Andy
Thank you for joining us. This is episode 77 of the Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers where we share our thoughts and experiences.
Our panelists this week are me, Andy Codham, and my friends, Kevin Buckner and Chris Weber.
Franklin Christensen has some plans today that does not include 3D printing.
Here at the Amateur 3D Podcast, as much as I looked down on the practice and discouraged doing anything other than 3D printing and related tasks in our lives, we will accept Frank’s flaws for what they are and accept him for his discrimination and allow him in this absence.
Well, in charge of this episode, I will not be the strict, all-powerful, omnipotent, almighty bringer of repercussions.
I will allow for some activities that are not 3D printing related for a minimal amount of time.
So, Franklin, we’ll be excused for today. How you guys doing?
Chris
You have just elevated yourself to 3D printing God.
Condescending.
Andy
Frank left a power vacuum and I’m here to fill it, so.
Everything will be 3D printing all the time, every time.
So how you guys doing?
Kevin
I’m doing well. How are you?
Andy
Doing good, doing good.
Kevin
Good. Good. Good.
Chris
Did you print that one out to
Andy
Yes, Frank’s got some things he’s taking care of, so he’ll be gone today and leave us to deal with this, and this is my first time posting, so please forgive me for any of my failures when it comes to that, but yeah.
Chris
So, yeah, Frank had the Easter stuff going on and we all, it sounds like we all had Easter
stuff going on in the afternoon instead of the morning, so Frank upped it out on this
one.
Andy
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Now, in my.
Kevin
I don’t have Easter stuff at all today.
Chris
Oh yeah, you got game stuff.
Kevin
Much more fun. Yes.
Andy
I think Easter is next weekend, isn’t it?
Chris
It is, but today I am taking eggs and I’m making them dye and my favorite part is when
I hold the munder until the bubbles stop.
Andy
Nice.
Nice.
Andy
With it.
Kevin
Wow, that got dark.
Andy
Yeah, for like the last.
This, this whole last week I kept on confusing this week for being the Easter weekend. I even like ordered a lot of extra eggs when I did groceries and got all the Easter bunny stuff like well ahead of time panicking because like all that’s this weekend I better hurry up and get it so.
I’ve been living as if this, this tomorrow here Sunday is Easter and it’s throwing me all off so to hear you guys suddenly start talking about everybody doing Easter stuff, you know, this weekend I’m thinking maybe what I was right.
Easter bunny can’t be late, you know, coming to the house.
So.
Kevin
I haven’t even started getting ready for Easter.
Andy
Really.
Chris
The wife’s been doing that all for me.
I’m a little, I’m a little behind because the cars are broke.
Andy
Yeah, that would offer a lot of extra work in the day. That’s for sure.
Has that been coming along for you? Okay, so far that new engine you’re putting in the car.
Chris
Yeah, I’ve got the engine, got it on the stand, started cleaning it up a bit already.
I’ve got the new gasket sets I’m switching over, but this last week I got looking into
the wife’s car and it seems like something is funny with her timing belt,
Andy
Oh, that’s not good.
Chris
the new timing belt that I put on about four years ago.
So yeah, it’s just, it’s been running with a funny ticking noise and so I went to check
the valves to see if like maybe the exhaust valves had come, you know, the adjusters had
come looser or something like that, but no, they’re all, they’re all to spec,
factory spec.
So I’m like, great.
And I got looking at the timing and the timing seems to be just a little bit off and the
belt seems to be loose.
I can’t see the tensioner unless I take everything off, which is what I’m doing today.
But it seems like maybe it’s got a pneumatic tensioner on it.
So I’m thinking maybe that went bad.
I got looking at a lot of forums saying that, you know, they have these problems because the tensioner went bad.
They were like, I bought this dang cheap timing set and that’s what I get and blah, blah, blah.
And I’m looking at it going, well, I didn’t buy a cheap timing set.
I bought the nice, the nice Durilast one with the warranty and everything.
Andy
yeah.
Chris
So to have this happen four years later seems a little strange to me, but then again, manufacturing
isn’t 100%.
Andy
That’s true.
That can be a little bit frustrating.
