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Thread: 3D Printer Suggestions

  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob Young View Post
    For local purchases I've been using the PLA and PLA+ labeled as "Inland" from MicroCenter. Also around $22 per kg but it is more cost effective to get the Jessie branded filament.
    I've got a MicroCenter about 8 miles away, but they've been showing 'out of stock' at that location since before I started this thread.
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
    We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
    The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
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  2. #32
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    Buying Filament

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud View Post
    I've got a MicroCenter about 8 miles away, but they've been showing 'out of stock' at that location since before I started this thread.
    I've ordered almost all of my filament directly from Prusa. The shipping was surprisingly inexpensive considering it comes from Prague. At the moment I count 30 spools on my shelf, some duplicates of favorites.

  3. #33
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    PLA? Zyltech is usually really good pla. Either direct or through ebay, roughly same price when you factor in shipping and they have a 5 to 20% sale several times a year. I'm using PETG most of the time and I've been buying Paramount. Good variety of not kid colors (bright pinks and greens that a lot have). The paramount material is a couple of bucks higher, but still it prints PLA or PETG with zero issues. I've been running a bunch of items for my daughter, gaming items, she found a group that designs a lot of interesting items and they all print with zero supports and are pretty intricate. I'll have to post one she's painted up.
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  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by John K Jordan View Post
    I've ordered almost all of my filament directly from Prusa. The shipping was surprisingly inexpensive considering it comes from Prague. At the moment I count 30 spools on my shelf, some duplicates of favorites.
    I've used Prusament and while it is very good. The people at Printed Solid make the Jessie and have similar equipment for verifying diameters as Prusa uses.

    I do like Prusa's spool design a little bit better but I'd prefer cardboard for as much of it as possible and not the plastic.
    Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud View Post
    I've got a MicroCenter about 8 miles away, but they've been showing 'out of stock' at that location since before I started this thread.
    I stocked up with the Jessie stuff I mentioned about 6 months ago and so haven't checked on the MicroCenter in Overland Park, KS lately. Its about 30 minute drive for me so I don't just pop-in. And when I have gone there I've found the physical inventory vs. on-line inventory to be a bit out of whack. Usually in favor of physical inventory. Of course it will vary by store.
    Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob Young View Post
    I've used Prusament and while it is very good. The people at Printed Solid make the Jessie and have similar equipment for verifying diameters as Prusa uses.

    I do like Prusa's spool design a little bit better but I'd prefer cardboard for as much of it as possible and not the plastic.
    Speaking of spool designs, what are the overall dimensions (diameter/width/hole) for those?
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
    We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
    The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
    The world makes a lot more sense when you remember that Butthead was the smart one.
    You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much ammo.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud View Post
    Speaking of spool designs, what are the overall dimensions (diameter/width/hole) for those?
    A 1kg Prusament spool in my hand is 2=11/16 wide, 7-7/8" in diameter, and the hole in the center is about 2" in diameter.

    I have several types of holders. What I'm using now has 4 rollers on bearings that support the spool by the rim rather than through the center hole. I like them, very smooth operation, but a disadvantage is they have to be adjusted at times since some spools are different widths.

    A spool can be supported from almost anything through the center hole but if there is too much friction the filament can get jammed between coils of filament on the spool, especially if it's allowed to get a little loose, or between the filament and the inside edge of the spool. I use clips to hold the loose end of the filament when removing the spool to keep the windings tight. Some spools have built-in keepers but I prefer the clips (can find them on-line for printing).

  8. #38
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    I have the Prusa MMU. I purchased it about 6 months ago. I needed an indoor project during the winter, and I like tech stuff. The Prusa MK3 is rock solid and I have used it about 1000x times more than I thought. The MMU seems a little finnicky. It might be my setup. I have only printed one multicolored print so far. It was a little sheep that I think had 4 colors. It was a little rough process with some feeding and unloading faults along the way. One thing that wasn't expecting was the increase in time to print multiple colors. I knew it would take longer but it was excessive. The sheep would have probably taken around 1hr to print in a single color but took 8 or 9 hours to print in multiple colors. It was fun to watch though. Most of my stuff I print is a single color so I have several filaments loaded and select the correct one in slicer. It is doing pretty well. Another consideration is that most files on the internet like Thingiverse are set up for single colors. You have to convert the files over to multicolor and I am still trying to find an easy and reliable software to do it. I have watched sever youtube videos on how it is done but they sure don't seem as easy as presented. It is probably me. I have a death trooper helmet that I want to print out in multicolor for my wife but I haven't got it converted yet. I have also added the Raspberry Pi to it and Octoprint is a great help at leveling the bed. All in all I have not regretted my purchase. The nice thing about Prusa is that future improvements will be upgradable.

