Kevin
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 45 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, Kevin Buckner, and my friends, Andy Codham and Chris Weber.
Frank is, once again, unavailable this week, so we’re allowing him to have a bit of a vacation.
Andy
I still think we’ve got our priorities all wrong, 3D printing isn’t coming first, you’re doing something wrong.
Chris
Oops.
Kevin
So that being said, Andy, what have you been working on this week?
Andy
Oh, well, as far as printing goes, I’ve gotten a couple of projects going here or there.
I did have a huge problem with my printer this week.
Let me quickly look here to see if I have worked on anything recently more than that.
So my son wanted to have something printed and some large piece of track for his Hot Wheels track that he could do.
He wanted to be able to make the cars go upside down without falling off the track.
So we put together something weird.
I told him this isn’t really going to work like the way you want it to work, but he was pretty gung-ho on it, so I told him, okay, you just tell me what you want and I’ll design it.
What he wanted was a little bit more difficult to design than what he could do in his 3D paint program.
So I sat down with him and he gave me measurements and told me what he wanted and I threw it together for him.
He came up with something that I’m pretty certain will not work, but he’s pretty excited about it and since it is more than the 25 grams of plastic, he’s willing to pay for it.
So if he’s putting his own money forth, I ain’t going to question it.
It’ll be a good learning lesson for him, but got it going through the printer and it wound up stopping in the middle of the night.
It was a nine hour print, if I remember right, and it only got maybe an hour and a half into it, and my printer had a thermal shutdown.
Now what’s kind of scary in my household is when my printer has a thermal shutdown, it starts screaming and an alarm’s going off and it does that until you forcefully shut it down.
Now Marlin seems to be really good at whenever there’s a thermal problem of shutting everything down itself, in which it did, but it was still the alarm was still going off.
So when I woke up for work in the morning and I get out of bed to go start the day, I can hear this screeching from my laundry room, so I go to look what it is and it’s my printer on thermal overload shutdown mode yelling at you.
So I go and I shut it off and no one else in the house noticed it, so that’s a whole issue on its own because it sounds like a fire alarm when it’s going off and nobody heard it.
So I think I’m going to have to set my alarm sometime in the night and go and do a fire drill in the house and make sure people knows what those sounds mean and how to address them.
Chris
You got to be careful with that though.
So when I was in high school, my dad got one of those 100 decibel alarms because I had trouble making it to my first period class a few times.
Andy
A few.
Chris
And so I actually slept through it for a good half hour and I dreamed that I was riding a fire truck.
Andy
So anyway, back to the printer, played with it for a little bit.
Turns out when I power it on and the printer powers on the cartridge for the hot end, it does not increase in temperature and that’s what the thermal alarm is, is it’s actually outside of the curve that it’s supposed to follow when it powers out on because it doesn’t do anything.
So my thermal cartridge is just toast and it happens from time to time on these 3D printers.
It’s usually not too big.
What was, what a joke.
Chris
Your thermal cartridge is toast.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I completely missed that.
No pilot intended.
Obviously, there was definitely no pun intended.
But yeah, so the cartridge on my printer is toast and that’s okay.
That’s the, I am still running the original cartridge on my printer that it originally came with.
I haven’t had a need to swap it out and anytime I’ve swapped out the heat block or whatever, I’ve kept the same cartridge.
So it’s been inside of a couple different blocks and all that and then moved around a lot and it finally gave out.
So this weekend…
Chris
Better run than the cartridge on my record player.
Andy
So this weekend, I’m going to pull it apart and throw in another one and we should be back up and running.
But for as of right now, my printer is kind of down for the count as that it won’t heat up anymore.
So that’s where that stand and hopefully by the end of the week here, I’ll get it going again.
And then I’ll be able to finish off the weird track thing that my boy made and we’ll go from there.
But that’s, that’s all my three 3D printing news.
There hasn’t been a whole lot really.
How about you Chrissy?
Andy
Well, no, I’m, I’ve been busy with remodeling and broken cars, you know, my printer’s been on the down low.
I am looking to surprise the wife by printing that little crystal dragon.
Andy
Oh, is that the one that was shared on our group that was that little like like flexi dragon?
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
But that’ll be pretty neat.
Kevin
I still need to download those files because that printing one of those would be cool.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
They looked pretty neat.
Rose Dragon, wasn’t that what it was?
Chris
That was the one Frank had, yeah.
Kevin
Right.
So Frank, Frank shared the Rose Dragon one and then Chris shared the Crystal Dragon one.
Andy
Oh, I think I missed that.
We’ll have to go back and look at that one.
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
My wife’s not really a big fan of roses, but she likes crystals, really likes dragons.
So again, I’ve been pacing myself with printing all the various dragon things so that we don’t fill my house full of 3D printed dragons and in no time flat because I let her have everything she wanted.
Andy
So just looking at over here, yeah, it looks just like one of those flexi dragons, but it looks like it’s made of crystals.
Kevin
Yep.
Chris
Yep.
Yep.
Pretty good.
And yeah, so we were at the grocery store and there’s a little end cap by one of the registers and yeah, there was that dragon of a few different colors and they were all tagged at like 18,18,18, $19 and I was like, how long would it take to print one of those?
And I said, well, I don’t know, I need to see if I can find if there’s a file available for it.
Yeah.
Yep.
So there it is.
I will be printing one of those probably in a speckled, speckled purple, possibly.
Yeah.
Oh, and then I found an articulated toothless one.
Kevin
Nice.
Chris
Looks kind of cool.
