The Official 3d Printing thread

[Ericpwp]

The petg is working nice. Adheres to the glass for the print, and pulls right off.

 

[1911ly]

The hole in my nozzle is too big. I must have messed it up cleaning it.

They open up with use. I change mine every 3-4 rolls. Some media is harder on nozzles then others. JJ posted a pic a while back that shows what a well use nozzle looks like. It is amazing how much it opens up.


Awesome on the PETG. I also notice that is is really shiny too.

 

[Ericpwp]

Yeah, the petg really looks like it fuses well. I ordered some new nozzles, as well as a bowden hot end.

 

[1911ly]

Here is the test print of the first RPi case. Looks pretty good. I need to move the HDMI jack a little. And I made a few changes to the lid for a tighter fit. It is a very light case.

 

[RobbyMaQ]

Awesome. Thank you. I ordered the parts from Amazon already so I can just put the printer together with the parts already upgraded.

let me know if you have any problems assembling...

Remember, belts only need to be 'tight enough' to not slip. They don't need to be super tight. When moving the axis by hand, you feel any binding or skips? then it is too tight. Make sure your motors are NOT plugged in when moving axis' quickly because the motor can generate current and backfeed the mainboard.

Do your best to get the Z rail (vertical) plumb and X gantry square to the Z. You don't need to go crazy with squares and jigs, just a pretty good eyeball on it. The locking washers on the z Rail hold down bolts (underneath the printer) are not recommended.

Decent build video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMPanw2am8
It should take about an hour to assemble, though first time you will probably take a bit longer

 

[Sailor]

My printer is still not up and running, have been distracted with many things, with the house, parents health and work stuff. Just looked at that relay tonight and there is no way my 12 AWG wire will fit in the holes of the relay that the connectors were using, drill them out or just find some more connectors?

 

[1911ly]

My printer is still not up and running, have been distracted with many things, with the house, parents health and work stuff. Just looked at that relay tonight and there is no way my 12 AWG wire will fit in the holes of the relay that the connectors were using, drill them out or just find some more connectors?

Prune the wires back enough to fill the hole and you will be ok. You will have more metal in the hole then what that connector has. if you can drill it out that works to.
Those connectors are cheap, but they suck. It would not bother me to connect direct.

I like to use silicone wire on my heat bed. The jacket doesn't melt/wilt when you solder it and it is really flexible. Search Ebay/Amazon for RC battery wire and it usually pops up.

If there is enough room between the connections you can use screws and nuts with a connector on the end of the wire? I'd use brass screws & nuts. You can solder the screw to the PCB. Drill the board for the screw. I would not rely on a soldered screw for support.

 

[Ericpwp]

My new nozzles arrived today along with some of these solid bearings https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XPRCMJS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It looks like it is printing much better.

 

[Jaredjosh]

My new nozzles arrived today along with some of these solid bearings https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XPRCMJS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It looks like it is printing much better.

Wow the price on those Igus bearings have really came down.

 

[Jaredjosh]

On another note I tried a titanium nozzle today because, well, I found them for an awesome price and I thought what the heck. I'm glad I only bought one because when the cooling fan kicked on it would pull the heat out of the titanium nozzle faster than the speed of light. Needless to say I went back to stainless. I've had really good luck with the stainless and have yet to wear one out. Usually I have to replace the stainless ones after a very long service time due to them clogging up vs wearing out.

 

[RobbyMaQ]

On another note I tried a titanium nozzle today because, well, I found them for an awesome price and I thought what the heck. I'm glad I only bought one because when the cooling fan kicked on it would pull the heat out of the titanium nozzle faster than the speed of light. Needless to say I went back to stainless. I've had really good luck with the stainless and have yet to wear one out. Usually I have to replace the stainless ones after a very long service time due to them clogging up vs wearing out.

Ive had no luck with any sort of steel... Always way too cool and ramping heat adjusting pid tuning etc still results in poor quality and underextrusion. So i just run brass and replace as needed.

 

[Jaredjosh]

Ive had no luck with any sort of steel... Always way too cool and ramping heat adjusting pid tuning etc still results in poor quality and underextrusion. So i just run brass and replace as needed.

That's the exact problem I had with the titanium. It would cool off so fast the extrusion would all but stop if I ran the cooling fan. Now stainless work great in my machine and I really don't notice a difference in my prints vs brass. The only difference I notice is that I can run the stainless forever vs the brass wearing out quickly.

 

[Gabriel]

Put the Ender 2 together. It seemed pretty straight forward. Had an issue with the bed being really wobbly, but saw on a video that there is an eccentric nut on the inside wheel that fixed it.

I'm so new to this I didn't even know how to get the nozzle down to the bed and start leveling or even how to feed the filament or start a print. After watching a few videos on Youtube I have it printing the model that came on the mini SD card right now and amazingly it seems to be doing fine.

I will say that the it seems like the bed leveling would be easier if there were four adjusters, but I eventually go it pretty close.

This video, besides being horrifically long, was very helpful. I would suggest to anyone putting one of these together for the first time to watch a shorter video and then if your still having issues, slide the slider around on this one to wherever he is on the build and get the info you need. He talks a lot and asks a lot of questions to the people following his build (when it was live), which pretty much answered all the questions I had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr1M_aFbWqQ

Thanks everyone here for the help also. This is way out of my wheelhouse.

 

[RobbyMaQ]

Put the Ender 2 together. It seemed pretty straight forward. Had an issue with the bed being really wobbly, but saw on a video that there is an eccentric nut on the inside wheel that fixed it.

