28
votes
What are you 3D printing now? What setup do you have? What issues are you running into?
I'm personally a little busy for 3d printing at the moment - but I love to see and be inspired by what others are doing. I know this is text based, but I'm also interested in what issues you are running into. I find it useful to see examples of what common problems and solutions others are running into.
I've got an "old" Prusa MK3S that is still going strong for me. When I get the time again I've got a few projects lined up: a brain, a mask, and a fluid desk sculpture that I'm excited to get printing.
What have you been printing lately?
I am excited to get starting with this! I am ordering a P1P tomorrow and I am planning to print a few things when I have it:
Over time I will probably add more stuff! I have also got a few friends interested in printing some things, but I don't know what yet.
I have also been too busy for it, honestly. And when I last had some time I was too busy with other hobbies.
I built myself a Voron V2.4 and with a lot of tuning and a handful of mods it is incredibly reliable. It’s freeing to be able to just remotely click print and not have to worry about the first layer not sticking properly. Assuming I already know what material is loaded so far.
I am thinking about doing some of the newer options like the new stealthburner toolhead and Voron Tap instead of the clicky probe that I am using now. But I am in no real rush for either of them. I have a roll of polypropylene filament that the afterburner’s clockwork 2 extruder simply doesn’t have enough grip to extrude it with and as my only enclosed printer it is basically the only way I will be able to print with this stuff.
I'm printing off the final parts for my 2.4 right now. Once this one print finishes, I'll be able to install the front screen, and it will be ready to turn on and I can get to configuring it while the rest of the skirt and panel hinges print. My Kobra Go is so slow, its taken me almost a month of printing to print off the parts.
After I finally get it tuned in, I'll be able to start printing prototypes for a thing I've been designing for work over the last couple weeks.
Just in case you aren’t aware, if you are going the recommended route and using Klipper firmware (which I personally strongly recommend), you don’t actually need the screen to get started. You should be able to do everything from the web interface.
Just make sure you go through the setup process very slowly and thoroughly. There are a lot of wires and it’s almost guaranteed that something isn’t wired correctly, so don’t rush yourself. These steps are not hard at all, but it’s very easy to mess up if you haven’t done them before.
And of course, when you are done don’t forget to get your serial number!
Oh I'm definitely going Klipper, I just want it finished before I boot. I've not used Klipper before, so I don't want to overwhelm myself with learning that while I'm still building the thing.
I just got everything wired up this morning, and that's no joke, there are a LOT of wires. I'm glad I bought a wiring harness kit. I would have gone insane if i had to crimp all those JST connectors, however, in the near future, I may end up rewiring everything with the proper lengths cause this kit has some wires that are WAY too long and a couple that have only 10mm slack. I just cant properly wire manage the way I want to.
Oh yeah, cable management, that's totally a thing I did when I built mine. 😅
Lmao yeah, see, I'm an electrician, so it really bothers me knowing the cables I'm running aren't neat and tidy.
I have an Ender 3d pro. Nothing too special, but it fits my needs. I'm usually printing something utilitarian - a replacement part to fix something or some kind of organizer. I think my biggest project was a set of containers for a board game called Agricola that has a ton of pieces.
3D printers are the perfect companion for board game nuts! It’s so handy to be able to print out custom organizers, storage units, and accessories like dice towers. There are even games meant to be printed like Hextraction.
Not me, but my wife is printing a little robot with some tri-color filament as a test. I hope it turns out cool!
Which filament? I've tried the Matterhackers Quantum dual color, and it's very shiny and looks great. Didn't know there was a 3 color version.
Personally, I've gotten some very cool results with ERYONE tri-color filament. Quite easy to print with as well (for silk PLA)
I'm a fan of their PETG. I started with them because it was cheap (I think the price has gone up over the years) but their stuff hasn't gone out of stock on me and it has never given me any problems.
I should branch out and try some fancy multi-color stuff too!
OVV3D PLA Shiny Silk, the red/blue/yellow version. The print failed but we're pretty sure it's because we had the window open and the wind was blowing in quite a lot.
