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The Everything 3D Printer Thread

gte718p

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Is that a walk-in 3d printer? or a model? If so, holy smokes!
It is just a really big 3D printer. There are becoming more common. Most are a cross between and injection molding machine and a 3D printer. They use plastic pellets instead of filament and grind/melt them in the head. They have much higher pressure and nozzle diameter at the nozzle. You can use them to make large plastic things like the chair in the picture or where they are super cool is making molds for other materials like carbon fiber or fiberglass.

Say you are doing a prototype for or one off bumper. That takes big block of steel or aluminum to machine for a mold. Easily $100k to machine the mold, which does not work for one off parts. Your other option is to sculpt it by hand. That is the way it has been done for many years. However that is time consuming and takes a ton of skill. It is a dying art form. The new option is printing a plastic mold. A little bit of finishing and you can pull really nice parts for $100 in plastic and 10 hours of run time over night. That is actually why I upgraded to a larger format printer. You can print multiple sections and glue/bolt them together but it adds extra work and clean up. Glues molds tend to only be good for one part as epoxy gets into the crevices at the joints and likes to stick and tear the mold when you pull them out. With single part molds you can generally get several parts out of a mold. The consumer plastics you will only get a few parts out of. Some of the new plastics I'm told can actually do production runs.

Easy Composites has some good videos of doing it on a small scale:
 
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jeepxj

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A couple years ago I was at the turbine engine shop of one of our air force bases. They were 3D printing FOD covers for some of the gas turbine engines they remanufacture. You could literally stand on the print bed.

same thing on carriers now.
 

loganb

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If anyone has a 4' x 4' free space and needs to bang their head against the wall.....Tronxy large format (1000mm cubed working envelope) is for sale locally on the FB Market...

big printer.jpg

Started at 2,500 asking, now down to 800 and taking offers. Claim they have over 4k to buy it. I've never used one of these but from what I've read to say they're "finicky" would probably be generous...but if you need big area....this could be it. Located in Omaha NE
 

gte718p

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Mar 12, 2009
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If anyone has a 4' x 4' free space and needs to bang their head against the wall.....Tronxy large format (1000mm cubed working envelope) is for sale locally on the FB Market...

big printer.jpg

Started at 2,500 asking, now down to 800 and taking offers. Claim they have over 4k to buy it. I've never used one of these but from what I've read to say they're "finicky" would probably be generous...but if you need big area....this could be it. Located in Omaha NE
Yeh that is a crappy design and old technology. Bed leveling would be a nightmare. However in the age of klipper and beacon you might be able to over come it.

You can pick it up for $3k new. Suprising lack of details on their website about what you actually get for that price. I would definitely go with a Voron before I messed with that PoS. For $200 I might think about it for parts.
 

loganb

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Yeh that is a crappy design and old technology. Bed leveling would be a nightmare. However in the age of klipper and beacon you might be able to over come it.

You can pick it up for $3k new. Suprising lack of details on their website about what you actually get for that price. I would definitely go with a Voron before I messed with that PoS. For $200 I might think about it for parts.

I was also thinking that the 200 to 400 mark as parts was about the value. I did ask if it had the upgraded 2.85mm extruder head but haven't gotten an answer. It'd be fun to play with to put Klipper on there...but I have plenty of projects already and don't have a 4' square area to give up to put it.
 

kaymccampbell

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Feb 27, 2015
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Upstate New York
If anyone has a 4' x 4' free space and needs to bang their head against the wall.....Tronxy large format (1000mm cubed working envelope) is for sale locally on the FB Market...

big printer.jpg

Started at 2,500 asking, now down to 800 and taking offers. Claim they have over 4k to buy it. I've never used one of these but from what I've read to say they're "finicky" would probably be generous...but if you need big area....this could be it. Located in Omaha NE
$50, and they deliver it. You'd still lose money on it scrapping it.
 

ArcReactorKC

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Jun 1, 2019
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Out in the county NE of KCMO
If anyone has a 4' x 4' free space and needs to bang their head against the wall.....Tronxy large format (1000mm cubed working envelope) is for sale locally on the FB Market...

big printer.jpg

Started at 2,500 asking, now down to 800 and taking offers. Claim they have over 4k to buy it. I've never used one of these but from what I've read to say they're "finicky" would probably be generous...but if you need big area....this could be it. Located in Omaha NE
I have a truck going to Omaha beginning of next week. He might just be bringing this back with him.

I would replace all of the electronics and swap the hotend to a stealthburner arrangement. I've already got all the parts on hand and could use a printer this size often.
 

ArcReactorKC

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I was also thinking that the 200 to 400 mark as parts was about the value. I did ask if it had the upgraded 2.85mm extruder head but haven't gotten an answer. It'd be fun to play with to put Klipper on there...but I have plenty of projects already and don't have a 4' square area to give up to put it.
I haven't gotten a response from them and I told them I was willing to pick it up with cash in hand.
 

XJSuperman

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Jan 26, 2018
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Central Iowa
As I sat organizing my filament last night (I moved it from one spot to another in the house) I began to get curious as to how much everyone keeps on hand these days. I'm not a production facility, but my days of just a couple rolls of black on-hand are long gone. Those pics of shelves full of filament spools on the maker libraries and the racks behind the youtubers are starting to make more sense to me now.
With the latest purchase, I've got a bunch of colors of PLA, a few colors in PETG-HF, a roll of ASA, and some PETG. I get impatient waiting for a color or type, and I don't like running out mid-print. Then I started looking at toys for birthdays and such, and more colors were needed. I did some outdoor stuff and needed different kinds, etc. It just seems to keep growing.

