Frank

We’d like to thank you for joining us. This is episode 73 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by
amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience. Our panelists
this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends Chris Weber, Andy Cottom, Kevin Buckner,
and we have a returning guest in Ryan Phillips. How’s everyone doing today?

Andy

Hello, doing good.

Chris

Howdy duty

Frank

Why did I expect something more enthusiastic after? Oh, it’s because I tripped twice, right? I tripped a couple of times.

Chris

What that wasn’t enthusiastic

Ryan

I think it’s because you gave us a pop quiz and we weren’t ready.

Frank

Well, that’s the point. That’s why it’s called a pop quiz, because it pops you in the mouth.

Chris

Oh, I thought it was about I thought it was asking about different kind of pops because there’s like the pop that’s your father
There’s the pop that is the noise and then there’s the pop that sits in your cupboard and
Pop when you open it

Kevin

Well, see what when I was in junior high, I
had a math teacher. He was one of those individuals who erroneously called soda pop. And so he would
tell us a day in advance. Yeah, tomorrow we’re going to have a pop quiz. That means you before
class you go to the vending machine and get yourself a pop and bring it to the quiz. Okay.

Chris

Like our teacher that uh, let let me be late the first period if I if I brought her a diet coke. Yeah, that was great

Andy

Oh my God, it was like every single day with him. I was in that class. You would always show up like halfway into the class, but you’d always have a soda.

Kevin

Anyway…

Andy

That brings back memories thinking about that, Chrissy. That’s good time. Good time.

Frank

It’s interesting to me how conversations like this kind of spread the way they do.

Kevin

yeah, um

Frank

I just heard another podcast where they had the same conversation about soda pop or coke or pop
or soda or whatever else anybody calls it. I’ve never understood this conversation,
but then I’ve always called it soda pop when I haven’t called it by its brand name.

Kevin

And see, I can understand Soda, or Pop, or Soda Pop, what I don’t understand is calling all soda Coke.

Chris

Right because

Andy

And for me it’s Coke or Soda. Not really pop. Pop sounds weird to me.

Frank

But do you call sprite coke?

Andy

Yeah.
Gimme a Coke.
I’ll take Sprite.

Chris

That’s strange

Frank

You’re weird. I mean, I always knew that you weren’t anomaly Andy, but that’s pushing it.

Chris

Yeah, ever since I went to Florida and they called the you know everywhere I went they called it pop
Um, I just started calling my dad pops and it’s been fun

Andy

There you go. Don’t you hate it when you go to a restaurant and you ask for a Coke and they say all they got is Pepsi and you said that’s fine because I guess that doesn’t sound that funny as it is in my head, but it’s hilarious in my head.
That’s what you guys get for not being up here.

Chris

Well, and that’s the thing
Pepsi is not fine. Give me a give me a doctor pepper and if you say Mr. Pib, I swear

Chris

Yeah, it kind of

Frank

I’m a fan of the Coke Zero lately, myself.

Andy

Yep. I agree. Although I’ve noticed a lot. I drink Coke Zero all the time now and a lot of restaurants are now carrying Coke Zero pretty normally. I’m kind of impressed by that.
I don’t like Coke as much as Coke Zero. I prefer Coke Zero. It’s kind of nice, especially since I’ve got a weight issue and it’s kind of nice to be my normal soda is calorie free.

Frank

Um. watching my sugar has had an effect on me where I’ll still drink the regular soda every
once in a while. I don’t want to say I get the spins because that’s not it, but I can definitely
tell the difference between the sugar that is used, the sweetener that is used. So there’s that.

Chris

Yeah, I don’t know about you guys but the old fillers like aspartame
Um, they always had like this funny
Horrible aftertaste for me. I cannot I can always tell right away and I don’t I never liked it

Andy

But you said you like Coke Zero though, right?

Chris

No, I had I haven’t no, I don’t like coke Zero.

Andy

Oh, I thought that was one. I thought that was you that said that. So I’m going to say that’s what they flavor Zero with, I believe is aspartame.

Ryan

I think that’s actually Diet Coke if I’m not mistaken.

Chris

That’s diet coke. Yeah

Kevin

It’s actually both, if you read the ingredients.

Chris

Hmm, but that would be why I don’t like that would be

Andy

I don’t have enough desire to go grab can check. Oh, you know what? Here’s can right here. Let’s see Coke Zero.
I’m not seeing it on the label right off the bat.

Frank

sweeteners in the form of vanilla and

Chris

Yeah, I thought they used a a mixture of Splenda and aspartame on this

Andy

Yeah, aspartame. It’s the, wow, it’s the fourth ingredient on here.

Chris

Ooh

Kevin

Yup.

Frank

as people look for it on the label, I’m sure.

Andy

Right after Phosphoric Acid. Well, I mean they have to order it in the amount that it’s used so water caramel color Phosphoric Acid and aspartame.

Frank

Oh, okay.
Not actual caramel because that would be sugar.

Chris

Just the color

Ryan

If anybody’s kind of a fan of the Mr. Pib, Dr. Pepper family,
there is a popular drink out here.
Called cheer wine.

Chris

Yes, cheer wine is delicious

Ryan

Or cherry. No, it’s cheer wine.

Chris

It’s cheer wine. Yeah

Chris

I used to I used to have a boss from the North Carolina
And he would brag about how good cheer wine was and so he would always bring back
A pack of it when he came back from seeing his family

Ryan

It’s basically the same thing as cherry Dr. Pepper.

Chris

And I’m not a fan of cherry flavoring at all, but cheer wine is delicious

Ryan

Yeah, it just has, it’s like, I mean, I know that Dr. Pepper is already cherry flavored or something like that, but yeah, it just has a more cherry flavor than usual.

Frank

Utah for some reason has fallen into the
mixed soda hole where you start with your base soda and well, they had all the mixers out for
a while, but there are businesses that have been sprite. They’ve popped up all over the place
where that’s all they do is the mixed drinks.

Ryan

They’re doing soda mixed drinks.

Chris

Yeah, there’s some of them that sell cookies on the side or do both and then there’s some that do just the drinks

Ryan

Kevin, do you remember I told you back in like 2008 that they should do that.

Kevin

Yeah.

Chris

Yep, and if you’d have done it yourself, you’d be you’d be a rich man right now

Frank

Every location that pops up has got a line probably about a quarter mile away from the
order location because they don’t have speakers at any of them. I’d say half the daylight hours.
They don’t have enough locations and they’re everywhere right now.

Chris

And I I do find it ironic that the Utah
Church authorities, you know
Kind of were like, yeah caffeine’s really not that bad
As soon as all of these places started popping up and being really popular. I thought that was fun timing

Frank

They’ve always, maybe not always, they have a steak and Pepsi though have had since we were kids.

Kevin

They actually, they actually said that before the places started popping up because
I was on my mission when, um, during a general conference, President Hinckley said that,
uh, he said regarding colas and other caffeinated beverages, there has been much debate about
what the church’s official stance is.
And I want to tell you right now that the official stance of the church is that we do
not have an official stance.
If you don’t feel comfortable drinking it, don’t.

Frank

and don’t. And that’s fair.

Kevin

If you do feel comfortable drinking it, just remember moderation in all things.

Ryan

I think it just comes down to judge, you know, keeping an eye on your vices.

Frank

And be mindful. Yeah. Well, anything can be a vice.

Kevin

Right.

Frank

The man you were just talking about talked about how at the age of 90, his greatest
vice was raspberries. I wouldn’t mind having that as my only vice to be fair. But

Andy

That, that would be almost a good problem and the kind of food we have nowadays.

Ryan

Mine is jelly beans.

Frank

right, right. There’s a lot more sugar, not more processed sugar in the jelly beans,
I can see that being a problem. What else was there? Oh, there’s, it’s probably apocryphal,
but I do remember growing up, there was a story of somebody close to the president of the church
who had a bishop or somebody who drank soda pop regularly. And she went and talked to the president
and he looks at her and goes, so mind your own business. And that was in the 80s. So
yeah, the overriding important aspect there is be mindful. If all you do is lift off her soda,
you’re going to have kidney stones and diet dehydration. So

Kevin

Well, you won’t die of dehydration because it is hydrating, just it’s not as hydrating
as water, but yeah, you will get kidney stones.

Frank

fair. When I was when I wasn’t MEPS, there was a guy who they do a UA there. And he came out and
it was brown. The cup was brown. It wasn’t just dark, it was brown. And the the
the corpsman looked at him and said, Are you feeling okay?

Kevin

That’s a serious problem.

Frank

Yes, they made him drink a gallon of water, and then put him on an IV, I think. And he didn’t go
to boot camp that weekend.

Ryan

Are you at all worried people are going to say
When are they going to talk about 3D Printing?

Frank

You obviously have not listened to the backlog.

Kevin

I was actually about to, I was actually about to say so 3D printing.

Frank

Yeah, well, we did invite you to follow up on what your investigation with your printer is.

Ryan

Which means you’re fully responsible for any mishaps that I cause here.

