Heaven help me - I've just bought a delta kit :-)

[curious aardvark]

printedvikinghelmet_507x480.jpg

That's the easy bit done :-)
had the annual visit with my accountant yesterday. she has way more good ideas than I do.
So she reckons find someone who already does craft shows and fairs and let them sell widgert and things for you.
So that's one thing I'm going to try.

You're missing the point of printbite. You don't have to bugger about bending the plate. once it's cooled down - the print is no longer stuck, at all. Tpu sticks to pretty much anything and just peels off - so that's probably the worst test you could possibly do.
If they can show me printed polycarbonate sticking to something and then easily releasing - that I'd be impressed with.

So plans for the helmet.
File the joins as flat as possible, glue. Then run round the seams with the printing pen and sand flat. Should give a reasonably seamless finish. Currently about to print a couple mini helmets to play with.

[curious aardvark]

here's the 2 small ones:

minihelmets1_640x452.jpg

minihelmet2_528x480.jpg

Given that they were knocked out at 150mm/s and 0.3. Not bad. The inside at the top is pretty good.

The quarters at the apex were actually building out on the horizontal. Bloody impressive.

Need to get some silver/metallic paint now :-)

[curious aardvark]

where'd you get the bearings ?

And have you got pictures :-)

So I'm thinking what is the actual physical speed limit of the printer ?

If she can do 150mm/s at 0.3mm - she should be able to do 200mm/s at 0.2mm layer height. Same volume of plastic right.
Or will that make her explode !

How fast can the stepper motors turn ?

I think it's something to do with inverting the y axis.
It used to be fine, just printed what showed in the preview. then when I installed version3 it started showing text reversed in the preview but printing it fine.
But with the delta it doesn't seem to matter what shows in the preview it always prints it reversed. Which is bloody weird.

Sod it going to give it a go :-) Also test if text is right way round yet.
right here goes super speed !

***

well that works, still got text issues. doing it again with no inverted y. test looks mirrored on preview, so might print right way round.

The fine detail isn't brilliant - but i reckon it would be good enough for that marble run - if I can ever slice it lol

[curious aardvark]

how'd you get 3 colours ?

Looks neat.

I'll try the visualisation thing :-)

200mm/s is pushing it a bit - kinda loses the edges a bit.
I'll stick to 150 I think. :-)

***

yep that works - looks like crap, but doesn't crash.

layer height 0.25 and 20% infill gets it down to exactly 8 hours. 270gms
Hmm, dunno if I've actually aroll with that left. I will see.

weird.
Cheers - good call :-)

***

found a full roll of blue ingeo pla. The good stuff !
This could end up being the biggest plate of spaghetti I've made to date, lol

Holy crap it's 1.68 MILLION lines of g-code !
45mb text file. average novel is around 0.3mb

Wow.

[curious aardvark]

Hmm, I think alexa is having problems counting up to 1.68 million.
Just locked up.

we'll have another go.
Ah that's better, think it was s3d disconnecting that locked her up.
here we go :-)

I was playing with printed bearings a short while back. Got it down to about 1.5 cm. Didn't work.

I reckon you could go down to about an inch and get it to work.
Nozzle thickness not as much of an issue as getting the gap between gears right.

Worth a play when I've done the marble run :-)

Easily the single largest print I've ever done, as well as the most complex.
1.68 MILLION instructions - I'm not getting over that in a hurry lol

[curious aardvark]

nope, what actually happened was that she stopped about an inch or so into the job.
No jams, not a power cut, just stopped. All settings were fine when i went in yesterday morning, still heated, just waiting for the next instruction.

I have been using the dirt cheap sd card that came with the printer. So presuming somewhere in the 1.68million lines of gcode, it got corrupted.
Got a few brand new 4gb sd-cards lying around, I'll try again tonight with a new card.

And the marble run will definitely print at 0.3 layer height. The bit that was done was at 0.25. No issues at all bar some stringing. So a furtle with the retraction settings, drop speed down to 120 and up layer thickness to 0.3.
It'll probably need some blowtorching - to kill the cobwebs :-)

Might have a go at painting a helmet to day.
Though if my cases arrive, I have got a couple of base units to build for actual paying customers.

Time lapse wise - remembered I got a better webcam with the ciclops 'scanner' (yeah right) so I'll dig that out of the box and find somewhere permament to attach it. Also need to source the professional version of the software.

[curious aardvark]

yeah I was thinking that. Plus proved that you don't need to print it on silly resolution settings.

unfinished marblerun_557x480.jpg

Just unticked: 'only retract on travel'. Should get rid of a lot of the thicker stringing.

Under tools, options, machines. the y axis box is ticked for flip table axis.
There are four combinations of this as you can have it on and off both from the tool/options/machine AND from the gcode page in the printer profile.

I have tried all four combinations - and none of them worked.
When i first got simplify 3d what i saw on the preview screen was what printed. Then when I upgraded to version 3, the text on the screen showed mirror reversed but the text printed normally. So that wasn't an issue.

But with the delta, it doesn't matter whether the preview shows normal or reversed text it just prints reversed.
I've got a vague feeling that playing with the 'x' axis inversion is what sorted the printed text.

No cases yet so I'll have another play with the settings.

[curious aardvark]

Surely you need 6 tubes.
how much more expensive are carbon rods over aluminium. I've got no issues with the aluminium rods.
And how about magnetic sockets and bearings ?

[curious aardvark]

not yet. Keep forgetting to bring a new sd card into the workshop.

The mirrored weirdness continues. Printed a couple of those plastic strut nuts. Thought this is odd they are the wrong way round.
Had look at thingiverse page, had look at s3d preview. s3d has reversed the y axis.
I mirror the mesh they look right.
They printed brilliantly and i've got a bag of m3 nuts.:-)
Tell you what that filament that came with the printer is really really good stuff.
Might buy a bulk batch from reprapmall.
Think if you buy 8 rolls it's free postage. Plus they've got the good metallic stuff as well. The aluminium one is just like metal.
Nah no free postage :-(

So I can have mirrored prints with text, or non-mirrored prints but with mirrored text.
is that in any way logical ?

[curious aardvark]

It's something to do with version 3. before that I had no problems. And it's not just on the delta either.
The flashforge shows reversed text but prints fine.

Yeah the nuts need to be about 1mm thinner to actually turn in the channel.
Other than that, they look great and are certainly strong enough to hold most things. Printed at 0.2. 3 minutes per - saves 20p per knut :-)
Damn fine idea.

I loaded up the basket at reprapmall with about $100 worth of filament, but wanted another $74 for postage. Which begs the question how the hell do they offer free postage on the printers ?