3D Printer Help - Beginner questions

Hey Guys and Girls,

I've been wanting to get into 3D Printing since they debuted but I couldn't justify spending absurd amounts of money on a machine at that specific time. However, now that my life has changed, I'm looking to pick one up. I've got a few projects in mind that I want to try a 3D Printer out with.

I'm an avid computer geek, I custom build gaming machines, and I'm one of those gents who has a custom built network, storage servers, and ESXi Servers (Virtualization software by VMWare). Anyways, I've recently embarked on a task of taking Storage JBOD Backplanes (BPN-SAS2-846EL2), and mounting them in a desktop tower (Using NZXT H440). If you look at the case, you'll notice that there isn't a whole lot of space. I'm going to gut this system completly, and custom build the inside. I've been thinking that a 3D Printer would be JUST the thing I need. Here's where I need some help.

1. What printer to buy?!
2. Something that can print (17cm Tall, 10.5cm Wide(up to 45cm), and 18cm (25 or so including the backplane)).
3. Something that can withstand constant temperatures of 70c.
4. Something that will last through abuse.
5. Something that will give me the ability to print to a size of .5mm within some degree.
6. Price range less than $1,000. If I can't get it below $1,000, then $1500 would be my maximum range.
I need to leave 2 - 5mm of space between each HDD to allow airflow.

If my project turns out well, I plan on selling these cases for a few hundred a piece, minus backplanes (Mine cost about $900 brand new).

I don't care if the software runs on Windows or Linux, I run both in my environment. Most of what I'll be building won't be complex shapes. I've looked into building this with metal, however I live in an apartment complex, and my landlord would lose their minds if I brought a tig welder into my apartment. They've let me get away with a lot of things, but i think that would push it over the limit, haha. Someone suggested this printer, da Vinci 1.0

Cheers,
BinaryData

Not a davinci !
cheap, and not terribly reliable.

70c could be an issue.
Are you talking about the printer or the printed parts ?

And if you're talking about the temperature inside the case - then you seriously need to redesign and get some airflow in there !

Printerwise i'll recommend a tevo little monster.
Large delta that would satisfy all your requirements - and then some !

Deltas are easier to build, simple in operation. Print faster, quieter and with at least the same detail level as cartesian machines. They also have a smaller footprint to build volume ratio. All things apartment friendly :-)

Around $799 with free delivery.
it comes as a kit, but very easy to build.
it's a cylindrical build volume - 340mm diameter x 500 tall.
Loads of printing videos and build vidoes on youtube.

https://www.3dprintersonlinestore.co...arge-delta-kit

:-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

Not a davinci !
cheap, and not terribly reliable.

70c could be an issue.
Are you talking about the printer or the printed parts ?

And if you're talking about the temperature inside the case - then you seriously need to redesign and get some airflow in there !

Printerwise i'll recommend a tevo little monster.
Large delta that would satisfy all your requirements - and then some !

Deltas are easier to build, simple in operation. Print faster, quieter and with at least the same detail level as cartesian machines. They also have a smaller footprint to build volume ratio. All things apartment friendly :-)

Around $799 with free delivery.
it comes as a kit, but very easy to build.
it's a cylindrical build volume - 340mm diameter x 500 tall.
Loads of printing videos and build vidoes on youtube.

https://www.3dprintersonlinestore.co...arge-delta-kit

:-)

---

70c for the printed parts. That's the hottest HDDs i've seen. I recently did a test with them sitting outside of a case, with no air movement on them. This would be the worst case scenario if all 3 fans failed. I can probably write some failsafes to power down systems if that happened.

Nope! My cases are generally maxed out on fans, and I'm working on a water cooling build for my new one. Hoping to use my 3D Printer to build some crazy LED images for it too.

I'll check it out.


On another note; are there more colors available for printed material? Clear/see through by chance?

Thanks for the reply!