Chris
So but I think maybe I got lucky that, you know, her timing belt only just advanced one
of the cams a little bit instead of actually, you know, coming full on loose and ruining
the valves or anything like that.
Andy
yeah.
that’s good.
Chris
So
like my car, yeah, so
Andy
Yeah.
No Kidding.
Kevin
Kick it.
Chris
yeah, but yeah, as far as 3D printing goes, my, my machine is
still down.
So until I get a new….
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
Chris
So I don’t know if you guys were, you guys heard the conversation kind of about how my
my printer is a bit different than the ender.
Andy
Yeah,
Kevin
Yeah, your extra long nozzles.
Andy
yeah, I heard about that. That’s weird.
It sounds like the volcano nozzle that you got on there or something like it.
Chris
So yeah, yeah, so yeah, so I should have posted a picture of
Andy
Who makes your printer?
Chris
Uh artillery.
Andy
artillery.
Kevin
Boom.
Andy
I’m going to look up a picture of that just so I know what you’re talking about.
Chris
Yeah…
Kevin
Fun fact, heavy metal music got its name because of an alternative name for artillery.
Andy
Oh, really. That’s cool.
Kevin
Yep.
Chris
Here we go.
So I’m going to pull this up.
There’s a picture.
Andy
I see what I saw I did listen to the podcast that you and Frank did the other day. And, and now a lot looking at the pictures a lot of it start to make sense your heat block is kind of sideways I mean it’s built that way on purpose but it’s it’s tall, not wide.
That’s interesting.
Chris
Yeah, so it’s tall and not wide and it’s got the so the block itself has this little adjust
or thing you tighten around the heater itself.
So the heater and the block are actually separate entities, entities.
See that.
So the nozzle threads in.
Andy
Well, that makes sense. That looks that looks normal with the way it bolts in. It’s just at a funny angle compared to ours.
Chris
Okay, yeah.
Andy
Yeah, they do attach the same way. Most of ours anyway.
Chris
Yeah, so and so the nozzle is like honking honking long and so I got some pre nozzles
with one with some of my plastic and yeah, they are they are not like this at all.
So I ordered a whole.
Andy
You probably got the old v six nozzles that’s the most common style or v eights. Sorry.
Chris
Yeah, so I ordered some new nozzles along with so the thing I ordered was basically the
whole heat block get up.
I’m I found just the right picture, but this is one of those special sites that doesn’t
let you easily copy the picture into discord.
Andy
Yeah, you know, when you guys were talking, your Frank was kind of describing as it being sideways, just simply sideways the heat block, and I figured okay maybe the heat block is sideways but the way it’s drilled and everything would would be different it would just be set up to be tall not wide.
Andy
So looking at this it’s like no it really is sideways the only thing that’s drilled differently is the path for the nozzle. Everything else is still set up very similar to the way a normal, you know, heat block is done for the the V.
Chris
Yeah, so everything on my everything on my heat block is vertical.
Andy
I don’t know if it’s v eight or v six but I know both of those are similar is where your your heater cartridge and your thermistor thermistor actually come vertically out of the heat block instead about the site of the heat block. That’s crazy.
Chris
Yep.
So everything on my…
So everything on my heatblock is vertical.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding. That does remind me of the the volcano hot end a little bit with like the length of nozzle and things like that.
I’ve heard some great things about the volcano hot end being able to achieve some pretty, pretty decent throughput because the melt zone inside your nozzle is so huge that you’re able to really push plastic so you might be able to play with yours and get it to go pretty fast.
A lot faster than than than we might be able to do with our equivalence.
Andy
Chris
yeah, I was able to get it printing up.
I successfully printed some of those Christmas ornaments back when I was printing those at
like 120 millimeters a second.
Andy
Oh nice. Okay. Yeah, that’s great.
So are you just waiting on on parts on it then is that what’s going on or.
Chris
Yeah, so I’m because my whole nozzle was kind of it was kind of crusted over, like it had
gotten some sort of contaminant in there or something, I’m not sure.
But you know how if you’re working on like your lawnmower or something and you take a bolt out
and there’s a bunch of like, there’s a bunch of crusties all over the outside of the threads
or whatever, that was my nozzle, my nozzle was all crusty and not looking good all over
the outside of it and I’m going, I’m not sure that’s supposed to be that’s that’s normal.
