shinyhappyrainbows

" To create, you have to break the rules, you have to break your own rules, " ~ high wire artist Phillipe Petit. That is all

Forgive my phone's camera, it's only an iPhone SE and its camera only does digital zoom. However, take a look at this 3D print, currently coming "out of the glass." That is NOT the "fuzzy skin" setting in my slicer! That's the natural look of the carbon fibre impregnated PETG I'm printing with. The tiny carbon strands are fizzing up in the hot paste and making such a matte finish that you can't see the layer lines! This printer has never printed so well before! This is my first, serious structural part print since I upgraded this machine from the stock v-wheels to linear rails. This was an AU$200 upgrade kit, so I expected good quality prints but I also expected more linear layers, too, more prounounced in other words. And they sort of are with plain, glassy PLA. A little bit. To me, this print, side-on at least, looks like it's been printed in a laser 3D printer - laser melted nylon granules. This finish is one of the attractions in the 3...

Wow! What a productive couple of weeks in the workshop. (Not "the \'shop", In Australia, a shop is where you buy bread and milk. Light industrial work happens in a workshop. Ignorant #seppos.*) I have repaired a picnic table as light work table, mounted my drill press on a mobile trolley on casters, started redesigning and building my robot drums, begun turning my 240x180x50 CNC router "toy" into a 1000x500x50 CNC tool, got my trusty Ender 3 upgraded to linear rails and 32 bit control, running Marlin 2.1.2.4 (the latest at time of writing) and printed some of said drum robart parts. In all of that, I have modified my new trigger clamps to work interchangeably with clapming force or spreading force. Used the old 18x240 T-slot bed from the "toy" CNC as my drill press table AND mounted the cross slide on that with T-nuts, so that I can clamp jobs or do fine jobs or high accuracy jobs. It's like my ADHD staged a coup on my autism and decided to be pro...

First there was the Tronxy, a Prusa i3 clone, which was rebuilt more than grandad's axe. Then there was some cheap-assed, no name brand delta printer with a tiny, circular bed that really couldn't take the size of prints I wanted. These two overlapped with my Ender 3 Pro which, quite frankly, wasn't as good print quality as the $150 nameless delta but it sure was reliable... well, except for the stock hotend. Those old hollowbox extruders with the hidden, red, undersized heatsink... ugh. Then there was the Ender 3 Pro II. Same shit extruder and hotend, but, yeah, 32 bit control board. Now we're taking. The Tronxy and the Delta are now retired due to beyond economical maintenance. You can only throw so much money or effort at a steamer, and the more you print, the more stuff wears out. They were also fire risks, no thermal runaway protection. The E3 Pro II churns out basic engineering prints up at Splodgenoodles' place, but nothing pretty, really, it needs work. and...