Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 29 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, Andy Codham and Kevin Buckner.
And Chris decided that spending time with his family was a little bit more important than hanging out with us Bums, so he’s not going to be with us this week.
Andy
So selfish.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Since when does family come first?
Come on.
Frank
Especially in Utah.
I mean, of all places.
Andy
Yeah, I’m sure Chris is having a great time with his family, and we’re sad not to have him, but he’ll be back next episode, I’m sure.
Kevin
Indeed.
Frank
That’s for sure.
So Andy, you done anything this week with your printer?
Andy
Well, last night was an interesting…
Frank
Do I want to ask this question?
Andy
I didn’t flood discord enough with my sudden stresses and problems while we were trying to plan out the next podcast timing.
Yeah, that definitely got selfish on that one.
Frank
I don’t know.
Maybe it’s related to me being tone deaf, but eventually I just stopped watching and summarized it all when you stopped ranting.
Andy
That was all live feed there and all the frustrations during the problems, so I don’t blame you for that.
Plus, I tend to do novels when I talk online, so that I don’t blame you for ignoring them at all.
Frank
Well, that’s what you get for using your assistant to post instead of actually typing.
If you had to use your fingers to put all that out, I don’t think it would have been so… verbose.
Andy
Yeah, I think you’re probably right on that.
This week, it was pretty productive.
My kid is in grade school, and he’s doing a play, James and the Giant Peach, and my wife is really big into cosplay and things like that.
She’s really big on the, what are they called, Comic-Con and all those kind of things.
This was right up her alley to help in a PTA kind of form.
She signed us up for just about every prop they had to get done, and then left a bunch of the ones that were best to be 3D printed up to me.
I’ve been running my 3D printer through the loops the last week, and it’s been constantly buzzing along, printing large items, and putting a lot of stress on it.
It’s been working great every since I tried out the new Cura Profile, and that seemed to solve all of my problems with appearance.
I’m back to having really great print quality again, so we’ve been running PLA through it.
Like Mad, I’ve put two reels through it just this last week, maybe two and a half, so it’s been buzzing along for quite a while.
Yesterday, yesterday night, actually it was yesterday day during work, the wife sent me a picture of the front panel of my printer that said it had a thermal issue.
So I figured, okay, now I’ll check it when I get home, and I figured it’s been a little while, it’s so easy to break the thermal resistors on the head, and anything like that could have happened, and I wasn’t really too worried about it.
My printer is pretty good at making sure that during heating, yeah, really.
Frank
For the visual listeners, I did the air quotes for easy.
Kevin
Seems appropriate.
Andy
My printer is pretty good at making sure the thermal, during heating and cool down and all that other kind of stuff, stays in a particular envelope, and if it goes outside of that envelope, then it will throw this error.
I love that it does that, it makes me feel safe around the printer that way, if the heating cartridge ever popped out or something like that, and it became an open system that it’s not going to sit and catch fire or something like that, it’s got a lot of safeties there.
So I’m happy to see that it threw over something, and it could have been a number of things.
I remember that last time I changed out my hot end, that I didn’t redo a PID test, which could affect that, but it was the same size heater block and things, so I wasn’t suspecting that it would have changed a whole lot.
So I didn’t rerun a PID, that’s kind of complicated to come bring down the laptop and hook it up to the printer and run that test to figure out what it needs exactly, but that could have done it, a number of different things.
So when I got home and looked over the head, it looks like I was actually having a little bit of leaking where the hot end gets covered in plastic, I’m sure we’ve all had a little bit of that, but it wasn’t too bad, but it did have a little bit of plastic all over the whole thing.
And so I figured, okay, I’ll go ahead and pull off that silicone sock, and I’ll take the head out and clean it up and just put it back in, and I’m not really going to worry about trying to figure out why it did what it did, sometimes it just backs off with heating and cooling and things, so I’m just going to clean it up, and if it fixes the problem great, if it starts to leak again, I’ll worry about it then.
And so I turned on the printer to start heating up the head so I can get the sock off because it’s glued to the head at the moment with plastic, and it sat there for about a full, maybe minute, maybe 45 seconds, and only got up to like 80 degrees and then through a thermal error.
Now, that’s kind of weird, it would start heating and heat slowly, and then throw an error, looking over the heater and stuff, it really did only get to like 80 degrees, it was reading the temperatures and everything properly, but why is it not getting up to the temperature it needed to be, you know?
I also noticed a really, really, really high-pitched whining coming from the control box on my printer, like power supplies make when they’re going out.
So I opened up the printer and my printer is based off the 24-volt system, so I opened it up, I put the multimeter on it, read 24 volts coming out of it, that’s perfect right where it needs to be, so I turned on the hot end again and looked at the voltage again and it pulled it down to 11 volts, and something is seriously wrong with the power supply on my printer, it’s going out on me.
Now, I’ve done a lot of stuff to it, my printer originally had a 24-volt bed, and I pulled that out and swapped it out with a 110-volt bed, and now the 24-volt supply for the bed only flips a relay, and so I took all of that amperage off of the power supply, but then I went and put in my Peltier cooling system that runs off of the same power supply, but it is less amperage than the original bed, so it shouldn’t have caused any problems.
Now, I’ve been running it this way, should, yeah, use that bad word, I’ve been running it this way for the last, like, two years with the cooling system, and so I’m thinking this isn’t due to something that I necessarily did and have to compensate for, so I’m just going to go ahead and swap out the power supply itself.