Andy
On our V eight nozzles. If we don’t button up our nozzle against the heat freight tube tight enough, you could get leakage outside of that, and the plastic will come down the threads for the the nozzle.
Instead of going through the nozzle, and then of course it burns the plastic and turns into like a crust, does that sound like maybe something that was happening to yours.
Chris
Yeah, maybe no, no, it’s still plugged in.
I’ll I’ll get you guys a picture of it later.
But not not really, it seems to seems to me more like it was like condensate.
Andy
Oh really.
That’s weird.
Chris
Yeah, it didn’t seem like it was burned up old plastic, you know, but maybe could have
been a little bit.
I did have a couple instances where I ended up dry printing and having to clear out the
nozzle. So…
Andy
So are you going to get yourself a couple of nozzles then so you got some backups or whatnot.
Chris
yeah, I think I’m just going to order a whole another set after I get this
first one, but car parts are car parts are expensive.
So I’m keeping that to a minimum.
Andy
Nope. Totally understand. And I don’t I don’t have any nozzles that side. I got the, I keep on confusing v six and v eight because I use v six nozzles but have a v eight head on my hot end online.
But both of those nozzles are short. And those are the only ones that I have otherwise I’d offer to run some up to you.
Those really, those really long volcano ones man they’re, they’re something else.
Chris
Well, like I said, I, I’ve got a couple of those nozzles, but not anything that actually fits my printer.
So…
Andy
Good news though if you ever, I mean just looking at the the the back end of the heat break tube and how it connects to the artillery, you could easily change into a v eight style head.
If you had ever bothered you having to get used the longer nozzles and stuff like that and that way you could have something more similar to what, what me and Kevin and Frank use but at least it’d be an option there.
Yeah, that ever gives you any more problems being that long and I know a lot of people do swear by the volcano, but I don’t think a lot of people run it so.
Chris
Yeah, I don’t know.
I’m one of those kind of people where I try to go OE as much as possible, like modifying
something for with aftermarket stuff just isn’t isn’t really something I do.
Like if I want to upgrade, I’ll, I’ll upgrade the whole unit to a new, new,
new OE version and sell the old one to use, to use money to pay for my event or the new thing.
Andy
For the upgrade.
Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, and you’ve gotten some great runtime out of just the one nozzle anyway so it’s still doing you well.
Chris
That’s true.
Two years almost.
Andy
Yeah, that’s
Chris
No! Over two years out of the nozzle.
Yep.
Andy
that’s quite a lot of burn time on on one nozzle.
And, and it’s not even what failed you wasn’t no no you were suspecting that it was the problem and went into change it right that what started this whole endeavor.
Chris
That’s what started this whole thing.
Yep.
So what happened is changing the nozzle is supposed to change the nozzle.
Andy
Yeah, and then it was your thermistor wound up getting broke in the process of changing the nozzle out and that’s where you’re sitting now isn’t it.
Chris
Yep.
What happened is changing the nozzle is supposed to be a quick and easy and not too difficult thing.
Right?
Andy
Yeah, it’s supposed to be.
Chris
Well.
Well, I went to, well, I put my wrench, you know, the little stubby wrench I’d made.
I put that on the end of the nozzle and started twisting and my heat block twisted with it too.
And I was like, so.
So I twisted it back, obviously, and went and got an adjustable wrench to make sure that
my heat block stayed where it was supposed to and got the nozzle pulled out.
And that’s when I saw the crusties and I’m going, oh, no, I mean, I need to replace this
anyway, but now I’ve got to take the whole heat block off and make sure it’s cleaned
out properly and yada, yada, and then after seeing the price of the heat of the whole
heat block assembly, I’m going, rather than spending my time cleaning this out and make
it work, it is worth my time just to get a whole new one, whole new setup.
Andy
How much is the whole new setup for your setup for the heat block and nozzle and all that as one piece.
Chris
Well, the really, really cheap setup from from China is like 10 bucks.
One of these ready to go from Amazon is 22.
So.
