Ontopic The 3D printing thread

My 6 stepper card is still processing at Seeed Studio. I'm getting anxious :/

And it looks like I have a job throwing together a 10 stepper, 4 heater controller for a couple of the Marlin devs.
 
I haven't annealed any prints yet. Think I should take that step with the hot end mounts?
I didn't bother.

Mine's also printed in PLA, and it's been going strong since January.

The hot end mount won't see any significant amount of heat, so I'd just print and go. Try and do the mount in 100% infill, so that if you bump it, it's not going to break off readily.
 
I'd use PETG for a hotend mount. Biggest issue there with PLA is it cold flows, increasingly at higher temperatures, so if you're using it as a clamp or whatever to hold something under pressure it'll eventually loosen.

Annealing works great for PLA to make it tougher, but it throws off the dimensions.

PETG doesn't cold flow, it's dimensionally stable and doesn't shrink much when it cures... for jobs like this, embrace PETG!
 
I'm printing at school right now since the Glob O Death got my current hot end. Once I get everything done and in place so its usable I'll look at redoing it in something stronger.
 
I'd use PETG for a hotend mount. Biggest issue there with PLA is it cold flows, increasingly at higher temperatures, so if you're using it as a clamp or whatever to hold something under pressure it'll eventually loosen.

Annealing works great for PLA to make it tougher, but it throws off the dimensions.

PETG doesn't cold flow, it's dimensionally stable and doesn't shrink much when it cures... for jobs like this, embrace PETG!
But the E3D mounts way up the body away from the heatbreak.

You got any protips for Taulman 910? I'm doing a set of these for the guy who sent me his broken one this weekend, and I picked up a spool of the Taulman because its properties looked damn good for the use case.
 
But the E3D mounts way up the body away from the heatbreak.

You got any protips for Taulman 910? I'm doing a set of these for the guy who sent me his broken one this weekend, and I picked up a spool of the Taulman because its properties looked damn good for the use case.
I just went with the suggestions here: http://taulman3d.com/best-print-settings.html

And make sure you dry it out really well before you use it, because it absorbs water to the point where your printer will hiss and pop when it prints.

Also, print slow (say, 30mm/s or less) - since you're printing small gears you might want to go even slower.
 
I just went with the suggestions here: http://taulman3d.com/best-print-settings.html

And make sure you dry it out really well before you use it, because it absorbs water to the point where your printer will hiss and pop when it prints.

Also, print slow (say, 30mm/s or less) - since you're printing small gears you might want to go even slower.
Fortunately, I live where it's about 2% humidity, so I don't have much trouble with absorbed water. Thanks for the tips!
 
I also need a little bit of help with a dumb practical joke.

I'm on a scrum team that works with two other scrum teams, one of which named themselves "THOR", and has a little hammer totem to pass around at their standups.

I found the model they printed, and I want to change the "THOR" on the hammer's head to "Borg" (since that's my team's name), and print it at about 130% size, because I'm a dick and I like to fuel tension on the project.

Any helpful pointers on how to alter a finished STL to remove that set of letters and substitute another?
 
Assuming you dont know/have Blender or MeshMixer or something to edit STLs, simplest way would be to make a new panel with your team name, position it so that it overlaid theirs.

Alternatively, I could import that STL into Solidworks and do the edits.
 
Assuming you dont know/have Blender or MeshMixer or something to edit STLs, simplest way would be to make a new panel with your team name, position it so that it overlaid theirs.

Alternatively, I could import that STL into Solidworks and do the edits.
I have Blender, but I'm having trouble making it work for me. I'm not a visual learner/coder, and deep in my heart of hearts, I believe that this whole "mouse clicking" thing is a fad that will eventually go away.

I'll click harder, I guess, unless you've got some tips on selecting and editing things from within blender :)
 
quick #hack:

import() it into OpenSCAD
make a cube and translate it around until you've got the text filled in.
difference out some new text().
 
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I have Blender, but I'm having trouble making it work for me. I'm not a visual learner/coder, and deep in my heart of hearts, I believe that this whole "mouse clicking" thing is a fad that will eventually go away.

I'll click harder, I guess, unless you've got some tips on selecting and editing things from within blender :)
I've never fucked with blender, I just know it's one of the more common ones
 
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Better idea: if you've got the exact same colors of plastic, reprint it with 'borg' instead of 'thor' and just quitely switch out their hammer, see how long it takes them to notice.
I actually bought better colors. They've got a drab gray and brown. I got silver and wood. Way classier, and also proves I'm willing to spend $40+ on dumb jokes.
 
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