Newbie can't get a clean print on one-pice designs

[Kirkmage]

I got a DaVinci AiO from XYZ Printing for Christmas and have started printing from STL files I find at ThingVerse and other 3D printing communities on-line. My stationery objects come out fine, but all of the "one-piece" prints of objects with hinges or moveable parts are bonded at the critical movement points. The DaVinci doesn't come with much of a User Manual, so I'm struggling to know what settings to change or adjustments to free up the prints per the designs.

[Marm]

The davinci is not a high resolution machine. You have to judge how big the gaps are in the moving pieces, and adjust to make it work, if it even can.

Instead of starting off by printing off complicated designs that will only waste your (insanely expensive) filament, start off by designing your own, small, test pieces. Try printing those and working your way up to more complicated designs. Overhangs, arches, etc all come out differently depending on the path of the extruder and the settings.

[Kirkmage]

Marm,

Thanks for the reply. We have already printed several static pieces with good success. I realize these "single piece prints" are harder to do, but my question is more about what settings affect things like gap and precision of material placement?

[old man emu]

It may pay you to read this: http://www.computerworld.com/article...sappoints.html

Old Man Emu

[Wacojoe]

Hi, I'm a complete noob also. I bought a used Printrbot Simple a week ago from Craigslist. The machine seems to work well. What is have learned within this 1st week is that some of these complex CAD drawing downloaded from Thingiverse have very tight tolerances. I will give one example of a part I printed. It is the gear bearing by Emmett. My 1st print was welded together and the bearing would not rotate. I tried everything to free it up and destroyed it in the process.

Some of these file you can customize. Not all of them, but some can be customized in the "open with customizer" tab directly above the blue tab "download this thing". Here you can adjust various settings Iike tolerance, number of gears, size...etc... Once you have made the changes the customizer makes the nessisary changes to the STL file.

In in my case I changed the tolerance from .15mm to .5mm. Printed the bearing, and BAM! Bearing worked perfectly right off the print bed.


Hope this helps you with your project.

Joe

[Marm]

See, the thing is, the davinci (at least my version) is the equivalent of having training wheels on your printer. We have very very few options when it comes to settings. The first firmware/software I got with the machine had only 3 choices of infills 10, 50, 90. Luckily now, there's a full range of infill settings. We have a couple options for thickness and height, but small medium large is about it. Resolution? ha! The raft option just adds a crappy non removable bottom layer to your print. Oh, edit the code you say? It runs soley on a proprietary gw3 code, which people are still trying to figure out.

So the idea of slightly adjusting a setting for the Davinci is laughable at best, a tear rendering nightmare most of the time.

[-willy-]

See, the thing is, the davinci (at least my version) is the equivalent of having training wheels on your printer. We have very very few options when it comes to settings. The first firmware/software I got with the machine had only 3 choices of infills 10, 50, 90. Luckily now, there's a full range of infill settings. We have a couple options for thickness and height, but small medium large is about it. Resolution? ha! The raft option just adds a crappy non removable bottom layer to your print. Oh, edit the code you say? It runs soley on a proprietary gw3 code, which people are still trying to figure out.

So the idea of slightly adjusting a setting for the Davinci is laughable at best, a tear rendering nightmare most of the time.

Remember the saying "you get what you pay for"? It applies to printers as well. I feel for your pain, I feel for everyone whom bought a Davinci printer.
In some ways the Davinci could be compared to the International Pro Star trucks (truck drivers call them Pornstars). They are covered with alot of glitzy interesting plastic, yet little value when you strip it away.

[Marm]

To be honest though, (and I know I'm starting to sound schizophrenic here), the thing, for me has been a beast. In a both a good and a bad way. I've been meaning to write a small review on it for a while, but having so little experience with other printers, I don't have a lot of reference.

[3DPBuser]

I did not know you could customize Thingiverse files. Been a while since I've been there.

[Marm]

Only files that were written in SCAD that the author set it up to be customized, ie the variables can be changed by customizer. I've printed a few things using Customizer, and it's nice to make parametric items.

In fact.....hmmmm.... idea!