I’m print that in a speckled black or well, dark, dark gray, not black black, but it’s called burnt titanium.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
That works.
How about you, Kev?
You do anything?
Kevin
Yes.
So I printed off the little goblin bat riders that I’m planning on using as the black knights for the Nightmare Chess set and I also printed off what I’m planning on using as the black rooks.
They’re these gigantic beasts with towers on their backs that my son said reminds him of Sauron’s Tower from Lord of Rings.
Chris
What’s black and bad for your teeth?
A rook.
Andy
A rook.
Kevin
That is certainly true.
Yes.
Andy
There’s so many things that can qualify under that, what’s black and bad for your teeth.
Kevin
Right.
Yeah.
And so also this same son, he’s got his fifth edition D&D campaign going and he had one of his friends get on the computer onto Titancraft to design his character and my son tried to print that yesterday and it mostly worked but the weapon looks a bit flat on the back end so I’m going to suggest that he tries that again.
Andy
Okay.
Now when Prince failed, does that happen too often to you when something just doesn’t seem to solidify right or something like that on your SLA printer?
Kevin
It happens from time to time.
Yeah.
Andy
Does it?
Kevin
Yeah.
A lot of it has to do with either exposure times but I’ve got those pretty well dialed in so it’s mostly at this point I think positioning on the build plate.
For some reason, just the way where you put it and the direction it’s facing has a noticeable impact on the success of the print, I don’t know why.
Andy
That is weird.
I’m sure there’s a reason for it if we really dug into it, probably we’ll figure it out but I bet that would mean really watching one go and it’s kind of hard to watch when they’re printing unless you’re printing in something clear, right?
Kevin
Even then, you’ve got the build plate that blocks the screen for most of the process.
Chris
I just get a UV pen light, you’ll be fine.
You’ll see everything you need to.
Kevin
Yes, because there’s no way that will ever go wrong.
Andy
That’s cool.
Well, awesome.
It’s neat seeing that that chess set is coming along well.
Chris
Oh, I am so stoked to see with it.
Andy
I’m excited to see when you’re all done with that on how it looks as a whole.
Kevin
Yeah, me too, actually.
Andy
Are you still going through and thinking about doing the actual board itself using your FDM printer?
Yeah.
That’s going to have to happen at some point because I lost my train of thought there for a second but I do need to have the board because I need to have some place to store all the pieces that I’m printing off and I want to have the board be capable of having sections blocked off that are movable because that’s an important part of the game or at least with one of the cards, it has barriers on the outermost empty ranks and files and as outer ranks and files get emptied, the barriers move, so the usable area of the board shrinks.
Andy
Oh, that’s kind of cool.
Chris
Are you thinking about possibly using magnets, maybe in laying the magnets?
Kevin
I had floated the idea of putting magnets in or on the basis of the pieces and having just a metal sheet under the board.
I haven’t gotten that far into it yet.
Chris
Oh, okay.
Yeah, a metal sheet is at least relatively cheap for less than 20 bucks.
You can get a really, really thin 16th-inch steel plate down at the local hardware store, so that’s not too bad.
Andy
That would work.
It is neat seeing how this is going to come along.
Not too many people would think that being able to completely design a chest set from scratch here.
Kevin
I’m not really going from scratch.
I am leaning pretty heavily on my Lute Studio subscription.
Andy
Are ya?
Chris
It’s kind of sort of like taking pieces from here and there and assembling a complete unit instead.
Andy
Yeah.
It’s still pretty cool.
I discovered…
Chris
It’s like taking canned ingredients and sticking them all together in a pot to get a stew, as opposed to actually cutting up the meat fresh and baking the beans and all of that from scratch to get the stew.
You know what I mean?
Andy
Yeah, that makes sense.
I had something kind of neat happen.
I think I might have mentioned this a little bit earlier, but just kind of brushed by it, but I’ve got a…
I had something kind of unique happen in my work car.
I’ve printed off a lot of pieces in PLA back in the day that I’ve used that I keep in the car all the time, cell phone mount and stuff like that, but one of the things that I had designed was a USB charger that can give you the detailed readouts of how many amps it’s pulling and stuff like that and also be quick charge capable, do the 5, 9, and 12 volt quick charge and to be able to do it for all the ports that I made for it.
So I made one that’s just a 4 port quick charge that can hook directly to the car cigarette lighter, but I had no mounting mechanism for it inside of the car.
And at one point, a couple of months ago, I think actually, I wound up just rubber banding the whole thing to a part of the work desk that’s in my work car, and it was working pretty fine and didn’t think too much of it.
And over with us dealing with this heat wave and stuff that’s been coming around, I’ve noticed that that that piece is actually melting.
And what’s weird about it is it’s curling up where the rubber bands are putting pressure on it.
The rubber bands are absolutely destroying the PLA.
It’s kind of crazy.
Chris
Well, constant pressure comes constant pressure and do that, find how that works.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, but it’s just it seems to be just so susceptible to it compared to other plastics.
I was kind of impressed, figuring I just haven’t had any problems with PLA inside of hot cars like that.
This is the first time I have.
And to see it, you know, curl over and do that is was, you know, it’s been kind of impressive see how bad it would fail over that that time.
But it is really bad.
I’ve only got a little bit more time with it.
Once I got some free time to use my printer and don’t have anything to print, I think I’m going to go and get the file that I made for that and reprint the entire plastic clam shell out of out of PETG this time instead of PLA and swap it out.
So I think the PETG isn’t quite susceptible to stuff like that.