Chris

That’s our fault Frank way to go

Frank

Okay, I mean, you can sue the amateur 3d podcast and you can wait for the your whole
life to get a payout from it because there’s no revenue. So

Ryan

I don’t have to sue in revenue I could sue you in things that have no material.

Chris

He’s gonna shut us down

Kevin

He will dismerch our good name.

Ryan

Yeah, I’ll see you for something else I’ll come up with.

Frank

you’ll figure it out when you get there. That’s fair. Let’s

Chris

We’ll burn that bridge when we we’ll burn that bridge when you cross it

Ryan

Well, like 3d prints or something. Like, you owe me 3d prints.

Frank

yeah, I think this is the first time we’ve ever talked about burning the bridge before we even
got there.

Andy

That’s true.

Ryan

Well, if it’s a 3d printed bridge, it won’t burn, it’ll just melt.

Kevin

Plastic does have an ignition point.

Andy

PLA can catch fire.

Frank

Yeah, it needs to be much hotter than most of us…

Ryan

Well, it’s going to be a lot hotter than my fire levels I’m just going to say that.

Frank

Okay, fair.

Andy

Electrical Shorts will ignite PLA.

Ryan

Electric Schwartz?

Chris

Now I’m thinking I’m thinking of electric shorts, you know the kinds with the battery. Yeah

Ryan

Oh short shorts.
I think you said Schwartz like this was some sort of like.

Frank

a crossover with a crossover with not Star Wars.

Ryan

Um, do we need to talk about last time on Batman.
For anyone.

Frank

If you want to, if you want to summarize, I mean, I’m assuming our 40 listeners listen
to us sequentially so

Ryan

Well,

Chris

Oh, he’s talking about me more specifically I think because the next episode airs tomorrow so I’m completely in the dark

Ryan

Okay, well,
yeah, so my thing was just generally just being new to the 3d printer that I have some of the difficulties that I was having with largely getting spaghetti prints and having curling issues, two very common issues in general I believe I we could say.
But, you know, just trying to decipher what was going on there.
There were some interesting factors like how it was both brittle and also curling.
So, and I posted a picture in the discord of my most recent adventure as a result.

Chris

It’s a boat

Ryan

It’s a little boat like it’s supposed to be like a Roman temple.
And it’s technically it’s one of my students designs.
Although I do have my own design but I was trying to do this to, you know, make it more exciting for my class.
And the. So what I was looking at what sort of was the takeaway was that I would focus on reducing the fan speed and adding supports and
sorry, these adding the like the helper dis.
So the helper dis work well, this thing is well curled and it did not dislodge from the plate.
On the corners, and also along the sides intermittently.

Andy

Where are you placing your helper desks?

Frank

like the long side or the narrow side or all of them. Okay.

Ryan

Long side of course.

Andy

Okay, so.
Don’t feel like you can make the helper discs pretty large because this, this print that you’re showing us looks, you know, very much like a skateboard with the way it’s curled up and the deck of one at least.
But if you were using large enough helper discs on the corners, that should have held it down.
Now there’s a lot more questions here as to why PLA is curling so badly.
I don’t think you got very good filament with looking at this print.

Ryan

Well, I took the fan speed down to 30%, which I believe was your recommendation.
And other than that, the only thing I could imagine would be the only other factor is the heat of the filament or the heat of the plate.

Andy

What, what were you running your bed at what temperature? Do you remember anything?

Ryan

I mean, I just let it be it’s default value, which in this case is like to what is it 230 or so.

Chris

What no no no no no the head

Andy

I think you’re talking about the head, not the bed.

Ryan

Oh, sorry, I thought you said that one.
No, the that wait no I think that’s well I know I don’t know okay I don’t know the temperature of the head.

Andy

Yeah, if the bed was 230 degrees, you wouldn’t have been able to print anything but a goo.

Frank

normally the bed doesn’t go much higher. Like, I think that my

Chris

Than 70 C yeah

Ryan

No, no Fahrenheit not Celsius.

Frank

ah, sorry, we we we talk in terms of Celsius here because it’s superior.

Ryan

Okay.

Chris

Go go metric buddy

Ryan

You don’t, you don’t, you don’t value the body temperature base of a cow.

Chris

So
Oh jeez

Andy

Because it was a staid liquid and just melted all over.

Andy

Oh, okay.
So 270 Fahrenheit is a little warm for a bed.

Ryan

No, no, I said like 230.
Or 230 still that that’s a little bit that’s about boiling right there that’s still a little bit warm there.

Ryan

It might it might have been a little bit lower I can’t remember exactly it might have been as low as maybe 210

Andy

Yeah, now if that was the case, and you are because that that I would because in the chat here, I recommended you might want to warm up your bread if bed if you’re still getting curling, but you’re running it that hot.
I doubt that that yeah that’s got to be filament man that is just got to be crappy filament something’s going on with the filament.

Ryan

is PLA the cheap stuff I don’t recall.

Andy

It is yes, but it is the easier stuff to print cheap does not necessarily mean bad in this case PLA is more brittle, because it’s more it’s hard, and it’s what’s it called when it is deal basically a liquid.
The rubber band around a PLA part over time the rubber band will crush it, even if it’s not that tight.

Chris

Oh you mean ductile?

Andy

Yeah, yeah, it’s very much like that so it’s got its problems but when it comes to printing things like the model you’re showing here you’ve chosen the exact type of plastic you should be using.
But this looks like this looks like ABS but brittler.

Frank

So there’s a strange thing and I know that because you’re much closer to sea level than
we are the temperatures aren’t necessarily going to be as much of a translation to or from
4,000 feet above sea level. But you’ve got things like when we suggest 200 we meant Celsius and
that’s going to be closer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Andy

But we’re also talking about bed temperature, not the temperature at the head.

Frank

Yeah, the bed temperature at you said 50

Chris

So if if you have to increase your nozzle temperature

Chris

Above 210 to get anything decent you might have old filament that needs to be reconditioned

Andy

Or something going wrong with your thermistor or coupler if you use a coupler.

Frank

So, so, okay, I was kind of looking at the wrong place, but I would say for your bed temperature
Fahrenheit started closer to 100 and maybe go up a little from there.

Ryan

Wouldn’t I thought a higher temperature would be more conducive to what to this process though because I thought that would keep it softer…

Andy

No, you’re right for the for the bed for the problem you’re seeing here with the curling, yes, a higher temperature would be good.
But from what you’ve described you’ve already printed it at a higher temperature than what we probably would have recommended for this.
I mean you might go that high if you’re like trying to print ABS or like nylon on an open bed you might go that high but

Frank

So, so, so you said 50 degrees Fahrenheit is where your bed is set, right?

Andy

no 230

Ryan

So somewhere between 210 and 230.

Frank

230? Why am I, my brain isn’t liking me.

Chris

Because 230 is 230 C is what’s what we’ve printed stuff out

Frank

Okay, so that’s about 100 Celsius and that is hotter than
I would do it.

Andy

Yeah, yeah, but I want to.

Kevin

Yeah, that is still way too hot. I think.

Andy

Yeah, I want to point out that not even that super hot temperature helped him with his curling though.

Frank

Yeah, it might have almost been too high.

Chris

Yeah, I’m saying he’s he’s probably got some old filament
Because those are symptoms of old filament if if it if it if it pops it doesn’t stick to the layers very well if it’s brittle

Andy

And it doesn’t seem to be popping if you look at the front of the roof of his little model building here.

Ryan

The roof is perfect.

Andy

It looks nice and smooth. Yeah, it looks nice and smooth so I don’t think he’s got water in his filament. I don’t think it’s popping.

Chris

And and it curls

Chris

Oh
Oh, oh no, it’s designed like that on purpose. Okay. I thought that was little smuggy. It’s little smudgy blubbies

Frank

Yeah, it looks like there’s still support structure on the bottom side of the overhang, but

Ryan

Well, yeah, that’s, that’s the sort of the new problem is the I in adding the supports, the supports were completely.

Ryan

They introduced a completely new problem, which is

Andy

Yeah, well this particular model would be better printed where you cut the roof off and then you print the roof flat.

Ryan

that’s what I did on my previous iteration and it worked okay, but it still had, you know, so, so, you know, trying different things.

Andy

Yeah, I mean there is options to get around this if you did want to print it as one piece for the listeners he’s got, if you imagine a building he’s got a ground floor and then a roof and then instead of walls there’s pillars all around.

Frank

Looks very much like the like a pantheon.

Ryan

There are calls in there too, but that you can’t see them because I couldn’t get the, I couldn’t get the supports completely removed enough because they’re in there and I can’t get at them and they’re to

Chris

Yeah, because they’re between the pillars, huh, right

Andy

Yeah, now something like that you probably could have bridged in between each one of those pieces it does look like around the outside you would have needed supports but in the middle there.
You could use to support blocker in the software to block supports from being generated within the center and then just relied on bridging techniques to compensate for that but if you were printing this particular building.
I would have just cut the roof off and printed the roof flat and then glueed it back together that way you don’t have to worry about supports at all. Yeah, and it would have came out a lot better but

Frank

Like you’ve done.

