Keith's Electronics Blog

I picked up a couple rolls of Overture TPU and it’s lovely stuff — supple and squishy and I really want to use it — but I just can’t get it to print right.

(more…)

I am loving this slightly-textured build surface. ABS sticks to it well enough not to peel even without an enclosure, and PLA works great, too. The texture is just enough to make the bottom of a print blend in with the other faces. So far it’s providing so much better results than my Prusa PEI spring steel sheet that I’m on the verge of ordering a clone spring steel sheet and covering it with this.

You can find them on Amazon by searching for “blue 3D printing build surface” (or just “3D printing build surface”) and scrolling through the inevitable irrelevant Amazon results until you find the offerings from Chinese companies named <random letter> <random letter> <random English word>.

And, er, I bought a secondhand Creality CR-10 Mini (300 mm x 220 mm build area) to be able to print something a little longer than my Prusa can do.

While designing a (different) small box, I knew I wanted it to have a heavy base to keep it from being tippy. I designed recesses in the base for stacks of electrical box knockouts (that I’d been saving for recycling, because I’m just that way and I can’t help it) and had to look up how to get the printer to pause for me to insert them. Because I am not steady enough to play Operation, the Wacky Doctor Game when the patient is awake and trying to bat away my tools.

In PrusaSlicer, the answer is to slice the object once, then grab the slider to the right of the plater and drag it down to the layer that you want the printer to pause before beginning to print. Hit the + button immediately to the right, telling PrusaSlicer that you want to do a manual filament change to make that layer be a new color, and then reslice. You can verify the pause with the slider; everything below the pause will be shown in one color and everything above in another.

When it finishes the layer below, the printer goes through a superfluous dance of unloading and reloading the filament, but it works out fine.

After resuming, the printer bridges nicely over the weights, just like it oughtta. Very gratifying.

Everybody all, “ABS bad, it shrink when you print it,” and I’m, “Yo, dog, PLA shrink too.”

That’s a box with 2-mm walls and a 2-mm base. Hatchbox PLA. The layers of the base that are not stuck down to the hot build platform shrank right up.

Don’t be up in my grill about PLA being nature’s perfect filament. I need me an enclosure.

With several filaments I’ve used lately, I get a rough surface on the top of my prints that makes me think the printer is depositing too much filament. I took a bit of time today to learn how to calibrate that; and one of the same tutorials gave a nice reference for nozzle temperature calibration, so I did that, too.

These notes are as much for me as for thee, as I expect to run through this again with more filaments in the future.

(more…)