BinaryData your cool in my book. Here is an example of what I have done when mashing up gaming rigs with the 3d printing..

http://i1050.photobucket.com/albums/...oWiz/24_20.jpg

I drew up and printed out these cool 120mm fan funnels to channel the hot air from the cpu heatsink directly outside the case..

http://i1050.photobucket.com/albums/...oWiz/22_19.jpg

I love building and rebuilding and creating and making things better. And as such I have found freedom in open source hardware. When you do get your printer up and going, please start a thread here on what you make with it. This sounds like a really cool project that I would love to follow. Just because you seem to really like working with your hands and have stated that you built gaming rigs, I would just like to offer to let you browse through a couple of threads I have of the building and reworking of 3d printers. Because if you are good with your hands then you can save a lot of money and end up with a better printing machine than everybody else who spends so much more. Because in life skill trumps money.

The building of an ebay i3 (this cost ~$200):
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...d.php?t=269457
I started building my own 3 color printer from scratch here:
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...d.php?t=270130
And there were a lot of mods that went down on that machine here:
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...Mixing-Printer
And the rest of it's modifications and also more mods of the i3 can be seen here:
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...twork-Printers
Then just because I have had so much fun reworking these machines so much and they just keep getting better so I went and bought the biggest printer I could find at the time, the Tevo Black Widow, and I joined a community of black widow owners and found a plethora of modifications for that machine that went down on the initial build:
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...-250mm-X-300mm

If you like working on computers and building things, you might be short changing yourself spending more money on a machine that you wont get do have all this fun with. oh and the green I used for the pc case glows in the dark.

yep lots of colours and even textures of filaments available.

Clear/transparent is a sort of moot point.
The filament is lovely and clear and then you print, what is basically, a really messed up prism type structure and do a of of light deflection and it becomes sort of clear-ish :-)

There is stuff you can paint on that is suposed to make it clear. But if anyone round here has done that - I've missed it.

And if you're running harddrives at 70c - switch the damn thing off !
Or use ssd's

Never understood this obsession amateurs have with over clocking stuff.
You buy a cpu and then spend a couple hundred bucks on silly cases and cooling systems.
When that money would have been much better spent on a faster processor that didn't need overclocking in the first place.

I know, as a professional system builder for the past 25 years, I often look at what enthusiasts do and shudder. pc magazines and youyube have a lot to answer for lol

But anytime you've got a hardrive running at 70c, you've got serious issues, the 5mm gap between drives sounds like one of them :-)

The best thing you can do to a computer. Is take the see-thru case side with all the snazzy leds on - that is keeping the heat in the computer and remove completely.

Then just have a couple decent fans blowing across everything and blowing the heat out.

It might not be as pretty, but it won't overheat and explode either :-)

I'm a backwards enthusiast, lol. Aardvark, I spent time underclocking a pc..

http://i1050.photobucket.com/albums/...20carputer.jpg

A fully built mini itx based quad core gaming pc with descrete graphics card with twin frozr 2 cooler, quad core cpu, 8gb of ram, ssd, and hd touchscreen. But it was limited to the strongest dc-dc pc power supply I could find (250watts). So it became a thing to make sure it wasn't drawing too much current at full load(playing borderlands on the highway)

That build thread is here: http://www.mp3car.com/forum/general/...al-time-tuning

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

yep lots of colours and even textures of filaments available.

Clear/transparent is a sort of moot point.
The filament is lovely and clear and then you print, what is basically, a really messed up prism type structure and do a of of light deflection and it becomes sort of clear-ish :-)

There is stuff you can paint on that is suposed to make it clear. But if anyone round here has done that - I've missed it.

And if you're running harddrives at 70c - switch the damn thing off !
Or use ssd's

Never understood this obsession amateurs have with over clocking stuff.
You buy a cpu and then spend a couple hundred bucks on silly cases and cooling systems.
When that money would have been much better spent on a faster processor that didn't need overclocking in the first place.