Ryan

Yeah, and, and I don’t know if you recall what I what I was saying that I did on my previous attempt where I had like actually modeled in little tabs to snap it back into place.

Andy

on your previous one, yeah.
Yeah, and that’s a great idea for when you need more control over your supports, but also try to leave a little bit of a gap in between the top of the support and the surface it’s touching, try to leave at least one layer gap in between the two that’ll help out as well.

Frank

Of course, all that only helps when he’s getting good prints in the first place.

Andy

Yeah, yeah, that’s you got a good point where there’s a lot more problems here than that.

Chris

Um, so art. Yeah, so our

Ryan

Well, this, this just made me feel like supports are unusable in general because they’re, they’re so difficult to remove.
And, and because like even where I can remove it it’s like not like I’d have to sandpaper it down.

Andy

Yeah, well using surface cutters and sandpaper is a normal tool for us when it comes to printing supports there are numbers of ways you can print supports without worrying about marring the underside of your building.
If you have a.

Chris

Uh, and you can also change the density of your supports too. Sorry, Andy

Andy

No, no, you’re fine using different materials for your supports if you can do multi materials on your printer you could print the support with let’s say a PLA print with PETG supports or vice versa because PLA and PET don’t stick together.
So that way your supports could be you know 100% coverage on the surface and it won’t actually stick that works really good or using a water dilutable filament like hips does work really good but that kind of filament is hard to use because it absorbs water so quickly and deforms.

Frank

And it degrades.

Andy

Yeah, really badly.

Ryan

Yeah, the, the, the first option in this particular case, I don’t think would work just because it’s that there’s there’s also like a room in there.
That’s open. So, even, even if it was more easily removable, like it still wouldn’t really be removable, because I wouldn’t there, it would print the inside of that, and then I’d have to try to reach in and snap it all out.

Frank

Hemostats. Exacto blades.

Andy

Yeah, water soluble, or just relying on on bridging, but I think would be the only way to get in there.

Ryan

I don’t think this particular one is a multi filament printer though so, but that’s very interesting to know about.

Andy

Well, like you said earlier, this particular model is just not a one that’s really good to print as one piece, and it’s better to cut it in half.

Ryan

I’m, I’m okay with those kinds of solutions as long as they’re not, you know, cut it into 20.

Chris

All right, well wait till you get into cosplay

Andy

No kidding, no kidding.

Ryan

So, other than that, that was a sort of my only real result.
The only thing I was really working on.

Andy

I think trying some brand new PLA to see what it does.
It was is something you might want to look at because all your descriptions of the brittleness behind it, the warping of your of the print, especially with high bed temperatures like what you are using.
All this sounds like you just got old bad PLA probably PLA that was back in the beginning when they were building PLA and the formulations weren’t really zeroed in very well and you could get crappy PLA even though it was brand new.
I wouldn’t be surprised that something like that’s going on with this because looking at that print, it should not have warped with your bed that high of a temperature and yeah.
Now supports are a totally different issue.

Frank

How thick is this ground portion of this?

Ryan

Oh, um, it’s, it’s at least half of that base that you see. Oh, that’s the other thing is I can’t even remove the ground, the base that it prints underneath it.

Andy

Oh, that’s your.

Andy

Frank

That’s on a raft.

Andy

That’s your raft.

Ryan

Yeah, yeah, the raft is just stuck there I can’t get it off. I tried breaking it off and then I ended up just breaking off the end, the ends, the edges.

Chris

Okay, so for a model like this you may want to go with a brim instead of a raft

Ryan

A brim. Okay.

Andy

A raft is like the nuclear option for bed adhesion.

Chris

Well, well what I use rafts for is for stuff that has very very
Very small points, you know that are touching the the build build plate, you know, like like
A fish is a great example. It’s it’s it’s rounded on
almost every side
So you want to put it on a raft so that the whatever little rounded point is going to
Catch or or like a ball if I’m printing a ball you want to put a ra.. put that on a raft too
um
Because it just has such a small space that it contacts with the surface with your uh bed plate

Ryan

I had just read that rafts were supposed to help against curling so that’s why I’m using one.

Frank

And they do typically, I actually thought

Chris

And masking tape does too

Ryan

I’ve got masking tape.

Frank

now that I’ve zoomed in, I can see the difference
between their build plate, they’re using the masking tape method, Chris.

Chris

Okay
Um

Frank

I can tell the difference between the raft and the base, now that I’ve downloaded the
image instead of just looking at it in the discord.

Chris

But you can also use the option Andy uses with hairspray

Andy

Works great. You wouldn’t need any kind of any kind of bed adhesion support if you use hairspray and nylon based hairspray.

Ryan

Um, is that the same kind that you would find it like just the Dollar Tree?

Andy

Yep, yep, yep, just just look at the ingredients if it’s got nylon is one of the ingredients you’re probably good, you should be good.

Frank

If you’re spending more than $10 for a
smallish can, you’re spending way too much for a hairspray on your printer.

Andy

Yeah, it’s like $2 for a can that’s you know 11 ounces like this one here I got I like this rave or from Walmart that works really good I’ve heard a lot of people use Aquanet because it’s a nylon based one I don’t like Aquanet I like this one better.
And they’re both nylon based and that tells me there is quite a difference between nylon based ones. So this one is the one I’ve got most of my knowledge about which is Rave 4 from Walmart.
And it works beautifully when you hit your bed heats up it becomes extremely sticky, and the plastic melts right into it, and then as the bed cools.
It becomes not sticky anymore and a lot of the components will pop off themselves. So I’ve like right now I’m printing component drawers, and they’ve got a lot of surface area, and even the boxes for these component drawers are, you know, 80 by 120 millimeters
touching the build plate. And when the beds cool when I go to get these, they’re not attached to the bed anymore. But if the bed is warm, I cannot pull these off the bed.

Chris

Okay, so

Andy

The hairspray works really neat with the way it works with heat and even though you get hairspray on the bottom of the component it’s completely water soluble
quickly water soluble. So every one of my prints when I’m done I bring it into the bathroom here and I’ve rent some water off of it and just rub it with my hands for five seconds or so and all the hairsprays washed off of it so that’s the minimal for this and that’s why I always say always use hairspray

Kevin

And I guess that could be very well why you remember I tried hairspray and said it did not work
When I got the hairspray, Andy, the I thought you had said that it needed to be vinyl based so I got vinyl based hairspray

Andy

What, what did I just say just now let me double check maybe I’m saying the wrong thing.

Kevin

You just you said nylon

Andy

Nylon let me let me read the ingredients here to double check because maybe I’m saying the wrong thing today, vinyl based.

Frank

And everybody who uses hairspray is going, they put plastic in my hairspray.

Andy

Yeah, so every time I said nylon.
I meant vinyl there. Yeah, vinyl. It is definitely vinyl based. Thanks for correcting me on that.

Chris

Chris

But you want to remember
That if you’re using hairspray
It does have different reactions to flat plate beds versus textured beds if you have a textured
Yeah, if you have a textured bed
It will hold like none other and you need maybe a small mallet or something like that to get your print off of the bed

Andy

Do you remember when you tried that was your bed still hot when you tried that Chris.

Chris

Oh, no, I let it cool down and it was still stuck like a

Andy

Did you.

Chris

Stuck like an angry monkey

Andy

I’d be careful. Yeah, yeah, so do you know if you got a textured bed or is it a flat bed.

Chris

Mine is textured

Andy

No, no, I mean that Ryan’s.

Andy

Is it flat. No, but does it have you did say it had you did say it had a removable sheet, didn’t you on the bed.

Ryan

That’s sad that I put down masking tape.

Andy

Oh, okay, so masking tape would be the difference here. Yeah, if you were spraying your bed, you wouldn’t be using masking tape.
You’d be putting it directly on the bed so you’d spray a good like two layers of hairspray about the amount you’d use in your hair enough to coat it once and then coat it again after you got some on there like like I do I just do one coat after that but if it’s fresh.
I usually put two coats down before starting and and yeah, but when you do use hairspray on flat beds like that you can get prints like my phone case here that’s actually shiny.
It’s so flat. So there are definitely some benefits to this.

Ryan

So don’t use it on the masking tape.

Andy

Yeah, all those are like that. Yeah, don’t use it on the masking tape.

Chris

So take the tape off retram your bed try the
Um try the hairspray and then lower the temperature on your on your bed
Um and get new filament. Is that that’s what we’re all suggesting

Frank

I actually have a couple of different ideas rather than putting all the plastic into a
a full big print like this in your your 3d image designer just create like a
square about the size of the base and make it a 16th of an inch thick it
doesn’t need to be much and use that for your test surface while you’re trying
some things out that way you’re not putting a bunch of plastic into a whole
print to have it fail like this

Ryan

You know, that was another really interesting thing about this, this little building used a ton of plastic.