And maybe consider making a proper mount for it, because that was the whole reason I was using rubber bands is I just didn’t have a mount for it at all.
It was supposed to just kind of be a brick, you know, and it’s got a wire that runs to the the cigarette lighter cord to get power from the car.
And so it’s it’s just a block that that runs to and it’s some it’s not doing not doing very good compared to everything else.
And it’s it’s all about where those rubber bands were riding.
Chris
Well, if you want to try it in ABS, I have determined that I do have all of the materials I need to make an enclosure for mine and start moving on ABS.
Andy
Well, that’s pretty cool.
I appreciate the offer.
But PETG covers everything that ABS can do and do a little bit more.
So with and being that everything about the clam shell has to line up with my printed components, I would have to compensate for shrinkage and stuff like that to use ABS on it.
Chris
Yeah, I forgot about shrinkage.
Andy
Yeah, ABS is pretty bad when it comes to shrinkage.
You definitely don’t get the same size part that you printed or that you drew it up as that will come out in different different orientation.
It shrinks more some ways than other ways, too.
Like anytime you’ve got a curve in your print job, you won’t find very much shrinking at all, but straight lines will shrink quite a bit.
So it’s like if you’re making like a lollipop shape, the circle, the lollipop might hold its dimensions, but the stick is going to be a lot shorter than you originally designed it for.
So it’s not just like overall designing or compensating for shrinkage throughout the entire part.
You got to compensate it in weird ways because it just matters in how it’s printing to how it.
Yeah, that’s kind of one of the reasons why ABS is really kind of phased out with 3D printing.
It’s very difficult to to get precise components out of it.
Chris
OK, well, I still want to be able to be printing nylon anyway.
But yeah, yeah, still going ahead with that.
But I’m not going to hit that low hanging fruit about the shrinking stick.
Well
Kevin
Right?
So what are you planning on making your enclosure out of there, Chris?
Chris
Uh, mostly a wood box.
So you get you get the pressed melamine board.
That’s already got the coating on it, right?
And so and then I’m going to put a hole in the back with a four inch vent out to the window with a fan on it.
Andy
Oh, cool.
Chris
And so the the the.
Um, I might hook the fan up to a thermal switch where it kicks on.
If the if the enclosure area gets too hot, but then again, maybe just have it on a regular low power, low power when.
When the when the printer is on or just straight up flip it to a manual low power switch so that, you know, I can turn it on and off as I please.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Um, but yeah, the melamine wood.
And then the front is going to be a P.
Oh my gosh, that clear plastic.
Andy
Plexi?
Chris
Plexi glass.
Yes, I’ve got a piece of plexi glass already are already ready to go.
So that’s nice.
Andy
Yeah, that’ll be cool.
It’ll definitely give you some advantages that the rest of us just cannot accomplish with our FDMs not being closed.
Kevin
Right.
Chris
And the the great part is that I can use my existing roller setup for the plastic for my plastic rolls so that I can just cut a a slot in the in the in the top piece of wood and then put a little hole for the plastic to feed through.
Andy
OK
Kevin
There you go.
Chris
Easy, easy.
Andy
That’ll work.
That’ll be nice.
I think I’ve kind of moved away from advancing my printer a whole lot more.
It kind of does everything that I need it to do right now.
So I don’t think I’ll wind up doing the enclosure.
It would be nice to be able to print nylon and things like that.
But just right now, it seems like I’ve got a specific type of plastic that does what I need it to do for every situation that I’ve encountered.
So until I start encountering situations where I need a different kind of plastic, I think I’m going to just kind of stick to what I’ve got going on here.
And I use just PLA, PETG and TPU for everything.
But different varieties of those types of plastics seem to cover quite a bit.
Chris
Nice.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
However, I’m getting close to wanting to purchase a SLA printer.
That keeps on bugging me here and there.
I think it would be nice to just have that available right now.
Chris
You know, well, an SLA printer is invaluable, invaluable for a cosplay stuff.
You know, you can get such fine, fine details.
You can do you can use it for a lot of a lot of the details in cosplay versus the FDM, you know.
So like, yeah, you can make big, big arm cuffs with an FDM printer or whatever else.
But you’re not going to get all the symboling and stuff like that out of it.
Andy
Yeah, that is true
Chris
As as easily.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah.
So my new my boss is big into cosplay and he has both an FDM and an SLA printer because he’s cosplay.
Andy
Well, that’s that’s good to know that that’s something that’s been working out.
My wife’s really, really big into cosplay, too.
Being able to do some of the finer detail for things like, you know, like gem pieces and stuff like that, where you kind of want the extra detail or for buttons or things like that on the cosplay would be really nice to have.
Really good quality detail like that.
Ah, you know what?
I just thought about something that would be kind of neat.
I was just thinking, oh, gems are kind of a neat thing.
But what if you were to pour an epoxy of something like a gem but then use your SLA printer to print something that would be inside of the gem, inside of that clear epoxy?
Kevin
Yeah, you can do that.
Chris
Yeah, easy.
Andy
Yeah, that would be neat.
Kevin
Well, I’ve used mine to print little gem things because I found an STL for a hollow infinity stone.
And so I printed that up and then I was able to put a an LED inside the infinity stone.
And I talked about this before where my son wanted to go as Dr. Strange for Halloween and I printed up the Eye of Agamotto.
And so it would it would open up and there you’d have this glowing green time stone embedded in the eye.
It was it was really cool looking.
Andy
That is that is really neat.
I remember we showed that one off.