I know, as a professional system builder for the past 25 years, I often look at what enthusiasts do and shudder. pc magazines and youyube have a lot to answer for lol

But anytime you've got a hardrive running at 70c, you've got serious issues, the 5mm gap between drives sounds like one of them :-)

The best thing you can do to a computer. Is take the see-thru case side with all the snazzy leds on - that is keeping the heat in the computer and remove completely.

Then just have a couple decent fans blowing across everything and blowing the heat out.

It might not be as pretty, but it won't overheat and explode either :-)

---

Well, I did that to test how how the SAS Drives would get. I had 4 stacked on top of each other, with no gaps, and all 4 sat at 70C. Which told me that I'd need some serious cooling. My arrays rockin' 10x 6TB Drives sit around 24C, with a max of 28C. These are the Hellium based HGST Drives. 3x 120mm Fans right next to them, pumping in AC air, I'm rocking the NZXT H440 Cases. Which is what I plan on using for this project.

Edit:
I forgot to mention this is going to be a JBOD Box. It'll have 48 Hard Drives, ranging from 2TB to 10TB, which is what the backplane supports. I need to build custom HDD Mounts, that won't become brittle and break after a year or two. And if that does happen, make it EASY to replace them. The case has fan slots for 3x 120mm in the front, and I believe 3x for 120mm - 140mm on the top. Side panel has none. I'll have to build a new side panel as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AutoWiz

I'm a backwards enthusiast, lol. Aardvark, I spent time underclocking a pc..

http://i1050.photobucket.com/albums/...20carputer.jpg

A fully built mini itx based quad core gaming pc with descrete graphics card with twin frozr 2 cooler, quad core cpu, 8gb of ram, ssd, and hd touchscreen. But it was limited to the strongest dc-dc pc power supply I could find (250watts). So it became a thing to make sure it wasn't drawing too much current at full load(playing borderlands on the highway)

That build thread is here: http://www.mp3car.com/forum/general/...al-time-tuning

---

I'm not sure where overclocking came into the picture, lol. I don't overclock my gear, and I plan on watercooling my i7-7700K because the materials used for the thermal transfer on the CPU is low-grade.

My biggest concern is grounding the case, the last thing I need is 2800W of power going *poof* in my apartment. My landlord is already wary of me and my extracurricular activities. Being a security enthusiast and a gun one, she's pretty suspicious.

I was replying to aardvark's comment:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by curious aardvark

Never understood this obsession amateurs have with over clocking stuff.
You buy a cpu and then spend a couple hundred bucks on silly cases and cooling systems.
When that money would have been much better spent on a faster processor that didn't need overclocking in the first place.

---

These days this is all handled with uefi bios. instead of trying voltages and frequencies and having to clear cmos a million times now we have a gui in bios and use the mouse to select the fast icon and the machine finds it's own stable upper limits

more to the point - you have a computer to play games on - IN YOUR CAR ?!?
lmao - Umm, why ?

yeah bios overclocking is also a bit pointless. You might get a few percent inprovement. Which is largely unnoticeable.
Like I said been a profession it person for around 25 years, just never seen any point in overclocking.

As for cramming lots and lots of drives into a standard desktop case.
So you're basically building mini servers ?
Why not just use a larger case ?
Still got a brand new unboxed full tower in my workshop that's used as a shelf. I reckon it predates atx power supplies. But you can still get them.

Used to use the occasional full tower back in the day. Can't remember why, but I do remember using them :-)

Oh yeah - so you want to be using pet-g to make your components.
has higher glass point than pla or abs, less prone to enviromental break down, easy to print with and reasonably cheap.
Also comes in different colours :-)
It also has some of the best layer bonding - so no matter what your print orientation you get structurally strong and tough prints. Plus you don't need an enclosed print volume to print it :-)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by curious aardvark

more to the point - you have a computer to play games on - IN YOUR CAR ?!?
lmao - Umm, why ?

---

Because the reasons for it outweighed the reasons against it. But aside from the games and hd movies and 5.1 channel surround and internet, The big thing about this capability is the use of virtual assistant or ai apps and the ability to talk to my car. I gave my car a voice. and wihile tethered to my phone all I have to do is ask my car where the nearest gas station is or whatever.

