In keeping with new hobby tradition, another new toy arrived this Wednesday. In my defense, when the idea was struck into my head, I was actually searching for new keyboards, a mouse, and a new headset for the computer. But while talking to a friend from work, they mentioned something to the effect of "they can 3D print guns, that's crazy" and in the midst of my Amazon spree, my brain went AHA! And not just because the thought of guns is all manly.
A Creality Ender 3 Pro 3D Printer has found it's way to my desk (the one that my prior post alluded to having more space on). As with a lot of hobbies, this thing is addictive. It came partially assembled, and thanks to copious YouTube videos while waiting for it to arrive, I had it fully put together in probably an hour. I've never owned a 3D Printer before, but I've looked before. There are a few different styles, and different technologies. The most common that I see for general public use are FDM machines, standing for Fused Deposition Modeling. As the name implies, they work by heating up a filament, usually plastic, and fusing it into layers upon itself. Depositing it, if you will. One style that had caught my eye before was a Delta style printer. They look like this:
When I went to Amazon, I typed in "3D Printer". Novel idea, I know. I then picked a budget, relatively small. I knew I wanted one, but also had the presence of mind to convince myself to start basic, and see how I got on with it, or what I would even use it for. So for a max budget of $250 dollars, I sorted by rating, and well I'll be dipped if this Ender 3 didn't pop up at the top of the list with over two thousand ratings, 4.5 stars with almost 80% being a 5-star rating. Good enough for me, I was sold, and a few days later, it arrived. This particular model is also a very popular one, with great community support to boot. Couple that with sites like Thingiverse.com for free prints of almost anything you can imagine to serach for, and I felt fine with my choice.
The hardest thing to do with most 3D printers for novices, is leveling your print bed surface. A video make a good point that while it's referred to as leveling the bed, it's not entirely accurate. What we're really doing is making sure the surface of the bed is square in relation to the X and Y axis of the nozzle as it goes back and forth, and at the right height off the surface. Too low, and the nozzle can scrape, scratch or damage your print bed. Too high, the material doesn't get smooshed onto the surface enough to adhere to it and your plastic just flakes off before you get anything accomplished. I felt relatively proud that it didn't take me too long to find a dialed in setting, and I got to work printing test prints.
This turned into a finished dog, that I was rather impressed with. Certainly as a demo print, they had the quality dialed up pretty good, but hey, if the machine wasn't capable of printing it as fine as it came out, it wouldn't have mattered, so I was thrilled with it.
The picture makes it harder to see than real life, due to the single color and being unable to make out the depths and contours well enough. But it printed great to my eyes. I printed some other things, like a Baby Yoda holding a pumpkin, and a tool holder that clips to the top of my printer to hold the various hex keys and things that came with the printer. There were plenty of other things to print for the printer too, but I knew I wanted to wait until I had some black filament to match the black printer, instead of the light gray, whitish sample I was playing with. Fortunately, that didn't take long to arrive either, so I've done a few of the common Ender 3 additions since. And when I say since, I mean in the last two days, I've been having a ball.
There's the tool holder, and there's a standoff arm to help the filament have a better arc down into the Extruder, where the filament gets driven and pushed through the tube to the nozzle. I upgraded that tube to a newer one that can handle slightly higher temperatures which will be ideal for different plastics to print. I added a little cover for the front of my rail, then some panels to cover up some of the wiring, and even swapped out the extruder to an all metal version.
I swapped out the factory Extruder which had a plastic assembly (but did at least have metal gears and a proper bearing), to an all-metal version and topped it off with a printed knob. And you can see the tubing, called PTFE or the Bowden Tube, so named as this is considered a Bowden type extruder and nozzle setup, is now blue and not white as it was originally. This blue tubing is made by a manufacturer called Capricorn and seems to be widely accepted on these printers as the go-to upgrade. This is more heat tolerant, where the end is that sits against the nozzle, is less prone to damage over time and can handle higher heat for certain other materials.
I printed a decorative cap complete with the Ender dragon logo, to cover up the pulled and belt adjustment on the front of the machine.
And I printed these snap-in panels that cover up the wiring for the control panel. If you look in the first picture from when the printer was first assembled, you can see the rainbow colored ribbon cable. Not any more!
And as I type this, I'm printing more goodies, like a different arm for the filament and a little guide for the bottom, so that I can use that original PTFE tubing as somewhat of a guide tube from the filament arm, down to where it goes into that new metal extruder. While the arm does a good job of holding the filament out to allow a less steep angle of entry at the bottom, it's still not the best way of doing it. Having a piece of that tubing will really allow it to make a more graceful curve at the bottom, and enter straighter. Similar to this:
I might just need to let that one finish on it's own and go to sleep. It's already almost 2 AM. I need to stop finding new hobbies, they're costing me sleep!
Wait, I should look for some sailboat models to print while I'm at it...
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