That was very neat.
Kevin
Yeah
Andy
Yeah, a lot of options like that, that too.
And also thinking about giving some CNC set up that can cut aluminum.
I think that I know that’s 3D printing adjacent, do stuff like that.
But it’s kind of on the docket, too.
Sometimes it would be nice to be able to just cut a component out of aluminum as easy as they are to 3D print.
Chris
Actually, I saw a guy turn his 3D printer into a CNC.
Yeah, not a CNC.
Not a or not just a CNC.
It was the EDM, a wire EDM.
Oh, OK.
Wow.
He turned his 3D printer and wire into a wire EDM.
Chris
That’s impressive.
That’s not an uncomplicated task.
Yeah, he said he was getting an accuracy of about five thou.
Andy
So he designed that the head himself on the EDM or was that something he just bought a proper head and attached it to the the printer to do the the CNC movements?
Chris
Yeah, so it looked like he took a wire EDM head and mounted it on his 3D printer.
But then, you know, didn’t have the bed underneath it, obviously, because you need to have the the bath underneath it.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, that is cool.
That is cool.
I’ve only seen a couple of times where where EDMs have been used and I’ve even tried to hunt down somebody who’s made those really super precision little puzzle pieces that you might be able to buy.
But whenever you come across ones like that, they always try.
They’re always charging so much money for them just to be able to have a small gift for my dad, you know, just that that super precision engineering and those those kind of cuts that can be airtight without, you know, any kind of seal.
Chris
Yeah, yeah, I worked with a guy that operated a wire EDM for precision tooling and he could he could get it accurate within about 10 millionths if he had everything dialed in, right?
Andy
Wow.
And that’s 10, 10, 10 millionths is is is that kind of fit where you can’t see the surface when you pop them together.
You know, but most off more often than not, he was being pushed for production time and did was just getting something within a couple of tents and calling it good because when the print calls out a thousandth tolerance, plus or minus.
So plus or minus five tenths, you go, yeah, it’s within two tenths.
The program will be good within two tenths all the time, no matter what.
OK, just go with it.
Andy
Yeah, that makes sense.
Kevin
Yeah, there are certainly those times when good enough is good enough.
Chris
Yeah.
And then I was reading a deal about a my oh, this was one my my phone ended up crashing and I ended up not being able to share it with you guys.
There was an article about a guy that had turned his into a water jet cutter.
Andy
That’s cool.
Chris
Yeah.
So his 3D printer was a water jet cutter.
And I’m going, that’s really cool.
But gosh, making something at home that operates at, you know, 5,000 PSI scares the pants off of me.
Kevin
Right.
Chris
I mean, I’ve seen what 200 PSI does to a guy.
You know.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
Chris
It’s scary.
Andy
That is that is.
I was just watching some videos of people doing water cutting earlier today.
And I remember actually being slightly disappointed.
It might have just been the quality of the videos that I was looking at there.
But, you know, they split a screwdriver in half down long ways, even down the the shank of the metal screwdriver itself.
And it just it looked like it had been plasma cut.
And I just remember thinking, yeah, yeah.
And it was like a really zoomed in view.
And it made me wonder, like, I wonder how many of those other ones that I’ve seen videos of that I thought were really good.
If they kind of had this this plasma cutter effect, too, is I don’t see much of a way out of it.
Chris
It’s like using a CNC.
It all depends on your nozzle and your movement rate and your pressure.
You know, it’s just like using a CNC.
So the the slower you go with the more with the more steady nozzle will give you a better, a better cut, a better clean cut as opposed to if I’m just cutting this just just because I need it in two pieces, you know, you turn up the speed and it’s rough as crap.
But who cares its two pieces now?
Andy
You’ve got a really good point.
You’ve got a really good point.
I may have been judging wrong there.
Chris
It’s it’s all about how the operator and or a programmer uses it.
Yeah, it’s not about the size of the car.
It’s about how you use it.
Same goes for all all tools.
All tools get can can get the job done wrong enough if you use them in in that fashion.
Kevin
Yeah, any tool can be the right tool.
Words of the wisdom from Red Green?
But I mean, really, if if if you use the tool and it gets the job done, is it really the wrong tool?
Chris
Well, you need the quality of how well the job was done.
But yes
Andy
I think there’s a lot to it, too, though, because I mean, they’re right.
It’s like it’s like shopping at Harbour Freight, right?
You go there, you’re not going to get equipment that’s going to last you a whole long time.
If I want to redo my roof and I go and I get a roof nailer from Harbour Freight, it’s not going to last one…
I mean, it’s probably only capable of doing two or three roofs total.
Chris
It’s not something you’d buy if you were a professional roofer.
But if you’re doing it yourself once and you don’t ever need it again.
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Exactly.
You don’t always need the super high quality tools if you’re not doing that many of the job.
Chris
It’s yeah, it’s something I learned while I was a mechanic is that, you know, I would buy Harbour Freight tools first for stuff that I would I would use almost never, you know, I would use it.
But I and the tools that I would use regularly and read you, you know, I bought Snap-on.
Yeah, yeah, by the good stuff.
I hear you.
I mean, I’ve had my Snap-on ratchet break twice and they replaced it.
And well, it wasn’t Snap-on.
It was the Snap-on off brand, but they still replaced it fine.
It’s called that’s Blue Point.
Yeah.
So that’s my actual Snap-on, Snap-on and ratchets never broke.
Andy
Is that as blue point, just like a brand that is being sold by Snap-on?
And
Chris
I think so.
