Delivery No.1 - Build blog of the first V1.0 Peachy Printer in the Wild

[CescoAiel]

I will post a picture when I get a chance :-)

Yes please!

[Builder1]

Ok. I've uploaded the latest pics.
With the laser set to 100%, the print was solid but still slightly rubbery. That actually made it a bit easier to get it off the mesh without totally destroying the bottom of the print. Just a little mangled instead :-)
http://postimg.org/gallery/2g96zxbtg/

[CescoAiel]

Ok. I've uploaded the latest pics.
With the laser set to 100%, the print was solid but still slightly rubbery. That actually made it a bit easier to get it off the mesh without totally destroying the bottom of the print. Just a little mangled instead :-)
http://postimg.org/gallery/2g96zxbtg/

Are those artifacts at the top?

Looking good though! Too bad it never actually made it to market!

[Builder1]

Not sure what you mean by "artifacts".
Which picture you referring to? Can you be more specific as to where the artifact is?
I will take better close-up pictures and post them when I can.


Printing G-Code Files
I've been encountering some oddities when I would try to print my own model from g-code.
After a long chat with Rylan last night, I have resolutions to at least 2 of them !!

Oddity #1
Every print from ANY g-code file, the print would not start until the "Current Height" equaled 5. I scoured the settings in Slic3r but could not find a reference to a height of 5. That is until yesterday when I started digging through the g-code itself.
In Slic3r, I found the g-code "beginning" had “G1 Z5 F5000” in it. This translates to Draw straight lines (G1) at the Z-Axis location 5 (Z5) with a Federate of 5000mm/min. So I tried changing Z5 to Z0. This produced NO DRIPS in the Peachy software. It would NOT print. Ok then, I changed Z0 to Z1 and it worked fine and the print started at “Current Height” of “1.0”.
Cool !! That will shave time off my prints :-) Still having a small time buffer allows for final base height adjustments.
In Cura, Rylan recommends deleting the "Begging/End" gcode entirely.

Laser Power
The setting for the laser power would not stay at 1.0 when I set it for my prints. I only had it hold it’s 100% setting with the “library” print.
When I was going into the Advanced Settings, I was setting the value to “1.0”. Last night I tried “0.99” and it is holding the value even after closing and reopening the program !!! That's close enough for me!! Solved !!

Layer Counting & Compressed Layers
Something is still quirky here. I ran the print and the "layer counting" jumped from layer 1 to layer 10. During those layers (maybe a bit longer too), there was no time where the laser stopped drawing between layers. I even had the drip speed set to 3. After around the 15th or 17th layer (not entirely sure), there were laser drawing pauses even though the layers were the same shape/area coverage. Why the change in behaviour??

Rylan and I talked about how we can get some bugs fixed in the software. We will continue that conversation (and I will continue testing!) and see what can be worked out. It will depend on many things including programmer availability but I'm hoping a new release can be brought out sometime in the future. It's all "good intentions" right now but we will see what can be done :-)

More to come...

[CescoAiel]

Last picture, near the top of the indented ellipsoid, there seems to be some irregularities in the print?

[Builder1]

I added 2 close ups.
http://postimg.org/gallery/2va5pcaj8/

There are a few "imperfections" in the print and they were all caused by me. The most obvious two are near the top and near the bottom.
During the print, I move the dripper bottle up or down (usually up) to change the drip speed. I have the bottle on a stack of DVD cases and add cases to the stack as the bottle empties. The less water in the bottle and the higher the level in the Build container, the less effective your syphon will be.

I *really* didn't need to move the drip bottle for this print but I couldn't help myself from tinkering ;-)

Moving the dripper bottle makes sense for print jobs that have large surface areas (slow drip required) that change to very small surface areas. With small surface areas, the laser sits around doing nothing waiting for the resin to reach the new layer. The waiting can be a lot more time than the drawing. This is when you want the drip speed to be faster and thus... raise the bottle to a higher position.

I grab the bottle by it's top (don't squeeze it in the centre!), lift gently, slide DVD case under it and slowly place down. This will cause a brief peak in drip speed. Raising it speeds the drip up and placing it down causes it to sink into the DVD case and thus drop down a bit. If you pick it up too high then put it down, you can create a rapid spike in drip speed and if it is near the end of the wait cycle, the resin will break over the already cured print and cause a distortion in the print.

:-)

[CescoAiel]

I added 2 close ups.
http://postimg.org/gallery/2va5pcaj8/

There are a few "imperfections" in the print and they were all caused by me. The most obvious two are near the top and near the bottom.
During the print, I move the dripper bottle up or down (usually up) to change the drip speed. I have the bottle on a stack of DVD cases and add cases to the stack as the bottle empties. The less water in the bottle and the higher the level in the Build container, the less effective your syphon will be.

I *really* didn't need to move the drip bottle for this print but I couldn't help myself from tinkering ;-)

Moving the dripper bottle makes sense for print jobs that have large surface areas (slow drip required) that change to very small surface areas. With small surface areas, the laser sits around doing nothing waiting for the resin to reach the new layer. The waiting can be a lot more time than the drawing. This is when you want the drip speed to be faster and thus... raise the bottle to a higher position.

I grab the bottle by it's top (don't squeeze it in the centre!), lift gently, slide DVD case under it and slowly place down. This will cause a brief peak in drip speed. Raising it speeds the drip up and placing it down causes it to sink into the DVD case and thus drop down a bit. If you pick it up too high then put it down, you can create a rapid spike in drip speed and if it is near the end of the wait cycle, the resin will break over the already cured print and cause a distortion in the print.

:-)

That actually explains a lot!
That is why we (as in several people in the community) were looking at things like moving platforms and peristaltic pumps: better control on Z-speed!

Dang, seeing this stuff makes me want to have one too!!!