I have a Prusa MK3s inside an IKEA cabinet and a pi3 running OctoPrint, including light strip. And a Elegoo Saturn resin printer.
Nothing on print now, but I have a design my partner wants me to make for her CCSD department (instrument sterilization in hospital) and perhaps a night light for my little one
I have a Neptune 2s that I have just recently set up in a cabinet as it is winter we’re I live and it is really cold.
This is the first time in about a year I have turned it on.
I have it running 24/7 for about a week, I was printing some buildings and trees for MESBG (war hammer but LOTR)
I switched back to a 4mm nozzle from 2mm and I have been using the fat dragon printing profiles
I have not had a print fail since changing the nozzle as I have only been printing Terrain.
I'm printing (and designing) a lot of Gridfinity boxes and baseplates at the moment to try to organise my hobby space.
After much fighting with my Ender 3 Pro over the years I fell out of 3d printing. However a friend of mine ended up getting a Bambu X1 Carbon with AMS and after they talked it up a lot I ended up getting one myself.
Its night and day as far as experiences go, and I'm once again in love with 3d printing.
I've been printing things for organization for my board games, some things for my D&D game, some costume pieces for my wife and I, and a gift for my nephew's birthday.
I used to recommend a lot of people who were serious about 3D printing and were technically minded to build a Voron to replace their old Ender clones. But after the X1 (and later P1P) came out, it really became a hard sell. It basically includes all the most important features at a fairly comparable price point while also being essentially turnkey without much need for calibration at all.
I was looking into a better print system for awhile, but just didn't have it in me to do all the tinkering again.
X1 was 100% what I needed to get back into the game. Its been going non stop for me since I got it last week. Re-joining the hobby has been awesome.
I've got this printing on my Prusa Mini+
I've been messing around with a new Revo ObXidian nozzle on my Prusa i3 MK3S+ (glow in the dark filaments, algae and wood based filaments too!)
I'm waiting until next year to purchase a Prusa XL with 5 toolheads.
And my "tinkering" printer is a Creality Ender 5 Plus with an Omnibox electronics housing, using a Klemco V6 mount, holding a Revo 6 and an EZABL Mini. Currently pondering how to make longer motor cables (I have no idea wtf I need to do this), and if I should purchase a different mainboard (Currently working with a BIGTREETECH SKR E3 Turbo and its just ok for my needs), if anyone has thoughts on either of these two things I'd appreciate feedback!
Making the cables isn't too difficult. The hardest part is figuring out how to use the crimper effectively. You'll just need a box of JST connectors, a crimp tool, and 4 rolls of colored wire of the proper size, or 1 roll if you don't care that much about color coding the wires, but that's not recommended if you don't know what you're doing. I'm building a Voron 2.4 3d printer and I've had to make a couple cables cause the wiring harness kit I bought gave me a couple cables with the wrong connector for the parts I ordered. It wasn't too bad, but I have some experience as an electrician.
On the mainboard, cant help you too much as I'm just venturing out into the world of non-stock boards with my Voron and its BTT Octopus 1.1, and i only just finished the wiring of the printer this morning.
Awesome, I have the crimpers for JST connectors, I just dont really know what the plastic connecting bit is called. Good thought about the color coded wires, probably easier than just winging it lol
I made a recommendation for these earlier, but I will repeat this for you; buy the Engineer brand crimping tool. I know it's kind of expensive, but it's very much worth it; every other tool I have used eats terminals like they're corn flakes.
This is the JST connector kit I've used for my printer: https://www.amazon.com/GeeBat-460pcs-Connector-Housing-Adapter/dp/B01MCZE2HM
For wire sizes, its going to depend on your stepper motor, but a 22awg PTFE wire should be sufficient.
I'm already considering making my own cables due to some issues I listed in another comment in this thread, but purely for looks, I'm thinking of using all black wires because I like how much cleaner it will look. God forbid I wire one of the cables wrong.