Andy
Therefore, like warrantied kind of the same way, but still not the same quality.
Chris
Yeah, I think it’s pretty much like that.
I mean, the Snap-on guy was willing to swap me out.
So that’s good, you know, the Snap-on guy I bought the blue point set from says, oh, yeah, these are, you know, these are superior quality, not as as good as Snap-on, but, you know, when you buy them, you’re not getting the lifetime warranty per se.
And I was like, OK, I don’t know.
And they’ve honored it.
So
Andy
That’s good.
Chris
Yeah
Andy
That’s good.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Making turning your 3D printer into other things is apparently a thing now.
Kevin
Oh, I think it’s been a thing for a while.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Well, like, components for them have become so cheap.
And they’re all your basic, like just CNC, like any kind of CNC based machine could be made out of 3D printer pieces.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, it’s it’s just like home home modding.
You’re, you know, taking printer pieces and home modding it for whatever machines you want to be doing.
There’s like guys that guys that have been using it for wood burning.
You know
Andy
I’ve seen that.
Chris
That was pretty cool, actually.
I had a train of thought and now it’s derailed.
Andy
Yeah, I was wondering what that sound was.
Huge crash.
Sounds like it was carrying some toxic stuff on there, though.
We might have to get some suits to clean it up.
It’s neat, some of the stuff that people have used their 3D printer for.
I’ve seen laser cutters.
That one kind of intrigues me a lot, because from what I understand, there’s some laser cutting heads that you can, you know, attach to your 3D printer.
And a lot of the laser cutter software that they’ve made out there, that there’s a couple out there that will generate the the code that is native to things like Marlin so that it can still function that way without you having to actually swap out the controller board or anything.
Chris
And then you can use it not only as laser cutter, but a laser etcher, too.
So you can have like a design etched into something, you know, and then turn around and then cut it into a circle so that you have this nice circle with a really cool laser etch design in it.
Yeah, that’s insane, cool.
Andy
That one really got me interested because like that would be just something that you can make a clip on to the the head of your printer without changing it being a 3D printer.
And then you can just have a plug where you would plug in your head.
I don’t know how all that would work.
But yeah, being able to make it a laser cutter without changing the fact that it still can 3D print on a normal basis, you know.
Chris
Yeah
Andy
Make it a multi tool.
Chris
Yeah, I know that.
Oh, that’s where I was going with this is that, you know, using these things to make your own home, basically homebrew, especially tool.
OK, I was I found an article on.
I don’t remember that website.
I’ll have to look it up for you guys again here.
OK, there’s an article about a guy that made a 3D a PETG recycler, right?
OK, so it’s it’s a it’s a bit better at this thing where you can you can buy all the components yourself.
You can 3D print your own, you know, casing in a couple of parts for it and things.
And then it turns your PETG into a filament.
So it’s it’s a it’s a step above that thing you saw on YouTube where they’re like, make your own PETG.
It’s an actual machine that rolls your rolls up the PETG into a usable filament on a roll.
Andy
OK
Chris
It winds up the roll for you as as it’s feeding the PETG through.
But you still have to take the bottle and, you know, cut it with, you know, and string it up with a little cutter.
You still have to do that part yourself.
And so I want to I want to homebrew a machine that will take the PETG.
And it’s not just taking the middle of the bottle because you’re still losing the parts on the bottom and the top.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Right.
And there’s other bottles like, you know, my little sauce bottles or whatever that I’m throwing away that basically cannot be given the same sort of treatment because they’re thicker PETG stuff like that.
Yeah.
So I want to make a mesh crusher that crushes them into little almost pellet sized, right?
And then have a thermal, basically a thermalized bowl or something that you can apply pressure into so that you get an extrusion of filament out of the PETG.
Kevin
That’d be cool.
Andy
OK.
Chris
I would say I want to make make something like that.
But again, other projects ahead of time, it’s kind of on the back burner.
But I’m thinking it would be relatively simple to take a couple of things like maybe some old camshafts or something like that to to use to start grinding those pieces up because they’d already be able to be geared on one end so I could use one motor to run all the camshafts Yeah, at the same time and and use that to crunch up the plastic bits.
Andy
That’s one thing I wish had more time to be able to sit down and do is to come up with a plan to make something like that.
Because like, even if it didn’t work very good, it sounds like a real fun project to actually go and do.
Chris
Yep.
I’m just, you know, I’m going, you know, filaments not that expensive, you know, that that’s not it for me.
But the thing that is it for me is that I am ever since the recycling program stopped doing plastic here in my city, you know, it’s just I’ve noticed how much plastic I’m throwing away all the time.
Andy
Yeah
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah, definitely encountering a lot of that, too.
It’s ridiculous.
In fact, I would just throw away a bunch of cups.
I’ve got still young kids, so we don’t have nice dishes.
And we were getting kind of low on drinking cups for the kids.
And my wife was into buying cotton candy that came in these really nice, soft cups, these soft plastic cups.
I don’t know what kind of plastic they’re made out of, but they’re perfect for kids, right, size and everything.
So I told her, let’s hold on to those.
Let’s just wash those out and reuse those for the kids for now, you know.
Kevin
Yeah, it might as well.
Chris
Yeah.
But I know the ones you’re talking about, my my kid has a couple of those, too.
Andy
Yeah.
But today, when I was going through the dishwasher and putting stuff away, I just got stacks of those because we keep on saving them.
And it finally upset me like I’m just going to I’m going to have more of these.
I don’t need to store them.