[rylangrayston]

Hey Builder1
It was great chatting with you on the phone the other day! Just getting caught up on this thread here.
Thankyou so much for posting in detail. There arnt alot of built and working peachy printers out there in the world right now. Your really carrying the torch here! So cool to see that print with the FTD Resin .... We have tested with that resin to and we loved It! We got it to print sooo smooth ... here ill see if I can dig up a pic..
yep here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-a...ew?usp=sharing

Thanks for posting your pics in supper High res! ... your FTD snow white test print looks good but my hunch is that if you turn laser power down just a little bit it will get even smother. It looks like its suffering from break over.

Another resin that I really loved was the Maker Juice resin for the little RP
Pic:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-a...ew?usp=sharing
https://makerjuice.myshopify.com/col...erp-compatible

This print was so smooth I couldn’t even find layers under a microscope!
It takes some experience to get your printer to do this, and from what I can tell your really close!
Since your printing now I think you will find this to be a very interesting read.
http://peachyprinter.ipbhost.com/ind...yers-are-made/
There are lots more articles and info in that form here is the root url http://peachyprinter.ipbhost.com/index.php?/

Looking forward to more posts! Lets chat on the phone again soon. On the plus side with this few people using the peachy printer one on one Tech support with the founder is possible, so call any time Builder1.

[Builder1]

It’s BIG PRINT time !!
I spent some time prepping and testing the traditional "test print" Rook file from Thingiverse for printing. I prepared it in Cura according to the recommended Peachy Cura settings with a 2% Fill.

Results !!
Mixed.
Due to difficulties maintaining drip speed, the print looks quite mangled. …but is it?
Ok, yes. It's totally fubared but what's important to know is that it was only few minor settings that made it this way.

This print took over 4 hours and 20 minutes to print. Since it was "averaging" about 1.2 drips per second this isn’t surprising.

Due to slightly weak curing (more below) and drip speed spikes that caused skipped layers (7.8% of all layers were skipped), the print kind of looks like a spring. Also due to this weakness, the rook leaned over while draining the water which caused even more splits.

A bit about Slic3r and Cura
I’ve discovered that Slic3r is only 32bit. This means that prints with very large areas or 10X the Z resolution (..of a typical FDM printer), the data buffers overflow and crash Slic3r. Cura handles this fine, so I’m back to using Cura. The Slic3r team is aware of this issue and is investigating a fix.
Some important Cura settings that are not detailed in the Peachy Cura Setup video are the “Start/End Gcode” settings.
Super simple. Go into the “Start/End Gcode” tab and delete ALL Gcode in the Start and End text areas. NONE of that gcode is applicable to the Peachy and has actually caused me problems. Just get rid of it !

Some Peachy Setting Changes
I changed the laser speed and power to be 100mm/s and 95% power (previous successful print was 80mm/s & 99%) since it was set a bit too high for that print. The Rook was wobbly once the water was drained and since it was printed on a 15 degree slant, it warped slightly from its weight. Using a higher laser speed was essential as I needed each layer to print as fast as possible but I will be raising the power back to 99%.

Propping up the Reservoir Bottle
This was really tricky. Since the drip speed had to be at about ONE drip/s, I had to use very thin books/magazines to prop up the bottle. I started with 2 DVD cases. That set the speed at about 2.5 drips/s which was fine for the start (small surface area). Once the speed dropped down (because the water levels in each container are now different) I added another DVD case. This increased the speed to over 3 and I started getting skipped layers. I removed that case and scoured the house for thinner alternatives. On top of the 2 DVDs, I added 8 CDs, 6 MAKE mags and 4 very thin books equaling 18 increments during the print. Each layer added caused Skipped Layers. If the drip speed required would have been in the 4 to 6 range then it would have been easy to just let the speed drop low then add a new layer that did not put it over the top.
Unfortunately, complex prints take too much time to print each layer and the required drip speed can’t be easily maintained.

Solutions
I see a few ways to SOLVE this issue:

1) Make the print simpler.
In other words, print it smaller and don't use fill. This isn't really a solution but rather just a compensation. I want a way to be able to do BIG complex prints!

2)Abandon the dripper completely.
The Peachy team made a Z-Axis system utilizing a stepper motor for the Peachy and the design files are on the github repo. The Peachy software is also setup and ready for this system.

3)Use a larger build container.
A 2L pop bottle simply can’t be beat for low cost and ease of availability. LOW COST was the primary goal of the Peachy printer and the dripper system allowed that to happen. All things considered, the drip system really is quite slick and does a fabulous job given what it is. Unfortunately pop bottles don’t have a very large surface area. Increasing the surface area would allow for much more resolution with the drip speed and thus significantly reduce or eliminate print problems due to drip speed spikes and “skipped layers”.
I already have a design drafted. 150mm X 150mm X 200mm (5.9”x5.9”x7.9”) with a lid (with glass top) and external drip input and drain output (simplifies cleaning and reduces smell). There are a couple parts for this that I wanted to print. Thankfully they are small and should print beautifully! I consider this a more reasonable build area for 3D printing. It’s on the small side but still small enough to have on your desk and print items of a useful size.

4) Stepper-based Z-Axis **AND** Larger build container !! Why not have it all ;-)

You can see the print here: Rook1 Image Gallery
https://postimg.org/gallery/2bd73bb4k/

What’s Next ?!?
There are a few things I have in the cue:

Create new build container
-Finish 3D modelling some small parts
-Print them
-Laser cut clear acrylic and glass parts
-Design and cut Peachy mounting legs for lid
-Put it all together
-Calibrate new container with Peachy software

Cura
-Explore Rafting in Cura

[Builder1]

I also did another rook print and I'll post about it soon.

Images for Rook2 are online :-)
https://postimg.org/gallery/lux3rgno/

More to come...