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

[curious aardvark]

when MAKING filament on an industrial scale, you run the filament making machine all the time, you don't stop when adding colourant.
But when he adds the yellow colourant, it invariably jams up the machine.
Basically whether you are making filament or printing with it, yellow is a bastard :-)

Oh yeah and those he3d glass build plates, if you happen to knock one onto a concrete floor - wow they sort of explode.
A bit like windscreen glass in a car, it just shatters into hundreds of tiny squarish pieces.

Spent the last 2 days clearing out my workshop, and that was one of the casualties.
So this was my workshop with 15 years of accumulated dead laptops, base units and other computer related crap and just plain crap. It's not a large room, basically a converted one car garage.

workshopstart_640x480.jpg

What came out and got taken away by a fantastic company from yorkshire: http://tmreuse.co.uk/
They collect your electronic waste - FREE OF CHARGE ! This is important as everyone else who's ever phoned me, wanted lots of money to do the same thing.

stuffthatwent_640x480.jpg

Some of the actual rubbish that went to the local tip:

workshopclear-rubbish_640x440.jpg

Took me all of tuesday and a couple hours wednesday morning to clear the workshop. Think a complex 3 dimensional jigsaw puzzle that's taken 15 years to build.
Even found 3 vhs video recorders !
3 old dvd players and more redundant cables than you can shake a boa constrictor at :-)

Then all of wednesday to put the workshop back together - complete with my new shelves :-)
Given that the 15 or so base units had been acting as 'shelves/tables' - I had an awful lot of stuff with nowhere left to go, so couldn't do anything till I'd bought some shelves and put them up.
So I now have space for the BB to live once it's built :-)

More importantly, when i again start to accrue other peoples discarded computers, I've got a wonderful woman called Lorna to call who'll arrange for it to be taken away and recycled :-)
Interestingly they even send me a certificate to say that they have crushed the old harddrives (about 60) - presumably part of the data security act.
They also offer to crush them on site if you're particularly paranoid.

So while no actual work got done, last 2 days been pretty productive.

[mjf55]

You forgot the most important picture, your workshop AFTER the cleanup ;-)

Is BB moving along? Get those wheels?

Another question, What is your setup with Alexa? You print via S3D control panel, with the USB connected? Do you know if that is slower than printing from the SDcard ( not counting the time to transfer the file to the SD card )/

Im still poking at the Raspberry Pi USB speed thing. It add a lot of time being connected via USB , or so it seems. I'll have to do a real speed test.

Also moving back to Crua 3.0 , or trying to. got bit last night on a 5 hours print with the S3d weird slicing issue I posted about in the other thread. I think I'll open a S3D forum thread on it. See what they say.

[curious aardvark]

Depends. anything under about 20 minutes usually use usb cable. Otherwise sd card.
loading to the sd card might take 3 seconds :-)

These days i usually leave the usb cable unconnected unless specifically printing something. reason being, even if it's printing from the sd card - if i start or shutdown the computer the printer reboots and stops printing. Bloody annoying, so 90% is from sd card with printer unconnected by usb.

No wheels. Hoping they'll arrive before the new motherboard and the mosfets.

On another note entirely. Got a roll of Vanish - soluble filament this week.
So rather than expose the whole reel to the atmosphere, plus with all the stuff i got at tct. Needed some new spools for shorther lengths of filament.

0.4 layer height, 100mm/s :-)
I'll upload the design to thingiverse in a bit - just want to check that 0.8mm is strong enough for the bottom rim, might have to up it to 1.2. You can't tell till you start to wrap the filament round it.

bigsample spool_580x480.jpg

new sample spool_462x480.jpg

100mm central cylinder so you don't have to bend the filament too much when wrapping.
Take an hour and a half to print and 30 gms of plastic.
Should easy take 50 metres of filament. locking holes at top, and holes at bottom for loose end.
Tempted to add holes in the top to cut down on plastic usage. N idea how well that would work, guess I'll have to suck it and see :-)

Using clear pla got from amazon £12 a kg delivered.
Bloody good stuff !

[cowy]

good luck with your new printer!

[curious aardvark]

wheels have landed !
also couple packets of smaller bolts.
Wheels smaller than I was expecting, no biggee - they'll probably look neater anyway.

Thinking about screw in clamp for the belts, carriages will be 2 part anyway, so a simple bolt together clamp would make adjusting and thightening the belts a lot simpler, probably.

Not going to get much chance to start the latest round of part designs till next week anyway, working all weekend.
But pretty sure I now have everything to finish the frame, belt and carriage setup.

Updated spool with holes in top part and thicker base with reinforcing around the connection points to the central cylinder.
Down to 26 grams :-)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2597201

[curious aardvark]

Added 115mm spool for people with little printers :-)
16 grams !
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2597201

[curious aardvark]

So I'm on a speed kick. Loving this Surreal transparent pla.
Currently still printing spools - I've got a LOT of samples from the last 2 tct shows - got it down to 1 hour 20 by running at 150mm/s and 0.3 layer height.

So what with s3d adjustments, it's not actually printing that much faster. sooo, can I knock one of these out at 150 and 0.4mm ?
That would make it around an hour.
OR maybe 0.3 at 200mm/s !
Hmm, hell why not lol
(runs slicer)
150 at 0.4 is a minute faster than 0.3 at 200.
So we'll try that first :-)

These things don't have to look nice or be smooth. Just work :-)
Made the filament holes 4mm, so even with fast sloppy printing they're still large enough for a good fit.

[mjf55]

So the question is, if you set the print speed to 200mms, what is the actual speed you are printing at, i.e. what does S3D show in their speed color chart. I found that at 150mms, very little was that fast, most was 100mms.

[curious aardvark]

well at 150 and 0.4mm the spools print fine (not pretty, but 100% functional) and in an hour and 6 minutes.
Generally the actual print speed probably averages about half the maximum. For this particulay item, only the 2nd and third base layers are printed at maximum speed. The rest is all outline and given that it's all underhang and overhang - figure half speed is damn good. The little turbo nozzle for the fan setup is obviously doing a good job. Cooling those outward sloping layers at that resolution and print speed is not simple. Plus upped the print-temp to 215.

But getting a thing 50mm high and 150mm diameter in an hour - is no mean feat :-)

First mosfet arrived today. I have no clue if this is the £3 or the £6 one.
Have to wait for the second one and see if there are any discernible differences.

The cheaper one I'll fit to Alexa.

[mjf55]

Adding a mosfet to Alexa , I'll be interested in that. Post some pictures as you do that. What mosfet did you get?