made that.” I think even if you CNC milled out a figure and said “I made this” people would find it to be valid due to the effort involved.But… 3D printing is too… easy? Compared to all those other tasks the level of effort to get to the final product is quiet different.Personally I am not comfortable taking ownership of prints unless I designed the cad file myself, or in the case of Video game model prints, put significant amounts of effort to making the damn thing printable. But I am just wondering how the community feels about design vs manufacturing ownership in 3D printing. http://ift.tt/29cGQBm