Frank
Thank you for joining us. This is episode 72 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers, for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Chris Weber, Andy Cottam, and Kevin Buckner.
But Chris is not with us this week. Instead, we have a surprise guest, Ryan Phillips. Say hi, Ryan.
Ryan
I am surprised, oh wait, no I’m not, I’m Ryan, I’m sorry.
Frank
Well, we’re just going to call you a surprise. That’s one of the few S words we like on this podcast, so.
Ryan
I’m a teacher, that should be Mr. Surprise, sir, okay, that’s,
Andy
Yeah, we tried to avoid the S ones.
Frank
But we’re all amateurs here.
Besides, Mr. is my dad’s name.
Ryan
Okay, then it’s Mr. Surprise Amateur
Andy
Got weird real quick.
Frank
It’s always been weird, Andy.
Andy
Yes, yes, yes.
Now, Ryan, you’re a bass player with Kevin, is that correct.
Ryan
Amateur, no just kidding, um, yeah I can, I can call myself that, I, because I play a
Bass and, um, yeah it’s fun.
Frank
I’ve never seen anyone play a fish before.
Ryan
You would think it’s hard, but you, if you’re not the, if you can’t find the fish in the
Room you are the fish, I like to think I have problems.
Andy
I don’t want to be the one being played. That’s for sure.
Frank
So we invited you in because you just got access to a 3D printer and you had questions.
Andy
I don’t like we’ve got answers.
Frank
We can try.
Frank
We all have problems.
Andy
Some more than others.
Kevin
The Question is, do we have solutions
Ryan
Um, so, well I’ve been working on solutions on my own and so this might be more of a discussing
Where I am in that process.
Frank
Well, let’s go for it.
Andy
We like pointing out the obvious.
Ryan
Just a bit of background is I’ve started teaching a 3D modeling class, um, before that I graduated
From the University of Utah with a degree in game design, but this was my first chance
To kind of use that modeling knowledge, uh, anyways the school has a 3D printer and so
Ryan
I wanted to get into that because who wouldn’t, but, uh,
Frank
Sounds logical to me.
Ryan
But nobody’s been able to teach it
To me so I’ve been teaching it to myself
Frank
Welcome to the 3D world.
Ryan
Right, um,
Andy
What kind of printer do they have.
Ryan
They’ve got a MakerBot Replicator
Plus
Andy
That’s a good machine.
Ryan
Oh you know it, actually maybe I should first start saying, oh you know it, um, I
Andy
Oh, yes.
Andy
We like to dabble in and dream about the machines we would like to own.
Ryan
Don’t have any context as to how good it is, but, um, so far it has, uh, had some good
And some bad, uh, I guess the, uh, response to that should be let’s talk about that, but
Frank
Of course, that’s why you’re here.
Improvise, improvise, improvise.
Ryan
Yeah, yeah, uh, the, the, the starting point of that though, um, was of course just taking
Some something I had made, throwing it into an STL, importing it into the, uh, the MakerBot
Print software and exporting it to the printer, um, in doing so I immediately found a lot
Ryan
Of, uh, what I would call, uh, yarn getting printed in the, in midair, oh yeah, that’s,
Andy
Okay, spaghetti prints.
Ryan
Um, it wasn’t as delicious, but it was certainly spaghetti, and my first assumption was, okay,
This must be happening because it doesn’t have a stable enough part underneath it, um,
And I mean the first thing I was making was like a shark, by the way, um, and well that
Ryan
Was one of the things that I’ve been having my students create sharks, so what I wanted
Was to be able to, um, help students see the fruits of their efforts, uh, so my response
To that was to go to the design level and try to put something, put more things underneath
The shark so that it wouldn’t, uh, so that it wouldn’t have that problem of not having
A base
Ryan
Um, and that seemed mildly successful after several tries, um, until the point where
I actually got it to work by, uh, putting some bases underneath the fins and also decreasing
The size, uh, and I still think that there’s some better solutions to that, but, um, but
It’s fine for now, um, I moved on to some bigger ideas, uh, particularly like a building
That somebody had, uh, put together,
Ryanuh, where I ran into bigger problems, namely that the
Base was warping and dislodging itself, so that would also result in like gobs of, of
Plastic and some more spaghetti, um,
Andy
Do you know what kind of plastic you were printing with.
Ryan
Filament. I don’t know what kind of filament though.
Andy
Do you know what, what, okay.
Frank
It almost sounds like ABS. Just the way it’s warping like that.
Ryan
I know it’s slightly brittle.
Frank
So is it, do any of these terms sound familiar like ABS, TPU, PLA, PET?
Ryan
Um, I mean, not really, but, uh, I know I’ve heard them
Before.
Frank
Okay. So the reason I asked is because those are the most common that we’ve run into ourselves.
For the Filament Printers, the FDM printers. I know I’ve got a few thoughts. I think Andy might have a few too. With the…
Ryan
Do we want to talk about that first or do you want to me to tell you what’s
How I approached that problem and where I landed?
Frank
Yeah, let’s start there. And we’ll just keep notes.
Andy
No, go ahead, go, go ahead, continue. Yeah, that way we can.
Ryan
Well, my, uh, of course I didn’t,
You know, just end there, so kept looking into what the solution to what that was, um,
You know, which is still an ongoing process. Um, so, uh, from there I went to cleaning
The bed and, well, sorry, not my personal bed, the print bed. Um, the, it’s covered
In like a scotch tape, so I’m like, let’s just put new tape down. Um, so I did that
And then I found a setting for calibrating the, the Z axis, um, and I ran those and then
Tried it again. Also, I added some helper plates to the, in the print software. Um,
From there I was able to get some success, um, but only when I like cut up the designs
A little bit so that then I was, um, printing part of the building and then another part
And then I kind of just put them together. Um, that was the, that’s the only way I’ve
Been able to get that to work so far. That’s cause, uh, and then, but in doing that I went
Back to try to, uh, do this again and I ended up getting more spaghetti print. And that’s
Where I currently am. Uh, my thought on that was, okay, when I went back and I didn’t add
The helper plates that time, so, but I didn’t understand, I wasn’t expecting spaghetti print
From a lack of helper plates. Uh, so, yeah.
Andy
So you, you’ll, you’ll start getting a spaghetti print anytime any part of the print starts to fail. And so the spaghetti is a symptom, not the problem.
And the plastic it sounds like you’re using might be a very difficult plastic to print with. If it is curling up from the bed.
When you’re printing it. There’s not too many plastics that do that, but ABS and ABS is notoriously bad for it.
So it’s not a good thermal plastic to be using in 3d printing, but it was one of the first plastics that people were trying to use to print, but it’s made for forming and molding plastic, it’s supposed to shrink intentionally, but in the 3d printer world you
Want as little shrinkage as possible so it becomes very difficult to work with so one of the things that might be causing most of the problems you’re having right now is using an ABS based plastic.
Ryan
Hmm.
Andy
Now, there’s there’s another problem you’re probably going to start to witness in 3d printing is that everybody has their own solutions, and those solutions often work for just that one person.
So no matter what you find online or hear from us, you’re going to have to experiment we can give you ideas on how to work with it and things like that but not one particular idea will work.
Frank cringes anytime he sees the way I print and I do the same for what he does because we’re both very wrong in the way we do it, according to each other.
Frank
And we insist we’re right
Andy
Oh yeah.
But, but if I was in your shoes it sounds like starting off with finding out what kind of plastic you’re printing with. And if it is ABS, I would abandon ABS for right now.
Though Makerbot is a great printer it’s a higher end printer it’s Cartesian I don’t believe it’s corrects why but that shouldn’t really play too much of a part here.