How many spools of filament do you keep on-hand most of the time?
 
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shakenfake

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I just print everything out in whatever color I have for the most part.


I am probably going to sell my Ender 3 here soon. $150 sound reasonable? Has auto-leveling and a glass bed. I think I did another upgrade but I cannot remember what it was. I am sick and tired of screwing with it. I would like to buy an enclosed Bambu but I don't know if that is in the cards right now.
 

Poolshark314

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I just print everything out in whatever color I have for the most part.


I am probably going to sell my Ender 3 here soon. $150 sound reasonable? Has auto-leveling and a glass bed. I think I did another upgrade but I cannot remember what it was. I am sick and tired of screwing with it. I would like to buy an enclosed Bambu but I don't know if that is in the cards right now.
That is dependent on the variant of the Ender 3, but most likely $150 is high. Microcenter flooded the market with $99 Ender 3 Pros and more recently they switched to the Ender 3 v2 and maybe some others at the $99 price point
 

shakenfake

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@Poolshark314 Yikes, did not realize they were that cheap now. I think it is the V2, I always forget. Probably $50 then. Any cheaper and it will be destined for the scrap bin or give it to my girlfriend's brother. He has a REALLY cheap and ****** one but I don't know if he would use it.
 

XJSuperman

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Agreed, I barely got $150 for mine this spring, and it had a bunch of extra stuff on it, including a Sprite that cost me over a hundred by itself at the time. Plan on a loss in money but a win for being rid of an Ender.
 

Citation

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I sold a stock Ender 3 Pro for $70 a few months back but recently the prices have really dropped. Microcenter was clearing out the E3 V2 for $50 and the E3 S1 for $75. Great value for someone looking to tinker and on a tight budget. I think the prices on good printers (Bambu, the latest Creality stuff, Flashforge 5M, latest Elegoo) has dropped the price of entry so much that the "cheap but you need to tweak it" market is going to die.
 

moab11

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Nov 22, 2015
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553
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Thunder Bay, Ontario
As I sat organizing my filament last night (I moved it from one spot to another in the house) I began to get curious as to how much everyone keeps on hand these days. I'm not a production facility, but my days of just a couple rolls of black on-hand are long gone. Those pics of shelves full of filament spools on the maker libraries and the racks behind the youtubers are starting to make more sense to me now.
With the latest purchase, I've got a bunch of colors of PLA, a few colors in PETG-HF, a roll of ASA, and some PETG. I get impatient waiting for a color or type, and I don't like running out mid-print. Then I started looking at toys for birthdays and such, and more colors were needed. I did some outdoor stuff and needed different kinds, etc. It just seems to keep growing.

How many spools of filament do you keep on-hand most of the time?
I'm afraid to even count but probably 100 spools all together.
I like to have filament on hand for whatever I want to print, and multiples of my most used filaments. So with PLA, Pla Tough, Sepcial PLA's (glow, matt, marble, multicolour, etc),PETG, ABS, ASA I have quite an assortment. I have 4 AMS's connected to my X1C and I still never seem to have the right filament loaded.
I want to get a second printer and set of AMS's, but waiting for a larger format Bambu Lab printer, hopefully with a heated enclosure.
 

nicholam77

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Dec 18, 2016
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2,655
Location
Minneapolis, MN
Wondering if anyone in this bunch can help me with support settings in Bambu Studio.

I'm trying to print this unicorn lamp for my daughter:


Because it needs to be somewhat transparent, I'm using 2-3 walls, and no infill.

The model prints great, but I'm having issues removing the supports after the print is finished. Any ideas on settings or why this might be happening would be amazing.

I've been using tree supports. Started with the default auto settings. Then changed to "slim" Tree, and adjusted the Top Z-distance to be a little bigger (.25mm instead of the default .2mm).

I haven't tried "normal" (non-tree) supports yet, but those seem like they would be even harder to remove.

Filament is a brand new roll of PLA+. Printer is Bambu A1.

supports1.jpg

They are all difficult to remove where it touches the model at the top of the support, like it's fused. I've tried heat gun and various tools but it always breaks the model.

IMG-7555.jpg

These were the latest settings I tried:

supports2.png
supports3.png

Any help would be appreciated, I am racking up useless pink unicorns and they take 4.5 hrs a piece! 🤣

IMG-7556.jpg
 

nicholam77

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Make sure you're printing 3 full walls on the object.
Try dialing the support branch diameter to 1mm and the distance to 7mm

Thanks Kay! I happened to be re-running it with Normal support when you replied (and it worked!), but I will give that a try next time for Tree. I did 3 walls for the object.

For the top Z and xy distance I'm at .3 and .4. That seemed to help, but it’s still not perfect for me. I'm interested in others' opinions as well.

Thanks for the input. I had tried one with those values with Tree, and same issue. For whatever reason Normal support worked, but I did modify those values to .3 and .4 respectively. In fact it broke away so easily I probably could have left it at default Z distance, as the supported area doesn’t have the *best* finish, but I’m just glad it worked.

I'm interested in this too, I ruined a two day print because of the supports being fused to the model and tearing it when trying to remove them. First time I've ever had that with the auto generated supports.

I’ve never had issues with Tree supports either! That’s a huge bummer on a two day print!
 
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