Thankfully it’s only a 20 power supply, it’s an 8. 5 amp 24-volt PSU, and I can buy one of those off eBay, in fact I bought two because I know I said earlier I’ve got enough parts to make up a full printer and that’s not necessarily true, I don’t have aluminum extrusions, I don’t have another case for the printer, I don’t have another power supply for the board, I don’t have a working main board, so I’m not exactly being truthful when I said I’ve got enough parts for a whole another computer, you know, another printer, just close to it. And to be fair, you know, in your defense, you could put up a whole another printer for pocket change with the parts that you already have. Yeah, I’m not missing that many components, but to buy the power supply, I bought it out of China because that’s20powersupply,it′san8.5amp24−voltPSU,andIcanbuyoneofthoseoffeBay,infactIboughttwobecauseIknowIsaidearlierI′vegotenoughpartstomakeupafullprinterandthat′snotnecessarilytrue,Idon′thavealuminumextrusions,Idon′thaveanothercasefortheprinter,Idon′thaveanotherpowersupplyfortheboard,Idon′thaveaworkingmainboard,soI′mnotexactlybeingtruthfulwhenIsaidI′vegotenoughpartsforawholeanothercomputer,youknow,anotherprinter,justclosetoit.Andtobefair,youknow,inyourdefense,youcouldputupawholeanotherprinterforpocketchangewiththepartsthatyoualreadyhave.Yeah,I′mnotmissingthatmanycomponents,buttobuythepowersupply,IboughtitoutofChinabecausethat′s20, it would have been about $50 if I would have bought it in the U.S.
So I’m going to wait on it, and the printer takes a single rail 24-volt power supply, and so I got a variable power supply out my shop that’s supposedly 10 amps, up to 30 volts, and so I brought that inside and hooked it up to that in the meantime while I wait for another PSU to come in to be shipped down, and unfortunately that power supply too is also a cheap power supply and won’t push 10 amps at 30 volts at all.
And so at its max, it will push about 19 volts when the printer is fully loaded, it will pull down to 19 volts, but the printer seems to be just fine with that.
The duty cycle on the head went from about 20% of the time to up to about 32% of the time, so you can tell that there was a difference with the lower voltage, but that still means that it’s only running 32, only powering up 32% of the time.
So it’s still got enough power there to maintain what it needs to do, and now the printer’s designed to operate between 12 and 24 volts, so 19 is going to be just fine, I believe.
And last night I printed a big peach on my printer, it was only like 120mm diameter sphere, but it worked just fine and the print quality was still there and everything like that, so I’m going to, I guess, use this variable power supply as the power supply for my printer until I get another PSU, and I bought two of them when I did
And when I get the original one out there, they’re just a very simple switching power supply, so I should actually be able to even fix it and have a backup there, but either way, I’m just going to call it a fluke and just replace it with one that it’s designed for.
The same one, and go with that, so that’s been my adventure with my printer last night, and going through and figuring out this problem was quite stressful, because I’ve got all this stuff I need to print.
And as wonderful as you guys are saying, hey, you know, you can help me out if I need anything, I still need to put like two or three rolls of filament through my printer for everything that the wife has been doing, and I felt like that’s asking a little bit much to just run, you know, like Chris’s printer day in and day out, print these things I need for the wife.
so I’m happy to have the machine back in functioning, even if it’s just got a band-aid over the current problem.
Frank
Where do you stand on the idea of moving your coolers onto the power supply that you’re even running the bed heater from, doing the same thing with a relay?
Andy
Yeah, I could, and that wouldn’t be a problem at all.
In fact, well, Chris mentioned something really neat back in the day, he says, hey, laptop power supplies are 18 volts and can pack the punch, and he’s got a lot of amperage there, and Peltier coolers work best at about 18 volts.
Right now, I’m running two 12 volt, or two Peltier coolers in a series off of the 24, so they’re only operating off of 12 volts.
However, the temperature my cooling system can get down to is way already, with just the 12 volts is more than I need anyway, I can, in the middle of summer, it can get down to almost 40 degrees, and that’s cold for the print head, it doesn’t need to be cold, cold.
Frank
Oh, you don’t want to be able to put your drink underneath it and get an Icee out of it?
Andy
Yeah, no kidding, no kidding.
So I think it’s okay, and honestly, the original bed was, I think, a five amp heater, and my Peltier coolers, after measuring them, only pull about two and a half amps.
So that’s still taking a lot less than the printer was supposed to be designed to be able to put out.
So I think I’m okay with going with just the one plug and keeping it simple, running the cooling system off of the printer’s PSU, because it’s still well within its range, and I think it’s just more of a fluke that it went out that it probably, you know, if it was where and due to the amount of amperage that it’s being pulled from it, it would have gone out probably faster with the bed heater, with the original bed heater on it, because that pulled more power.
Frank
There is the bit where technology is weird, it might have lasted, there’s a non-zero chance it would have lasted longer with that bed heater, and that’s why science is so fun too.
Honestly, you have to account for everything, whether you want to or not.
Andy
I remember when I was little, I had a go cart that my dad had built when he was younger, and it was a fun little go cart.
I mean, I had to have only been like 10 years old, and at one point we were out playing with it in a parking lot, and the throttle got stuck on it, stuck open, and I was a 10-year-old, it was a life-threatening situation, actually, I’m lucky I lived through it.
I wound up sneaking in between, we were in a school parking lot, and they had a bunch of pillars up in the parking lot to control the buses, so I could like separate the parking lot where the buses are supposed to go.
And I was just screaming with the throttle wide open, not knowing what to do, and I was too young, I was worried about rolling or flipping the go cart, and not realizing that, God, if I just turn really sharp, it’ll just spin out.
And then my dad would come and help me shut the engine down while it was spun out, but I was young and just worried about flipping it, so I just took this really wide turn and tried to go through those pillars.