Frank

probably because the the supports were added and

Ryan

So I just wasn’t expecting it to be as thick as it printed it almost it almost just seemed like a block of plastic.

Chris

Okay, so how’s your infill

Andy

Your infill might be. Yeah.

Frank

yeah adjust the infill on your

Chris

I don’t ever go above. Yeah, I never go above 30.

Andy

Most of us run a run at 20%. Yeah.
Unless you need it solid.

Frank

yeah I usually don’t I usually don’t do anything more than 20% well no I do
closer to 10% on my infill but so yeah your infill we all concluded your infill is

Andy

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Frank

probably solid on the supports which will add a lot of weight and use a lot of

Andy

100% infill.

Frank

plastic as far as the as far as…

Chris

And you want to use slight you want to use slightly less infill on your supports if you’re using those by the way. Yes

Andy

You shouldn’t have any infill on your supports. Your infills are single line.

Chris

Oh, well, it’s got support density is what it’s called

Andy

Ah, yes, yes, I see.

Frank

it depends on what you’re doing too because he doesn’t have the tree supports the
way we do with cura

Kevin

I love tree supports

Chris

Tree supports are awesome

Frank

they’re awesome um um I do have another thought as far as the curling itself with
that flat piece I was just talking about um try slowing down see if slowing down
will change this at all I wonder if it’s going so fast that it’s not quite cool
before it comes back with another piece of plastic

Chris

Well, then wouldn’t he want to turn up his fan speed

Andy

Do you know how fast you’re running to begin with here because like somewhere around like 40 to 80 would be kind of a good range, sometimes even the lowest 30 millimeters a second.

Chris

We’re talking about the machine we’re talking about machine movement not the fan

Ryan

Um, no, I’m not familiar with that setting.

Chris

Okay

Frank

the problem as you’re learning is there’s a lot of dials to turn when it comes to
um I think you can dial it in this this is actually really why we talk about test
prints um I would be surprised if there wasn’t some test prints specifically for
your printer that you could find those I’m going to go back to you should find
those and hammer the hell out of them until you get everything dialed in
because what they’ll do is they’ll test your um your speed they’ll test your
temperatures they’ll test just everything that you’re working with and um any one of
those things being off by enough will cause issues that are just hard to track down um
there’s issues that are hard to track down when you have all of the test print
structures and they just make it so much easier to identify where an issue is
like if it’s speed like it it feels to me like it might be speed just looking at the
picture um yeah and if you’re going too fast and you’re getting this curling like
even if you cut it in half then the roof is going to be curled up too and that’s going
to make it hard to put them together um yeah I feel like that’s where a good place to
start I wasn’t sure I saw flow issues but it looks like some of your support structure
is still sticking to the sides even of the roof um but…

Chris

Yeah, so to fix that turned it turned down the infill density on your supporters supports

Frank

I don’t see I don’t see like
any uh we call them pimples when it starts a new layer there’s a little extra right where
it starts and where it ends because of some overlap um but there’s also indicators of
too much flow if it’s there you’ll see lots of plastic coming out it actually the print
itself looks like it’s in pretty good shape as far as like looking at these pillars they’re
nice and smooth it looks like you’re running at a high resolution the… I don’t know what
could be fixed there but looking

Ryan

I feel like the resolution could be even higher.
Though
Cause I still see a lot of lines on the roof.

Andy

Well, you’re still good. You got an FDM printer. There’s always going to be lines.

Ryan

I know I have the option of increasing the resolution from where it is.

Frank

and we can increase our
resolution to hundreds of an inch…

Andy

I’ve gotten it down to 50 micrometers or micrometers on mine.

Frank

yeah I’m trying to translate in my head um the the

Andy

Yeah, it gets stupid what your layer height can get really stupid at how small it can be, but yeah, it does get to a point where it’s a

Frank

the major value in if you’re going to be doing high resolution stuff would be the SLA printer
I know like resin printers um the FDM does do statues very well but it requires some post
processing um something to fill or you’re gonna want to sand down the layer lines or something
like that um because they’re always going to be there or it’s going to take it’s going
to take three days to print a small thing if you’re going at a high enough resolution so um

Ryan

This, this was actually a really long by far the longest print that I’ve attempted and was on a technical level successful. So like…

Andy

It looks like he’s might be pointing about point one millimeter layer height just looking compared to the laptop in the background and looking at the layers.

Ryan

that might be accurate. I may have that kind of sounds familiar.

Andy

And point one’s good point one’s pretty dense. I run at point two most of the time, and these guys usually run at it.
Yeah, point two millimeters and these guys do it around 1.5 mostly don’t you guys.

Chris

I have one point two one point or sorry point one two point one eight or point two four that I run at depending on what I’m doing

Kevin

I generally run at point two on my FDM on my SLA. I generally run at point zero five

Frank

so

Ryan

Did you did you notice on this model, how the curling stopped by the time it got to the base of the pillars.

Frank

yes and and looking at that that’s why I’m thinking maybe going slower because when it had more density
that was printing it supported itself better like laterally and when it was just the the
grounds of the temple it wasn’t thick enough to have the tension to hold itself down so

Ryan

To hold itself down.

Frank

that would be that would be a pressure point you’re a programmer right you can play with
the gcode um notepad plus plus does okay at reading it but if you use vs code you get the
the color highlight and all that um

Ryan

Okay. Well, I’ve got both of those installed.

Frank

so you can play with the gcode and you’ll you’ll start to
recognize which codes do what there’s only like a hundred codes and they do everything for the
printer um and I don’t know about your slicer I know cura actually annotates real well which
what code does what when it’s happening but you can take and modify it so that you’ve got a slower
speed for the bottom and then you can pick it back up to the normal speed once it gets to like
where the pillars are and um probably maybe get a better print there too what’s that

Andy

Can I point out one thing when it comes to speed when it when it comes to speed I mean it’s it is contradictory to your opinion. So the raft that he printed was a rather large component and seems to be the only thing that’s worked.
So the heat buildup on the raft from layer to layer, I think would have been less than when it came to the pillars the pillars would have been higher even though it’s still printed printing infill amongst the pillars.
It would still come back it would go through the layers quicker, and therefore generate more heat while doing the pillars right now doing small circles, like the pillars do is one of the worst places you can have you can be moving too fast, and getting too much heat buildup.
And the pillars came out really nice.

Frank

I would say the pillars are the slowest part of the print though there’s

Ryan

The pillars are not too much different than than the rest of it because of those supports that’s not printing the pillars like normal. It’s printing them in a long series of things.

Frank

right
if it’s if the order for that is the same as cura though it’ll print the support structure and then
it’ll print the pillars but um I’m assuming because you said there’s some inside that’s what 12
sorry yeah probably 12 pillars total not counting the corners and so 16 and because of the time it
takes to print

Ryan

Okay.
Excuse me.
There’s 6, 12, 14, 16. Yeah.

Frank

because the time it takes to print each individual pillar that’s gonna cool off no
matter how fast you’re doing before it gets back to the first pillar to print the next layer and
that’s another reason I’m feeling that slowing it down will

Andy

but I think the time per layer for the pillars would be far less than the time per layer of the raft, because the raft is a very flat surface that is about twice the footprint of the pillar area, and the pillar area has got the pillars and the infill, it’s not even solid.
So I’m thinking the time it would take to print.
Yeah, printing a solid layer raft for that footprint would take far longer than the pillars.
So I think the pill the temperature amongst the pillars would have built up faster than the temperature with the raft.
When it comes to the pillars being a circle, when you’re printing a circle instead of a straight line as much more susceptible to molten plastic being placed on top of molten plastic it tends to bubble up and what’s it called the surface tension causes it shrink more than straight lines would.
And so that’s why if you’re ever printing something that’s kind of like to be your shape and you’re going too fast it kind of forms more like a skinny blob on top instead of it doesn’t look like it’s printing as big as it should be because it’s contracting because the surface tension of the melted plastic.

Chris

So, you know what cura has this really great thing where it has plastic profiles you can select from
You can say, okay. I’ve got just some generic PLA and it’ll adjust the settings for your your printing settings for the printer
for just a generalized PLA and that has been
Really useful to for me to diagnose issues because it just resets everything
back to a
Should be generally good

Frank

I’d be surprised if ultimate here slicer doesn’t do the same thing though they sell plastics that they would
account for the different types that you’re printing with how we just as easily as anybody else

Chris

So, yeah, I’m saying, you know
You can you can use one of the default printing profiles for PLA to set you back to a a base that
Should be pretty close to good
Frank
it’s a conundrum Ryan

Andy

I think though we’re really kind of digging into the more details when the stuff that I think Chris pointed out would be the best things to start with now.

Ryan

yeah It kindof seems like something that’s not going to have a for certain result

Frank

and honestly while you dial it in that’s why
test structures are nice because usually they’re designed to not use a bunch of plastic to give you results
and I’m assuming this took probably what a quarter of a kilogram of plastic to to learn that the base was curled
up so

Ryan

Um. on previous prints
but on this one I just set it and let it go.
I just noticed something else weird about this though
I’m going to have to take a picture to show you, but it’s like really off.
It’s like askew in a way I that I didn’t realize before.