  9. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud View Post
    Decided over the weekend that I was over-thinking the whole bit...just pulled the trigger on a Flashforge Adventurer 3, due from Amazon Wednesday.

    My only misgiving was the odd/small spool size, but I found a printable add-on that allows the use of standard 1KG spools fully enclosed. Even with the bump-out, it's small enough to fit the bench, and portable enough to stuff in a cabinet if I need the space.

    More when I get some time with it.
    So are you up and running now Lee? I've been following because this is something I'm also interested in. If so first impressions?

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Blue View Post
    So are you up and running now Lee? I've been following because this is something I'm also interested in. If so first impressions?
    Yup. I've got about 150 hours on it already, and it's running like a champ. Most of that was printing the big chunks of the "doghouse" that clips to the side to hold full-size 1kg spools.
    Got busy with some other stuff (taxes ugh)...I'll post up some pics maybe later today.

    [EDIT] Ok, here's the pieces of the add-on, and a view of it assembled and attached:
    20220204_145408.jpg20220204_142543.jpg
    (and no, those were NOT the first things I printed, there was a day or so of testing and prints of Benchy and the other Usual Suspects. )

    Ok, this is getting annoying: can someone tell me the trick of getting pics from my phone to stop displaying sideways here? Don't have that problem with any camera I've owned...
    Last edited by Lee DeRaud; 02-06-2022 at 11:21 AM.
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
    We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
    The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
    The world makes a lot more sense when you remember that Butthead was the smart one.
    You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much ammo.

  11. #41
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    Looks like that came out nice. Did you design it too? If so what software do you use? I have nothing to offer on the photo display orientation issue.

  12. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Blue View Post
    Looks like that came out nice. Did you design it too? If so what software do you use? I have nothing to offer on the photo display orientation issue.
    Not my design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4899516
    I did modify the spool holder to handle the wide (~3") spools Amazon Basics filament comes on. I'll post that up on Thingiverse as a "remix" when I get a chance.

    Still looking for the right design tool: I've got 3D Builder, SolveSpace, OpenSCAD, and FreeCAD loaded up, just need to see which one's UI doesn't give me a headache.
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
    We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
    The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
    The world makes a lot more sense when you remember that Butthead was the smart one.
    You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much ammo.

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud View Post
    ...
    Ok, this is getting annoying: can someone tell me the trick of getting pics from my phone to stop displaying sideways here? Don't have that problem with any camera I've owned...
    There is metadata embedded in the photo specifying the orientation. I load the picture into an image editor, rotate, resize, and save as JPG and they always come out as expected. I use Photoshop but others should work.

    If rotated and reposted dozens of pictures for people. I could rotate yours if you want.

    JKJ

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by John K Jordan View Post
    There is metadata embedded in the photo specifying the orientation. I load the picture into an image editor, rotate, resize, and save as JPG and they always come out as expected. I use Photoshop but others should work.

    If rotated and reposted dozens of pictures for people. I could rotate yours if you want.
    The odd bit is that the EXIF orientation value is apparently ok at my end: it always displays in the correct orientation on the computer (Win10).

    Somewhere in the vBulletin upload process, it gets resized...maybe the metadata gets stripped off then? (As I recall, we used to have to do that resizing ourselves, or the upload would simply fail. Not sure when that changed.)
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
    We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
    The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
    The world makes a lot more sense when you remember that Butthead was the smart one.
    You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much ammo.

  15. #45
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    Here's a test, manually resized to 80KB:
    20220204_142543 83K.jpg
    Note that it loaded into Paint (only thing I have on this laptop) vertically as shown.
    So I guess we still need to manually resize if we want them to display properly. Sheesh.
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
    We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
    The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
    The world makes a lot more sense when you remember that Butthead was the smart one.
    You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much ammo.

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