And made it the front of the cart through, but the back of the cart hit the pillar, so I was an inch or two away from a serious accident, because I was probably going maybe 25, 30 miles an hour in this little go cart.
Just screaming, but it grabbed the rear wheel and bent it out, and that was where the wheel that was chained up to the engine, so it busted the chain, spun me out in a circle because now the wheel’s bent and acting like a steering wheel.
And everything come to a stop, and everything’s good, everybody’s calm, you know, the problem is over, now my dad went through and rebuilt this go cart, because it was obviously had its problems that it could be in this situation, you know.
So I now had a kill switch down at the base of the steering wheel, so I can kill the engine easy, you know, he fixed the back wheel up and all that other kind of stuff, put all these precautions in, so it would never happen again.
And then I remember going out and riding it for the first time afterward, and I wouldn’t go fast, because obviously I was now scared of the damn thing.
But I was still having fun, you know, it was the go cart, and I remember my dad telling me, you’ve got to go faster, you’re going to burn it up!
Going this slow with it all the time, because it just had a centrifugal clutch, and that’s the first, that’s a long story to bring these two ideas together of sometimes going, pulling too little, can be just as damaging as screaming and pulling too much.
I didn’t think that story was going to be that long and detailed to get through, just to connect those two ideas, I apologize.
Frank
I’m sure it burned through your head in a matter of a second, and…
Andy
Yeah, that’s one of those memories is a little kid that is like, perfect, and because you know, I was a scary moment, everything was happening really slow, because I’m sure my brain was going 90 miles an hour recording every little thing, and you can remember it like it was yesterday, so…
Frank
We can do a tangent on memory, if you like, because it’s what came to mind for me.
We’ve done tests, and figured out that when you remember something, you’re not actually remembering the event, you’re remembering the last time you remembered it, and so things that you remember real well as an adult, the reason they’re different from how they actually happened is because your perspective changes, so the story changes with it, yeah.
Andy
I know exactly what you’re talking about, I’ve got a picture from when I was like five or six years old, that I swear I remember being there for that picture.
I’ve got all these memories about it, but like no memories outside of the photograph, so it’s like that, I’m wondering if I actually was only remembering seeing the photograph as a kid, and developed a memory of actually being there at the time.
Frank
It could be.
Andy
It’s weird, can’t trust the damn thing the brain comes up with, I swear.
Frank
I hate that part, I can’t trust my own memory, and I don’t even have…
Andy
Especially when you’re having an argument with the wife or something like that, you say, oh, I said this, and she says, uh-uh.
Frank
I swear this is how it happened.
Andy
Yeah, you didn’t say that, and now you’re like, maybe I didn’t, I don’t know anymore, I don’t know what’s real, what’s right.
Frank
First, the real challenge is convincing them that what they’re remembering is wrong.
Andy
Yeah, okay.
They’re the wife, you know you’re wrong no matter what you do.
Kevin
I think the worst thing I ever had was right after my brain surgery, they did the Lobectomy, cut out the piece of the brain, you know, the defective part, and within minutes of me waking up, they say, so, are you having any memory loss?
Frank
I think that’s got to be an inside joke.
Kevin
I don’t know.
Frank
Probably.
Kevin
I’ve been awake now for like 20 minutes.
Frank
Let me inspect my memory of my whole life and see if there are any holes.
Kevin
At this moment, if I don’t remember something, I don’t know that I should be remembering it, and so I don’t know that I’ve forgotten it.
I need to talk to people.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Of course, the funny thing from there…
Andy
We never really talked about that.
Was there anything that you did notice that changed after your brain surgery as far as your personality and who you were or anything like that?
Kevin
Yes.
The tumor was pressing against my mood centers and my decision-making centers, so I was actually happier after a lot.
I remember before the surgery, I was in a really bad place, like super depressed.
If I felt anything, any emotion at all, it was either sadness or anger.
Usually I was just numb.
Andy
Oh, geez.
Kevin
Yeah.
It was like probably textbook clinical depression, but I didn’t want to seek any help because I didn’t think I needed it.
I was making some questionable decisions and stuff, and then after the surgery, all of that magically disappeared.
I could suddenly feel the full range of human emotion again and make good decisions and all that.
Frank
There was the aspect.
I remember you were at my place playing poker like a year, maybe two afterwards, and I asked you a question and you looked at your wife and you went, can I use the excuse now?
She looks at you and goes, yeah, you can use the excuse.
You said, I had brain surgery.
I don’t remember this.
Kevin
Yeah.
My wife got sick of me because I’d frequently say if somebody, if I didn’t know the answer to a question for a while, my response was, I’m missing a piece of my brain.
Give me a break.
Andy
Oh, dear.
Frank
That’s one thing we like about the women in our lives though, right?
We can sit and talk crap about them all we want, but in the end, they keep us honest.
Andy
Yep, definitely.
Kevin
Yeah.
And so she’d be like, you need to stop using that excuse.
And I was like, hey, no, I don’t.
Frank
It’s relevant.
Kevin
She doesn’t let me use it anymore though.
Frank
Kevin, on the subject of memory, did you do anything this week?
Kevin
Yes, I did actually.
So I did successfully print the multicolored egg and I posted pictures of that on the Discord.
And then my son has his character in our Pathfinder 2 game that I’ve talked about, his Summoner character.
So I printed his dragon Eidolon a few weeks ago.
And then this last week, I printed four little velociraptors in the hopes that at least one of them would work because I’ve noticed that sometimes things don’t work exactly with this printer exactly the way I want them to.
