3D printers

Hardware

The printer

Lulzbot TAZ3

The lulzbot TAZ3 is our newest addition to the 3d printlab. The machine was a donation of Aleph objects for which we are very appreciative. This will be the machine that is under the heaviest use due to the fact that it is the best machine we have on hand right now.

Specifications:

• 0.35mm nozzle width
• Heated bed
• 0.1mm precision
• 298mm x 275mm x 250mm maximum print dimension
• properly calibrated out of the box

Velleman K8200

this printer was a donation By Mark Fell, who was a visitor at the space a while back

• 0.5mm nozzle width
• Heated bed
• 0.2mm precision
• 200mm x 200mm x 200mm maximum print dimension

The filament

We're currently testing PLA (green) by Velleman (bought at Capitani for around €30) Here, we can put experiences with different types and brands of filament.

Velleman PLA green

• when printing on the Lulzbot, during the second half of the role, the filament tends to break off during the printing process. The breaking happens inside the white/transparant guiding tube.
• print results are quite good if the filament doesn't break.

Filament Providers

Imprimante3DFrance has quite a selection of filaments and other products of interst.

Software

3D software

• Freecad http://www.freecadweb.org
• Openscad http://www.openscad.org Openscad is a programatical tool to do 3D solid modeling. You write code, and a model comes out! An annotated example is available here.

Slicer software

• Slic3r http://slic3r.org
• Lulzbot provides some Slicr3 profiles which should work for ABS or PLA.
• a profile for the velleman k8200 can be found here
• Kisslicer and Cura are alternatives for slicing...

Print software

• Printrun http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrun
• Repetier http://www.repetier.com
• Cura http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Cura

Hack that printer!

Printing yet another octopus gets a bit boring after a while. Let's dive deeper into 3D printing and printers. See 3D printers/Hack for more info.

Printing cost

You can find a nicely formatted ODT-file comparing printing price and speed in different circumstances here: File:Printing cost.odt. The following examples are detailed:

• Tentacle tablet stand (€2.55 - 2h50 à 6h39m or more)
• Large scale omnisphere (€30.75 - 13h48m à 67h16m)
• Battery caps (€0.23 - 0h16m à 0h37m)
• Raspberry Pi case (€1.46 - 1h06m à 4h19m)

The parameters are compared: Layer thickness, Fill rate, Shell thickness. Roughly, printing something at top quality will take up to 4 times as long as in lowest quality. The RasPi case f.e. takes somewhere between 1h06m and 4h19m to print...

I didn't try playing with different infills though, and I understand that this too could make a big difference on the time picture...

Time issues

As 3D printing takes a lot of time, it has become an issue on how to spend your time while a 3D printing project is ongoing. Several options on how to spend your time, are discussed here...

• Option 1: Watch some (data) porn
• Option 2: Engage in some social media activities
• Option 3: Create or update some wiki pages
• Option 4: Make a video of your item getting printed
• Option 5: Clean up the mess you made
• Option 6: Clean up a random piece of the hackerspace

More in-depth discussion here.