New 3D printing area wish list/hopes and dreams

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#14

Great thanks for putting in your ideas. Th more people that voice their opinions and concerns the quicker we can move forward!

So the automatic fire extinguishers could be suitable but would only be applicable to an open frame system. Things like the flash forge would need another solution or be exempt from overnight prints.

The idea of night an day print shifts could be further looked at I suppose. I it may be that you have to have a minimum print time of say over 4/5 hours is always a night print and under 4/5 hours is a day print. Personally i would find it annoying if someone were to run a 2 hour print on a night shift because they didn’t want to wait around for it and I’m sat there with a a 12 hour print not being able to get the machine time.

Material management I think would be a matter of seeing how it goes. Definitely an honesty box for larger prints should be a thing at a minimum. I guess that things like the laser materials work in a way that the honesty box just pays for the material supply 1:1 and doesn’t effect the monthly allotted budget of the area.

We could get to the point of holding a small quantity of spools in stock for purchase but we wouldn’t have room for any on site storage and some filaments can be very particular in the way they are stored.

If we first address print speed, I think it will be surprising how many more prints come to within the 1-3 hour range that are currently wildly longer. It is very model specific but the the general rule is more changes in direction the longer the print as most time is the printer accelerating and decelerating to the target speed rather than actually printing at the target speed. Take the dice tower I showed at the induction for example. Sliced on the ultimaker it is showing a print time of 1day 3 hours and 20 mins. on my personal machine optimised slightly for acceleration It will print the same model in 14 hours flat. Its basically just spending less time speeding up and slowing down. You can then maybe print something that would take like 8 hours and print it in 3.5/4 hours so a lot more becomes accessible in the same amount of time

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#15

These are all great points and very useful info.

Depending on demand, maybe an open frame printer setup exclusively for 6 hour + prints could solve a lot of these issues as it could just run one large print after another.

Regarding spools, I feel that anyone wanting a very specific material would be able to plan that in advance and order, so regular stock probably only needs to be a few different colours of traditional pla /pla+? My practical experience was a woodshop group buy that maxg ordered and delivered to the space, and we just grabbed our stuff. Simple and straightforward which I think is important in a space like ours.

Again these are all just personal opinions, and I have very very limited 3d printing experience so you will know more than I in regards to the details

As far as immediate action goes, I’d be happy to either contribute a spool or £20 to a material fund if we have a few folks interested in stocking up on some filament so we can all explore different projects.

#16

Whatever slicing software you use will tell you how much filament the print uses. It would be pretty easy to go from there to a cost.

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#17

Yes, all slicers will support this and you can plumb in the spool cost directly to calculate the print cost. Once we have decided on a common filament(s) and answered the questions of ‘how much is fair use and part of the membership?’, ‘At what point do we charge for filament?’ and ‘Do people buy their own spools or do we have house filament?’, I can build and disseminate the filament and printer profiles for people to use at home and everyone will know what they will need to contribute before coming in slicing it and being supposed by the cost. (Not too much of an issue for smaller prints but if you wanted a 20 hour structural part with lots of infill, you could be talking a fair whack of filament.)

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#18

The estimate is pretty helpful when knowing whether to start a print with remaining filament on the spool but I am wondering about failed first layers and aborted prints. How about a pre and post weigh?

#19

Just to fill in what has happened in the past in 3d printing - the Space has never bought any filament before, members have bought their own filament and left it to share with others with an informal, use some but not all of it attitude.

That doesn’t have to stay the case, 3D techs could buy some using their consumables budget, or 3D techs could have an honesty box that covers it, or even more controlled pay for what you use like the Laser Shop… All up to what @3dtechs and members want to see and agree on!

Also feel free to try it one way, and change it - since we have never done it in this area, we don’t know what will work best…

#20

Yes not a bad shout, you just have to check that people are actively and honestly weighing the spools.

#21

I think it would be good if we were have some sort of paid system like the other areas. I see the benefit of the space providing the filament is that we can make some bullet proof high speed profiles for the filaments as we can have finer control over the calibration of profiles if we know its a stable, consistent supply. That’s not to say people cant bring in their own, but maybe either dedicated machines for the ‘house’ filaments or restricted profiles in terms of speed, capabilities on filaments we haven’t vetted. There are so many PLA variants these days that the temperature ranges and inclusions vary widely.

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#22

Err, I say we keep it simple and say any filaments are free to use. And we just kindly ask people that do large or many prints to buy another spool of filament to cover what they used. I feel like there’s always going to be some filament left over from someone. A spool of filament is 1kg so I think it’s reasonable to expect people to carry home any special plastic they don’t want to share.

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#23

Yeah I agree.

@3dtechs - Should we all meet and start to put some planning in place for the new 3D area? Pizza and Printing meet up? Would be good to nail down a list of priorities as I fear we are close to chasing our tail and not actually getting anything done with the FDM printers. It would good if we can decide on a card holder for the pre paid card. I’m happy to if no-one else wants to. I’m down the space 2-3 times a week so can keep an eye on supplies. This way we can be actively stocking the area with filament/ resin and any other consumables. @Calin Don’t forget to submit you receipts for all the stuff you’ve stocked up so far.

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#24

We have a pile of big extractor fans (the mdf cubes)

#25

Are you folks on 1.75 only as I have some 2.85/3mm to pass on?

#26

Hi Chris, We have 2.85 still for the Ultimaker so that would be great if you can drop it into the space. Is it PLA or another filament? Thanks!

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#27

@3dprinters

Hi All,
Realised I should have tagged all the current users for 3D. Please read above and weigh in on the situation.

#28

Agreed with the above that print times would be a nice focus. Fire and forget machines or belt printers like the Creality CR-30 are nice but unless we see a lot of contention on the 3D printers already, I think faster print times is preferred.

Related, I know we have a vacuum chamber somewhere. That and maybe a pressure pot would be really good for teaching people that to print 100 of something, creating masters and making good resin casts is easier than you think. Expands upon the usefulness of 3d printing without requiring someone to learn to use a resin printer.

Regarding previous ownership, I had an Ender 3v2 but I didn’t do much upgrading other than a BL Touch and new bed springs.

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#29

By the sounds of it, belt printers like the CR 30 can be a bit of a pain and It would need another full set of inductions. As it prints on an angle, you have to completely re think the way the model is constructed in terms of overhangs and supports.

You would have been a raspberry pi away from a printer that out performs the ultimaker! I’m going to have a look at the ultimaker tomorrow to see what can be done to speed things up with what we have. Im in the long waiting list or a Raspberry pi so I can give it an alternate firmware rather than the stock one.

#30

My PIs had other uses unfortunately :slight_smile:

Have you tried https://rpilocator.com/ ? The stock has been frustrating but this has been good for getting Pi Zeros or similar that might not be in high demand, but often perform well enough.

Re: CR-30

Yes you do :slight_smile: But yeah no need for such capabilities right now unless members are a bunch of projects that would require it. (unlikely)

#31

Ah good to know about pi locator. The processing needs for the for the machines normally ask for a pi 3 or later and the added wireless connectivity means the printer can stay in a semi mobile state. Will have a look to see and find one. The last time I only had to sit on the waiting list for a few weeks.

#33

Don’t forget the price of 2k moulding silicone or the rubber sheets, and the moulding press, and you have to inject the material with a bit of pressure to the mould to get a good finish.
Btw we have a working plastic injector with 10g injection capacity!

#34

I’ve successfully casted two component polyurethane without pressure before, with just vents in the mould and degassing components mix in the chamber before pouring. It is quite low viscous. Lifetime of the mix was quite short though, around 10 minutes.

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