And so if I print multiples, it increases the chances of at least one of them working, but all four of them did.
So that was fantastic.
Frank
Nice.
Now you’ve got three spares to put on display in your office.
Kevin
Yeah.
And actually, so another game that I’m running is called Gods of Metal Ragnarok.
And I think I’m going to homebrew Raptor Monster in that for the players to fight if one doesn’t already exist.
I don’t think there is one though.
Frank
That should be fun.
Yeah.
That’s cool.
Andy
Well, how about you, Frank?
What have you been up to?
Frank
I have been battling these eggs.
I did get a runoff of the dozen out of a light pink.
And I thought, hey, you know what?
I’m going to run these solid ones off hollow just to see how they do.
And they came out okay, but there was like a bunch of loose filament inside from, you know, when it crosses the gap.
And I decided that I don’t like them hollow.
There’s one that’s the Minecraft one doesn’t do very good hollow.
Like the squares don’t fill the inside very well.
I mean, I guess I could add an extra inside wall to do that, but then I’m really making major differences to my profile that I really don’t want to.
So I decided to just run them all at a lower infill.
So they’re doing 10% instead of the 20 that I normally do.
And that’ll give them the strength and, you know, the loose filament inside is their own purpose.
And then I got, these are 50 hour prints to do all 12 of them.
Andy
Oh, wow, that’s, that’s a long time.
It’s a really long time.
Frank
So we were down to the last two, I’ve got a really light, I guess you might call it a baby blue that I’m doing this set out of.
And we got down to the last two hours of this 50 hour print and two of them were not connected to the main raft.
They had their own raft, but they weren’t connected and they got moved around.
So they weren’t printing good anyway.
I figured, okay, we’re down to the last two hours.
I’m just going to pull these off, reprint them later and let it finish the job.
It’s worth a little bit of loss plastic at that point.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Well, I went and did something for an hour and I came back and I saw that the whole raft was shifting.
Andy
Oh, geez.
Kevin
Oh, no.
Frank
And it’s like, oh, okay.
So part of the reason I’ve decided is because I have let you, Andy, make me paranoid about using rafts and reduced my footprint to three millimeters.
And so what I decided in reprinting, because that whole print was just gone, is I’m doing half of the set at once and I’ve increased the raft big enough that they’re all interconnected very well and the whole thing will be stuck to the build plate instead of minimal spacing.
And it’s worth the extra plastic to me to do it that way.
Andy
My real goal in life is to try to convince you that rafts aren’t necessary and you just need hairspray.
Frank
Good luck with that.
Andy
No, I stopped trying to convince you guys of that a while ago.
I think you’ll come to it on your own.
Chris is almost there.
Frank
Well, I’m stubborn.
My ancestors are from the north.
I’m stubborn as hell.
Andy
Just as much as I did not want to play with your stupid online CAD software, because I know what I like, I’ll respect that you can do it wrong too.
Frank
Well.
Just coming from the guy who ended up going with his stupid online CAD software.
It’s just your custom, your stupid online software instead of my stupid online software.
Frank
Well the SOLIDWORKS is kind of online.
So in order to launch the software, I have to do it from the browser and it will launch the software on my computer.
So to that degree, it is online because I need to be signed in and all that.
That’s how they’re doing their anti-piratng stuff.
So it has to be launched from there.
I can’t launch it without launching it from the browser.
But after that, the only other way it is an online software is when it comes to saving and loading.
I have two new options, save to cloud or load from cloud.
And that seems to be the only difference.
Everything else is still like the normal, it’s like normal software at that point.
It’s just the save and load and how you launch it is online.
And honestly, I can accept that.
Frank
I will identify that I have been working professionally in tech for 10 years and I love software as a service from an engineering perspective and I understand its value.
And so I’m happy to use it that way and you as a software engineer are mostly just localized for the work that you’re doing, so you’re not necessarily creating distributed systems or anything like that.
Andy
You should just use what you like.
Frank
Not as invested in the services.
Andy
Yeah, well, just use what you like and that’s fine.
I totally get that there’s a lot of benefits from using the online stuff just nowadays.
It’s just just like you’re not wanting to use a hairspray.
You just would rather do it the way you’re accustomed to and that’s what makes you comfortable.
Frank
And I’m stubborn.
I identified that already.
I’m stubborn.
Well, we did have a topic for this week.
Actually it’s the topic from last week until we reiterated everything.
Andy
That’s what happens when you have a topic and never actually address it during the podcast?
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, except for weirdly it was on purpose instead of accidentally almost not addressing the topic like we normally do.
So…
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frank
Anyway, the topic this week is material storage and treatment.
Andy
This is a fun one.
Frank
We’ve alluded to different storage processes like from the resin all the way to the different thermal plastics, but now we’ve got the excuse to dive deep.
Andy
I think there’s so many different ways to do it too.
Everybody kind of has their own way that they feel like works for them and everybody has the right way and quotes here to do it.
And everybody else who’s doing it different from that is wrong and, and, and, yeah…
Frank
Hey Andy, you mispronunciated should.
Andy
Oh.
Okay.
Should.
Frank
But it’s true, you know, there was one thing I understand this reasoning, but Kevin, you you specified a couple of weeks ago that your resin comes in brown bottles.
Kevin
Yes.
Frank
And it’s not just the, from my understanding, it’s not just the, because it’s a solid plastic, the brown itself actually helps with preserving the resin, right?
Kevin
Yes.
So the, you look at it from the outside and the bottle appears to be opaque plastic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still some kind of translucent nature to it.
Just because of the nature of molding plastics, you’re, you’re going to end up with some thin spots here and there.
