Hope to have the time to do it.
I tried putting the printed parts together with Sherline's flange bearing and motor coupler. The fit was extremely tight. It took me quite a while to have the coupler seating completely at the bottom of the base. When the bearing holder was inserted into the centre of the spool, it broke... I reprinted one with infill of 40%, hoping that it would strengthen it some what. I'm now ready to print an owl using the blue filament for Ruth. This will be a 4 plus hours job as it is going to be slightly bigger than the one I did earlier for Alicia.
Hope to have the time to do it.
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Being frustrated with filament entangling, I went on Thingiverse searching for some kind of a spool holder. Nothing caught my eyes but the one shown to me by Mike. He sent me the STLs upon my request and I started printing. It's now the time to figure out how to install the 2 parts to the spool...
I came across this beautiful pair of owls on Thingiverse that I just can't help wanting to print them. The models are too big for the Portabee and the author suggested scaling them down to fit. Not wanting to spend too much time printing as it was almost 11pm, I scaled of the pair down to 50% which gives a built time of about an hour.
As I've not done calibrating, the result isn't as good as the photos posted by others that did the same print. But I'm rather happy with what was produced except that I broke one of the thinner part of the brows while cleaning up the model. I'll post the time lapse pics when I have the time. It's almost 1am in the morning. The STL was taken from Thingiverse, created by Pointedstick. I was looking for something practical to print when I stumbled upon it. The entire print took one and a half hour to complete. This is how it looks, with the charging cable installed: Before printing, I took the pain to level the X axis smooth rods and make sure that the bed is leveled in relation to the axis. This proves to be worth the effort as I've even distribution of the molten PLA on the bed at the first layer. For this post, I'll be presenting the photos taken during the built in the form of a gallery. Feel free to click on the photo of interest to see the enlarged view or click on "Play" to view them as a slide show. The 3D printer is really addictive. Good that there is a smaller version for my over crowded shop. Otherwise, I'll miss out all the fun.
If anyone reading this has a tip or two on how I can improve on the quality of the print, please let me know. I'm also trying to figure out how I can manipulate STL model so that I can make adjustments to interest models downloaded from sources like Thingiverse. A day or two after I returned from my Bangkok trip, I received a message from Mike that the Portabee has arrived. I popped over his shop with my little girl to pick it up. I wasn't very excited about the 3D printer as I've yet to complete the ER32 Collet Chuck for the Proxxon lathe. There are a few other projects I would like to work on before my leave ended. But I couldn't stop the moment when I opened the unlabeled box... It is addictive!!! The construction of the printer was completed after 2 nights. I did my first print this morning. The result was crappy as the bed wasn't leveled relative to the spindle (or should I say extruder). It was nonetheless a good experience. A call to Mike provided the solution of how the bed should be leveled. It took me quite some time to get it almost right and the next print came off okay. More needs to be done in order to achieve the quality of printer shown by many out there into 3D printing. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Mike of SG Tooling and KP of romscraj for their help in getting me going. Both are very patient with this brainless newbie and responded to my whatsapp and emails even late into the night. I also had the opportunity to tour KP's shop at Midview City on 18 Sin Ming Lane. It is not too much of a shop but their production area. Good stuff you have their, KP! When I did a test run of the printer, X axis refused to move, making some noise. After swapping the wires and motors to isolate the problem, I figured out that its the board that is giving the problem. An email was sent to KP of Romscraj, he asked me to drop by his office at Sin Ming to let them check and suggested that I bring down the printer. Boy I'm glad that I did that! I've never seen so many printers working at the same time and the shop is cool!!! KP swapped the board for a new one and plugged in the wires to do a test print. Except the lousy printout due to the bed not being level (yet), everything else works fine. I saw these 2 vase in the shop and can't help but to take a pic of them. Nice print! When I got home, I did a trial print on my own. Here's the clip: The above 2 pics were the results of my attempt to level the bed. Not too bad but lots more to be done. Compare these to my first print before leveling. More work and more work needed to square up the printer's axes and to understand how to calibrate it to print correctly. I wonder when I'll be back in my metal shop to finish up with the ER32 Collet Chuck and the rest on my To-Do list with this printer around... So much to do, so little time...
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