Andy
Okay, so that’s right up there with prices of the v8 ones then that’s great.
Chris
Yeah, so it’s it’s not particularly expensive or anything.
So that’s why I’m going, it’s like any time I’m doing something, if it’s going to take
me more than half an hour out of my out of my way and I can spend 20 bucks or or so just
to not have to do not have to do that.
I go with not having to do that.
Andy
Yeah, that sounds good.
Chris
That’s I learned this lesson from my father who spent way too much time on things that
should not have taken him so much time.
Andy
Oh really.
Chris
Yeah, it’s like that’s that’s a two dollar.
If you go down to the store and get get that get get a new pipe flange or whatever, it’s
two dollars, dad, instead of making the old one that you’ve had for forever work…
work again, you know, it’s not worth an hour of your time.
Andy
Yeah, I can understand doing that for something that’s got some sentimental value to it but if you’re trying to do that everything’s just to save a couple of pennies that’s.
Chris
Yeah, anyway.
Andy
Plus it would be good to have one of those on backup on hand to if you ever get a glob that destroys your your hot end or or anything like that that way you’re just ready to swap it out and move on.
Chris
Mm hmm.
But I’m thinking after pulling the nozzle off, I’m thinking it was my nozzle, but it’s
because my nozzle was all up and dirty and stuff.
And so it wasn’t conducting properly.
Andy
Okay, weren’t wasn’t. Yeah, heat.
Chris
Yep.
So… probably.
Andy
That’s nice that you found a problem because then hopefully that’s what will actually fix the quality problem you’re having.
Chris
Yep.
So, yeah, so I’m not going to make it for printing any Easter fun stuff this year, but you know,
Andy
That’s a little bit of a bummer I’m sorry.
Chris
well, and it’s okay.
Andy
You usually did those really neat eggs every year too, didn’t you all the.
Chris
Um, no, I wasn’t printing.
No, I tried the Pokemon eggs last year and.
Andy
Oh that’s right that’s right okay I guess I might be just thinking about you know stuff that’s being pushed to us from 3D printing websites and stuff or all season also.
Maybe that’s where I get that memory.
Chris
Yeah, no, Frank was the one.
Yeah, Frank was the one printing those really cool twisty eggs.
Andy
Oh, okay, okay. See I remember things.
Kevin
And I did a couple of those on my resin printer just to show off.
Chris
Mm hmm.
Andy
Yeah, that’s right because those were the ones you were trying to do multicolor wasn’t it.
Chris
Mm hmm.
Andy
Yeah, I remember that that was a neat experiment.
Well, how about you Kev you did anything this week that was fun.
Kevin
So I talked last week about designing up that Viscountis and then using Blender to finish it off.
Well, the first attempt, the pendant on her neck did not work.
So I went back into Blender and I saw that I had actually left just a teeny tiny gap of…
we’re talking like micrometers between the pendant and her chest, but it was enough that it made it so that the pendant did not print properly.
And then the next time I embedded the pendant, kind of in the inner blouse, and made it sure it was on the chain that I made for it.
And then I, in Blender, I was fairly proud of myself that I was able to do this but I separated the figure from the base in Blender.
And then I, I took the symbol that I used for the pendant and I stuck that onto the base. So she’s standing on it.
Andy
That’s cool.
Kevin
Because the, and I’ll post a picture of this right now actually,
but the pendant still didn’t work out quite as well as I would have liked but you can still see that there’s something there at least.
So I said, you know, let’s, let’s have this.
I kind of anticipated that that might be the case because it’s so small.
So I said, let’s have her standing on the, on this symbol so that you can see what it is because she said it’s so the player said it’s supposed to be her family seal, or crest.
I thought that might still be appropriate. So, just a second, let me get to yeah.
Chris
Well, how long do seals live?
Because like, if I had a family seal, I’d go through so much fish, but I have a family dog.
Thank goodness.
So we only go through steak.
Andy
That’s neat that you’re able to accomplish that in blunder.
Definitely envious.
Kevin
I have posted that picture and then the other thing I did was I finally, finally got the peacock spider to work.
Andy
I see what you mean about the pendant on the model it is so small to.
Chris
Ooh, peacock spider.
