Qidi Tech 1 - Replicator 1 clone

[DarkAlchemist]

Well, after dealing with the post office and dealing with MakerGeeks over this issue this is the first, and last, time I will be ordering from them. They refuse to do anything for me until they get it back and the post office said they will try to get it back to them if they can. Funny that they have insurance on it and this is the first time I had to wait like this with a possibility they will never get it back and I will still be sitting here waiting. I guess I am spoiled by great customer service I have been receiving from other merchants.

[DarkAlchemist]

ABS ate my Borosilcate !

There's an inch long meandering divot in the surface of my 1/4" glass plate and the mating chunk is adhered to the ABS piece I was making. What the heck? How often does this happen? I had been thinking of the glass plate as indestructible, unless I dropped it or did something else clumsy or stupid. I guess not. Now there's this little ersatz dry riverbed thingy in the middle of an otherwise pristine surface. Might as well be the grand canyon.

Yeah, I know you're thinking "Hey, just flip it over, it's only 50% gone". Not so fast, I'm a Maghold user. It's payback time for all those seconds saved not having to deal with clips or pads etc.. I get to discover how easy it is to separate that steel plate from the back of the glass. It's only stuck on there with 60 square inches of 3M 468 MP high-temperature sheet adhesive. I don't know if hi-temp is going to be the answer for getting it to loosen, but I guess I will find out. I'm thinking of that video cncartist did of scraping Qidi blue BuildTak off the metal build plate...

And then I get to flip it over and re-apply it! Any suggestions? What causes these divots to happen in the glass? Anyone else have this happen?

My boro glass has a divot as well on one side and it was not a maghold system. Boro glass is not indestructible, especially with ABS, it is just more temperature shock proof than standard glass.

[wirlybird]

Question for the group:

Once you design a model in fusion, Sketchup, solidworks etc. what is your process for going to a STL file? Are you exporting directly to the STL or are you importing a file into another program to convert to STL and check the file?

I am building some basic test items in Sketchup and added the STL plugin but was just wondering what your process was.

[DaveB]

ABS ate my Borosilcate !

There's an inch long meandering divot in the surface of my 1/4" glass plate and the mating chunk is adhered to the ABS piece I was making. What the heck? How often does this happen? I had been thinking of the glass plate as indestructible, unless I dropped it or did something else clumsy or stupid. I guess not. Now there's this little ersatz dry riverbed thingy in the middle of an otherwise pristine surface. Might as well be the grand canyon.

Yeah, I know you're thinking "Hey, just flip it over, it's only 50% gone". Not so fast, I'm a Maghold user. It's payback time for all those seconds saved not having to deal with clips or pads etc.. I get to discover how easy it is to separate that steel plate from the back of the glass. It's only stuck on there with 60 square inches of 3M 468 MP high-temperature sheet adhesive. I don't know if hi-temp is going to be the answer for getting it to loosen, but I guess I will find out. I'm thinking of that video cncartist did of scraping Qidi blue BuildTak off the metal build plate...

And then I get to flip it over and re-apply it! Any suggestions? What causes these divots to happen in the glass? Anyone else have this happen?

So 110C heat, and 3 or 4 spackle knives at once, and slow but steady pushing, prying and patience got them separated. Thanks again to cncartist for that BuildTak video and also that build plate support bracket design (I'm sure that reduced the stress on the Z-axis hardware).

Once apart, acetone dissolves the 3M adhesive, kinda, sorta... Really, its a disgusting, gelatinous, gloppy, sticky mess. I've done my first pass on cleaning up some of the spackle knives and moved the operation outside due to acetone fumes. At first, I was unsure if the glass plate would ever get clean enough to use for printing. It's really incredible how much of that 3M adhesive is present (volumetrically) on these surfaces. The acetone somehow combines with the adhesive and expands the volume. It took most of a can of acetone and a few metal trays along with 6 pair of nitrile gloves and a dozen disposable rags to get to a discussable level of clean on the plate. The adhesive on the Maghold steel sheet was just as bad. Grump, grump, grump.

Here is a suggested technique to remove the 3M 468 MP adhesive:
Set the plate covered with adhesive into a metal tray you can discard when done. Lay a sheet of disposable rag under the piece in the tray. Pour a small amount of acetone onto the surface of the adhesive on the plate. Use just enough acetone to mostly cover the surface of the plate. Using a sharp, flat edge, spackle knife, spread the acetone until it covers the adhesive. (Here's where the volumetric magic happens.) The acetone seems to dissolve / combine with the adhesive and expand into glop that can be easily scraped off and plowed into piles with the spackle knife. Scrape the plate and move all the goo piles close to one edge of the plate. As much as possible, let the acetone do its thing dissolving the adhesive (it will be evaporating like crazy anyway so I hope you are outside). Using the spackle knife, snappily scrape the goo piles off the plate onto the underlying rag. Shift the plate a small way away from the goo-piles you've made on the rag and repeat with fresh acetone etc.. Replace the underlying rag as needed. After four to six passes at this you will probably have cleaned off all you can. So abandon this technique and shift to using a clean rag and acetone to remove the spots of adhesive you couldn't scrape off the plate. Clean gloves are a requirement or you will just be moving little adhesive snot pieces around.

