Joe’s Makerbot is now Joe’s 3D Workbench. http://joes3dworkbench.blogspot.com/ This has been a long time coming. I avoided it for many technical reasons, but I now feel it’s time. Joe’s Makerbot (this blog) will remain with it’s history and posts, but I will no longer be updating it. From now on all posts related to making, designing, and teaching will be on …
Well that’s new
One of the great things about 3D printing is just when you think you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on it throws you a curve ball. I’m printing a model that is mostly infill in PLA and about 1/4 inch up it stops doing the infill for no apparent reason. I wasn’t watching it at the time …
That is a great idea
I’ve got a couple loose spools that I don’t know if they’re ABS or PLA. I wish I had thought of the idea Joseph did. Acetone will stick to ABS, but not PLA, so it makes the perfect identifier.
Printing again. Again.
This will mark the 3rd time I’ve had to replace the ceramic tape on my extruder heads, and it was just as painful as the first two times. But hopefully this time it’ll be the last. Because this time I’ve used high temp tape. My theory is that the reason my tape keeps failing is because when a print fails …
More forced down time
Found out what that mystery bolt was for. It was holding the X-Axis motor to the bracket. There was another on the other side, so no harm. But now I have another problem. Winter has brought failed prints and fail prints have once again it’s shredded the ceramic tape wrap, which in turn is causing prints to fail. Vicious cycle. …
What’s this bolt for?
No, really, I want to know. There is a short M3 bolt (that is the right name for the bolts that are all over the Makerbot, right) sitting at the bottom of my build area and… I have no idea where it came from. Everything I can see is still screwed in. Anyone know where this might have come from? …
3D Printing Tidbit – Hairspray, Glass, and HBP
Hairspray on glass with a heated build platform is a brilliant solution to sticking prints to the build platform with surprising effecency if it’s done right. Hairspray has some properties that at heat will hold a print on the build platform. I don’t remember who on the google groups recommended this procedure but I’ve been doing it for a while …
Dual Printing dice
So playing with the new MakerWare dual print option (for a project I’ll update on when it’s done) I learned a few things. First of all, the sacrificial walls work great. I mean look at those. Catches tons of drool. Love ’em. However, if you position your objects so that the other nozzle spends a considerable time over part of …
New depths in layer height.
In the past one thing that made shorter than 0.15mm layer heights difficult is that my build plat wasn’t completely level. Where it bowed up it wouldn’t let the extruder get any plastic out and it would clog. But with the new glass build plate providing a more level build platform than before I decided it was time to try …
OverrideGc, Yes, Transparent PLA for Lithophanes, No.
So I finally got around to using a feature of Jetty’s firmware that I knew was there, but never played with. It’s called OverrideGC Temp which essentially allows you to set the temperature for printing on the printer instead of when slicing so I can switch from ABS to PLA without reslicing and it works great. I still have to …