So is that like an enemy in the in the game that they’re going to fight or.
Kevin
No, my, one of my friends sent me an email with the, the STL for the peacock spider saying that he wanted, he’s, he’s got some character that he’s playing in a game I’m not involved in that I guess has a spider companion.
And he said that he wanted something a bit more fun or something for this character he’s playing.
So, he asked if I would print him up this peacock spider.
And this was like, this was way back in December and, and he was understanding of the difficulty I was having that was, it was
He sent me the email, while my father in law was actively dying.
And so I said, well, yeah, it’ll be a while because of these difficulties.
And then he’s like, oh, yeah, sorry, I don’t didn’t mean to bother you during this.
I was like, dude, you had no way of knowing what I was going through.
And then I’ve tried a few times since then but with my screen dying that caused other problems.
But now that, now that I’ve got the, the screen replaced and I’ve got good resin in there is like I’m going to try this again, and it, it worked.
And then I still haven’t done anything with my FDM printer, but just yesterday, and it’s still attached to the build plate.
I’ve got my kids and a couple of Kyle’s friends playing a game called Zombicide Chronicles. And so I’m slowly but surely building up parts for that.
So I’ve printed up a couple of segments of fence to use as scenery in the game.
Andy
I’m cool. Okay.
Kevin
When we get there eventually. Yeah, these are just, these are just pieces of chain link fence with concertina wire at the top and and those concrete traffic barriers at the base.
So I’m going to, I’m planning on using these as boundaries for certain things when I eventually get to the point of using the 3D scenery.
Andy
Okay, that’ll be neat.
Chris
Mmm hmm
Kevin
Yeah, I still need to. So James just barely joined yesterday I still need to get his character designed and printed up. What were you going to say Andy.
Andy
I was just going to say like it sounds like you’re starting to even do models outside of the games that you and your kids play for other people.
We turned into the model person for for games for people.
Kevin
Um
Andy
That’s cool.
Kevin
Mostly it’s just been this one friend and I’ve only done two models for him now, but I’m sure as he’s, I’m sure as he gets word out people will start coming to me more.
Chris
Yes, and you will be a model citizen.
Kevin
Wah wah.
Chris
No, I’m a model citizen. I can’t move my legs anymore. Ah.
Yeah, you have to. Yeah, you have to send us a picture when the peacock spider gets painted up.
Andy
That’s pretty cool. Those came out pretty good.
Kevin
And that’s all I’ve done.
Andy
Nice. Nice. Um, well, I
Chris
You’ll have to send us a picture when the peakock spider get’s painted up.
Andy
Yeah, that looks kind of cool. It looks like the model you got right in the middle of him waving his butt.
Kevin
If he’s.
Chris
Yeah, you have to tell him that he asked to share it.
Kevin
Okay. And that is if he does, if he does paint it up.
Andy
Yeah, that’s so cool.
Chris
Okay, yeah. I mean, it’s a peacock spider. You have to paint it.
Andy
True.
Chris
All right. What are you, what are you even up to, Eddie?
Andy
Not a whole lot this week, unfortunately, I have been running my printer, nearly 100% of the time, doing its thing. But I’ve been working on my drawer system that I got set up here by for my component storage.
I can kind of show you over here. You can see those drawers.
Chris
Yep, it’s a doubled in size.
Andy
I’ve got about.
Yeah, I’ve got about a little bit short of 200 component drawers, all about three inches deep on my work desk here, getting them labeled up and with with fancier labels.
It’s been kind of cool going through and putting the new labels on these compared to just the the text that used to be on my old component drawers with just like one line of text like the new labels have all the information and logos and even small pictures of what’s in there.
Chris
Wow, that literally looks like a radio, like, like, like you’d gone down to Radio Shack it for those of us that actually remember Radio Shack.
Andy
Yeah, it’s worked out really good and I I’ve got some things that I’m printing now that I’ve tried up.
I’m working on my diodes and ceramic capacitors, which often are really small. So I’ve got the smallest drawers that I’ve printed out so far. These are only about an inch wide and maybe three quarters of an inch tall and three inches long.
So really small component drawers.
And those really increase the numbers of how many drawers I have in a small area.