I've got a Prusa i3 mk3 that's now semi-retired until I decide to experiment with multi-axis mods, and my main printer now is a Voron V2.4 - super fun to build and it's proving to be a very capable printer. I just got a Nevermore filter finished up and installed, but I still need to configure it.
I have a QIDI i-mates I purchased about a year ago for what was a great deal at the time.
I've had a lot of fun with it but have mostly struggled to keep up with it recently.
Honestly my biggest problem is living in a very humid SoCal beach town - keeping my filament dry is basically an exercise in futility unless I stick to PLA, but I almost always prefer PETG and TPU for anything even remotely functional. I have a Sunlu 1st generation filament dryer with no fan, and it doesn't work that great. I bought a 24V fan to install with it, but haven't yet because I have been considering doing a larger dry-box by basically disassembling it and using the parts.
The idea would be to remove the lid, attach the base to a box (with the "hotplate" and power cord) and connect the fan to the power supply pointed at the hotplate. Then I could potentially store multiple rolls of filament together and keep them dry by running it 19/7 (off between 4-9PM because my electricity costs effectively triple during that timeframe). Theoretically, it would power itself off whenever the internal temperature of the whole box reached 55C.
I feel I would print a lot more often if I had dry and ready filament available. My current method of drying filament in the Sunlu overnight and trying to remember to print in the morning hasn't been working well for me.
I probably have the same one. I got it because I was troubleshooting a problem and "maybe it's wet filament" was a common suggestion. I don't know that it has ever helped massively but I'll stick an old roll in there ~2hrs before I want to use it (rotating it 180deg at 1h). I think it was cheap enough that the fact I've never melted a whole roll in the oven makes it worth it for me.
Yeah, that's super similar to how I do it - load the filament, turn it over after a few hours. It does a pretty good job of keeping filament dry if I run it while the filament is being fed from it into an active print. But it only fits one roll and won't fully dry out wet filament on its own unattended.
Totally agree on the value of it though - it is better than nothing, better than melting plastic in an oven, and better than repurposing a food dehydrator or putting a bucket over my filament on my hotplate for sure.
Get a food dehydrator, the circular kind with the trays. Take some snips and cutout some trays, most can fit 1-2 spools staked vertically without issue. They’re way cheaper than the purpose made ones and often have more heat control and go warmer for ABS and similar filament.
For keeping it dry try a loctite or similar container (ideally with a gasket or seal) with some reusable desiccant goes a long way—you can recharge them in the food dehydrator too! There’s plenty of dry box mods to allow printing out of the boxes as well.
Already have the purpose-made one, so it's functionally a sunk cost, that's why I think my best bet is a repurpose.
Haven't printed anything in a while tbh, but on my Ender 3 v2 I made a hitbox style fighting game controller completely from scratch. The only part I ordered was cut acrylic for the top, the rest is all printed, even the buttons. I learned a whole lot while making it (and especially it's previous version, which was pretty bad).
I also own a small resin printer (I forget the model.. Photon something?) which I use to print DnD figurines (mostly Heroforge) for my games.
I'm 3d printing... a 3d scanner! Specifically an OpenScan classic, but I'm making some pretty significant modifications as I go along to suit my needs.
Ender 3 Pro. Making dust collection parts for my wood shop.
one thing that i have found incredibly satisfying to design and print are vacuum hose adapters. Either what you need doesn't exist or is stupidly overpriced (looking at you shop-vac). all you need to do is get a few measurements of length and diameter for a cross section drawing in freecad, rotate it around the z-axis and then print it up using pla. currently, my artillery sw-1 is in pieces, so I have been using a mostly stock ender-3.
The thing I love about that is if a generic "universal adaptor" from a DIY shop isn't right - you're boned.
Something you printed doesn't fit perfectly? Either change that dimension or just scale the whole print to fix it.
I did that the other day when replacing old drywall anchors. I drew what I thought they should be, then printed the 95% and 105% versions as well. It took a minute but I got the fit I was after.