And the thing about this brown, this particular shade in the lab business, we would call it an amber plastic, even though it’s a, it’s a darker brown, not really what you would think of as amber colored, which is going to be that, you know, a dark yellow orange.
Frank
Yeah.
When I think of amber, I think more yellow.
Kevin
Yeah.
Um, but that’s what we call it in the laboratory world.
And it’s probably just cause it’s like that same color, just super concentrated.
And that has the effect of being an excellent UV filter.
Doesn’t let any ultraviolet light through though anything that is sensitive to ultraviolet light is going to be protected from that and since this is UV curing resin, you don’t want it to be exposed to ultraviolet light before it’s time.
Frank
Sure.
That makes sense.
And the reason I learned of this is it was weird, but I watched a documentary on, um, what’s the beer out of Boston, Sam Adams.
And they made a big deal out of, yeah, our glasses, the, the bottles that our beer goes in is always this amber because it blocks the UV and they always use the deeper boxes and all that.
And it’s like, oh, that makes sense because, you know, then you avoid the, the, the beer oxidizing from UV before it gets drank.
And, uh, yeah, I just thought that was fascinating.
Um, go ahead, Andy.
Andy
Uh, I was just going to say that that’s just, that’s just neat thinking on their part.
I mean, it makes sense that they would do it that way, but it’s, it’s nice that you, you know, the leftover storage containers you have, you could reuse for a recycled resin and stuff like that and still have that UV protection on them.
Kevin
Right.
And, and I actually have done that for when I’ve colored resins, I don’t want to put them back in the bottle they were, they came out of because now they’re a different color and they’d, um, they’d color the, the rest of the bottle if I did that.
So I’ve, I’ve hung on to empty bottles for the exact purpose of storing colors or resins that I have changed the color of, uh, when I’m not immediately using them.
Frank
Hmm.
And it works.
Kevin
Yeah.
It works very well.
Frank
Yeah.
I mean, Chris, we’re talking, um, once again, a couple of weeks ago, me and Chris were talking about, uh, the little one gallon buckets, um, for food storage is what they’re usually used for.
And they have the, I can’t remember the official term, but their UV twist on lids that are actually meant to keep it reasonably airtight.
And once again, to keep the UV out, and so I’ve got a couple of those one gallon buckets and I keep my, uh, filament that I’m not using right away and my, uh, my water, uh, what is it, hydroscopic filament, um, I keep those in the buckets with a bunch of desiccant too.
So that way I don’t, I’m not as concerned about, I need to use this quick or else it’s going to suck up all of the moisture that’s in the air.
Andy
Yeah.
Um, well those buckets that you use, can they hold only one reel at a time or can you fit a couple in there?
Frank
These ones can hold three, three, three one kilogram spools.
Andy
So it’s only like a gallon bucket.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Oh wow.
Now, when you were originally talking about this, I was looking at like a five gallon kind of thing.
Okay.
He’s kind of showing me a picture of that.
I think it’s more than a gallon though, isn’t it?
It’s not five gallon, it might be like two and a half or something.
Frank
I’m pretty sure I found them as one gallon buckets.
Andy
Really?
Okay.
Okay.
Uh, that looks like that would fit good.
That’s cool.
Frank
It might be a little bit more, but then when they size buckets anyway, they don’t expect you to fill it up to the brim.
So.
Right.
True, true.
But yeah, the, the one kilogram spools are the perfect size to have almost no leeway, no tolerance inside of the bottom.
Okay.
As the flares going up, it’s not that big a deal.
It’s only, I don’t know, a centimeter difference in diameter at the top from the bottom.
Okay.
Uh, yeah, diameter.
Um, and I got the twist on lids because I don’t want to be breaking my fingers to pop the lid off every time.
Andy
Agreed.
Frank
Um, and it just has the added bonus of being UV blocking.
So, um, there is the bit where I have not, like, I guess I could take one of these buckets and modify it so that I could have a spool currently being used in one, like, uh, there’s a lot of the products that you can buy now.
You can buy from people that have made them where it sits on where you normally have the spool and just feeds the, um, feeds your plastic out as you’re using it, and then it keeps it dry while it’s being stored there.
Um, and I’ve seen a lot of DYI options for that exact thing, but because most of what I use is PLA, I’m not as concerned.
And the stuff that is, like I said, hydroscopic, I just store in one bucket until I’m going to use it.
And when I know I’m going to use it, I just throw it in my dehydrator for a little while before it goes up on the machine.
Andy
Yeah, it sounds like a great way to do it.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
I’ve always used the, um, the bags for freezer.
I think they’re two and a half gallon bags.
Okay.
Um, they’re the bigger, the bigger bags, uh, with the big plastic zipper, um, on the edge.
And that’s what I keep all of my filament in.
Just those bags, just one, one bag per filament and all except PLA, I don’t bag PLA.
I let that sit out in the open, but like you’ve pointed out here, we’re up in the high desert anyway.
So our humidity tends to be lower, um, so plastic with the exception of the last week or so anyway.
Yeah.
No kidding.
With the, with PLA being not quite as hydroscopic as a lot of other plastics, I don’t really worry too much about those.
I got more of a problem with UV exposure, I think, uh, but I also keep it all in my laundry room where I don’t have an outside window and we don’t really leave lights on in there and things.
So I don’t think it’s that big of an issue either.
Most of the time whenever I have problems with, uh, UV exposed plastic, it just is brittle and, um, you know, a little bit of time in the dehydrator, uh, you know, can re soften the plastic right back up real quick.
So it doesn’t really seem to be too much of a problem.