So all this stuff is kind of working out but I’ve got some some bigger things like I want to go through next and do a bunch of potentiometers, not potential. Yeah, potentiometers that are a lot larger that I’ll need some more normal sized drawers that will be a little bit bigger.
Chris
don’t talk about your pot on the pot on the podcast.
Andy
Yes.
You know, it’s kind of funny you said that because I had a I had bought a bunch of pots just for doing some microcontroller work.
And, and I couldn’t find them and I was looking around the house and joking around saying to my wife hey have you seen my bag of pot I don’t know where I left it it somewhere upstairs with the kids.
I need to find this bag of pox I need to see how big it is. So I can make drawers big enough for it but yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Chris
Yeah, not to mention you’ve been showing off your drawers.
Andy
No kidding. But I’ve been printing those quite quite a lot on the printer.
My printer has been running quite little I think I’ve been running mostly two print jobs, I would do a box during the day, and then a set of drawers during the night.
And then on the weekend I do pretty much all drawers outside of other projects because I can, I can print boxes, the holes for the drawers, I can print faster than the drawers themselves because the drawers I am.
I’m really like to try to comb movements through my pieces when I’m printing that way the the head never leaves the outside shell of the item, and that way you get zero string at all.
A lot of stuff I print in PETG and PETG, you can dial it in and get it to be no strings, but it’s really difficult to do so.
So it’s most of the PLA is going to have some level of fine stringing.
And I know it’s easy to take care of for the most part, but you can avoid that by just combing your 3D prints.
And if I unless I’m going to do one drawer job at a time on the printer which would take forever like what I showed you right now I’ve got about 200 drawers that would take a very long time to print those individually and a lot of you know restart and print jobs on the on the printer.
So I’ve got it set up like with these small drawers I’m printing 10 drawers at once on the print bed, but each drawer is printed completely and entirely by itself.
So it’s almost like you got a section of the print bed that I can move the head around in without crashing into anything.
As long as I keep the entire print head within that area, I can have multiple zones on the bed where I can print full size models without interfering and crashing with the head.
So when I print, you know, it does them all one at a time, and I’m able to comb and not have any strings so it works out really nice.
In fact, I was speaking with Frank Frank’s got a wonderful little present for us next podcast I believe to stick words out for those listeners that want to stick around and see he’s made some really neat modifications to his printer.
We were talking a little bit about the park cooling fan and how everybody that I’ve ever seen their park cooling fans are always on angles, which makes sense because you can get you know the more angles, the airflow changes.
When airflow changes angles, it lowers the static pressure for requires more static pressure to compensate for the angle.
So most people put their fans on an angle towards the head, you know, towards the, the nozzle. That way, there’s pretty much no angles to compensate for, and they get to keep all that static pressure.
Chris
Nozzle.
Andy
But on mine, I’ve got mine sitting absolutely vertical, and that air needs to take a 90 degree turn in order to get to my nozzle.
And so I used a slightly larger or heavy duty fan.
So I’ve got more static pressure to compensate for that.
But because my not it set up that way, the footprint above my nozzle for my whole carriage is smaller, which means I could be able to fit that whole carriage into a smaller area on the print bed without interfering with prints that are already attached to the bed.
Chris
And yeah, mine was set up just like that from the get go. So yeah, my, my cooling fan is also, you know, at a 90 to the print bed.
Andy
So is it?
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Is it? Yeah. And I like that. And we were talking a little bit about that, but it kind of made me wonder a little bit of missing out on anything by making it 90 degrees compared to, you know, doing it on an angle, like definitely cool things even better.
But right now, I don’t, I’ve never run my fan near 100%. It’s usually between 20 and about 50% is the highest I run my part cooling fan at. So, you know, I don’t, I guess.
Chris
Which is…
Which is funny because I like, when you let Kira make the defaults for your settings.
Sometimes, like, every time I let Kira do that, my print, my fan speed is always at 100%. And I’m like, okay.
Andy
And I think most might be, but I’ve modified mine. So I got a pretty big fan on it. And so I think I don’t I got more cooling than I actually need on that carriage.
Chris
Modified.