There’s they’re going to constantly be coming in as long as, you know, the wife’s getting cotton candy.
So I went and go and throw them out and I threw them all into the recycling bin and just felt that that weight behind them.
You know, it was about 20, just a stack of about 20 of those cups, but there was a lot of plastic there and it just kind of occurred to me.
They fill that entire cup with just cotton candy.
That’s not even like a lot of food in any way.
It’s a very small sack snack.
You know, it’s the amount of product you actually are getting when you buy that cotton candy is nothing compared to the amount of plastic you’re throwing away.
Chris
Yep.
The idea is they use that kind of plastic to protect the the cotton candy from getting all squished and undesirable as it were.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
I don’t know.
I’ve seen cotton candy bagged up all the time.
Having a little cardboard box with, you know, a little bag of it inside would probably accomplish the same thing.
And even though the bag is a bad kind of plastic, it would be so much less.
Chris
Yeah.
You know, it’s one of those things where if they did them like Lay’s chips, you know, the cotton candy would be fine.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
No kidding.
You just blew it up with air.
You got a very good point.
Chris
Yeah.
Positive pressure on the inside.
You’re good.
Andy
Yeah.
I wonder why they don’t?
Because I mean, that that’s financially in their favor to do something like that.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
I’m sure those cups are not cheap.
Interesting.
Chris
Yep.
Kevin
But you never know.
They could be they might get like a big bulk discount or something.
Chris
I am I am very much on the train of, you know, of people recycling even at least parts of their bottles using these machines.
Kevin
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Chris
Is is is is freaking sweet.
Kevin
Well, and yeah, you go back, you you say PETG is not that expensive and that may not be the point.
But I mean, if you’re already buying the soda bottle, it and you know, it’s not actually going to be recycled.
Even if you put it in the recycle bin, it’s going to end up in a landfill.
Why not turn it into something that you can print something out of?
Andy
Yeah
Chris
Absolutely.
Andy
Now, look, I mean, those videos.
Those videos that people are printing stuff off with those, it just it just feels like even just watching the video, it feels good when you see the print at the end and to think that they were just drinking out of that the other day.
Yeah.
And now they’ve made it into a made it a slightly more permanent in our world of use, you know.
Chris
Yeah.
Yeah, except that guy that printed more soda bottles.
Andy
I didn’t see that video.
That would be even funny.
Especially if he went and printed one full size.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Yeah, definitely after this podcast here, after we’ve done recording, I’m going to go and fix my printer, because right now, not having an operating operational printer makes it kind of feel like you’ve lost a tool, you know, don’t have that capability at the moment.
Kevin
Oh, for sure.
Chris
Kind of like walking outside without your wallet, you feel half naked, even though you’re fully naked.
That one thing is gone.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding.
No kidding.
It would be nice to get it back together.
Kevin
I wouldn’t even know how that feels, because I always have my wallet.
Andy
My wallet is dead.
It’s been dead for like the last year.
I really need to get a new one.
And I’m just whenever I actually shop for one, I’m just not happy with the options, you know.
Chris
I’ve been thinking about printing one.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s where I was going with that, I was thinking, I wonder if I could get away with 3D printing one.
I mean, I 3D printed my phone case.
And I absolutely love that because I got exactly what I want, you know.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
A wallet.
I don’t know.
Chris
Well, you’re going to have to do it in layers and then glue it together with that stuff you were talking about that you’d picked up.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Chemical.
Andy
I wonder if it would be worth printing it standing up.
You know, I like the bifold.
So what if you were to print it folded just 90 degrees on your bed?
Is as long as you had just a little bit of a gap in between each one of the card slots and whatnot, I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.
You know what, I might actually just try that just for kicks and giggles to see if it is something that would be functional.
Chris
Keep us updated. I’m interested.
Andy
Yeah, because then because like the weakest part of printing that way is going to be the cards escaping through the sides of the wallet.
I mean, that’s where all our wallet wallets usually tear at, you know.
But if you printed it standing up, which is not something I considered before, if you print it standing up, then your layer lines are wrapping around those edges.
So you would have your strength there for it.
And if it’s TPU, then after just having it for a little while, you know, kind of like the way leather forms to whatever shape that you’ve kind of squeezed it in.
TPU kind of does the same thing.
So I’m going to have to try that.
That would be fun.
I mean, I’d be able to get exactly what I wanted in a wallet.
Kevin
That would definitely be interesting.
Chris
Yeah, I know I when I had to replace my wallet, probably about four or five years ago, I just I could not find a wallet that I wanted.
You know, nothing was like my old first wallet that I’d had.
Kevin
Right.
Chris
And you know, go to go to Coles, go to go to go to Coles, Ross, DJ Max, completely skipping Walmart
Kevin
Probably a good call there.
Chris
And, you know, Bud Kiss, Bud Kiss.
Did some online shopping.
And it took me like six months of constantly looking to find something that I was like, I’m OK with this, you know, this is OK.
You know
Kevin
Yeah, I don’t know why it is that you find a wallet you like.
And then when it wears out, you can never find it again.
Andy
Yeah.
And we know they’re going to wear out.
Why the heck don’t we buy two of them or three of them?
So you’re ready for it.
Chris
To be fair, this this wallet was the one I got when I was 12 years old.
So the fact that it was last, the fact that it lasted well into my 30s is saying something
Kevin
That is huge, actually.
Andy
Yeah, I think I only get maybe 10 years out of each wallet I’ve ever had.
It’s pretty good.
You got that long out of it.
Kevin
I don’t think I even get quite that many.