Andy
Some of the problems are good in your case. There’s no manual bed leveling for your particular printer. It’s all an automatic system for it. So that makes it easier because you can, you know, level your bed pretty easily and software, but so
Frank
The official terminology for that is still tramming, Andy.
Andy
But, you know, so getting the proper Z height sounds like it’s probably not a problem either. In my opinion, it sounds like it’s the plastic he’s using what do you think Frank.
Frank
I
I think that
The issue is starting with plastic. Yes
But I I was actually wondering about the adhesion methods like if it slides just a little bit
Like if it’s curling like abs like it sounds like it’s abs
Then um, that would warp the top a little bit too. Is it cooled and that would
Bump it that would do all kinds of things as as the head is moving around
And then it’s just printing in empty air where it thinks because you know our printers are stupid
It thinks there’s a part there that is laying another layer on
Andy
The tape method is largely been abandoned, although a lot of people still do use it.
A lot of us take a lot of pride in being able to print with with nothing at all. No adhesion problems at all, like Frank here likes to to to go.
I am but got a lack of words all of a sudden, but
Frank
My method is to use the print bed temperature for adhesion
Um, I don’t go too high. I usually only go to
50
60 degrees celsius and um
That’s usually enough that when it cools my parts will just pop off without me having to prime off
Another method is the one that Andy likes so much that it’s his sign off which is to use hairspray so
Andy
Nylon based hairspray.
Frank
The cheap stuff
Andy
That way you’re essentially gluing the part to the bed during printing that way you have no adhesion issues at all.
And then once the part cools, once the bed cools, the hairspray is no longer
An adhesive at all, really, and the item will just pop off the bed by itself if there’s any tension in it.
And then when it comes to washing it off, a little bit of water instantly dissolves hairspray. So it’s kind of my all around fix it. I always use hairspray always, and I recommend it to anybody having adhesion problems.
And often when these guys as methods don’t always work 100% of the time, and they’re having a problem part they will go back to using a little bit of hairspray as as a, you know, a nuclear option for them so Kevin uses a very highly.
Ryan
Okay.
Okay.
Andy
What would you call it a etched bed
Kevin
Textured
Andy
Textured bed to deal with his adhesion problems. And so all three of those might be an option the tape is known to work.
A lot of people use painters tape the blue tape seems to be something that a lot of people like to print on, but the tape is kind of going.
Ryan
Well, isn’t that the property of the tape that is in that, that you’re matching there is that it’s textured.
Andy
Yeah, yeah you’re adding tech texture to the bed that’s that’s the exact reason behind it.
Frank
And then the adhesive comes off pretty what pretty easily afterwards, so that’s another reason the masking tape has been used
Ryan
Let’s ask a very relevant question then.
Um, how often do you need to replace the tape?
Andy
I don’t know.
I never used it.
Frank
Neither have I um Chris would have been a great person to ask this actually because he has it seemed to me like he
Andy
I suspect he was only getting like four or five prints out of it before he had to replace it if I had to guess.
Frank
You have to be very meticulous about how you uh lay it down
Because your auto-tramming, um, you wouldn’t have to
Re-tram every time your software will do that for you
Because none of us have the uh
The auto-tramming option
Like Chris needed to retram every time he put down tape, so
He he pushed it as long as he possibly could
Um, I’ve been looking online and I’m not seeing anything
Jumping out… you said you’re using a Makerbot, right?
Ryan
Yeah. A Makerbot Replicator Plus
Frank
Okay, I don’t see any extensions for your slicer
To get print towers
It might be something to do a little more research on though
But that’s how me and Andy decide what kind of angle we can print at for open space
What temperatures we want to use for our plastic?
How fast we want it to run for our printer all of those things and those will help you dial in
Um all of the temperatures and the speeds that could be contributing to your issues there as well
Ryan
Let’s Take a second to talk about the fan.
Frank
Okay
Ryan
Because I’ve noticed that there’s a setting that is…
Basically I think it’s trying to say that I can control if I want the fan to be on high or low.
I think what it is, if I’m not mistaken.
Correct me if I’m wrong doesn’t it blow on the filament as it prints in order to get it to not be goo the second it lays down?
Frank
It helps with that
Andy
No, it’s more or less after it lays down, it tries to cool it down as quickly as possible. And some that’s really based on what kind of filament you’re using for how much of the air, you know, the fan you should wind up be using.
When you’re starting out, it can really vary on that one, but it’s not going to affect it too much. If you do like 20 or 30% and then kind of experiment from there that be kind of an all around starting place, because…
Ryan
Well it starts at 100% not low.
Andy
No, no fan. Yeah, now when you’re starting out, your first layer should have no fan, and a lot of slicers will give you that option to have little or no fan for your first layer, because that helps with it.
Frank
And then ramp it up for
Ryan
It doesn’t, it doesn’t distinguish in the setting, it just says fan speed. It’s just a setting when you export.
Frank
That’s awesome. Is there an advanced settings uh loop for your uh your slicer?
I know that we all use cura. So we’re not really that acquainted with how Makerbot does it
I know that cura has an advanced
And a rudimentary settings options
Ryan
It seems clear to me that they’re trying to keep things really simple, try to be, they’re focused on user friendly.
Frank
Which
They tend to be very user friendly just kind of across the board
Ryan
Like, in fact, it hasn’t even like cared if I’m very sloppy with my models, like it’ll, it’ll sort of auto figure out models on its own, like,
Andy
And then the faces, face gaps and stuff like that to make solid objects.
Ryan
Yeah, correcting faces and making assumptions if there’s any gaps.
Andy
That’s pretty, a lot of them will do that kind of stuff they try to help you out as much as possible because the amount of options you do have to control your printer are overwhelming to even the people who use it regularly.
So, yeah, the parts cool back to the parts cooling fan, you shouldn’t really have any fan at all.
The deep, it would be better to default towards no cooling than to default default towards 100% cool.
I can tell you that 100% cooling could wind up causing print failures. 0% cooling will lead more to just crappy prints.
Ryan
Okay. I had, I think I had turned it down to 90% in an attempt to improve. So you’re suggesting being more aggressive with with the fan.
Frank
But with lower fan speeds at least to start with um
Ryan
Just turning it down.
Andy
There’s going to be a lot of experimenting. That’s why Frank was talking so much about towers. Once you get it working.
There’s a lot of tests that you can run to see what’s going on.
You can see what your printer likes to run at to get the best quality of prints possible, but where it sounds like.
Frank
And so much of it’s environmental that it’s hard to be specific with advice
And and another reason that there’s so many
Different perspectives on how to do it is because environmental stuff plays such a big role
Andy
So you’re starting off already having problems with failed prints.
You’re going to want to correct that first until you can get reliably no spaghetti prints from the beginning, and then from their experiment with settings to get better quality in your prints.
Definitely start off first with your plastic. Make sure what kind of plastic you’re using.
If you do have ABS plastic, I would abandon the ABS plastic. That’s much more advanced. None of us print with ABS.
Chris is considering it by enclosing his printer, but that’s more difficult to print with higher skill printing and not necessarily for better quality either.
It’s just if you got a lot of ABS you want to be able to get rid of, then you might try to develop that skill a little bit.
ABS is also cheaper to use, but it’s not necessarily going to be better.
If you have a variety of plastic in your shop, start with something like PLA.
That is the easiest plastic for everybody to print. It’s pretty user friendly across the board.
And if not PLA, try PETG. That’s the next best compared to ABS.
And other plastics beyond that can get more difficult to print like ABS is, but the easiest is always going to be just straight PLA plastic for right now.