Frank

dimensionally?

Ryan

I’ll uplaod a picture for you.

Andy

Yeah, that amount of curling with PLA is still the biggest red flag for me.
Andy
Especially at the temperature you’re running your bed at.

Frank

we need to get you to convert to Celsius so that we can talk about temperature and size

Ryan

So if you look at this picture, do you see how uneven it is the base is compared to the top.

Chris

Ah, so you’ve got a cold spot on your bed or your bed isn’t trammed quite proper

Frank

like it’s near it looks like it’s crooked is that what you’re talking about

Andy

I think that’s just the curling that curled a little bit more on one side than the other.

Ryan

Oh, is that all.

Chris

Well, so.. you guys remember when I found a cold

Frank

and that would be I can see that being a heat differential

Chris

Yeah, you guys remember when I found a cold spot on my bed. It looks just like that

Andy

But if you look at the base of the pillars there, they’re all even with the roof. It’s only the raft that seems to be curved and I am looking.

Frank

at the temperature at the temperature where it was printed I would expect that to
like a cold spot on the bed
the whole bed would be heat soaked at a high temperature by then I wouldn’t expect that to be as much of an issue

Chris

You would think but again, like I said, I I’ve had that issue my my you know, I had the bed trammed
absolutely perfect and
If I get anything too close to one of the corners, it’ll curl up like that

Ryan

Okay.

Chris

Frank

hmm

Ryan

Okay.
I know it’s default orientation, which happened to be short side alongside.

Frank

another thing you can do with those test squares or if you do circles that would work too
is you can drop them in the corners and in the center and see how it prints differently in each of those zones
that would tell you something about how it’s doing as well

Ryan

I did have those on here I had six of them on here.

Frank

well I’m saying just the test squares though

Chris

Um, there’s there’s actually lots of different test things you can print
I know that if you hop onto the thingyverse, um, there’s guys that have uploaded
different kinds of tests to check if you’re

Ryan

Did you say thingy verse.

Chris

You know, how yep thingiverse

Frank

yeah it’s actually ultimaker thingiverse so you
this your manufacturer hosts the resource

Chris

But you can look up just test prints

Andy

Ignores I think it’s the better terminology there Frank.

Frank

well okay so they probably use you why to abuse everybody of all their personal information on there but it’s no worse than anywhere else

Ryan

Man, I guess I got to tell you though, my hands are killing me from tugging at this at these supports, just with pliers.

Andy

Okay, so there’s a nice tool that we all use it’s surface cutter dykes. It’s just a pair of dykes that’s a design for sure, you know for cutting surface I’m showing a picture here, they kind of look like this.
And these are priceless for taking off your supports because they can cut.

Frank

or something so inexpensive they are priceless

Andy

Yes.
And definitely recommend something like that for removing supports because a lot of the times you should be able to just pull the supports off and it shouldn’t be too hard, but it sounds like you might be.

Frank

and that says something about how the supports are designed when they’re more challenging than that too which is why we said
go for less infill and see if that helps

Ryan

What was it called again.

Chris

infill or your support density. Yeah

Frank

the dykes they’re just Chris called them jeweler Chris called them jeweler’s dykes at one point

Chris

Uh-huh

Frank

I imagine if you search for that online you’re going to find a pair for like a hundred dollars or something because you want precision when you’re doing jewelry

Andy

Just make sure you’re getting the flush kind though the kind that is angled and absolutely flat on one side.

Chris

Well, actually most craft stores have them like dirt cheap because

Frank

yeah it if you’re paying more than like five or ten bucks plus shipping or including shipping then you’re paying too much.

Ryan

Yeah, but have you seen the price of dirt lately.

Chris

Oh my gosh

Frank

it’s still less expensive than wood… but don’t give me

Kevin

And hobby stores have them because people who are into warhammer use them for
trimming the screws off of their parts their bits as they call them

Andy

When I learned one thing Kevin, when I was, when I printed this last impeller, I did what you described and put tons of supports on.
And when I pulled the supports off there was all these nubs all over the flat surface and it was just kind of thinking like God’s going to be a lot of work.

Chris

Sandpaper

Andy

But what before I cured it, I took the scraper and just, they just scrape right off. Yeah, it was, it’s absolutely flat after that so yeah, I was impressed.

Kevin

Yeah, but you gotta do it before you cure it
Before you cure it
While it’s still semi soft and then it comes off easily if you wait
I’ve learned if you do it after you cure it, it’s hard and it takes a lot more effort to get the the uh the surface smooth again

Andy

Yeah, so there’s the supports that I did for the thing, following your instructions. So, a lot of little notes.

Chris

That looked like one heck of a roller coaster

Frank

yeah um I feel like you’ve got a couple of things to at least investigate moving forward you feel confident with that did you have any more questions well

Ryan

Well, I’m going to I’m going to abandon supports for a project like this.

Frank

may not be a bad idea for the moment anyway that’s a whole new a whole another thing to get dialed in for sure

Ryan

But I will probably look closer at the settings for those supports when I come back to them.
And then I’m not I’m not confident about like speed or temperature changes at this point but

Andy

Your temperature for your print head seems to be spot on. You can see where some of the model comes over at the top of the roof. I see no stringing at all, and no, no gaps in your plastic from, you know, being too cold.
So I think your heat for the head is dialed perfect right now.

Frank

where I can zoom in I do see a little bit of stringing but it’s not anymore that you can’t just brush off with your finger you know it’s not
problematic to me in any real way

Ryan

The only thing that I’m still hazy on is if changing the fan speed affected any of this at all.

Andy

I would leave it at about 30% right now. That’s something that you’d want to run a test tower on in the future for quality, but your peeling curling is the bigger issue. And I doubt the fan speed has a whole lot to do with that at the moment.
There’s something else going on.

Frank

I would say fan speed would be the last thing that you want to dial in

Chris

Yeah, I’ve never changed my fan speed

Andy

But I wouldn’t run it 100% anymore either I would stick to something a little bit lower just because too fast can cause problems.

Chris

Yeah, but not as much as you’d think I mean, I’ve never turned my fan speed down and it’s always been a hundred percent so

Frank

and I went mine up over the first five millimeters in my print so it’s some of it is you
learning how to communicate with your printer too and that’s

Ryan

Well, I’m, I feel a little suspicious about the the about cold spots if anything.
In fact, it makes me want to switch to the the the other the other printer that we have and see if I get the same results.

Andy

Being in the kind of school that you’re in, do you have access to a thermal camera?

Ryan

No, not that I know of.

Chris

Temperature gun one of those uh
Uh
Touch touchless temperature

Frank

they’re not as accurate but you know if you’re yeah some variation

Chris

They’d tell you what you need to know

Ryan

They’ll let me hunt down people with COVID too so

Chris

You know, so I’ve seen people have been uh
Sensoring the word COVID online, so I don’t know if we’re allowed to say it

Ryan

How is that something to censor

Frank

it’s not as insulting to me as the word should so
I’m okay with with COVID not getting it but with the word I’m okay with the word

Ryan

You could be trolling me right now.
I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Andy

Me neither, but it’s got me worried because I mean Chris is just in a different social group. What if there is a social group out there that’s pulling that kind of crap.

Frank

Chris also doesn’t Chris also doesn’t Facebook so

Chris

I’m just I’m just saying I I see various posts and stuff and
Uh, official sites have been like
Sensoring the word covet so you know what it is, but you can’t actually read the word, you know, just like they would censor swear words
You know

Ryan

Oh, what could that word be? Well, good thing they censored it. I don’t even want to know

Frank

I don’t know I think the censoring the words actually makes you think about the more sometimes

Kevin

I agree

Frank

that’s why we just try to be mindful on the podcast instead of or poke fun at it

Ryan

Yeah, it just sounds as it just reminds me of something that I heard recently that I guess some people take seriously but also some people just want to make fun of them because of how ridiculous it sounds where they think if you guys heard birds aren’t real.

Andy

Oh my gosh, yes.

Frank

I have not

Ryan

It’s like both serious and a joke, you know, there’s

Chris

They’re they’re government drones

Frank

kind of like how apparently like half of the the card carrying flat earthers are doing it to troll

Ryan

See, that makes more sense.

Frank

honestly that amuses the hell out of me if we’re being honest but I’m more concerned about the other half that genuinely believe it at that point
that’s still too many

Ryan

I, I’m not convinced that that there’s that that’s not a seriously that’s that that it’s a movement that we have to give respect to, you know, like I think that the number of people that really are in that group are probably very, very small.
There’s probably more trolls that are just, you know, pretending then there are people that believe it that’s kind of what I think.

Frank

Shaq admitted it so you know anybody that was following him into the movement should be just there to troll at this point because
Shaq admitted that he was doing it just to troll

Ryan

Oh, I didn’t even know he was involved.

