Hello there Wendy,I'm starting this thread to put various observations I have made over the years about 3D printing.
You cannot lay a horizontal surface unsupported, with the following exceptions :
You can make a vertical Circle just fine . I do this frequently on my prints . As a matter of fact , I find that printing a circle in the X Y axis takes a lot longer than A horizontal circle. I have found the 3D printer works much better in some cases if the circle is in a horizontal mode. This is STL file work much better in the horizontal mode and it cut down on the print time considerably. I make this as a storage method for pill bottles.
I use SketchUp 2016 because it is free and does not require video accelerator. I really need to learn something better but I am pretty decent with SketchUp. Even though it is far from perfect I love my Ender 3 Pro
Hi,Think about it for a second. You have an extruder pushing out a thread of molten plastic if you try to do a flat surface without support it would just fall to the ground and not form a wall. Circles and arches gradually build up in the vertical direction as well as in the horizontal and you can make a flat surface using that approach.
Here is the latest release on my 3D notes:
I use Cura, PrusaSlicer, BambuStudio, and OrcaSlicer.Does anyone here use Ultimaker Cura for the slicer? If you use something else for an Ender 3 Pro I would love to hear about it.
I am using Cura 4.13 with a Longer LK5 Pro printer. I tried the latest Cura, but it didn't work at the time I tried it (I'm guessing the Linux build was not working at the time), and I haven't yet tried again.Does anyone here use Ultimaker Cura for the slicer? If you use something else for an Ender 3 Pro I would love to hear about it.
I ordered your recommendation for PLA, I will give it a try and we shall see. Something that occurred to me after the fact is maybe I can up my feed rate to my print. We shall see.Oh, sorry—I forget to add it! VoxelPLA.com (also added in the original post)
Great. It’s really good stuff. They publish recommended settings for printer/slicer combinations, including Ender printers with Prusa slicer. You can easily translate that to Cura since they aren’t very different but if you need any help with that, let me know.I ordered your recommendation for PLA, I will give it a try and we shall see. Something that occurred to me after the fact is maybe I can up my feed rate to my print. We shall see.
On June 16 I ordered the filament, they tell me they will be shipping it tomorrow. <sigh>. It had better work better than the Amazon brand or never again.Oh, sorry—I forget to add it! VoxelPLA.com (also added in the original post)
Yes, they are very up front with stocking levels so you can tell if they will ship right away or not. They are very accessible and happily answer questions (not some CSR on a help desk, one of the principals, it seems). Recently they have been waiting on stock or many colors and have been saying so. I am waiting for the clear PLA to be in stock myself. Just keep in mind these guys are really customer oriented and if you have any problems, contact them—they will certainly do what they can to help.On June 16 I ordered the filament, they tell me they will be shipping it tomorrow. <sigh>. It had better work better than the Amazon brand or never again.
Speaking of solving problems I casually get an unwanted curl when I print flat sheets on my 3D printer, I have discovered a solution for this problem. I take the heat gun that I use to shrink tubing and use it on the print and Walla it flattens out. Of course the Sheet metal I use for the workbench helps a lot.
The Bowden tube is considered a consumable, albeit one that lasts a long time. Friction and heat can take a toll and sometimes you just have to replace it. You can get much better quality PTFE tubing than what comes stock on the Ender, and it can help with reliability and even print quality in some cases.An odd problem with an Ender 3 pro:
My printer stoped extruding filament you might think this was the extruder head but I could not pull the old filament out of the plastic feed tube it actually broke before it came out so I had to remove the little nut the filament went through (not such an easy task when all you have is one working hand) and found that the plastic tube and filament had been fused together with heat. So I cut the plastic tube back about half of an inch put the nut back in and it worked just fine. Weird. Someone showed me a modification for this extruder where the extruder feed is at the head similar to the other printers I have seen on the floor of Dallas Makerspace, this is not something I could do by myself. Though I would love too have it .
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