Once you’ve identified the plastic problem, I would check on you’re already using tape.
The people who used your machine before you must have been using tape, right?
So that must have been working for them.
So I would continue to use the tape until you can get to the point where you’re only changing one variable at a time to figure out a better quality to print.
So for right now, tapes on it. Go ahead and replace the tape again. Make sure you got, you know, the nice good surface on the tape to try to print with.
And then you can work on from there. If you continue to have adhesion problems, there’s a lot of adhesion settings in most slicers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if MakerBot Slicer has some adhesion help as well. You’re already using helper disks, which is like the best way, excuse me, to go about with adhesion issues versus using what the slicer already has available.
For helping with adhesion.
But if you’re still having spaghetti prints, you can go default to the nuclear option, remove the tape, clean the bed and use a nylon based hairspray.
Or a lot of people have used, what’s the paste glue? The glue stick glue?
Frank
Oh the glue sticks
Andy
Yeah, glue stick glue. I’ve seen a lot of people utilize that as well too.
Make sure you use the the white glue stick if you do that. Um, I’ve heard that the purple glue stick which is
More common at this point. I guess um the purple glue stick doesn’t do as well
But it you know
Very thin layer and let it dry before you start printing. But those two options are kind of nuclear options. And once you establish a good print, you can try to get away from using them as much as possible.
Until, because I mean the printer should be able to print on just straight glass. Or, and you got a glass, a flat untextured glass bed on the…
Frank
Side note and he just used the s word that we don’t like
Andy
Yeah, should. Let’s see, the MakerBot, no, it does have a, you got a textured bed plate, don’t you?
Ryan
I don’t know because I haven’t really looked at it much.
Because it’s covered intape.
Andy
Okay.
Well, I guess the most important part is, is to get it printing reliably first without the spaghetti prints. And then you can branch off there to all the different ways you can solve other problems that might be occurring with your prints.
Plastic first, and then adhesion next is probably the two biggest things you should really work on. If you’re printing with PLA, you should be able to print pretty easily, you know, most things.
When you slice your models, if there are overhangs, your slicer is generating supports, correct?
Ryan
No.
Andy
Like it’s adding plastic pieces to, okay, that might be part of the issue too.
Most of our printers can’t print further than about 65 degree angles.
So if I stuck this to my bed for the visual listeners, I’m holding up essentially a funnel, if I stuck this to the bed, you can see that the angle where the funnel goes out at is about 45 degrees.
This would print fine without supports.
But you can see, along the top of this, I have bridging that would take place and overhangs that does require supports, asterisk, asterisk when it comes to bridging, right?
But generally, if it’s more than about 60 to 65 degrees, it requires supports.
Ryan
But you’ve got, you’ve got a lot of space between your supports though.
Andy
You tend to, this model that I was showing here has no supports in it.
So I was saying this would need to be…
Ryan
I thought you’re talking, I thought you’re saying those little, the things connecting the, yeah, the, the underneath there’s, I thought, was that not what you’re talking about when you say supports.
Frank
The fins
Andy
No, no, that’s not here. Let me pull something up here for you.
Ryan
So you’re talking about removable supports, not the natural supports of the object.
Andy
Exactly. Not something you necessarily apply to your model. As you get better, adding supports manually in your CAD software definitely gives you a lot more control.
But on most FDM slicers, there’s not a whole lot of control of where the placement of the automatic generated supports go.
But there is some there that you can work with. And for beginner, that’s the one you’re going to want to use.
I’m trying to load Cura here so I can show you a little bit.
Ryan
I know there’s some support options. I haven’t played with them yet.
But yeah, I’m, I’m, I think I saw some, some stuff online talking about the supports and I was trying to see if I could just learn to design my models so that it wasn’t going to have to make guesses and where I could just do that.
Andy
You are speaking directly to my heart on that one there. I hate using supports when all possible.
But if you look at the stream here.
Ryan
Well, because it’s a, it looks like a big waste of filament.
Andy
It can be. But a lot of the time, there’s not going to be a way to get around it.
If you’re printing any kind of organic model, there’s a better chance than not you’re going to need supports.
But if you’re making your model more like mechanical-based, then you can get away with those.
Are you seeing my stream by chance, Ryan?
Okay, so this is the same model that I was just showing you there.
And you can see the red under in the model here with Cura.
This is Cura showing us that we need to support this area. It will fail if not.
Cura doesn’t.
Ryan
Oh, wait, hold on. Are you showing your screen. I thought you meant just your camera.
Andy
Oh, no, I was the stream.
Ryan
Hold on. I think I got to switch here then to watch stream. Okay, got it.
Andy
Okay, all right. So for our visual listeners, I’m showing an impeller that I’ve been working on.
And I’m printing the impeller upside down in Cura so I can demonstrate how Cura would supply supports to the model.
So you can see this here now, right Ryan?
Ryan
Yeah. And I even did that in where I was saying that I had like cut up that building in order to try to solve this problem, which did work.
But it’s, I had to print part of it upside down in order to make that work.
Andy
And that’s, and that is the great way to do it because then you can turn around and glue the model back together.
And that way you’re more in control of where the surfaces are marred because, you know, the glue areas are never going to come out the greatest.
Ryan
Mm hmm.
Andy
But it gives you a lot more ability to control stuff like that.
But supports are another option to add to that skill level. If I go ahead and slice this model here,
You’ll be able to see the supports that Cura will automatically generate for the supports.
Ryan
Okay, so I don’t have Cura on my machine I would have to go to the IT department to get Kira.
Andy
Sorry, this is taking a minute.
The software you’re using should do something extremely similar. Pretty much all the slicing software will work the same as what you see here.
So if you look at this model here, you can see the supports that it has generated around the entire model to be able to support it.
If we go through and the layer by layer, you can see the inside of this model now has supports to be able to support the top surface.
Now, when it comes to 3D printing FDM style, there is techniques we can use called bridging.
You can see in this last couple of layers here, that next layer that’s going on top of all these fins in this model is completely flat.
This is a bridgeable surface. That means I don’t actually need those supports underneath it to make this work.
But it may droop a little bit during the print marring the surface.
So it kind of really matters on what you need supported and what you might be able to get away with not supporting.
Sometimes printing without supports can work just fine because the part that gets marred is not a part that you will even see.
Andy
You know, but supports when, when you…
Ryan
You can’t just keep it from drooping with a higher fan speed.
Andy
No, not when you can to a point.
Frank
Sometimes it depends on the printer sometimes you can but it’s it really depends on
The level of risk or how risk averse that’s a good way to put it a risk averse you are
To uh
The parts not bridging correctly and there’s actually tests
For the bridge as well
Andy
And there’s, there’s ways to accomplish stuff like that. We can get our printers to do some pretty crazy things, but that’s all more like advanced kind of stuff to be working with.
Right now, you’re just trying to get something printed. Now, the first print you said was like a shark or something, right? Some kind of fish.
Ryan
Uh huh. Yeah.
Andy
And so right there is standing out to me that you would definitely probably have overhangs that would need to be supported without supports.
The model.
Yeah, will probably wind up failing. And as soon as you have one part of the model start to fail, that failure will cause it to collide with the rest of the model and cause the entire model to fail.
I’m pointing out supports because it sounds like with the fish model, something like what I’m showing here is, is what you actually needed to accomplish that particular print.
Now, there’s a lot of ways you probably could have divided the fish up printed up, you know, two separate halves flat on the bed and been fine.
Ryan
Oh, you know, I did try that. But it didn’t. I tried cutting it in half and, you know, putting the inside face down.
Andy
Yeah, that’s perfect.