Frank

neither did I until I listened to a podcast where he was interviewed and they brought it up so whatever

Chris

Face palm

Ryan

Now we just need to get get the confession out of Tom Cruise that he was never a Scientologist.

Frank

I don’t think that’s going to happen he’s he’s he’s too high in that organization to to not
to invested anyway

Andy

If I can correct something on his problems with the thing with Chris is mentioning with fan speed, I was kind of thinking about about it. I’ve been preaching this whole time to you that 100 seems way too fast. You should definitely dial it back from that and things like that.
I made a modification to my printer a long time ago where I use a blower style impeller for my fans, which have a much higher static pressure, which means they can really blow through the tiny nozzles compared to, you know, a feel fan, a normal fan that everybody else uses.

Frank

computer fan computer fan versus a squirrel cage

Andy

Yeah, and I didn’t consider that the entire time I was talking about fan speed even last podcast, you probably are okay at 100%.
Because if I crank mine up to 100%, I’ll blow stuff off my bed. So, you know, it’s a it’s a big problem for me. But when I need that, but I didn’t consider that most people use normal style fans for that particular thing.

Frank

it’s still a ramp up thing for the lower layers I would still say have it if not off very low
but there’s also the the bit where
any printers that are not as old as your printer, Andy, will typically have the squirrel cage configuration for the blower on the nozzle

Andy

Oh, do they? Okay, maybe, maybe mine’s not that weird then.

Frank

factory from the tree so

Andy

Because yeah, I put that on for bridging, because when I’m bridging something, I crank the speed up on the fan a lot, so that it cools it as quick as possible and that works really well for bridging, but yeah, I didn’t know they were doing that new now.
That sounds good because it’s a better system in my opinion.

Frank

and it’s probably why they’re doing it that way is because it has better results at least in that case when you’re just calling the heat exchanger on the
on the nozzle it doesn’t need to be a super fan it’s the same as any computer at that point where just the airflow is enough to to work on the fins but
when you’re trying to control
from the nozzle sometimes well and it blowing on the nozzle itself helps normalize the temperature a little bit too so it doesn’t fluctuate as much
but even then it shouldn’t be too high necessarily especially for the lower levels so
in my mind it’s okay to keep it at the lower temperature always at least until you get everything else doubled dialed in

Ryan

I think I’ll probably maybe turn it up to 50 though.

Andy

Yeah, so if it’s got a normal size, a normal style axial fan for the component cooler fan, then yeah, you could probably crank it up. But if it is a blower one, then I would keep that one cranked down a little bit.

Ryan

You know, there’s one other aspect of this that we haven’t talked about.
But like it actually took quite a while to create the print file for this, because this is what was made by a student who has not been taught about controlling your poly count.

Andy

Okay.

Frank

okay

Ryan

So this thing actually has a ton of polygons, even though it’s pretty simple.

Frank

and it while I was looking while I was looking at the ground I couldn’t help but notice that the ground is super textured so

Ryan

Oh, no, that’s not by design. Like,

Frank

like the stone steps and all that

Ryan

yeah, no, that’s that’s because of the, because I can’t get the structures removed the supports. Those are from those are left over from the supports.

Andy

Andy

That’s just supports on the raft. And that’s the raft to support.

Frank

it looked it looked like it was supposed to be there

Ryan

Oh, in fact, I’m tearing at it right now still trying to get it removed.

Andy

So the model is just the pillars on the ground, right? There’s no actual ground on the model.

Ryan

There is a ground on the model it’s some semi flat stairs.
The actual model has no ground, right?
So you can’t see them.

Andy

You can always decimate the model before importing it into the slicer if it’s taking too long.

Ryan

Yeah, well that was going to be sort of my just kind of a sort of side general question is one, like how, how important is, is that going to be on in this process is that
where

Andy

It depends on the slicer. I know most of us use Cura, and once Cura loads the model, it only, as far as I know from what I’ve seen, I think it only loads to a certain amount of precision, so it kind of decimates automatically when it’s loading.
Some models can take a lot longer to load into it, but that’s not going to really change the slicing behavior after the model’s loaded.

Chris

I know that yeah

Andy

I mean, if they are more complex than it will, but also if there’s, our printers only work in straight lines too.

Chris

No

Andy

So if there’s a lot of curved lines and things like that, actually slicing the model will take a little bit longer than if it were straight lines because it just takes more time to write that amount of data in the vial.

Chris

Uh, no that also depends on your type of printer mine has round movements and it’s not straight lines
It’s an actual gcode for round movements

Frank

it it’s probably just pre coded we’re going to hurt you about this I guess

Chris

That’s true

Andy

Are you shitting me?

Frank

it’s pre coded because it’s still only x y and so it’s discrete data points that it’s told to move on straight line to this straight line to this straight line
it’s probably just a lot of them

Ryan

I’m more inclined to agree with you Frank because my understanding of 3D software is that it never boils down to
curves. Everything is aligned because everything’s points.

Frank

Ryan

Frank

now
there are some
I can see what do circles better like the they’ve got a
some that only have they’re on like a three arm axes for the
for the nozzle so it it moves in space and that way
I can see that being better like round surfaces because you’re using three movements instead of two

Frank

but even then it’s still the g code would just be really small straight lines rather than a specific curve because we haven’t figured out how to make computers more complex than binary really

Ryan

There are such things as analog computers.

Andy

So it looks like Cura can, with the right kind of plugins, it looks like Cura can do G2 and G3 G-codes.

Chris

Yep, I told you my printer uses those and it’s it’s basically a circular arc

Andy

But are you running those plugins for Cura so that it’s slicing that way?
Based on yeah, you know how big you say to do it

Frank

is it that refined though

Chris

I I think I think I think it came default when I when I had when when I told it what kind of printer I have

Andy

Yeah, it’s the ArcWilder plugin in the marketplace.
I don’t think Cura does it on its own. It looks like it requires an aftermarket plugin.

Frank

if you do
Chris at some point
if you’ll print off
like a
reasonably sized
say half sphere
or actually no you’ve been doing the
you’ve been doing the
Pokemon balls
do they show do they have like little triangles
all around them

Chris

No, they’re all perfectly round

Frank

that would be something worth looking at

Andy

I would love to see the G-code for that.
I know what you’re talking about with the triangles. I don’t get those either, but don’t you decimate your models within Cura to make it faster, Frank?

Frank

I don’t know what you’re talking about

Andy

You were talking about the amount of lines used for circles and making it use larger lines for circles in order to get faster speeds on your printer?

Frank

a while ago I was and after I reset everything
I tried just the normal
print profile and that aspect actually didn’t change at all with the setting I thought I was changing so it was not having the effect I thought it was

Andy

Next time you’re on your machine doing something, Chris, throw some G-codes.

Frank

did I not say that I’m sorry
did I not specify that I feel kind of dumb now for not specifying by the way this setting does not change what I thought it did so

Andy

It made sense what you were describing. I never really played with it myself, and I bet there’s a setting in there that does what you describe where it uses less lines to make those arcs.

Frank

probably it just wasn’t what I thought it was

Chris

I I do know that when I have like a highly detailed model or something like that that I’m that I’m printing
It’ll always take forever to slice

Andy

Yeah, and they do.
One of these times you got some sample of G-code of round surfaces. I would love to see that because that’s kind of like saying that, yeah, you’ve been doing non-planier printing this whole time.
It’s like, wait, wait, what? I didn’t even know it was capable of that.

Chris

Um, yeah

Andy

Can Marlin even do G2 and G3? Because you’ve got a Marlin-based printer, don’t you?

Chris

You know I do.

Frank

let’s get ourselves a google education real quick

Chris

Google foo

Ryan

From a motor control perspective you can definitely program curves.
You know. You just program the motor to run at a certain speed and change that speed over time.

Andy

Yeah, I mean, it physically can do it. We’re more or less talking about the G-code actually being sliced to use those particular kinds of codes and then the printer knowing what to do with them.

Ryan

Yeah, that was my only concern is like, or I shouldn’t say a concern, but my expectation was that your, your model, even if, even if your printer is capable of printing curves models I think are usually expressed simply in points, which would create lines, but it could be otherwise.

Andy

Okay, I think it does because looking at the Marlin website, their G-code index does include G2 and G3 arc moves, so I think it does actually support it.

Frank

and it specifies them as clockwise and counterclockwise

Chris

Yep, yep, there it is. Yeah
Yeah, arc or circle

Frank

all you need to do is give it a start location and end location and a radius of the circle

Chris

Yeah, I was like because my my printer just did did those automatically ever since I bought it

Andy

Well, I don’t think Cura can slice that without this plug-in that I was talking about. I don’t think Cura can do it natively, which is why I was curious if maybe next time you’re on your computer if you can check to see if any of your G-code does actually have G2 and G3 movements.