I have an Ender 3 and Elegoo Mars (the green version) the Ender is printing a Pokeball for my niece, and the Mars is or will be when I get more resin, a bust of Beast from X-Men.
I printed Beasts head along with Vapeoreon to go into the Pokeball, had a few bumps along the way so used a bit of resin on fails.. I didn't do my supports correctly because I rushed and stupidly thought "she'll be right"
As for the Ender. Well it's not been extruding enough, that was after the stepper motor died and the hotend went into thermal runaway. It's been good fun.. anyway I replaced all of that, did everything then remembered the e-steps. So I did the e-step calibration, it was 5mm out, that's an easy enough fix, as I opened the settings I realised some fool changed that almost a year ago to extrude 5mm less. Past me is always doing things like this and forgetting, making life hard for future / present me..
My setup is a heavily modded Voron 2.4. It is currently torn apart due to my efforts to add the atsamc21 to klipper to be able to use the Duet3D Toolboard 1LC. After that project is done, I’m planning on finishing the design for a printer I have had in mind for ages, due to some things about the Voron (and other printers) that annoy me.
Ender 3 v2, currently idling while I procrastinate on what to print. I need to find somewhere else in the house to move it to so that it can run overnight (the issue is noise). I printed most of a stagetop table and I have a few GM/DM screens that are in various states of completion.
I am still running my old Wanhao Duplicator D6.
Old, but very reliable machine. (Which sadly does not give me a reason to get a new one.)
After printing a new set of shade holders for the garden, I am currently printing all kinds of doodads for the archery club.
A set of small pipes to go through a foam target to hang it up.
A set of end caps for a colleagues take apart shrew bow, so no dust and dirt gets into it.
.. and I am sure more will come...
I'm currently running a modified Ender 5 plus that's gone through a bunch of iterations to make it more effective for large nozzle / high speed prints. It's now direct drive, using an E3d Hemera with a Volcano hotend.
It's not perfect (print quality is limited by the rigidity of the X axis with such a heavy hotend / extruder setup) but with a .6mm nozzle it can lay down a kilo of plastic in under 12 hours at an acceptable quality for functional parts.
I mostly print PETG because it's great for functional (less rigid) parts without needing an enclosure.
My biggest project so far, I completed last week - printed all the parts to build a Millennium Machines Milo v1.5 - it's a small CNC mill that's capable of machining Aluminium at decent accuracy and can machine it's own parts to improve rigidity further.
Having both additive and subtractive manufacturing capability is a new world for me and I'm looking forward to working out how to combine them.
I now realise I can machine the parts required to turn my E5P into CoreXY so that might be a design effort soon!
Ender 3 S1. I mostly do organization and wall mounts. My garage shop tool wall is incredible.
Coming in the fall, I’ll be using a Prusa in a course that is more or less an encouragement for college freshmen in computer science.
That's its draw in our middle school. We require students to make their designs themselves (which most do through TinkerCAD), and they get to keep whatever they get printed. While there are definite learning opportunities that tie in to middle school math and science (especially improved spatial reasoning and application of scale factors), the real draw is to get their foot in the door to hype up their interest in STEM.
Yeah. I think it's interesting to hear how it sort of plugs in at all levels too. Even at the university freshmen level, I doubt more than one or two will have done it in the past. We'll also be able to go a little deeper and do parametric modeling. But in the end, it's all the same hook.
I'm currently trying to run off a bunch of minis for an in person Lancer game on an Elegoo Saturn S. I'm having fun with build plate adhesion for about half of what I put on any given plate. At least the failures will make good scatter terrain... I'm going to try lowering my lift speed some, the addition of SirayaTech Tenacious resin probably made it harder to separate from the FEP.
I have an ender 3 pro that im currently printing out parts to convert the z axis into a dual belt driven setup. I want to install a direct drive, but I already have very measurable x axis sag, so im doing that upgrade first. A lot of printed
Ill be installing the belted z, the microswiss direct drive+hotend, and a new heated bed all at once. After that, I plan on maybe trying to convert the printer to klipper.
