Educate Me In 3d Printing

I have a bunch of 3/4 tooling plate on the shelf. Mass in this case is not an issue, the mill or router won't even know it has anything on the table.

Cleaning filament. The reviews looked pretty good. https://www.amazon.com/CLEANING-Filament-Makerbot-MakerGear-Printers/dp/B00MVIYNFW

I do tend to lean towards overkill. I didn't want to undersize the heaters, it is always easier to run them at reduced power. That and I don't want to have to increase the size of my 24V power supplies, I'm running out of room in the electrical cabinets.
 
interesting. I always just use a piece of filament to purge the old stuff out.
 
Ok... now that we have a BOM in steady state- I'm dying to ask; What is the end product that will come out of the replicator Captain? :) Something fun I hope? Knowing the quality of work you do, I'm excited to see how it all comes out!
 
What is the end product that will come out of the replicator Captain? :) Something fun I hope?

Thank you for the kind words :tranquility:

Not so much fun, it's part of a medical device I have been asked to help develop. That's really all I can say about it.

But........While I am leaning to use the system there will be fun stuff and I will certainly be documenting the progression of the testing and my learning curve. Hopefully documenting my stupid mistakes will help others. ;) And of course any other fun stuff in the future will be posted.
 
The thick build plate will take longer to come up to temp. You will probably also want an enclosure around the build area. It does not have to be too tight but some types of filament such as ABS need to cool down slowly and an enclosure will help retain heat. It also reduces drafts with can cause the part to cool unevenly and result in warping. I use CURA as the CAM software (3D printer people call this a slicer). I find it very straightforward to use. It will take and STL file from your CAD system and out put a GCODE file like any good CAM software will. Looking forward to seeing your build
 
Funny I just got my 3d printer working yesterday!

Note on materials ive researched:
Alloy 910 is just about the strongest filament you can get without getting into crazy expensive carbon fiber mixes https://www.amazon.com/Taulman-PA-Alloy-Alloy-Printing-Filament/dp/B00W6CS72I

TPU is durometer 90ish polyurethane , which is questionably useful but they are working towards a nice soft rubber apparently http://www.sainsmart.com/sainsmart-...u-series-filament-for-3d-printers-reprap.html

I've been printing PETG successfully so far, which I picked because it was cheap, but it's apparently pretty new person friendly.

Make sure you secure your extruder at 200+c not at room temperature, as mine leaked like crazy until I remembered how hot this dumb thing is really getting and snugged it up at working temp.
 
I have a bunch of 3/4 tooling plate on the shelf. Mass in this case is not an issue, the mill or router won't even know it has anything on the table.

When I built my 3d Printer I went to 3/8 inch MIC-6... It took forever to home up to temp... to get the plate up to 100c took about a hour... then cool down took forever... removing prints tends to be easier once the built surface cools and contracts a bit...

Now I just use glass over the heater with cork between the heater and the support frame... works great... It takes no more the 10 minutes to come up to 100c (my basement is very cold - with winter coming it'll be 10c - I have an enclosure but it still takes a while for the first warmup)...

I cut 4 glass plates and can switch one out right after printing... let then one cool down and keep on going...

Unless your going to go with a large AC heater I would seriously consider doing the same...
 
An hour? Wow. I have a 1/4 in mic 6 plate and mine only takes about 2 minuets to heat up. I'm also using an ac heater though.
 
the AC heater is why... I'm using a 12v heater still... it's in the plans to swap that out for a AC one but I need to get the solid state relay... been on my todo list for a while... just need a 36 hour day so I can fit everything in :)
 
An hour? Wow. I have a 1/4 in mic 6 plate and mine only takes about 2 minuets to heat up. I'm also using an ac heater though.
I've seen this reported on a bunch of groups I belong to, its invariably been poor solder joint where the wires go into the heating unit.
I run a 12v heating bed 12in/12in and it takes about 15m, maybe.
 
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