Chris

Okay, yeah

Andy

Because if it does, then a Marlin’s capable of doing it, so I don’t know what version of Marlin, but I think we’ve only got one and two, so it’s either going to be one or the other, both.
But Cura slicing with G2 I think requires a plug-in. Everywhere I look about Cura doing G2 movements is mentioned that that plug-in.
Either way, that could make print jobs a lot.
Well, I mean, if G2 and G3 only does circular arcs, that’s not necessarily very useful for a lot of our prints.
I mean, we get circles a lot of the time, but most of the time, like especially around models and stuff, or it’s not a steady circular arc.

Frank

so the garter thing that I’ve been fighting tpu on
has got lots of arc segments and without the plugin there is not a single
g2 or 3 in this whole gcode file so it’s not doing it natively

Andy

So yeah, it’s the arc welder plug-in that makes Cura does do that.

Chris

We’ll be taking this part

Frank

are you

Chris

Are you in trouble

Frank

needing to go there ryan well

Ryan

I don’t need to but I don’t know how long you guys are going.

Frank

well we’ve still got to get through the other
four of us so
if you need to go we can let you sign off now and I’ll
either play with it or not

Ryan

Probably be a good idea. I wasn’t planning on spending much longer here.

Andy

Okay.

Frank

okay
work with the information we’ve got for you
and let us know how it goes those pillars do look very good with some of that plastic pulled out though

Ryan

Yeah, I’m, and I’m tearing at these smaller bits literally just it’s painstaking literally painful.
Trying to get it to show the model underneath it’s in there. And so it’s got some nice fine detail.

Frank

is it

Frank

Michelangelo was known for saying that he doesn’t
he doesn’t design the model he just removes the stone from the structure that’s underneath it

Ryan

So your saying that Michelangelo had a 3D printer, and that’s where he got all of his sculptures.

Chris

Michelangelo was the 3d printer

Frank

he was a reductive engineer not a

Andy

So Michelangelo was the supports remover and some higher power printed it in the first place.

Ryan

We didn’t understand him. We thought he was being all deep. And he’s like, no guys, look, you don’t understand.

Andy

All you got to do is just take off the hammer away the supports here, it’s all in there.

Ryan

I don’t know why you guys think I’m amazing artists. I there’s some crap here and I just chisel it out.

Frank

And of course God is the one that did all of this, and sometimes I really don’t like that much.
Because he prints the supports with 100% density.

Ryan

That that’s, that’s just such an improper move.

Frank

Hey, you know, we’re pleasantly improper.
We watch our language and then we, we blaspheme God in the same sentence.

Ryan

All right, well, I’ll let you guys get to more important topics.

Andy

More important. Good luck on your printer though, and Ryan, I hope it works for you. Let us know what happens.

Ryan

Okay. All right, it’s been fun guys. Thanks for having me.

Frank

Yep, take it easy.

Ryan

All right, this is Ryan Phillips and leave a message at the sheep.

Frank

Oh, I have expected you to say remove God’s supports.

Ryan

Oh, I was just expecting Frank to give me a baa.

Frank

Oh, because I gave you the ring the last time.

Andy

Take care.

Frank

I am inconsistent in that way. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll add it.

Ryan

You don’t know how to blah.

Frank

We’ve got a whole panelist of sheep today, I guess.
This podcast never ceases to amaze me.

Andy

I’m hoping he gets some new plastic. I really feel like plastic is an issue, but we’ll see.

Frank

It’s, it’s definitely something worth investigating.
I just looked at our time and now we’re 20 right now.

Andy

I’m going to go through real quick with what we’ve done.

Frank

I need a, I need a hurry and finish my software.
Chris, you missed last week. Did you not do anything for two weeks?

Chris

No, so, um, yeah, I’ve been spending my free time

Frank

I’m sorry.

Chris

dealing with my
car vehicular issues
my car
I blew the engine in my car, but you know, I bought it from a guy

Frank

Oof.

Chris

I looked at it and he said
I asked about the timing belt because it was about that kind of mileage
And he goes, oh, yeah, no the timing belt the timing belt is new
You know, and it looked like it had been done
Um, but it had been done wrong
the tensioner fell off my belt slipped loose And my motor was toast

Frank

Bumped all your valves and

Chris

Something I I I I did fix the tensioner and put the belt back on nice and tight and proper and everything lined up and no
You you turn it and it doesn’t get any compression. So

Frank

that’s awesome.

Chris

Yeah, so I I got another. Yeah, I found another engine at the junkyard. So I’ve just been
Getting working on that. So my printers on the wayside, but I
I did print those
Um, those dishwasher signs got some old hard drive magnets to glue to the back of those
They work great gave one to my sister
Printed, you know, made one for the wife made one for a coworker gonna give one to the in-laws

Andy

Those were pretty neat.

Chris

Yep, but
Um, also my
Um, I I changed out the the nozzle and
I did something to my heat block when I did that
So I’m gonna be dig. Uh, I’ll be digging
into the
Cartridge cartridge and before I print anything else

Frank

That sucks.

Andy

If it turns out you need another therm resistor or a cartridge, if you don’t have any on hand, let me know and I’ll run some down to you. I’ve got a bunch here if you need.

Chris

Okay

Andy

If you mess them up, because I mean, the space, if you pull the wire off one of those, it’s just easy enough just to replace the whole thing instead.

Frank

Yeah, because you got to heat up the heat block to get the thing out.

Chris

So, yeah, that was it that’s it for me, you know dealing with a car car issues

Frank

That sounds like fun.

Andy

Yeah, really.

Frank

Andy, did you work on anything this week?

Andy

So I have been designing some component drawers and I’ll show you those right there. That’s how they’ve been kind of coming out.
I went through and I have this whole back area on the back of my desk.

Chris

There’s a whole lot of space there Ghibli

Andy

Excuse me.
Yeah, to be able to do stuff with. And I’ve got old drawer boxes that I used to use back when I was younger, but these things are really thick and deep.
And there’s a lot of things about drawer boxes that I just don’t like the typical design, like how they’re subdivided on the inside.
And if you don’t use the subdivision, then you got small components, then you wind up using tons and tons of space.
And so I sat down and came up with a drawer design that I like in which I can have different sized drawers for and have them put together a little bit like Lego pieces, which is kind of cool.
And so I’ve kind of been printing.

Chris

Your own

Andy

Yeah, I’ve been kind of printing these and putting these together. The ones I’m showing here, I started with doing all my resistors at 64 drawers that I have for doing all my THC resistors on.
And I wound up making some labels for the front of the drawers and stuff kind of got everything put together and everything’s coming out really nice.
I don’t have these organized or in order or anything in them because I still got to print more.
But that’s what I’ve been doing with my time is printing all these different little kind of drawer boxes that are kind of made a little bit like Legos.
And these are only about three inches deep. And which is really nice because that means this whole back wall here can have these three inch deep drawers without it filling like you’re taking up all that space for over the top of the desk.

Frank

The other configuration.
Well, that’s one of the wonderful things about 3D printing is you can custom build or custom design something like that.

Chris

It’s your own personal radio shack

Andy

Yeah, so I think this is going to be going to be really nice the way it’s set up, but I’m working on printing a bunch of these.
I guesstimate each one of these boxes right now costs about 200 grams of filament with the drawers. And these are smaller drawers than my design. This is a three by three drawer box, so nine drawers per segment or per section.
And, you know, for about 200 grams that means if I wind up doing quite a bit of this area with these drawer boxes to be able to put all of my stuff in all of my components in.
I’m probably actually looking at maybe four reels of plastic in order to do this. So my whole project cost for this is going to be about 30,�������������������,�ℎ��ℎ������������ℎ��ℎ���������������ℎ��������������������������.��′�30,maybealittlebitmore,whichseemsalittlehighuntilIlookedatthecurrentpriceofdrawerboxes.It′s50 a set so.

Frank

Yeah, I was going to say that’s about half the price for that. That’s one of the things I was looking at when I was trying to decide what to do, how to organize my workbench.
And it’s like, do I want to spend 60 bucks on this door set?

Chris

Yeah, yeah going through the exact same thing with my boss. He’s printing stuff for organizing our
Uh, some of our our gauges and our in our drawers and
He goes, oh, yeah, one of these is 10 bucks on msc or whatever
our granger and he he goes, but for that same 10 bucks. I just printed out the whole drawer. I have

Andy

Yeah, yeah.

Chris

100 worth of stuff for for not even 10 dollars worth of plastic

Andy

And you can.
You can do them the way you want to do them too, which is really nice because I mean, I look at my old drawers like these ones here and they’ve got, you know, a handle at the front, which is often leaves kind of not a whole lot of room for labeling at the front and scooping pieces out of the drawer bottom is really hard when those pieces are often very tiny.
So the drawers I designed have a vertical handle offset on one side because you’re usually holding the drawer sideways looking into it with one hand and digging into it with the other hand.
And I also made the inside of the drawer filleted on all corners. So anything that’s in the bottom of the drawer you can just swipe up the side of the drawer on all corners.