Ryan
It didn’t work though.
Andy
And so, okay, that goes back to the plastic and that you’re using and the adhesion you’re using on the bed for that.
Ryan
Right. I kind of saw that that that was the issue that it came back down to the same thing.
So but those are the two big things I were having was having problems with was curling and and supports.
Andy
Okay, and it does sound like.
Ryan
And sometimes it wasn’t clear which one it was.
Andy
Yeah, it really sounds like you’re probably printing with ABS, or some things.
Ryan
So it was a that’s another issue that now I’m starting to see is the brittleness of it.
Andy
That’s, that’s another weird thing. ABS isn’t brittle at all.
Ryan
Because
Kevin
It could be old filament.
Andy
Could they, could they brittleness of the filament before running it through the printer or after it’s been printed.
Ryan
After after it’s cooled.
Andy
Okay, then maybe it’s not ABS. So many questions.
ABS is a very soft plastic and by running it through the printer, you’re essentially reconditioning it.
Andy
So even if it is older ABS, if it made it through the hot end, it’s, it’s probably fairly reconditioned at that point and should be back to its nice rubberiness that ABS plastic has.
Ryan
Mm hmm.
Andy
I don’t suspect it should be brittle.
So maybe I’m wondering, PLA is known to be very brittle, but PLA shouldn’t give you the warping that it does.
Ryan
I don’t know what the packaging to find out what it is.
Frank
The the the hard part with all of this
Ryan
But to be fair, hold on to be fair, it’s only brittle where it’s thin.
So that’s like, so when I did the the building where I cut off basically the overhanging roof printed upside down.
I didn’t just print it like that. I added little I added little tabs where so that it could lock into the columns which were hollow underneath it.
And then but they were, you know, still very small. I’m printing on small scales. I don’t waste film it with bad prints.
And those little tabs, which were really nothing more than just, you know, and I did on the design level when the 3ds max and just added some small cylinders.
But yeah, they were breaking off. I think I lost a good four out of 12.
Andy
I don’t know. I would have to see it myself.
Ryan
And this week, my, my shark fin just snapped off when it fell to the ground.
Andy
And if he was printing with ABS, I don’t think it would be that fragile. That sounds like, that sounds like PLA.
Ryan
I would be surprised if it wasn’t cheap, but I don’t actually know.
Andy
Yeah, that’s a little tough there. It might be worth looking into the plastic that you’re using.
Ryan
Yeah I’ll have to just find out for myself.
Frank
Definitely the main place to start
Andy
Well, if the plastic you’re using is old, you could try reconditioning that plastic.
Ryan
But even if I find that out, you know, it demands an understanding to respond.
Frank
Right
Andy
But this would only help for the plastic acting old before it’s ran through the printer, not necessarily after it’s ran through the printer.
We often recondition the plastic through heat.
Some people are okay with using an oven, putting it in an oven at about 150 to 180 degrees, give or take, for a few hours.
Ryan
Thanks.
Andy
Frank
Fahrenheight that’s Fahrenheight
Andy
Yeah, Fahrenheit to dry it out works really well and to recondition the plastic and that helps with almost all the plastics we have out there.
But it doesn’t sound like this is the problem you’re having here. I don’t know.
Peeling up in shrinkage and being brittle at the same time feels contradictory.
I’m not sure how to how to deal with that one. I would have to see it myself, I think in that case, but at least checking into the types of plastic that you’re using would be a good start.
Ryan
Are there.
Weird plastics.
Andy
There’s tons of different kinds of plastics out there. So this could be something weird. I mean X 10 is very or X 10-9 is very brittle.
It’s a very good plastic but a very difficult one to print to and from what I remember it does shrink as well a little bit like ABS but it shrinks like the way PETG shrinks, not very much at all.
Ryan
Well, okay, now I’m not, I’m not a physics guy, but I do know physics guys. And I think this might be a thing. What do you think of this?
Is it cooling too fast that it creates brittality.
Andy
I don’t think that would play too much of a part with the plastics here. The maker that you’ve got is a fairly enclosed printer. I mean if you look at Frank’s picture in his background here, you can see his very open bed slinger style printer.
Ryan
Oh, and I don’t, I don’t mean cooling like natural cooling. I’m talking about the fan. Like is it is the fan cooling it too fast because that does can’t that create a brittleness to any product fast cooling.
Andy
It would but I don’t think you would. The type of cooling but the
Frank
It would require large changes like going from say I print at 250
If it was to go from 250 to 100 in just a matter of seconds that might cause some wear and tear
Ryan
Isn’t that what the fan does it.
Frank
But um just the fan
Just the fan blowing on it isn’t going to cool it that much that fast
Andy
I can’t say I’ve never heard of that problem in the 3D printer world.
Ryan
Are we are are the way you’re talking about that makes me think that maybe this fan is different because this isn’t just a generic fan this is something that is a very small fan that blows directly on the filament as it’s being printed, right.
Andy
Yeah, we call that the parts cooling fan and all 3D printers have them.
Ryan
Okay, so, yeah, not just like a generic cooling fan for the whole thing but just a cool this instantly fan.
Andy
Yeah, it looks like if the Replicator Plus hasn’t been modified that you have, it’s just a centrifugal impeller fan and it’s a blower. A lot of people just call them blowers.
Even if it was blowing a lot of air, it’s blowing ambient temperature air onto it.
And so I do not believe the amount of cooling that you could be getting from your fan would cause brittleness the way you describe in your part.
I’m sure if you printed, if you got two examples, one printed with no fan, one printed with 100% fan and you tested those that to some degree, the fan cooled one might be a little bit more brittle than the other. I could see that happening, but not to the degree that you’re talking about.
I think we’re talking very little for something like that. So I don’t think that’s necessarily the problem of why your parts seem to be so brittle.
The fan could be causing adhesion layers, adhesion problems between layers of the prints as well. Is the layers themselves actually breaking or is the print pulling apart and that’s what you’re calling brittle.
Ryan
Well, in the case of the tabs I wouldn’t really be able to tell a difference.
Andy
Okay, yeah.
Ryan
So the fin broke.
Andy
Does that break across layers?
Ryan
You know, it’s so thin that I don’t know if I could tell.
But I, I don’t think it did.
Andy
The fin was printed horizontally, right?
Ryan
I don’t.
I mean it prints exactly the way you would think that it would print you know it’s like, it’s like in.
Andy
Okay, okay, so if you printed the fin horizontally and the fin broke in half, that would.
Ryan
It goes up at an angle, but it’s so thin that it’s like you’re not going to be able to tell but more than that I don’t think it. I don’t think it broke perfectly.
You know, parallel to the body, I think it broke slightly angular.
Andy
Okay, well, our 3D printed plastics are really strong, except in the direction of the layers. They’re extremely weak in that direction. The adhesion between layers is always going to be less than the plastic itself.
So if it is going to break, most of the time it will break along layer lines.
And if you’re having some adhesion problems, temperatures not being right for the type of material you’re printing, if you’re printing too cold, it could cause you with adhesion problems between layers.
And like you’re suggesting too much fan can cause adhesion layers, adhesion problems between layers as well. So that could be the problem.
Ryan
Okay, so I think that’s going to be one of the things that I’m looking at next as well.
Andy
But I also think that should, that is amongst one of those quality issues. We, you got to probably should focus more of your energy on getting no spaghetti prints.
That’s the first problem, the first battle you’re going to want to fight, because it doesn’t do you any good trying to solve, you know, the brittality of the plastic before you can really print the plastic to begin with.