I'm so new to this I didn't even know how to get the nozzle down to the bed and start leveling or even how to feed the filament or start a print. After watching a few videos on Youtube I have it printing the model that came on the mini SD card right now and amazingly it seems to be doing fine.

I will say that the it seems like the bed leveling would be easier if there were four adjusters, but I eventually go it pretty close.

This video, besides being horrifically long, was very helpful. I would suggest to anyone putting one of these together for the first time to watch a shorter video and then if your still having issues, slide the slider around on this one to wherever he is on the build and get the info you need. He talks a lot and asks a lot of questions to the people following his build (when it was live), which pretty much answered all the questions I had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr1M_aFbWqQ

Thanks everyone here for the help also. This is way out of my wheelhouse.

Baby steps man! Congrats! You you learned about eccentric nuts, to help with tightening and loosening wheels on v slots... this is where, if you tighten them too much, you will feel the motor/belt/axis 'catch' or 'skip'. If so, back off just a little bit. Bed is awkward because of the springs. the heavier spring will help to keep the bed level long term over a bunch of prints.
You will feel the 'steps' in the motor rotation a hair... but pauses, or ruts, or binding in spots is too tight.

Now those eccentric nuts are found on the other axis' also. the printhead has one, it's the center nut underneath the other two. This is your x axis. Try to wiggle the printhead, or rock it CW/CCW. if it rocks, then tighten it slightly. There are none on the Z axis for this small printer.

That vid is James from print n play. He rocks a stock ender, and recently just printed a SNAPPY (completely 3d printed printer) using his ender 2 for about 90% of the printing. Really nice guy. I did some graphics for a mini arcade cabinet he built for Uncle Jessy on Youtube.

And YES that is the biggest complaint with this printer, is the 3 leveling knobs vs 4. but when you get the hang of it, you'll gain confidence in moving the bed forward, adjusting the spring nut, then sliding back underneath the point to check level. after a bunch you'll get the hang of how much adjustment you need... Key with this printer is to level precisely on those 3 screw points and everything will be level (keeping in mind adjusting one screw affects the height on the other two), so always do a 2nd or 3rd pass as needed. again, over time/experience, much like a particular firearm, you'll get to know how it runs...

Welcome to the club... learn a little at a time... sit and be mesmerized as the thing prints... years later we all still do it. you're off to a great start with this little printer! I'm pretty excited to see you enjoying this... it's not huge build area, but you'll use it a lot!

Now to learn slicer settings...

I'll try to save you a little time. I wouldn't go out and buy Simplify 3d just yet... cura and Slic3r prusa edition seem to be competing just fine and both are free.
The stock Ender 2 cura profiles will work fairly well. retraction around 6.5-7mm at around 60mm/s.
Slower speeds will always result in better quality prints. While you can try, stock firmware probably dosn't allow you to exceed print speeds of 60mm/s. Most prints I do are between 30-50mm/s print speed.
STRONG parts prints should be done at fatter layer heights. where as more delicate detailed prints can be done at lower heights like .12 or .08.
Most print in between at .2 layer height.
The z rods and stepper config mean you should print layer heights in multiples of .04 (so, .08, .12, .16, .20, .24, .28). you shouldn't exceed your layer height by more than 75% of your nozzle width. shorthand: fine = .12, medium = .2, fast = .28
Double check the spare nozzle they sent with the printer... it is likely a .3 nozzle, and not a .4 like the stock nozzle included with the printer.
Most infill can be between 15-25%. Anything beyond 70% is damn near 100% infill anyways. common mistake is to add too much infill.
Don't worry about jerk, acceleration, etc until you've printed a bunch and understand the basics.

 

[1911ly]

Awesome Gabe. They are a lot of fun for sure. You wil get the hang of things in no time.

 

[Gabriel]

OK, so I printed the test model with the included filament and it seemed to print fine... then my five year old decided he wanted to test how strong it was and smashed it with a wooden mallet (without really saying anything other than "can I see that for a minute?" ).

Not being able to really figure out the slicing thing after trying to figure out how to print a simple ninja for the kid, I downloaded a 20mm test cube. Since I didn't have to worry about doing anything to it other than loading it into Cura and changing the file type. I printed it and this is what I got...

Two dimensions are pretty close to 20mm, but one is only 18.5mm ( which may be why the X is off center ). The print also isn't very solid, but I noticed afterword in Cura, the default filament diameter is 2.85 and I am using 1.75mm from Hatchbox. I don't know if that caused an issue with how quickly the extruder was pushing filament or not.

 

[1911ly]

Change the nozzle diameter to 1.75 and reprint. There are a lot of things gone wrong on that print. I would assume it is the filament setting.

Make sure your nozzle diameter it's set correctly to. It takes a awhile to get things dialed in. We can help you threw it.

 

[Ericpwp]

Nozzle diameter should be .4, right? Filament 1.75.

 

[1911ly]

Nozzle diameter should be .4, right? Filament 1.75.

If it is the stock nozzle it should be. I have and use down to .1 nozzles. Most machines come with a .4 installed as far as I know.

 

[Gabriel]

I think the nozzle on it is .4, but the spare is .3.

I have a stupid question about Cura. Is it my imagination or is there more than one Cura program? The one I used last night made finding the things I needed to change easy, but the one I kept opening today was not user friendly at all. It took me a few minutes to realize I had two different Cura programs downloaded (I must have downloaded one of them a long time ago). I have a photo of both opened. The one that is full screen is the one I used las night. The one I have inset I couldn't find how to even use.