Andy
When I was putting it together, I discovered, God, if you’re bridging something, the more cooling, the more air you can have around the nozzle, when you’re bridging the better, you could almost bridge straight out 90 degrees without actually attaching to anything.
To some degree, you can pull that off if you got enough airflow. So, you know, I ramped up and got a bigger fan for it stuff. My original printer came with an axial fan, you know, a normal computer fan for the part cooling fan.
And, you know, those don’t have very much static pressure at all. So changing to one of the centrifugal, you know, impeller style ones, blowers, and making it a little bit bigger.
And I even spliced a capacitor in there to help with because the fan I used is not very friendly to a PWM ramping, you know how you can change that.
Chris
Yes.
Andy
Yeah, so I got a capacitor on it as well.
Chris
That’s, that’s why my, that’s why my LED lights flicker from the, from the dimmer switch.
Andy
Yeah. But so, you know, I’ve got that on there to help with that. So it’s a pretty beefy little fan. Well, you guys seen videos of it. So it does well. But I’ve been running the printer for some time and I’m getting a little bit concerned.
I can’t tell if I’m getting a little bit of Z wobble, or if my nozzle might be just kind of wearing down. I’ve got, I mean, this last month, I’ve probably put six or seven rolls of plastic through my printer.
But if you look at the sides of my prints, you can see you can see layer lines a little bit more pronounced than you should be able to.
And I, I can’t tell if I’ve got Z wobble in my printer, or if I got something maybe going on with the…
Chris
Oh.
Andy
So I got to work that and my printers one of the bad designed ones, where the, the, what’s it called the screw rod, what would you call that for the Z.
Chris
A ball screw.
Andy
Yeah, I don’t have a ball screw. I’ve got just a normal screw. It’s not a ball screw, but I mean they use the, it’s a very similar screw rod.
The mine is mounted at the top with a bearing, and it’s fixed, which is a no no to do on our printers or but we learned that after this one had been designed by TVO and things like that.
So it’s not one of the good ones and it’s susceptible to Z wobble.
I have considered going in and removing that bearing on the top and seeing how it does because, you know, if the top is allowed to move a little bit, then the carriage won’t really move as much.
But if the top is fixed, then, you know, it’s going to make the carriage more wobbly.
I attempted to go up there and remove the bearing so it can move around a little easy. See how that might fix things, but it’s just an idea at the moment, not something I’ve actually sat down to do.
But God, as far as 3D printing, I think that’s all I’ve really accomplished this week, working on my drawers.
I did sit down and play with blender again.
Last time I talked to you guys, I had made my donut with blender went through the tutorial online that was really good for those donuts and came up with mine and it worked out good and then I tried to go back in there to play and I couldn’t figure it out at all.
Yeah, yeah, I…
Kevin
Yeah, I had to do the tutorial, the donut a couple of times I never actually finished it.
Andy
Oh, really.
Kevin
Yeah
Andy
Well, you’ve gotten pretty good at wonder. I mean, you’re pretty capable at least knowing how to figure out what you don’t know.
Kevin
Yeah, but that’s because what I did in the tutorial I did a couple times, like, I took it, I took it up to getting to the point where you have it frosted. I didn’t do any of the coloring stuff and I didn’t ever do the sprinkles lesson.
Chris
So if you did a one Toriel two times is it still a tutorial.
Andy
There you go.
But I had a very simple project I needed to do. And my, my 10 year old’s in a play, and we get stuck with a lot of the props and it’s my wife’s into cosplay.
She gets a lot of the props stuff for the play for the elementary school. And since I got the 3D printer, I get stuck with doing a lot of the smaller 3D printable and the kids are doing finding Nemo this year.
And there’s one scene where they need to block the impeller on a fish tank, just like from the cartoon. And so he asked me if I could print up a rock.
And I was kind of, you know, about the size of little kids head, and that looks like an aquarium pebble.
Chris
Yep.
Andy
And so I sat down and I figured, you know what, I’m not just going to do that. Let’s overthink this.
I’m going to go to the TV show, the movie, and I’m going to find the rock that they used in the movie and I’m going to 3D print that rock, or at least I’m going to try to rebuild that exact rock.