Chris
So this is the second wallet I’ve ever owned.
Andy
Nice.
I think I’m on my fourth.
Kevin
I think the longest the wallet that lasted me the longest was the one I got at Warner Brothers Studios in California, and it was a Harry Potter wallet.
And it lasted it lasted a few years.
And then it finally, actually, it didn’t really fully wear out, but my wife got me a new one for our 14th anniversary, and that one’s starting to wear out now.
So I guess I’m just hard on my wallets.
I don’t know.
Andy
I think there is a lot.
When you put too much into them, they seem to wear out faster.
I remember there were a couple of years where I was saving all of my receipts and I was using my wallet to do it.
I put them in my wallet and then once a week, I would I would dump them out.
But, you know, that was a lot of extra strain on the wallet.
And then when you dump them out, you had a lot of the the flab and loose leafs of the wallet.
Well, it going.
Kevin
So I’m not I’m not doing that with this wallet either.
I’m trying to keep as just the bare minimum in it.
Yeah.
And it’s still wearing out.
Chris
Oh, I don’t know.
I that might be it, though, because like I’ve always been a lean wallet guy.
Like I put only what is actually I am actually using and what I actually have to have in it on a daily basis.
Like I’ve got my health insurance card, car insurance card, driver’s license, couple of my credit cards and then money and a seven of diamonds.
And that’s it.
So…
Kevin
A seven of diamonds is necessary.
Andy
Oh, yeah, you got to have your lucky card.
Chris
Yeah.
No, it’s it’s it actually every time you open my I open my wallet.
I see the seven of diamonds and it tells me, OK.
Is this something you really need to be pulling your wallet out for?
So it’s a frugal kind of thing.
Kevin
OK.
Andy
That’s good.
That’s good.
Do you have a problem with like you probably don’t, Chris, I’ve got a problem with throwing cards away.
I’ve got one here that I want to show you, Chris, you will respect this.
It’s actually stuck to another card.
Kevin
For our visual listeners
Andy
Can you can you recognize this at all, Chris?
This is a VIP card from Taco Maker.
Chris
Holy moly.
Andy
This sucker.
Gosh, we were what in our 18, 19 years old when we were working at Taco Maker?
Chris
Yep.
Andy
And I still got my card because it doesn’t expire.
Yeah well…
There’s no Taco Makers around here anymore.
Kevin
I was going to say, I think if the business doesn’t exist anymore, then the business expired, so the card doesn’t work anymore.
Andy
I know.
But here I am putting it back into my wallet.
Can’t get rid of it.
Chris
I got that.
I got this thing where, you know, every so often I sit down.
If my wallet’s a little bit uncomfortable, I’ll be like, all right, do I got something in here that I don’t need?
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
So I don’t ever get more than about maybe five receipts in it at a time.
And by then the receipts have all faded and are useless anyway.
Andy
Yeah.
I think I’m going to try playing with that.
I mean, this 3D printing one, because if I think if I print it, you know, with it folded on an angle, it would give it enough support.
I could print something thin.
And if I do each leaf that makes up the wallet with only one single layer, you know, I’m running a 0.6 nozzle, so it is a little bit thicker than a 0.4.
But still there’d be nothing to separate on itself.
As long as the layers themselves stayed adhered together, I could take it and anneal it too.
That will help it, you know, become more of one solid piece as well.
Chris
Yeah.
Pause between layers for wax paper too, possibly.
Andy
Oh, yeah.
That would be something.
That actually is even a neater idea.
Printing it flat and then pausing for wax paper.
Oh, that might be an option, too.
I might print me a 3D print me a wallet.
Kevin
I am looking forward to this.
Chris
I want to see how this adventure goes.
There’s there’s there’s a few different ways to do this.
Yeah, there’s printing them individually and gluing them together.
There is running the running running it up on its side.
And then there’s also trying the wax paper method.
Yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever actually tested the wax paper method.
It’s always just been an idea.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, it is
Chris
Because the only thing I’ve printed with wax on wax paper is stuff that I was transferring on the wood, you know.
Andy
Yeah.
So the only thing I’ve done close to that has been so I got my my vests, my high my high viz vests for my private locating company that I do here.
And one of the things I did do was using my 3D printer using a couple different colors.
I print down one single layer of my logo.
And then I put my high viz vest down on that on the bed.
And then I printed the second layer directly over the top of it.
So where they were, where there were holes for the high viz part of the vest, the TPU was just adhering to itself right through it.
But then as it came up over the material, then, you know, it would go over the material.
So it kind of squished it, squished the rubber into the plastic.
But…
Chris
wow, I haven’t heard you ever do that.
That’s kind of cool.
Andy
The test I did for that using some tool works just fine.
It adhered right to it.
And it was nice and flexible with the fabric and all that kind of stuff.
I’m hoping to do it to the the high viz vests for the logo.
Although I’m kind of recontemplating if I should be doing my own business on this and stuff and the risks involved financially might not necessarily be worth it.
So I’m re-second guessing the whole thing.
But but at the time to put a logo on the back of the vests, that was the idea to use the printer to do so.
And my tests with tool worked out perfect.
So
Kevin
That’s cool.
Chris
All right.
Andy
Yeah.
But other than that, I don’t think I really got a whole bunch more left.
You guys.
Kevin
I don’t.
Andy
There just hasn’t been a whole lot going on with the printer.
Chris
No, not at the moment…
No, not until I get the enclosure there.
I am going to be needing to 3D print.
So like the the mount for the back of the the enclosure.