Ryan
Yeah, I mean,
Well, I’m, I’m still quite lost on why my last print was spaghetti, you know, it was, it happened right where it was in where it was creating the base layers where I was trying to do another structural print.
And we talked about the, the material, but I only have what I have.
Andy
True. Did the base come off of the bed.
Ryan
No, it was spaghetti printing before anything like that occurred.
Ryan
It was kind of strange it was like, you know, it’s, it was mostly just, it should have been printing flat, but it was, I think it was still printing, it’s not my base, but it’s base, if I can, if that’s clear terminology.
Andy
Are you printing. So is the printer printing its own base for each of your models.
Ryan
Yes, which is an option I can turn on and off.
Andy
Yeah, we call that a, what are they called
Frank
Raft.
Andy
Raft. Yes.
Ryan
Yes. Well, although there is another option to a raft but I was reading that raft is one of the better ones that would help me.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, that’s one of the more nuclear options but for adhesion problems.
Frank
For a lot of time I use rafts on everything and
It helped me dial in other things while I was using them. So
They’re a good option
Andy
That is my.
Ryan
So, and it was kind of strange because it like it printed like a triangle before, like instead of a square.
Andy
That is.
Ryan
But, but then after it was done with the triangle it started printing something else and that went to spaghetti. And then I’m like, that’s strange because it kind of seemed like it was trying to print over the section that didn’t have the triangle.
And it’s like, well, shouldn’t there have been a second triangle, not, you know, it seemed to like it almost like it skipped something.
Frank
That makes me want to look at the gcode
Andy
Now, the slicer.
Frank
And see see what is going in there because it sounds like
Something else getting inserted into the print before it starts to print your design
Which is weird
Andy
So the, the software you’re using is not the most popular software out there for the people who are, you know, 3D printing.
Ryan
The, the maker but
Andy
But yeah.
But I know I understand that it would be hard for you to change software at this point too, but the printer comes to.
Ryan
Well, just because it’s not, it’s not my machine so I’m not in control of the, I don’t, yeah, I don’t have administrative rights.
Andy
The printer themselves are very dumb. All they do is just follow the instructions they get from the slicer itself.
And so there is a chance some of this some of these problems could be coming from the slicer itself. And unfortunately, none of us use that kind of software.
Andy
So it’s hard to tell what it what it is intending to do and if that is actually causing the problem here as well.
Ryan
Well,
Andy
You are definitely having a not normal problems though that is for sure.
Ryan
Oh, so, so this is useless to all beginners got it.
Andy
So no, like you yourself doesn’t sound like you’re having a normal printer. If you would have like bought that print like somebody buying a brand new printer and getting it out and trying to use it would probably have different problems and what it sound like you’re having here.
Ryan
Mm hmm.
Andy
And a lot of it is probably coming from the plastic that you’re printing. Like I said at the beginning, you’re having adhesion or curling problems on the print at the same time the print plastic is brittle.
Those are contradictory to, you know, that’s two separate types of problems that have very different solutions. So there’s something going on there with the type of plastic or using.
Frank
The challenge with printing that uh
We haven’t talked about with yet is
You kind of have to approach it with the scientific
Procedure in mind
And you need to try to isolate and treat each issue like its own problem
Ryan
Well, as a programmer that is familiar territory.
Frank
Okay, and and so
The problem that we all run into
And it’s really hard to battle is when you change something you only want to change one thing at a time
Ryan
That’s not something I want to do.
Frank
No, it it it takes a lot of plastic if nothing else
But especially identifying and working through these issues
They need to be addressed individually instead of holistically
Um, and if some of them go away because you were focusing on another thing, that’s great, but uh
That’s really the best place to start is just break it down
Um
Into its individual parts and address them that way
Andy
Yeah, that’s a toughie man really is sorry having so many problems with this one.
Ryan
Well, I’ve had successes to so you take it for what it’s worth.
But I think my, my, my next attack on that was going to focus on the helper plates getting those adjusted a little better is that based on my last problem.
Andy
The helper plates are really good for the curling, putting them on the corners to help her discs, and will help the solution as well.
Ryan
I thought, I thought it could have helped with that spaghetti problems I’m like well if it printed over nothing, but maybe it thought there was a plate there, and it didn’t, but there was no plate.
So that could be one possibility.
Andy
When you, when you say there wasn’t with your spaghetti print, you say that there was the base was still attached to the build plate.
Was there, there’s a there’s a type of air that we call the indexing. It’s where it looks like it shifts part of the print over the top of itself.
Did it look like it. Did it just go straight from printing the base into a purely spaghetti print, or were there chunks of the print that were floating amongst the spaghetti.
Ryan
The prior.
Andy
So just straight spaghetti.
Ryan
Yeah, it like, like I said, it just, it moved to an area where there was nothing underneath it and started trying to print.
Andy
And when you slice the model you don’t remember there being anything over there in the slicing environment.
Ryan
I mean this is the very basic layer it’s like the building is like surrounded by just flat stairs.
There, there is there’s there’s one other factor that goes into that on the design level, which is that the stairs are not completely flat I had, there’s, you know, they’re, there’s basically like a hole, you know, so that interrupts it sort of in the middle, which I had added intentionally to try to.
Help with the warping be like okay we’re going to break it up in the middle. I don’t know if it had, if that had messed it up, certainly possible but it should have been able to accommodate that by, you know, printing a base underneath the parts that are actually touching the ground.
Andy
Yeah, the, when it was printing the spaghetti print was it with the head printing directly over where the model was, or was it a skew from where it should have been printing.
Even though was air printing at the time, was it air printing over the model, or was it air printing off the model.
Ryan
I can’t even know if it was supposed to be over the model because it had printed, you know, like its base, the, which was like half of a, you know,
It was like a triangle half of the of a box, and then it moved away from that triangle. And so I don’t really know what it was intending.
Andy
Okay, so once it
Frank
I feel like we’ve been speculating a lot
Um
This next week
Why don’t you take some pictures?
What we’ll keep you in the discord so you can share pictures with us
And if you’re not opposed, we’ll even probably invite you back once we have better information once you have a better idea of
Where your starting points are
Because I just feel like we’re just falling into the speculation hole
And if we had pictures we could analyze and we knew what material you were using
We would have a much better place to move forward from
Ryan
Well, I mean, I guess in, I guess, I hope it’s not too distracting that I don’t mind speculation, because it’s, it explores all possibilities, which is good for my learning.
Frank
Well, sure I I just feel like it’s not being very helpful necessary
Andy
The last thing.
Ryan
Any multiple things to look at and try.
Frank
Sure, and there’s that
Andy
There’s the one thing that I was going with the set of questions here is if it is printing over it if it is air printing over where there was no model to be printed.
Then there’s the chance the machine became the de-indexed where the head the printer has no idea where the head is.
It has no clue. The only time it knows is when it’s homing there’s a little switch it will throw at the very max side one way or the other of the carriage or the, the, the gantry or actually you don’t have a gantry on yours do I guess you do but it doesn’t move.
Andy
Anyway, and it will know that it reached those those maximum points but that’s the only time it knows exactly where the head is the rest of the time it’s just telling the head how far to move.
So it’s really easy for the head to become the indexed and away from the model where it was supposed to be,
Like if the head struck something while it was printing, and the machine thought it had moved the head, let’s say 10 millimeters to the left, but since it
Hit something it only moved five millimeters to the left.
So now the entire print is d indexed by five millimeters, and it will continue to print.
Sometimes the machine, they can, they can have a lot of torque on the motors, you can have the average turned up really high on the,
Excuse me, the stepper drivers, and they’ll be able to push through stuff including like pop and stuff off the bed and stuff like that.