But desiccant, uh, you can microwave the desiccant, microwave the water out of a desiccant pack, kind of recharge it.
And so every once in a while I’ll go through and grab all the little tiny desiccant packets that I’ve thrown in my, uh, in my bags, uh, over time, because, you know, anytime you open up a new one, it goes into the, the, that particular bag.
And so plastic that I use a lot of like PETG, I’ve got a lot of desiccant building up.
And, uh, when I get my PLA ones, I usually throw those in somewhere too, but every once in a while I’ll go through, I’ll pull them all out, put them in the microwave, microwave them for, you know, five or 10 minutes until they stop generating heat, you know, all the water will be gone out of the packet if you put it in the microwave and it doesn’t build up any heat.
And, uh, and then you can throw it back in the bags to keep things dry.
It’s been working pretty well for me, I believe.
Frank
So they don’t absorb the microwaves and get hot because of that, it’s only the moisture that’s in them.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin
What the microwaves do is they go through whatever is in the microwave and they’ll rub up against the water molecules and kind of cause them to vibrate against each other.
And that’s what causes the heat.
Frank
Well, yeah, but I mean, like, uh, you use ceramic bowls and that sort of thing in the microwave too, and they’re, they’re not embedded with moisture.
Kevin
That’s true.
And I don’t understand why some of those, because I’ve noticed some of those get really hot and others don’t.
Andy
Yeah.
I’ve experienced that too.
I think it’s just whatever the microwave resonates with the particular material might heat up or not, but with desiccant, it doesn’t seem to, I mean, it’ll still get warm to the touch, but when it’s got water in it, it’ll get hot to where you put it in there for a minute, let it go, open the door up, and if things are really hot, I usually let them cool down before I close it and put it, turn it on again.
I don’t want to melt things down, you know.
Frank
Well, and you get them too hot and one go, it’ll burn through the, the packaging too, right?
Andy
Exactly.
Exactly.
But after a couple of times to do in that, when you, you know, put it in, they’ll just be, they’ll stop getting quite as hot as they have been and they’ll, they’ll stay kind of more just a little bit on the warm side.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
And it’s usually at that point when I pull them out and put them back in all the bags, but I’ve only done it like two or three times because moisture is really kind of not that big of an issue.
I rarely run into it.
Usually it’s one that’s, or the plastic zipper on my bag has broken or not sealed when you zipped it up and, because it’s just an overused bag.
And you know, that, that particular roll might get some water in it, but other than that water is not really too big of an issue.
So when people are doing all these fancy boxes, it’s kind of hard from my perspective to think it’s needed just because arid environment that we live in and just having a system that kind of generally works doesn’t feel like we would need that.
But then again, too, I’m not printing with like truly hydroscopic materials.
I’ve got some that’s made for, you know, the water soluble supports that I’m afraid to open the package.
I don’t even know why I got the darn thing.
I should just use it up one of these days, make some benchies for the kids, throw them in the bath, watch them have fun with it, you know, it’s about all that’s worth at this point.
Frank
Ooh! bath bombs!
Andy
What? Oh, bath bombs.
Frank
Yeah, 3D Print bath bombs!
Andy
Yeah, that might work.
I don’t know if it completely solidifies in water or if it just kind of melts, it’d be kind of gross to have a globule of that plastic in the bath with you, just a big booger.
Frank
Yeah, there’s that.
Kevin
just a little bit.
Andy
A big snot dome…
Frank
There’s that.
When I first got the buckets, I did make this little insert that goes in the hole in the spool.
Okay.
Andy
That’s holding the desiccant?
Frank
Yeah, for the desiccant.
Andy
Oh, that’s cool.
So it’s got a honeycombed sides on it and actually I redesigned the lid and put some in the top too because I felt like the spools might be sealing off the sides.
But yeah, that’s really just all it took for me was creating that and then I don’t have to go fishing for the desiccant later.
But I printed off three of them and they filled up with all the plastic I was using.
So I started throwing the desiccant away.
Andy
If you’re having that much desiccant, then that sounds better than just reusing it too.
Frank
So yeah, so there’s really just a matter of how much do you need?
Andy
Yeah, yeah, that’s true.
I know I print small things, so I tend not to go through plastic very fast.
It’s only until recently of doing all these prop items for my kids play that I’ve actually gone through like reels of plastic.
Usually a reel lasts me a very long time, you know, six months to a year.
And so I also bought some colored, tricolored PLA.
The wife saw one of the things that Chris had printed with his, you know, color changing PLA.
So I want one of those dragons and I tried not to be, I tried not to be the person that who has a 3D printer and I’m going to print all these plastic things for my family because I think it’s cool.
But I didn’t suspect that they were then like missing out thinking that that would have been nice if I would have been doing that.
So I feel kind of bad.
I made the wrong judgment of sharing my printer stuff thinking it would be annoying when really now they’re kind of left out.
So my wife had mentioned, oh, that would be kind of neat.
So I bought some of that color changing plastic and I’m going to go to, you know, and pick out one of the thingiverse, yeah, and pick out one of the dragons, the flexi dragons and printer out print them out for maybe a little bit more for the kids.
Frank
There is the bit where balance is a good thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Um, I try not to only print stuff that I think could be fun and I try not to get stuck in the hole of my wife wants all this stuff and I don’t have time to print my own stuff.
So…
Andy
yeah.
Yeah.
Frank
I don’t think I’ve violated either.
Andy
I think the only time I have is, um, I tend to print benchies for when I want to do a surface test of, of something.
If I’m worried about surface quality, I’ll do a benchy.
Um, but for all the other tests, I prefer tests designed to test the thing they’re testing.
But, uh, benchies become bath toys right off the bat.