So that should not be hard to do in Blender to make a rock. And, you know, with what the donut tutorial gives you, that should be enough of what you need to know to do a rock.
So I got in there, and I pulled up the movie, and I found that I have some good pictures of the rock that Nemo used in the movie, and it’s a terrible rock.
It’s got like a bunch of flat sides, and as I was designing it, my wife came down and asked me why I was making a very phallic ball and, you know, that kind of stick thing going on on the computer and then it occurred to me like,
Chris
It’s a rocket ship.
Andy
Yes, yes, I can’t give this to the kids. This is awful. This doesn’t even look like a rock, and it doesn’t look like a rock in the movie either, and it’s only there for a couple of scenes.
So, you know, nobody really questions it, and Nemo pulls it up from the bottom with a bunch of rocks. You don’t question why it’s shaped so funny, but it is not rock shaped in the movie.
So I kind of gave up and figured I’m just going to make a very traditional river rock, you know, just a lumpy sphere, pretty much, and I was able to accomplish that.
So I’m pretty proud of my lumpy sphere that I came up with to be able to do this, and just going to 3D print it out of TPU, out of white TPU, because the last time we printed something big for the class, it got dropped and it broke, and that was a peach.
For James and the giant peach, and it was pretty big. It was about twice as big as my head. It was as big as we could fit on the printer, and I printed it out of PLA, and it got dropped and broke.
So I’ve got to do it out of TPU this time, so it’s a little bit more durable, and the wife’s going to paint it that wonderful blue color like it was in the movies.
He says it needs to be worn down a little bit, that gravel like that is painted, and the paint doesn’t always stay, and if you go and look at gravel like that, you will see the real color of the material, you know, if it’s old in it.
So she thinks it will be better if we print it white and paint it instead of print it the color blue that it was. So that’s my next project is printing a rock.
Chris
Printed 3D rock. Will not break…
oh. It broke.
Andy
Yeah, hopefully. I also got to print a sandwich. I got to print two sandwiches for it as well. That one there I’m just going to go to Thingiverse for.
There’s some great sandwiches some folks have made. We could throw them a buck to save me some time, because that’s way above my skill level to make a blender.
Like I say, it took me almost an hour to build a rock, so I got some learning still to do before doing anything else.
Chris
You chould ask Kevin to make you a sandwich.
he makes all kinds of other mythical characters.
Andy
You got a good point.
Yeah, I need a sandwich big enough. According to my son, it’s got to fit under his hat for his costume, because I guess he’s supposed to have a sandwich, and then seagulls are supposed to take it from him, and then he’s supposed to lift his hat up and take another sandwich from his hat that has a bite missing.
And he’s supposed to cover up the missing bite with his hand, and then pretend to take a bite, and then reveal the bite missing the sandwich, smile, and look off stage.
So I got two sandwiches I need to print, and the wife will paint them. So that’ll probably be over the next two weeks, though. That one doesn’t have to be done for some time.
And I’ve got only a quarter of the drawers printed that I want to have printed, so got a little bit more work to do.
But I think that’s all I got.
Chris
Wow.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s going to give Frank a hard time during the podcast you and him did. You guys did a full, full 50 minutes on that. That was impressive.
Now with Frank missing, it’s hard to fill that time.
Chris
Little bit. Yeah.
Andy
I think we should go ahead and call it.
Kevin
Yeah, probably there’s no reason to hang on just for the sake of padding the runtime.
Andy
All right, well, we’d like to thank everybody for listening to the very end.
Chris
Very, very end.
Andy
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 are so easy to share.
If you have any feedback, you can find us at our Facebook group, Amateur3DPod.
You can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy, or Chris @amateur3dpod.com, or directly at panelists@amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode.
Open AI’s Whisper completed all the heavy lifting transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Andy Cottom, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Franklin Christensen.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
Um…
I traded my FDM printer in for a wimpy M printer.
Nothing it prints holds up.
Andy
Wimpy M printer?
I like that.
Chris
Do you guys remember the old Hefty ads?
Hefty Hefty Hefty.
Andy
Yeah
Chris
Wimpy wimpy wimpy
Kevin
Okay, now, now I get it.