Other times you breathe on them wrong, and the stepper motors will become the indexed.
So there is a small chance that the machine could be the problem. If you are air printing, and it’s spaghetti printing, but the head isn’t where it should be printing at.
That’s something that I might look into if I was in your shoes of watching the machine, listening to the machine and seeing if it does wind up getting de-indexed,
Because it’s hitting something, you know, try printing something and try holding the head back a little bit try holding
The head back a little bit. If it fights you pretty good, then you’re probably okay, but if you barely touch it while it’s trying to move one direction it just sits there and clicks, then d indexing could be causing your spaghetti problem.
Frank
I have a question. I don’t think we asked and we probably should have
Andy
What’s that?
Frank
Is anybody else getting good prints from this printer or are you the only one using it right now?
Ryan
I think I’m mostly the only one using it.
There’s, there’s a nice lady that runs the media center that’s tried a couple prints, but she says that she’s been having problems so she hasn’t been messing with it too much.
Frank
Okay, um, just because with all of this stuff. Well, you already clarified that you’re
A programmer and a techie so if it was anomalous and it was just you that would be an indicator that…
Of you know the cause as well… so…
Ryan
So I’m the problem got it.
Frank
Well, no, that’s what I’m saying. It’s a universal issue or it seems like a universal issue. So it’s probably not you
Probably
Ryan
I also heard it could be my breath.
So I don’t want to.
Frank
Um, I wouldn’t know
Ryan
Um, yeah, internet hasn’t gone smell vision yet, but once we only watched the mediocre movie.
Frank
Anybody anybody who’s read a ready player one knows to be afraid of that stuff. Anyway
Kevin
You know, I haven’t done either and I still know to be afraid of that step.
Ryan
But although the, the, the other issue where everyone’s going to just eventually be living in a little mobile home, like tiny homes on stacked on top of each other, I think we’re solely heading towards that one in real.
Andy
No kidding. No kidding.
Frank
We have to run out of dirt in Salt Lake before that happens. I think though
Ryan
That’s what you already were.
Andy
No kidding.
Frank
Well, we’ve already got the
We still got about a third of the western
Part of the valley that doesn’t have any houses. So
Frank
I think we’re good for at least another decade
Ryan
You know, I, I was even mentioning to my wife the other day that how much space there still is in Utah, like, like, if we’re talking about running out of space I’m like we still got several states worth to fill.
Frank
Two thirds of Utah is protected land though
I think it’s about two thirds. Maybe even more. We’ve got a lot of federal federal land in Utah, so
It would take a very specific permission to achieve
Ryan
I mean, there’s even just going south on, what was it called 85
Frank
100
I-15
Yeah, Utah Utah County is pretty dense, but
Ryan
I-15.
I mean, for hours and hours, you’re just, there’s just nothing there.
So all the way until like, until you get to like Cedar city and then you’re desolate again for another couple hours.
Frank
Yeah, got plenty of space in that direction, but that’s also where a lot of the the federal land starts to so
Kevin
Yep
Frank
Little blocks all over the place
Andy
Well, you get into 3D printing so that you can, you think you could develop skills to be able to print your creations and you discover the only skill you really learn is how to debug your equipment.
Frank
Just like any other skill that that’s what the 10,000 hours are for
Andy
There you go.
Ryan
Well, you know, you get into those positions where you’re like, I know what the problem is. I’m going to, you know, export the fix. And then I should be able to just print and leave it alone and not even check it.
Andy
Oh, yeah.
And it takes a little bit of time to get that but we can take any model that we want and just run it off on the printer site unseen,
But it’s getting the printer established with the right speeds to do everything and all the different settings set in just perfect.
Then you can have that, but that’s most of the skill behind 3D printing is just getting your machine to work that good.
Frank
Or any machine operation
Andy
I can’t tell you.
Ryan
Well, it’s just as, it’s just as useful as making a writing some code and then just compiling it and sending it off instead of running it first.
Frank
Hey, if it builds it ships
Andy
No kidding, right.
And you know what, I would say no, because you’re right when it comes to working code, you fight bugs all day long, but when it does come to 3D printing, I think, I mean, I don’t even, when I put a job in my printer, I don’t even wait for it to start anymore.
I don’t even preheat the machine. I just tell it to start the job.
I think it’s so rare now that I have a failure. I don’t even bother about it.
But that’s after, you know, spending time and like Frank was talking printing all the towers and getting things dialed in nice that you can have that and it definitely is different than coding at that level.
As there’s not really many bugs to work with and once you got it dialed in and it’s working right for you when something does go wrong, you have a much better idea of what to go with because that you’re back to only changing one variable at the time, you know, and you’ve got a good machine here.
That replicator plus is a far superior machine than all three of the machines that we’re running and we’re all running bed slingers. So you got a good one there.
Ryan
I guess that’s state funding for you.
Andy
Yeah, yeah. I don’t think it’s core x y.
Ryan
But oh, yeah, you know, we actually have, we actually have two. So I can still break one and be okay.
I was really actually worried about that. The other day I was like, I’m going to try a long print. I’m going to trust that my fix because you can’t sit around and wait for, you know, to see if your fix worked on a long print to be can’t be there for four to 10 hours.
So I like ran it and I was really nervous. I’m like, I’m going to leave the building with a hot machine running.
Frank
And I hope it doesn’t burn down the school
Ryan
Yeah, hope it doesn’t burn on the school.
Frank
I hesitate every time I leave my condo for that reason
I affect 12 10 other families if I burn down the condo, so
Andy
Please.
Ryan
To to not keep you in suspense on the end of that story.
I don’t know how sturdy the edges of your seats are, but it is.
It was a situation where I came back and I was really nervous. And sure enough, it did fail. It went to.
I don’t know what you want to call it. I call it the gobber ended up with just a big glob of plastic.
Andy
That’s the worst kind of fell those ones are hard to clean up sometimes.
Ryan
And it wasn’t too hard, but it did dislodge a piece of the machinery.
So whatever happened. And that really worried me until I saw that I could just snap it back into place.
And it seems okay now, but now I’m, you know, that you mentioned something being misaligned can’t help but wonder if it’s affected.
So, so I might end up going back to some smaller size prints and seeing if it’s if it’s printing those okay, some something less strenuous than what I’ve been doing, go back to like a small shark or something.
Ryan
I had, I had only after that happened, gotten to, I did get a couple successful prints where I had, you know, cut things and done it in smaller bits.
So I’m not sure.
Andy
Well, check the plastic work on the bed adhesion a little bit and then start off one variable at a time for what needs what’s not working right and also,
Ryan
Well, I’m gonna, I’m going to turn that fan down.
Andy
I would turn your fan down to like 30%. Yeah, 20 to 30% to start out with it.
It’s better to have it off than to have it too much on so
Ryan
So if you have the fan completely off. How, how much warping of, you know, due to melting plastic is to be expected.
Andy
Well, having the entire area heat soaked a little bit better will slow…
Will minimize the warping and lead to less quality, but not blowing the hot air away from the part will keep it warm so that when it does shrink, it’s shrinking more as one solid piece.
Let’s see is the Makerbot you got is still an open bed. It’s not enclosed at all. Right.
Ryan
Yeah, it’s open.
If I were so desirous I could, you know, put my hand in there and hurt myself.
Andy
I mean, it’s it’s not going to it’s going to be better than our printers for maintaining heat, you know, heat soaking the part but to also help with the warping if you are printing like an ABS plastic having the bed temperature a little bit higher helps as well.
The more you can keep the entire part just below the glass point of the plastic.