I got myself an Ender V2 for $100 for my birthday. Had some annoyances at first, mainly frommlack of experience, but now it's been printing without much issue. Have been mainly using it for D&D figurines, but also printed a dice Tower (in 3 pieces) that took about 3 days total. Unfortunately adhesion wasn't the best and the pieces warped at the base. Might look into reprinting it and using hair spray to help with adhesion, but otherwise, I don't have a ton of projects in mind.
I strongly recommend replacing the glass bed on your printer and getting a magnetic PEI spring steel surface instead. PEI offers much better adhesion and when you're done you can just lift up and flex the bed to pop off your prints. A more budget option is to get a PEI applique for your bed, and the most budget option of them all is to use a gluestick, which in my experience works better than hairspray.
If you go the PEI route, keep in mind that some materials will actually stick to that material too well, so make sure you read about it ahead.
Yeah I actually just got a Crrality magnetic mat. I tried it out with a few minis and had great results. I'll try out a bigger and print, would using hair spray still be beneficial?
I haven't used theirs, but the answer is "it depends". I don't know why but not every PEI build surface is the same, and there are different levels of stickyness between brands. The crappy one I put in my Voron that I'm too cheap to replace is pretty bad, so sometimes I do need to add glue stick. The super cheap adhesive PEI layer I have on my Ender is super adhesive to the point where I have had difficulty removing things from it (which sucks because I applied it to a glass bed).
Cool, I'll try it out, thanks for sharing your expertise
I've got a Dremel 3D40, little sister to the 3D45 we use at work (a middle school). I got a stupidly good deal on it - it's a fine printer, but I probably would have gotten one with a larger print bed.
Most recently, I printed a sample spool holder to use up the subscription box sample filaments I got for a while and hoarded instead of using, and a M3 hex nut tightener to use with it. I also recently printed a wedge hook to get o-rings out of food container lids for washing, and will soon be printing organizers for my medicine cabinet to make better use of the tallest shelf space.
I just got into 3D design, and I'm in the process of designing a shower for my pet conure. It'll be a sort of closed loop system where the water is in a box under where my conure will be, and the water will be pushed upwards to the second level right above the conure, and with holes so that the water rains down back into the water box.
I'm currently worried about the dust that might get stuck in the pump, which I'm thinking just a small filter will do the trick.
I'm Using Solidworks on my brother's laptop which is very daunting lol.
Excited for the final result though!
I finished designing the control circuit for it. Nothing fancy, just a water pump to push the water upwards and then make the water rain down, with a push button to control the pump speed.
I have an Ender 3 Pro and a Eryone Thinker SE. I print all sorts of things for various projects but mostly have been working on terrain for an eventual Battletech campaign. I haven't been doing much printing lately though as I kind of tackle it when I have the patience for troubleshooting and lately have been tied up in other things.
I definitely run into the most issues with bed leveling and hot end jams. I recently got a BLtouch for my Thinker and it's has been pretty good so far. However, I had to update the firmware to get it to recognize the touch and now I am having issues where the print will just cut out around the 4-5ish hour mark. The whole printer just freezes up, and I have to power cycle to bring it back. So obviously something is wrong with the firmware but I haven't gone back and tried to fix it yet. So it sits quietly. Taunting me. :)
Nothing on the bed right this minute but I’ve been printing a lot of pots for house plants lately
Right now I have two printers:
A Prusa i3 MK2.5S with some upgrades/changes: bear frame and x-axis and a modified zaribo pulleybox for the extruder
An Anycubic Predator where pretty much only the frame and PSU are still original. Upgrades include:
And soon: a dual tool Prusa XL, which I am so excited about
I also love Scan The World for getting models from museums across the globe.
Here's something I've printed from there - It's a stone head from Central America. It's about 1m tall (3ft) and hollow so I can illuminate the white PETG from the inside. I have plans on improving my tiling technique in the future so these big prints don't have the grid of dark shadows with them.