Chris

So it looks like a boat

Andy

And so I’ve got a lot of room. Yeah. Yeah. So I got a lot of room for the label, a lot of room for the open, you know, for being able to scoop things out and to be able to do different sizes of drawers for different size components.
And each one of these boxes, I’ll be able to, if I like want a bigger drawer for something, I’ll be able to repent print a box to compensate for that.
And I’m sure after a little while I’ll have four or five boxes that don’t fit anymore, but everything will be exactly what I want it to be.
So I’m kind of excited about how these suckers are turning out because they’re exactly what I want in the drawer box.

Chris

Yeah, take take that screwing jar lids to the bottom of the shelf

Andy

Yeah. And I also bought me a new scope that I was kind of showing off with all my electronics. I was using a really cheap Chinese handheld scope that was, you know, it was like $30 I paid for it kind of garbage.
So now I’ve got a proper standard size scope that is a little bit better than, yeah, a cell scope.

Frank

O scope.

Frank

There’s lots of kinds of scopes. This one’s an O scope.

Andy

Okay, it’s a little bit better than open entry. So hopefully that’ll give me more options on when I’m, you know, working with the electronics and stuff like that.
Only other thing, yeah, only other thing that I have really worked on is I think the decision to stick with my original impeller design to be able to do my blower.
The bigger impeller that I made last week that I was talking about, it’s a little bit harder to balance, and it does suck a little bit more, but it pulls more amps, a lot more amps than I get suction for.
So it actually seems like despite all the different ones I’ve made, my original design was best.

Frank

Ah.

Andy

So I’m going to go ahead and stick to it and maybe I’ll start designing, I don’t know, right now I’m doing a lot of these drawer boxes and that’s where my excitement is at is completing some of those.
But after that, I’m sure we’ll still get back into the venting because using the stupid resin printer stinks up the whole basement with that sweet, sweet resin smell
So kind of want to get rid of that for mine and my family’s sake.

Frank

That’s fair.

Andy

But that’s, that’s, that’s that for me to make it quick anyway since we’re using so much time.

Frank

All right, Kevin, you work on anything this week?

Kevin

Nope.

Chris

That makes the very quick

Andy

Oh, that was easy.

Frank

You and Chris.

Kevin

Yeah, I had other things going on. So.

Frank

I guess we’re back to that then.

Andy

I forgot your priorities all wrong man. 3D printing should always comes first.
I got to stick with it or I won’t.
That’s going to be the flaw in the character I play on this podcast and I got to keep up with it.

Kevin

Unless he’s the one who’s not printing,
and then he doesn’t give us any grief about it.

Frank

Then he’s suspiciously silent.
Not so suspiciously.
We all understand why he’s silent and then we give him crap for it.

Andy

Very good. How about you, Frank, you do anything.

Frank

I’ve been trying to figure out this TPU thing.
I thought I had a solution to it and I was getting better prints and then it still would.
stop extruding at a certain height.
It was just a higher height than it was before.
I don’t know how much of it is that I’m trying to print solid TPU for this because the infill
TPU, the lower infill, was not as strong as I had hoped.

Frank

I’m working through that.
I’m working through.
I should be able to do a demo for our visual listeners.

Chris

Okay

Frank

My transcript software here is still very rudimentary. I’ve got some things I want to change on it, actually.
But I’ve got some… Yeah, that folder’s moved.
I’ve got some I can do. That folder’s moved, too.
So I’ve got it set so I can…
I’m going to change it actually so that it uses the file name for the name of the panelist
and then allows you to change it later if you want to.

Andy

Okay.

Frank

So we just…
I’m only going to add two users or two panelists here.
So you pick all of the individual transcripts, which are still in the JSON format.
And from here, it’s really not doing anything except for getting your file names.
It’s just basic stuff.
But when you go to the next tab, it’s all populated in there.
And when you refresh it, it merges everything in the transcript together according to its timestamp.

Andy

Okay.

Frank

And when you’re looking at it, say…
In this one, Andy’s talking right in the middle of my introduction.
And it looks like…

Andy

Just like a rude person I am.

Frank

Right.
I’m going to add one and a half seconds to your time here.
And then when I refresh it, it will have moved you down the one and a half seconds
and fixed the timing through the whole thing.

Chris

End of the line bucky

Andy

Okay.
Oh cool.

Frank

And it’s still not quite enough.
I needed to add another second of that.

Andy

Okay so it’s aligning all the transcripts so that in areas in which someone talks over the other it allows the first person talking to finish first before

Chris

You like it

Frank

That’s the way it’s kind of designed.
The timing with Whisperer is actually still not amazing.
So I’ve actually started aligning it at the end of the podcast so that as I go, it’s more accurate as I get closer to the end.
And I’ve been playing with the idea of having separate…
Like all panelists on one page and then just adding a segment and having everything after that fixed the time

Andy

Okay.

Frank

so that it becomes more accurate as I go and then merges it after all the timing is fixed.
That’s going to be a lot of work. So I want to get the basic thing done first.
But you can see your time now is after my introduction at the very beginning here.
And from there, the timing should be fairly accurate.
Let’s go to the end.
Yeah, there’s the intro.
My whole outro doesn’t have Chris or Kevin as a part of the conversation.
Yeah, this episode Chris was in with us.
So those will get merged in too with all the panelists.
And you can see your outro, your sign off is right after I finish my outro.
So everything’s lined up.
It still takes a little bit of adjusting from here.
But it cut my time in production down by like half.
Well, no, half of my time.

Andy

Half an hour.

Frank

Just because then I’m not rearranging the whole raw data and identifying who’s saying what and all that stuff.
This does it for me.
Still got some refinements to do before I’m ready to put it down for a while.
And obviously, like I said, I’ve got lots of ideas.
We’ll see where it goes.

Andy

Sounds like it sounds like it’s nice to get the basic setup so you can trim that time off of production, and then refine it down the road.

Frank

Actually, I have, for lack of a better description, a back door that I’m using so I can use most of the software.
Without using the UI and just coding in the file locations in the offsets.
If you’re looking at the larger version here.
This is all hard coded in.
And once I get it all fixed, I’m going to throw away this probably throw away this class.
But so what it does is it allows me to do everything I just did in the UI just through the code so I can still shave off all that time.
I’m just not using the full program to do it.
I’m using the functionality for it.

Andy

I really admire that that’s one way of coding I’ve never really done that way of having the UI so disconnected from the, the engine of the software, you know to where you can just do it like command based or whatnot.

Frank

The pros, the pros refer to that as a difference between the business layer and the UI layer.
So, and all of the business layer…
The effort is to separate by brain wants to say disentangle.
It’s a, you want to remove dependencies as much as you can.
So that when you change something in one location, it doesn’t affect another location anymore than you absolutely have to.
And doing it this way, if I want to code in like a command line access to the software, rather than using the UI, it’s easy to shoe that feature in without completely updating the whole software.

Andy

Yeah. Yeah, that’s neat. That’s really cool.

Frank

And that really is where we talked about object oriented programming offline a while ago.
And that’s one of the more powerful aspects of object oriented so that you can reuse all of this stuff because it’s not so dependent on itself.

Andy

Yeah. Yeah, that is neat.

Frank

But yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing.
Like I said, I’m hoping to get this software in a working state this next week.
Well, I’ve been trying for two weeks and I just haven’t had time, but I’m trying to get there.
And hopefully I’ll get there today and fix the few things that I’ve decided I don’t like so much about the UI side and be able to permanently cut down production time.

Andy

Nice. Nice. I’m glad that’s working out because I had no idea you were spending that much time on production on the podcast so that’s great.

Frank

So.
Well, I kept it to myself. It was something I enjoyed doing until it didn’t, which is why I decided to solve my problems with software.

Andy

Very awesome.

Frank

So yeah, that’s what I’ve done this week is fight TPU and fight code.
Fight code.

Andy

I wish there was an easier solution with the TPU but I couldn’t tell you.

Frank

Yeah, I’ll continue to fight it until I win.
And then I’ll go back to PLA and not think about it until the next time.

Andy

That’s good.

Chris

Well, I don’t know you you could be printing basketballs and making a fortune right now

Frank

I don’t know.
Well, we’ve been at it for a while. Why don’t we wrap this up and everyone go to their separate corners and figure out this next week.

Andy

Sounds good.

Frank

All right, we’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.

Chris

The very very end

Frank

If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
We are available through a wide variety of podcast vendors and so are easy to share.
If you have feedback, you can find us in our Facebook group, amateur 3d pod.
And you can email us at Franklin Kevin Andy or Chris@amateur3dpod.com or directly at panelists@amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode.
Open ai’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts which you can find linked in the description.
And our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen and my friends Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber and Andy Codham with special guest Ryan Phillips.
Until next time, we’re going offline.

Kevin

Keep your FEP tight.

Andy

Always use hairspray.

Chris

I’m following the 3d printer movement
m201 well x30
Okay, and now it’s y minus 22

Frank

Sounds to me like you need a G2 in there.

Kevin

You forgot the Z.

Andy

Okay.

Chris

That’s not z hop yet not there it is
Oh

Andy

Writing it all out by hand.

Frank

No, Nick, no.