3D Printing with Emilio, Eddy, Kamlin, and Ricky
These are the first days of our very own 3D Printer, those first days we would be having to attend to it’s needs and make sure it’s all grown up and ready to go out in the world and do its job just as many others. As we try to make sure the 3D Printer is healthy and ready to walk on it’s own we made sure it is raised properly with the belt ready to act as it’s muscles to move and the bed leveling ready for it to begin using the filament and help print out whatever we may need in the future. With Kamlin and Emilio’s thumbs up of approval, Ricky continues to learn how to operate on the printer and build the belt so it is fully functional. Of course the rest of us would help out. Progress was being made and it seemed as if the printer was coming along really well. The only difficulty we had in the beginning was recognizing the names of each part until we searched more in the manual and spread out the parts we would need and look at their appearance. We were hesitant to use the video at the beginning but we found it much easier and faster to use and build the 3D printer. Sometimes learning visually or learning by example might be a good way to learn. Putting in the filament was difficult at first as well until Mr. Huang showed us that we can cut the tip a little to allow it to enter much better and be able to push it all the way to the end.
With our printer in it’s next stages of life, meaning it is now fully built, we needed to change the old springs with these golden colored new ones. With these new springs, the bed of the printer would be much more stable and nicer as well. Here we have Ricky quite enlightened by the progress of the printer being made and Emilio getting his camera out to take a picture as well. Maybe at the end of the year we could show these pictures to the printer to show it’s growth and any changes necessary it may have needed to function better. The print settings we used were 200 degrees C nozzle temperature, 60 degrees C bed temperature, and 100 print speed. These were the settings we stuck with for our entire printing process.
Ever since we finished assembling our 3D printer last Monday we were trying to find cool prints to test out. Such as a model of a character from a video game and a maneki neko. However, we did notice the motor was slightly not properly aligned. So we have decided to 3D print some spacers for the motor. The purpose of these spacers are to insure that the motor is properly aligned and improve accuracy. The next day the print came out nicely and we’ll be adding the spacers in the next few days to our printer.
The spacers were added and now the motor is and the bar is holding up at a really nice 90 degree angle.
Having decided to print between a filament guide or some spacer bars we decided to go for the filament guide first since it would’ve taken less time and we thought it would’ve been something we might’ve needed before we printed anything else so the filament didn’t curl so much. These moments of peace and hope turned to some grave tragedy and we never saw it coming. What was supposed to be our filament guide had been corrupted into this finger-like shape and the rest was to be found covered on the heating part which you may see in the two pictures above. We cleaned up the wounds that were left behind on our printer and used an alcohol wipe to make sure to get most of the gunk out. Of course we could try to thoroughly clean it further but it would’ve taken much more time and our 3D printer still had to print the filament guide properly. Sometimes there’s always a scar that gets left behind.
We noticed at times that the filament would start to curl before entering the tube to the printer. So we wanted to Next what we plan on printing is a filament guide. The purpose is to straighten the filament as it goes in and that it feeds the machine the filament properly.
This time we also faced another tragedy in which we failed to level the bed properly from the last time our printer had a problem. The pros of this time were that this time our filament guide was printed and it is fully functional and it is doing exactly what it is supposed to which is guiding our filament so it doesn’t curl so much. The cons were that our printer had apparently had a problem with the leveling but we were saved by Frank who happened to notice it had problems while printing and helped us level it. In conclusion our printer still needed some adult supervision but we thank Frank for helping us. Hopefully now it could manage printing by itself without having to constantly fix the leveling this time.
Finally we have successfully printed something without any malfunctions and this tool bar would come in handy as we’ll be able to pull out the tools much quicker and even be able to know which size we might need instead of them all scattered on the table. All our tools will be much more neatly organized and we even have a place for the USB. It was a day of victory at last and it even looks cool on our 3D printer. It’s almost like a little accessory for it.
Used Files
Filament Guide
Filament Guide 2021 - Ender 3 / Pro by ElevationsTech - Thingiverse