Of course, I can also load up games by voice command. Thank you virtual assistants. In my android based corvette, I run assistant.ai. for windows I just use Cortana.

You're building a knight industries 2000 !
:-)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by curious aardvark

more to the point - you have a computer to play games on - IN YOUR CAR ?!?
lmao - Umm, why ?

yeah bios overclocking is also a bit pointless. You might get a few percent inprovement. Which is largely unnoticeable.
Like I said been a profession it person for around 25 years, just never seen any point in overclocking.

As for cramming lots and lots of drives into a standard desktop case.
So you're basically building mini servers ?
Why not just use a larger case ?
Still got a brand new unboxed full tower in my workshop that's used as a shelf. I reckon it predates atx power supplies. But you can still get them.

Used to use the occasional full tower back in the day. Can't remember why, but I do remember using them :-)

Oh yeah - so you want to be using pet-g to make your components.
has higher glass point than pla or abs, less prone to enviromental break down, easy to print with and reasonably cheap.
Also comes in different colours :-)
It also has some of the best layer bonding - so no matter what your print orientation you get structurally strong and tough prints. Plus you don't need an enclosed print volume to print it :-)

---

Sorry it took me awhile to find this place again. I've been super slammed at work.

Actually, the point of the Pi 3 in the truck was because the Pi 3 costs $50 vs the $300 for a decent stereo system. The truck is a 1979 Ford F-150, rockin' a V8 400 stock with 35" tires on it. It was to defer theft, and I could custom build the bracket to fit in there, make it a WHOLE lot harder to remove it, if you don't know what you're doing. I drive this truck mostly for mudding, and summer weather.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AutoWiz

Because the reasons for it outweighed the reasons against it. But aside from the games and hd movies and 5.1 channel surround and internet, The big thing about this capability is the use of virtual assistant or ai apps and the ability to talk to my car. I gave my car a voice. and wihile tethered to my phone all I have to do is ask my car where the nearest gas station is or whatever.

Of course, I can also load up games by voice command. Thank you virtual assistants. In my android based corvette, I run assistant.ai. for windows I just use Cortana.

---

Mmm... It's more for the sake of not losing anymore stereos. The truck is so old, that you can use a blank key to unlock the doors. I've had the locks upgraded to a newer style, but it's still tough to keep people from stealing a stereo. I plan on fixing it up, and want to have something classy and different with it. Thus the pi3. Also, being able to connect it to the internet or WiFi while parked somewhere would be pretty sweet. I'm a decent programmer, I was going to do some nifty stuff with it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by curious aardvark

You're building a knight industries 2000 !
:-)

---

But mine will be green! Forest Green!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by curious aardvark

Not a davinci !
cheap, and not terribly reliable.

70c could be an issue.
Are you talking about the printer or the printed parts ?

And if you're talking about the temperature inside the case - then you seriously need to redesign and get some airflow in there !

Printerwise i'll recommend a tevo little monster.
Large delta that would satisfy all your requirements - and then some !

Deltas are easier to build, simple in operation. Print faster, quieter and with at least the same detail level as cartesian machines. They also have a smaller footprint to build volume ratio. All things apartment friendly :-)

Around $799 with free delivery.
it comes as a kit, but very easy to build.
it's a cylindrical build volume - 340mm diameter x 500 tall.
Loads of printing videos and build vidoes on youtube.

https://www.3dprintersonlinestore.co...arge-delta-kit

:-)

---

Wow thank you for recommending this printer. I love it and i can see i will love this printer. Now to just get past Christmas :)
RobertR728

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BinaryData

But mine will be green! Forest Green!

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How is all this working out for you? How about an update on this project? I have since built a new gaming rig for myself with the 3d printing. I built this last year in 2018 but I see most of this thread is from 2017 and before this awesome time right here: https://www.superchargerforums.com/t...-machine.7445/