You can tell I’m really dedicated to this whole rivalry with Lego I’ve got going on. By the end of the video I’ve gotten so wrapped up in the lecture I forgot to bring it back around to the whole “We’re doing this to print Legos” thing.
If you need to print accurately, here are the steps:
- Have a 3D printer that doesn’t suck.
- Have a slicer that doesn’t suck.
- Calibrate your flowrate.
- You must do this even if your feed steps are properly calibrated. But having properly calibrated feed steps helps.
- Print a test object with no infill, no top layers, only 1 shell, and 100% flowrate
- Use calipers to measure the extrusion width.
- Divide the expected value (usually 0.4) by the measure extrusion value, and multiply to get your flowrate percentage.
- You may need to repeat this for every roll of filament you own. Sorry.
- Calibrate your movement.
- This is properly done in the firmware.
- If you can’t hack the firmware, you can fudge it with a scale factor.
- Print a test object (PrintABloks are good for it) with your usual default settings, except use the calculated flowrate.
- Measure the size of the object. Divide the expected size by the measured size and multiply by 100 to get a correcting scale factor.
- Print lego.
Yes, I had to record the overhead segments separate from the garage segments. I did record them together, but then I had my overhead footage in time lapse accidentally. But I also had problems with my Lav Mic and had to use the boom mic’s audio on the camera. Cleaned it up as best I could, but it’s still kinda echoy and very different from the high quality mic I have in my streaming rig that I used for the new footage. Of course if I hadn’t have said anything, no one would have noticed, right?
I’m should take up the rest of this post talking about PrintABloks. The kickstarter is going well. It’s about to push another stretch goal. I am excited by what I’ve made here. And I hope you are too.