So there’s like five or six in the bath…
Frank
They like to float upside down, but okay.
Andy
Yeah.
They don’t really float that great, but then kids don’t care when they’re playing with them in the bathtub.
So…
Frank
That’s true.
Andy
Whatever.
They’re going to go underwater and be filled with water and stuff anyway.
But so there’s, there’s a lot of those floating around, but they would have been just garbage.
I would have thrown away once I confirmed and I try not to print them super big.
So I’m wasting a lot either usually it’s just big enough to, to do the test.
I want to test or want to confirm and then, then it’s a toy for the kids.
So other than that, when they want something built, that’s when it’s fun.
But a lot of that is like sitting down and designing it together.
Cause I think it’s the real fun, uh, more than, than playing with the toy afterwards.
So there was one, uh, around Christmas time we were looking for white elephant gifts.
Okay.
And my wife went through my plastic trash bucket and pulled out all the benchies I’d thrown away and we gave them away as a set of benchies.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Frank
My father-in-law looks at it and goes, that’s cool.
What is it?
It’s in my brother-in-law.
We talked to him already because oh, it’s a benchie.
My father-in-law goes, oh, what?
Yeah, it’s a benchmark.
It’s how you confirm how good the print is.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
No kidding.
Frank
And actually I’ve identified already also that, uh, when I get a new spool, I like to run off a benchy just to make sure that it works with the profile.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And then it becomes a color swatch.
Andy
Oh, there we go.
Frank
So you know, when, when I change out the colors, obviously that’s why I had a bunch in my, my bin at the time.
But yeah.
Yeah.
It’s fun.
Andy
Today, after the podcast here, you know, we’re coming up on Easter, I decided to do some shortbread cookies with the kids.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
And so we’re going to sit down and, and design some PETG cookie cutters, one-time use cookie cutters and, uh, that are Easter related.
And I think I’m looking so much more fun of sitting down with each one of the kids while we design a cookie cutter shape together on the computer and then printing them out later.
So.
Frank
Well, you’re a fun dad.
For sure.
Andy
Try to be.
Frank
Um, does anybody have any thoughts on the second half of the topic?
Which is treatment.
I didn’t write this topic.
No, I think it was Chris.
Kevin
Oh, no, I’m not sure exactly what that, other than maybe with uh…
Frank
maybe post like for you, Kevin, you have to, uh, you have to put everything through the wash and then you solidify cure, make sure it’s perfectly cured.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
After the fact.
Kevin
Uh, and that maybe that is, but yeah, that’s, that is my process because, uh, when it.
When it comes off the printer, after it’s been washed, it’s kind of got a, a soft texture to it and it’s a little bit more flexible than you’d expect of a thing.
And so then you put it in the cure station.
Some people will just put it in the sun.
Frank
Um, I mean, UV is UV, right?
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
And so probably a lot more powerful than the cure station, isn’t it?
Kevin
Yeah.
Probably.
I mean…
Andy
UV wise.
Kevin
There’s a big giant star in the sky blasting the planet with UV.
I imagine it would be.
I mean, I do know that when, um, when I was modifying the Eye of Agamoto amulet that I had printed for, um, my younger son’s Halloween costume last year, we were outside and I drilled through it and there were, there was liquid resin trapped inside and it solidified within a second.
So.
Andy
No kidding!
Kevin
Yeah.
It was, it leaked out, hit the ground and then it was solid.
Andy
Oh, wow.
That’s kind of cool.
Kevin
Yeah.
So.
Frank
No sense in converting coal into UV when all you have to do is put it out in the window, right?
Kevin
Right.
I mean, the only reason I got the wash and cure station was for the wash part, but then, then the cure station, the cure part is convenient.
I don’t have to.
Andy
You already have it there.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
And the things I tend to print are so small for the most part that if I put them outside, you know, you want to remember where you put it, you don’t want to lose it or step on it or anything like that.
So it’s convenient for that also.
Frank
Okay.
I know.
Andy
Does resin suffer from UV damage when it’s out in the sun a lot, like a cured part?
Like our PLA will turn brittle and hard in the UV, or at least supposed to.
I’ve got a lot of PLA that refuses to go bad…
Frank
Well it’s because you keep reconditioning it before you print it.
Kevin
Right.
Okay.
So I’ve heard that, yes, leaving resin printed stuff in the sun too long will make it go harder and more brittle, but I haven’t really experimented with that so much.
I don’t try to break the stuff that I’ve printed.
Frank
Well, yeah, that would be a waste of time to print it off just so you could break it.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Well, I say that, but there are YouTube videos where they stress test all the stuff.
Kevin
Yeah, that’s true.
Frank
But they’re doing it with a purpose.
It’s not an arbitrary, I mean, I see it.
If I can soak up too much UV with this dragon, I just print it off.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Now, that being said, I did a while back print some picks of Destiny, and one of my friends said that he was thinking of getting something, and then he said, or maybe I just ought to see if I can order some online so I can have an actually functional pick.
And I made me say, well, who’s to say this one isn’t, and so I actually got one of my guitars and I used it, and it was actually a functional pick.
I half expected it would break, but it didn’t.
Frank
Nice.
Andy
Does it seem to be wearing at the same rate as a standard pick?
Kevin
So I haven’t used it a whole lot, but I didn’t notice any.
I played with it for probably an hour, and I didn’t notice any significant wear on it.
And I will say that when I very first got my first electric guitar, I did have a hard plastic fender brand pick that broke in that amount of time.
Frank
Okay.
So there is a, well, there’s a spectrum for everything, right, but this is on the useful end of the spectrum.