Having done this, I am less sure if this recovery and reuse is economically viable. I am seriously considering switching to the sil-pad (or whatever the thermal pad material is called lately) in lieu of ever doing this gooey mess again. And if borosilicate normally gets dings like this, maybe regular old sheet glass would be a less costly solution.

[JSensebe]

Today I wrote an STL import script for Lightwave 3D. It seems to work pretty well. The trickiest bit was the fact that LScript has no function for reading 32-bit floats from a binary file. Lightwave uses doubles exclusively, and I guess they didn't figure on anybody wanting to import 32-bit float data. I had to read them as 32-bit integers and do some math, which is silly.

[DaveB]

Question for the group:

Once you design a model in fusion, Sketchup, solidworks etc. what is your process for going to a STL file? Are you exporting directly to the STL or are you importing a file into another program to convert to STL and check the file?

I am building some basic test items in Sketchup and added the STL plugin but was just wondering what your process was.

Most of the CAD apps don't speak directly to printers. Almost all support an STL or OBJ or other common compatible export format. The MakeWare or SD3 etc. apps then accept that format for use slicing and generating the GCode or X3G files that the printer wants to see.

[wirlybird]

Most of the CAD apps don't speak directly to printers. Almost all support an STL or OBJ or other common compatible export format. The MakeWare or SD3 etc. apps then accept that format for use slicing and generating the GCode or X3G files that the printer wants to see.

Yea, right now I am just finding STL files and sending them to print via S3d. I am also running them through a fixer that was recommended, it's an online on but is fairly simple to use but doesn't let you know if there were and problems or what they may have been. I am building my first parts in Sketchup. I have the STL exporter installed. Haven't tried it yet - that will be later today.

I am wondering if I can just keep sending the STL file through this online fixer or should I employ something like meshmixer to check out the file for problems then send to S3d?

I am figuring if I learn good practices now I can save myself headaches later when my models may get more complicated that a box!

[DarkAlchemist]

I would be too afraid to use plain glass again as I do shock it sometimes. As far as anything sticky on the bed I hate it because eventually that stuff has to come off to add new stuff and no thanks as the work involved is crazy nuts besides the fumes and just generally a nuisance.

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Well, after I called the post office they couldn't figure out what was going on with my filament as another driver that was not on my route took it but it is supposed to be going back to MakerGeeks. They got pretty snotty at me for all of their mistakes but I remained nice and calm. After I contacted my credit card company they put it into dispute due to the attitude MG had and after reviewing their response to this issue and what was happening with the post office (that filament may never be seen again) they issued me a final credit. Sure didn't take long.

I am a bit saddened at how unprofessional MG was about this because they are around a 3 hour drive from me but after I went digging around the net I found out I am not the first. What got my dander up was not the beach comber/hippie talk from a business BUT that they would do me a favor by not charging me shipping again when they finally get mine back (if they did) and send me a replacement. Really? A favor of not charging me more shipping for a package I never received and considering you have 50 dollars of insurance on the roll? SMH.

So, what PETG maker out there has good quality filament without breaking the bank?

[DarkAlchemist]

Yea, right now I am just finding STL files and sending them to print via S3d. I am also running them through a fixer that was recommended, it's an online on but is fairly simple to use but doesn't let you know if there were and problems or what they may have been. I am building my first parts in Sketchup. I have the STL exporter installed. Haven't tried it yet - that will be later today.

I am wondering if I can just keep sending the STL file through this online fixer or should I employ something like meshmixer to check out the file for problems then send to S3d?

I am figuring if I learn good practices now I can save myself headaches later when my models may get more complicated that a box!

With Solidworks there is a fine line between producing quality STLs and ones that need to be repaired that I have found. You have to play with the sliders but other programs are just prone to producing crappy stls (like sketchup did, may still, for years) that have to be repaired.

[wirlybird]

I would be too afraid to use plain glass again as I do shock it sometimes. As far as anything sticky on the bed I hate it because eventually that stuff has to come off to add new stuff and no thanks as the work involved is crazy nuts besides the fumes and just generally a nuisance.

-----------

Well, after I called the post office they couldn't figure out what was going on with my filament as another driver that was not on my route took it but it is supposed to be going back to MakerGeeks. They got pretty snotty at me for all of their mistakes but I remained nice and calm. After I contacted my credit card company they put it into dispute due to the attitude MG had and after reviewing their response to this issue and what was happening with the post office (that filament may never be seen again) they issued me a final credit. Sure didn't take long.

I am a bit saddened at how unprofessional MG was about this because they are around a 3 hour drive from me but after I went digging around the net I found out I am not the first. What got my dander up was not the beach comber/hippie talk from a business BUT that they would do me a favor by not charging me shipping again when they finally get mine back (if they did) and send me a replacement. Really? A favor of not charging me more shipping for a package I never received and considering you have 50 dollars of insurance on the roll? SMH.

So, what PETG maker out there has good quality filament without breaking the bank?

Why did they ship USPS was that a choice? I let them ship free and it was pretty quick. I ordered end of last week and it was delivered today via UPS.