The better it will print, like ABS will print just fine if you can keep it just under the glass point for the entire length of the print evenly, like the heated evenly.
And then when the prints done, letting it cool slowly evenly delaying is not a problem warping is not really a problem with ABS, but that’s a hard thing to do on even a well established enclosed printer.
The barrier is opening open and you’ve got warping issues. The fan having not having the fan run at all will help with the warping issues, but might cause other problems.
If you’re printing a very small part, the filament might not have enough time to really solidify before the head comes back over again with the next layer and lays, you know, molten plastic down on top of it.
Adding more heat to the part.
It’s going to end up printing a melted mass that same time so it’s really a balance by wearing your shoes,
I would bring it down to 20 or 30% and see what goes from there, check the plastic first, and then then go with that.
Hopefully that’ll get somewhere but I still am leaning speculating that it’s a plastic issue on this one.
Okay, who knows.
Ryan
Well, we will see.
Kevin
The Shadow knows
Andy
Yeah, so, an hour-six into it.
Ryan
I think that’s as many things as I can throw it. Yeah.
Andy
Yeah, no you’re fine. Since we’re so far into the past, the podcast we want to go through and quickly take five minutes and share what we’ve done or whatnot from last podcast.
Frank
Let’s do it and it you brought it up
What have you done this week?
Can you keep it down to five minutes or do you need another half an hour?
Andy
I will, I will rush. I will say one thing for next next week. I am working on a drawer component drawer system and have been designing that and I will talk more about that next week.
But last week I was working on my impellers for my vent cooling system, and I printed off to so far, two different kinds with a little variables change to each one.
And I did ran some tests this week, both an air speed test with an anemometer.
I check I ran amperage tests from the motor directly.
I also did a suction test by using a hose with water to see how many millimeters I can have for lift of water to compare the two suction capabilities,
And also RPMs off of the motor, and have discovered that the first one that I printed is a little bit better than the second one that I created from the last podcast we did.
So I will be going with the first one, but I’m going to print another version to experiment with, in which I am printing a larger diameter one.
The one that I printed here and I’m sure the smaller one I said that I lowered it down to 75 millimeters so I can print it absolutely flat in the resin printer.
I could physically hear Kevin cringe at printing flat when I told them that. And now I’m seeing why it is awful to print flat it did not want to come off the bed at all.
And I struck it hard enough that it D layered part of the bottom of the impeller.
Frank
Oh man
Andy
Yeah, you can kind of see my little delaying job right there. So, Kevin, I never said you were wrong and I knew you were right, but I’m just going to go with an insane amount of supports and printed an angle like normal people do, because apparently there’s a reason why they do that.
Kevin
Yes, there is
Andy
But, but that will give me a little bit more leeway to be able to print great bigger. I did print this new one with much thinner walls than the first one.
The first one was 2.5 millimeter walls. My second one was two millimeter walls. I think I’m going to go down even to one millimeter just to see how it turns out this ABS base 2.0 resin is amazing plastic.
It is so strong. I’m very impressed with it. And so I might be able to get away with a thinner lighter impeller. And so I’m going to try printing one that’s slightly bigger with the thinner walls.
That’s two variables, but I’m testing two different things. So, you know, can it deal with the stresses being printed thinner. And if so, does the larger diameter that cause more suction.
And yeah, that’s it for me, I suppose to not take up too much time. I’ll be working on my drawer boxes for my components that I’ve been playing with.
And hopefully I’ll have a lot of them printed and be able to really show off my ideas and why I did what I did for that particular project. That’s me.
Frank
Oh Kevin did you do anything?
Andy
See, I can do it in five minutes, five minutes.
Kevin
Good job. We’re proud of you, Andy. Yeah. Yeah, so I, I had printed that one articulated dragon and taken it to work. Well, so I printed one for my friend, and then I liked it so much that I printed one for myself I took it to work.
Frank
I I’m actually very impressed Andy
Andy
He did something good.
Frank
Kevin did you work on anything this week?
Kevin
Yeah. So. I had printed that one articulated dragon and taken it to work.
Well… so I printed one for my friend, and liked it so much that I printed one for myself.
And one of my coworkers saw it and she liked it and asked for one so I printed one for her.
Then, Jess said to me, Hey, now that you’ve printed three of those dragons that I didn’t ask you to do. How about you get around to, you know, finishing the shelf you started.
So, so I printed that up. And I have learned that the biscuits that I printed before because I didn’t reprint the biscuits because why would I, I already had them.
They don’t fit in the the slots on the ends of the shelf, but they don’t fit in the slots on the center of the shelf,
Probably because of how much more what I had to do to get this filament to work with the point six millimeter nozzle.
I had to do what Chris said he had found increasing the the plastic flow rate and decreasing the print speed. So it made it a little bit too short. That’s what works.
Andy
That’s turning your tires slower and driving faster.
Frank
No, it’s driving slower Andy
Kevin
Yeah, is it’s driving slower it’s like
Andy
Oh, you said, oh, you said moving slower. Okay. Okay. Sorry.
Kevin
Yeah, moving slower and but pushing pushing more plastic through the nozzle but moving the head slower.
Andy
Oh, well, that’s, that’s doing the same problem too. That’s spinning faster driving slower.
Frank
It’s a very low gear ratio it’s high rpms and low speed
Lots of torque
Kevin
So, so all I need to do that is, I mean, the biscuits are just a little bit too thick. Now, so I just need to sand those down and then I can assemble the thing.
And then, during the week. I, I’m one of the starting members of a group on Facebook called any cubic photon s fresh start, because there was already a photon s group,
But it was so full of spam bots and bots posting highly inappropriate content that a few of us got sick of it and decided we would start our own group.
Anyway, in that group, somebody asked if anybody had tried printing an articulated dragon with a resin printer. And so I came home that day and I had to shrink it way down.
Like, we’re talking like 28% 28% of scale.
But I printed it off and I was expecting that all of the articulations would fuse, but only a few of them did it worked astonishingly well.
So,
Frank
Did those fused parts uh break off easily or do they or are they fused fused?
Kevin
No, they are fused.
Frank
Okay
Kevin
So it’s mostly the feet, the feet all fused, because they’re their joints between the feet and the legs and those those joints.
Those are fused because they’re they were just too small. And then there were two or three articulations along the back of the dragon that also fused and they don’t bend but that’s okay because it’s the rest of it does and it looks fine the way it is.
And then there was also in that same group somebody was posting pictures of the screen on their on their printer saying, Okay, what do I do here.
And it was, it was the same problem I was having with my screen and so I said, Well, you’re going to have to replace that.
You’re your screen’s dead. So I pointed them in the right direction so I did a lot of helping and answering questions in the off week or not in the off time.
Frank
So you’re following in you’re following in Andy step and you’re not being an amateur anymore you’re being a coach
I guess we all coached this episode though
Kevin
Well, I’m not getting paid for it though so I am still an amateur.
Frank
No, there’s that there’s that
Kevin
And the whole purpose of this podcast is so that we can share our thoughts and experience. And that’s exactly what I was doing in this Facebook group.
Frank
Fine forget forget I open my mouth Kevin. I’m sorry
Kevin
But that’s what I did this week so what did you done Frank.
Frank
I did a whole lot of nothing actually um
Andy
That was easy.
Frank
The uh garter clips that I designed to hold the sheet on my bed
Um
The tpu flap version uh or part um
Was printed with a lower infill. I think it was 20
And the the part that holds the sheet on is coming off
So I am trying to get my
Absolutely Frankenstein 3d printer to
Transition to tpu so I can print a new one of those
And it’s being problematic
Ryan
Is that what you call your 3D printer, Frankenstein?