Kevin
Right.
Now, to be fair to Fender, just because I don’t want to sound like I’m denigrating them in any way, I may not have been using the pick exactly correct because I was a newbie with guitaring at that time.
So I just need to throw that out there so that nobody says this.
Frank
Just in case they reach out to us and ask us to help them 3D print a guitar for them.
Kevin
I’m more afraid of, you know, any kind of defamation.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I’m not a great guitar player, but if Fender decided to come and sponsor us and have us 3D print stuff for them, I would be game for them to give me a fender in trade.
Kevin
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Andy
I do got a question for you, Kev.
We’ve got all these different ways of reconditioning our filament when we’ve done the worst things with it, like leaving it out or leaving it out in the sun and being able to bring it back and make it pretty much usable.
There’s not a whole lot that you can neglect filament that you can’t bring back with, you know, 24 hours in the dehydrator or whatnot.
Of course, I don’t know if you went and soaked the water soluble stuff in water, you might have a problem putting it back together.
But generally speaking, you can recondition your way out of it.
Can you do anything for your resin that kind of starts to go bad on you?
Kevin
Nope.
Frank
Throw it away and start over.
Andy
Glad we figured that one out.
All right.
Good to know.
Kevin
I mean, if there is something that can be done with resin that has been left out too long and is starting to go bad, I don’t know about it.
So if anybody knows better, let us know in the comments or wherever email us and enlighten us.
Because as far as I know, once it starts going bad, it’s bad.
You can’t do anything to bring it back.
Andy
It’s actually starting to solidify, right?
And that’s a chemical reaction with resin, isn’t it?
Kevin
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s either solidifying or settling out to the point of uselessness if you can’t mix it back up, because yes, it is a chemical reaction.
Some weeks ago, a couple of months ago, I watched a very fascinating video about the science behind resin printing.
And it went into great detail about all the monomers and the activators and everything that basically…
Andy
I think you shared that with us, because I remember going through something like that.
Kevin
Yes, I did.
And I mean, the guy goes into great detail about, you’ve got these activators that get excited when they’re hit with a specific wavelength of light.
And in the case of my resin, it’s 405 nanometers, and it’ll split those apart.
And they’ve got active ends that don’t want to be separated.
And they’ll grab on to the monomers that are floating around and hold them in place.
Andy
It’s a monomer that has that happen, then is able to attract another monomer or something like that.
Kevin
Yeah, there’s kind of a chain reaction that follows, and then it forms the polymer that you end up with in your finished product.
Andy
That’s cool.
That’s cool.
Yeah.
That was a neat one to listen to.
But yeah, like you say, I guess if you had stuff settling out, just the different chemicals settling out, you might, with some serious mixing, be able to get it back together.
But I think that’s the only one you might be able to recover from.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
And that was Chris’s point with the blender a couple of weeks ago.
Not the modeling program, an actual kitchen blender.
Kevin
Although I think that a blender might be a bit overkill, I think it would be more appropriate to get one of those drill or rotary tool attachments that’s just got, it looks like a miniaturized speedboat propeller.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Yeah, like paint mixers?
Kevin
Yeah, exactly.
Just a little tiny mixer that you’d swirl around in there.
I think that would be a lot better, a better tool to use than a blender.
Andy
If you accidentally aerated your resin, would that affect your print?
Kevin
No.
In fact…
Frank
Your box isn’t even airtight, is it?
Kevin
I don’t think so.
Frank
Well, I guess if you were aerating it, you would be like moving air through it and aerating it.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Okay.
Kevin
So what I was going to say though is that the instructions for use on every resin bottle are to shake thoroughly before using it.
And if you’ve opened it at all, there’s going to be air in there.
And I’ve poured foamy resin into the resin vat before because that’s what happens when you shake it up.
It gets little bubbles in it.
But then the build plate comes down and it’s going to press all of that out.
It’s not so bubbly that it’s going to interfere with anything.
Andy
Okay.
That’s cool.
Frank
And where it’s being activated is at the bottom where there’s no air bubbles anyway.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Yeah.
So that’s fun.
Andy
Makes sense.
Frank
Well, was there anything that was missed, Andy, is how like you were going to say something?
Andy
Not necessarily with storage and treatment, whatever treatment was supposed to mean.
I mean, I think treatment for like our FDM printers is maybe the recovery of our filament when it does suffer problems from improper storage.
Frank
Well, and you’ve talked about times where…
Andy
In which case Dehydrate, Dehydrate, Dehydrate
Frank
Things, Andy, where you have put a finished part in the dehydrator.
Andy
Yes.
So kind of anneal it better?
Yeah.
Frank
When that’s necessary, which is not enormously often.
Kevin
Although I would suspect that what Chris meant by treatment was probably the pre-treatment where you take the old PLA and put it in the dehydrator or if it’s old and brittle but not necessarily waterlogged, just heating it up on your build plate for like we’ve talked about before, just to kind of bring it back into a usable state.
Frank
Well, and as far as I know, this is an old topic too.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Probably came off at the same time as some other topics that we thought of and…
Kevin
Probably.
Frank
So we’ve brainstormed some ideas like rejuvenating it on the build plate.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
But yeah, I’d accept that as an explanation of it too.
All right.
Well, if there’s nothing else, we can close this up.
Kevin
I don’t think there’s anything else.
Frank
All righty.
Andy
Not that I can think of.
Frank
Well, we’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
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Remember that if you have some feedback for Kevin’s question about other ways to rejuvenate resin if they’re out there.
The music in this episode was written by Kevin Buckner and OpenAI’s Whisperer completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cottam.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Dehydrate everything.