But that’s all again, I found it.
It’s easy, you know, so
Andy
yeah, that’s good.
Well, if it comes to any of the components that if you need automated for any part of that project and a microcontroller doing something can get you out of it, either running a control screen or turning something on and off at a certain temperature or anything like that.
Let me know.
I’d be happy to do something like that for you.
Possibly add to the project.
Chris
Yeah.
Or, you know, I it looks like getting like a micro pie or something like that would be a possible use for that, too.
Andy
Yeah, especially if you were using like a full screen, you know, a big screen more than the like the little screens that I I’ve used that’s just really kind of good for text and small logos and things.
You’re doing something bigger than that than having something where you could have a whole operating system on would would be kind of cool.
Yeah, that was kind of the idea was to have like have its own little have its own little side Linux system, you know, up on my network so I could just send send something to it.
And the printer goes, Oh, OK, I know, I know what you want.
Andy
OK, yeah, that is cool.
Chris
I kind of take over instead of because right now I’ve got it hooked up to my office laptop, but laptop broken so it’s not going anywhere, anywhere, anywhere ever again.
Anyway
Andy
Really?
Chris
Yeah, you don’t.
But yeah, it would be nice to have a like a smaller a smaller screen mounted to the printer itself or just outside the printer, just on top of the box or something where the, you know, where it would be its own self-contained unit instead of hooked up to my computer.
Andy
Yeah, I know there’s a lot of Android based things that you can like do octa print on and stuff like that that are quite unique, you know, some of the stuff that they could accomplish.
Chris
I was considering fixing my old phone and using it for that purpose instead, you know, screen and everything and it would be its own self-contained, you know, unit with the usable usable operating system screen mounted right on top of it.
Andy
That would be cool.
That would work.
Chris
So, I’m considering that.
Andy
Be a good use of the old phone, too.
Nice to recycle those things.
Chris
Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, I always I’ve not had a phone that I’ve not been able to sell when I was done and up and upgraded, you know, upgrade and sell my old phone.
And then I have that money toward my new phone.
So.
But this last one, the USB charger, the charger, charger port controller broke.
So I plugged.
Yeah, I plugged the phone in and the bottom of the phone gets really, really hot.
Andy
Yeah, that sounds like that’s not going to work.
Chris
Yeah, a new a new a new controller board for that is only like 20 bucks.
So it’s not that big a deal.
I just need to get around to it.
Andy
OK, that’s not too bad.
Chris
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Two weeks after I was available for a phone upgrade, it breaks.
Go figure.
Kevin
They do that on purpose.
Andy
Definitely feels like it, doesn’t it?
Chris
Yeah, certainly feels like it.
Chris
Although my my my phone, but the phone, the the phone before that lasted for a good four years instead of the two crazy.
Andy
That’s good.
Yeah.
I’ve always kept my phones for kind of stupid amounts of time?
God, I think I got the smartphone from you way back in the day.
It’s my very first smartphone.
And I’m still using that.
That’s still a navigational device in my work car still works.
Nice.
And then I moved to a one plus one.
And then I moved to a Samsung Note 9 and then an S20.
And I think that’s all the smartphones I’ve had this whole time.
And that’s been almost 20 years worth of smartphones.
Chris
Yeah.
Wow.
Kevin
Quite a while.
Andy
You take care of them.
They last longer.
And I’ve noticed too, like only charging your batteries up to about 80 percent really does make the battery last a lot longer too.
So on all of our phones anymore, we’ve got the the charger built to only go up to 80 percent on each one of them.
It will act like it’s fully charged at 80 percent.
So it won’t charge it past that.
And then whenever we do need the extra capacity, you can charge it up properly.
But generally speaking, it’s up to 80 percent.
And it kind of gets a neat kind of feeling because you can fast charge them until they’re what you’re used to as being full.
You know, you can fast charge all the way up to that without it slowing down because of 80 percent.
It’s still accepting the full power from the charger.
You know, it hasn’t started slowing down yet.
So yeah, that part’s kind of nice.
Chris
Yeah, my Samsung’s got that in the settings, which is I think most of my phones.
It’s usually by the end of the night.
I’ve got like 20, 30 percent left.
So it seems to be about right.
Kevin
Right.
Well, I think that’s it.
Andy
Yeah, I’m coming up dry.
Chris
Yeah, we we really went off track there.
Kevin
As we usually do.
Andy
Yeah, our topic today is 3D printing.
Kevin
We’d like to thank you.
Chris
Well
Kevin
what?
Chris
I’m saying we should just call this one other other stuff to do with your 3D printer.
Kevin
Sure.
Chris
All right.
All right.
Kevin
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Kevin
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 or if you have content requests, please let us know.
You can find us in our Facebook group, amateur3Dpod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com for individual feedback.
You can find us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
The theme music was written by me, Kevin Buckner.
Open AI’s Whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Kevin Buckner, and my friends, Franklin Christensen, Chris Webber, and Andy Codham.
And until next time, keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Use hairspray.
Chris
More power makes your printer print faster.
Andy
Let’s the blue smoke out.
Andy
Yeah, that felt like we were struggling for the last half hour.
Chris
A little bit.
Andy
Wouldn’t be the first time.
It will be nice to have a podcast where Frank is here.
7.29.
Kevin
Still hasn’t stopped.
Why have you not stopped?
Chris
I can stop, Craig, if you would like.
Kevin
That’s what I’m telling it to do.
Chris
Uh-oh, Frank.
Uh, Craig’s, stuck…