Frank
And not printing any more than
No, I call it the antiChrist
Ryan
Oh, I thought Frankenstein sounded appropriate.
Like it’s your baby.
Frank
Um, I grew up watching The Gods must be Crazy and uh, I decided the antiChrist was a better name than Frankenstein. So, um
Andy
Thank you all for how much problems it’s given you over this time.
Frank
Oh, yes, absolutely
Ryan
But, but if you think about it Frankenstein, that’s the scientist, it makes the monsters.
Frank
No, he is the monster
Ryan
Oh, okay.
Andy
Well, thinking about it, it might actually be fitting after all though.
Frank
Oh, so you’re saying I’m the monster and
Ryan
No, no, I’m saying like, you name it after yourself. And then every time you have a failed
Print, you know, you blame Dr. Frankenstein.
You’re like, ah, what have you done Frankenstein?
Frank
No, I I’d rather cry and fight and bitch and moan about uh, my machine deciding to not work the way I want it to
Um, otherwise
Andy
TPU has been a struggle below lately on that machine. It’s, I mean, every time, does it still doing it like every time you use TPU, then you go back to something else you get clogs and stuff.
Frank
I haven’t gone away from tpu yet. I haven’t gotten a good print there. Um
Because the way I’ve got my heat sink connected to the heat break
I expect there to be issues and once I’m done once I get it figured out because that’s going to be its own problem
Um, I actually expect myself to tear it apart and clean it real good before I try to put anything else through it. So
Andy
It makes sense.
Frank
Yeah, that that’s a uh, that’s a later problem
Andy
Good deal. Well, hopefully fixing that one particular spot there where it’s getting all garbled up at would allow you to be able to switch in between filaments without any problems.
Frank
Um, maybe I
I… Maybe it’s ptsd. I I just I don’t trust it to transition from tpu to anything else. So I’m just going to disassemble it and clean it every time
And and call it a uh
Less of a waste of my time to do it quickly rather than waiting for it to be problematic and waste half a spool of
My filament
Um
Other than that I fixed the problem I ran into with my software to merge the transcripts
Um, I still need to shoe in the uh
The process to export the transcript file
And uh
Once I get that done, I’ll do the uh the presentation for our audio and uh
No, our all factory listeners
Wouldn’t get anything from this one. So just for our visual listeners. Um, I’ll do the presentation for that
Andy
That works.
Frank
Um
Andy
You still got it setting up just exporting JSON files, right?
Frank
Uh
With whisper. Yeah, uh whisper exports the JSON. I do have plans to make it so that I can read the raw JSON file
Instead of the needing to go on and p hysically modify it myself
Um
Andy
Is it a text based format.
Frank
Yes
Frank
JSON is just a uh
Uh
Andy
It’s a markup language, isn’t it.
Frank
Not quite a markup language. Um, it’s more
It’s an easy html data transfer language. So it’s just raw like
Andy
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, I see.
Frank
Um
It it’s the
Andy
I just found some raw examples of it.
Frank
Parameter I it’s
It’s easier than like a xml xml is very raw data too
Um, but JSON is just stripped down and even more raw data. So
Andy
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say is it does look like XML but different. But yeah, that looks like that shouldn’t be difficult parts.
Frank
Maybe maybe the
The better the better way to describe it is the c version instead of the uh
The java version or the windows. Sorry c version instead of the windows version of data transcript
Ryan
I think the whole point behind JSON’s was that to make it as simple as possible to have
A data format that could be handed off between all kinds of different parsers.
Frank
And xml um
Is just like html where you need the opening and closing tags
For most of the data transfer and with JSON it’s just uh, you have the header and then you use
Brackets like all other c languages. So it’s all scoped
Kind of the same way just with less text actually in the file
Andy
Okay. That’ll work. And so you’ll make it so that you can interpret the JSONs directly instead of using an interpreter. That would be nice.
Frank
Well, not instead of using an interpreter. Um, the way they’re exported from whisper is
There’s a lot more JSON in there and I just strip it down to the um to the array that I want
Frank
And that requires me going into the file and editing it
And I did it that way just because that’s the important part of the information right now
But eventually once I get everything else, uh working, I’m gonna build it out so that I don’t have to do that anymore
Andy
Nice.
Frank
That’s gonna be the pressure point so
Andy
I look forward to definitely look forward to seeing that. That’s awesome.
Frank
Uh, but that’s all I did this week
Andy
I’m lightening your load too.
Frank
Yeah, um, I realized I was underestimating how long it takes to do the production and even
Andy
Underestimating.
Frank
Yeah, um with
The newer format for the transcript. I’m still at about
Three times
The listening time
Frank
And that’s with things going much faster. I must have been closer to like six times
Andy
That’s a lot of time spent on this. I never considered how much hours you spend on that.
Frank
And and it’s at this point I do very little editing of the the actual podcast and it’s all just making sure that the transcript is
Accurate so
Andy
Oh, yeah.
Frank
Um, yeah
Getting this and I can refine it as I go to this software. So, um
Yeah, we’ll just go from there
Andy
Hopefully after a little while here you’ll just be giving it the locations of the files and they’ll spit out a complete transcript ready to be uploaded so.
Frank
That would be nice
Actually, um, I’ve been exporting the uh, the full
Transcript, uh with all the voices together
And eventually it would be nice to be able to make it so that it compares the individual
Speech with the full transcript and automatically aligns everything that way
Andy
Yeah, that’d be nice.
Frank
And, um, then it’s just a spell check from there instead of any adjustment of the the transcript
Um, but that’s that’s a later problem for Frankie to figure out too. So…
Andy
Great. Very neat.
Frank
But that’s all I did this week
Andy
Sounds great. Well, should we go ahead and call it since we’re approaching that one and a half hour mark that four and a half hours of time that Frank’s going to have to process all this.
Frank
Yeah, let’s do that even after I pull out the silence is still gonna be like an hour and 20 minutes probably
All right, uh
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end
Kevin
The very very end
Frank
If you like what you hear give us all the stars and subscribe
We are available through a wide variety of podcast vendors and so are easy to share
If you have feedback you can find us in our facebook group amateur3dpod
You can email us at Franklin Kevin Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com
Or you can email us together at panelists@amateur3dpod.com
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode and open ai’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts
Which you can find linked in the description
You think I spend a lot of time on this whisper spends about 10 hours
Andy
Wow.
Frank
Transcribing all of the
The audio so lots of heavy work being done by the ai
Um
Andy
I don’t know why it says that much.
Frank
Our panelists are me Franklin Christensen and my friends Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cottam
And our guest star this week was Ryan Phillips
Until next time we’re going offline
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Ryan
And you’ve reached Ryan Phillips, but please don’t leave a message at the beep.
Frank
Beep
Andy
I love bringing my 3D printer to a party. It always brings another layer of fun.
Frank
I didn’t expect this kind of dad joke from you Andy. I expect so much more from you
Andy
Chris has big shoes to fill here. Give me a break.
Frank
Wow
I’m gonna dwell on that all day now. Thanks for nothing Andy
Andy
I didn’t mean to be that disappointing. I’m sorry.
Frank
No, no, it’s not I’m not disappointed. I don’t think I would be struggling so hard if it was Chris that said it
It’s not what was said it who said it Andy I I I’m struggling
Andy
I love.
Oh, dear. I did reach out of the usual here. I could think chat GPT for its health because as much as I love dad jokes, I’m not very good at coming up with them on my own.
Frank
Oh, I guess we should add chat gpt to the the end credits too
Andy
Nah, I changed it quite a bit compared to what it came up with, because its version was a knock knock joke.