slodat's 3d printed shop projects

[slodat]

3 days of printing? No thanks, that's too long. I could make something a little less refined, but quite usable in a few hours.

I’m struggling to figure out how to respond. This is a thread of 3d printed projects. The Prusa i3MK3s that made these CAT40 tool racks is no speed queen. I’m sure the Bambu X1C would print them in much less time. I didn’t have the X1C when I made these. I appreciate nice, neat, orderly organizational bits in my shop. I use these two CAT40 tool racks with my Tree CNC mill that doesn’t have a tool changer. Quite happy with them.

And, it’s no sweat off my back if a 3D printer runs for 36 hours to make my parts. 3D printing, CAD/CAM, and the various CNC machines in my shop opened up the possibility for me to extract the ideas I have in my head and create them in very consistent ways. I’m finally able to make what I imagine.

Lastly, I have a handful of minutes in these, not a few hours.

 

[woodchucker]

I get that, I don't own any 3d printer, I just didn't think that would take 3 days. It doesn't look all the big or complicated. I would figure it had infill that would make it faster and stronger.. 3 days is a long time in my book...

 

[slodat]

I get that, I don't own any 3d printer, I just didn't think that would take 3 days. It doesn't look all the big or complicated. I would figure it had infill that would make it faster and stronger.. 3 days is a long time in my book...

Each of the two parts printed in about 18 hours if I recall correctly. It's depositing a 0.2mm tall x 0.4mm wide flat bead of filament moving rather slowly on the Prusa i3MK3s. It takes a while. I also did these at 90% infill (essentially solid) because some of the CAT40 tools weigh a few pounds each. I don't want the tool holder failing and chipping tools, etc.

These still came out about 1/3 the cost of commercially available equivalents, and I didn't pay shipping.

 

[Ken226]

I get that, I don't own any 3d printer, I just didn't think that would take 3 days. It doesn't look all the big or complicated. I would figure it had infill that would make it faster and stronger.. 3 days is a long time in my book...

While it would certainly be nice if the process was alot quicker, those 3 days will pass whether a 3d printer is running or not.

Sometimes, and for some widgets, I'd rather sit on the couch in front of the TV and design a part on my laptop instead of going out to the shop.

Like, this light switch cover. It took about half an hour to design while watching Prehistoric Planet on AppleTV. I didn't feel like running to Home Depot, and I think mine looks better than the ones at Home Depot anyway. And, the two hours it took to print would have passed anyway, whether the 3d printer was running or not.

 

[MillersvilleProf]

We recently purchased the X1 Carbon for our 3D print area at Millersville. We already had several Enders, four Lulzbot Mini's, and several resin printers. To make a long story short we were so impressed with the speed and print quality I ordered the Bambu P1S with the optional AMS system to go along with it. My son was also impressed and ordered a P1S for home. Fantastic printers and well we will still use the other printers the X1 has become a favorite in a short time period. We recently made several 5C collet holders and were printing these on both our Enders and Lulzbots with similar settings. Think the Enders were running about 22 hours, Lulzbots were a few hours faster. The X1 did a better job in just over four hours.

I will post some photos of things we build with these printers soon, but they are all heavily utilized in making tool holders, jigs and fixtures, and other needed parts for our material processing area. Having multiple printers does speed up the process, but the Bambu printers seem to be game changers.

 

[MillersvilleProf]

Here are a couple prints off the X1. We are printing a few dozen of these to help square up the tool boxes we make in one of our introductory material processing classes.

 

[MillersvilleProf]

Here is a rack I am building for our Haas TL1 lathe. We have a lot of different tools for it and I wanted a good way to keep the tools organized. The dovetail blocks were all printed with PLA on our Lulzbots.

This is a pattern for a bonze leg design we cast for a local company. The large format Ender was used for this part, finished leg was about 12 pounds.

 

[slodat]

@Ken226 and @MillersvilleProf thank you for contributing to the conversation! When I got my first printer, factory assembled Prusa i3MK3s, almost four years ago i would go long stretches where it just sat. Over time I found more use and ideas for it. At the time I was just learning how to model in CAD software and reverse engineer. The 3d printer was really helpful in checking dimensions, fitment, etc. There’s a much shorter iteration cycle with a 3d printer. At least for me.

I printed this 11” long version of the spindle liner for the CNC Accuslide lathe on the XL. The bed adhesion even after the bed had cooked was quite impressive. Filament is Prusament PETG that’s been open for almost four years. No doubt my high desert climate helped the filament.

 

[slodat]

Unexpected, awesome upgrade came along. Sold the Einscan HX for a great price and was fortunate enough to be able to get the new Einscan Freescan Combo scanner. It's a metrology grade 3D scanner with some incredible new capabilities. Namely, it can scan deep into a hole. It is also a lot faster because it has more laser lines doing the work. The HX went to a friend that's really excited to put it to work on his projects. I have a big reverse engineering project this coming week where I'll put the new scanner to work.

In preparing for this project, I decided to make the pentagon (ish) markers I've had in my head for a long while. Last year when I got the scanner I downloaded an .stl of a similar six sided marker. I wanted it to be five sided, and a pocket for a magnet. A few minutes in Fusion...

Quick test print on the X1C.

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I went through a few iterations before I settled on this one. Told the Bambu slicer to fill the plate with copies.

Both printers are running a full plate. Five hours about $5 in ABS filament later and I'll have 102 of them.

These are really handy. They are easily removed (vs sticking markers directly to what's being scanned), they dramatically increase the number of markers (more markers mean the scanner doesn't lose tracking as much or at all), and they can be used on things that are magnetic, or not by just setting them in/on/around the scan specimen.

 

[slodat]

One of the things I offer my client is taking care of the fastener bill of materials. I hand counted a bunch of small washers and that quickly became the last time I wanted to do that! Enter this guy:

It's a counting scale and it works great! Takes no time to accurately put the order together, and eliminates waste. The final piece to the hardware puzzle arrives tomorrow: a nice label printer to label each bag with all the pertinent info. Things will go out looking professional, and square away. Just the way I like it.

Because I have this hardware thing, I wanted some bins that have a slot for the same labels. At this point you know what's next:

A few minor iterations and we have these:

The mydpi.com label printer arrived yesterday. It comes with a license of their Label Live software. The software has a nice data import from .csv feature that is really slick. All in all this is a nice solution. Many years ago in a former (professional) life I developed a point of sale system. That involved a lot of fiddling with these thermal printers. I’m really impressed with this setup.

I’ve been sourcing fasteners from McMaster while I get a feel for what I need to have on hand. It took little effort to include their part number on the labels. I was able to use the same .csv for the bin labels.

I updated the bins to the size of the labels. I had them too wide for some reason. ‍

This is what the packaged hardware looks like:

The workflow is really quick and I'm confident things are right.

The XL continues to impress with print quality. Parts coming off it are really nice. Detail of that label pocket overhang:

The X1C continues to win the speed race and the print quality is awesome. I'm hopeful the much-anticipated input shaping firmware will yield the expected speed improvements on the XL.

I'm done with the BOM hardware stuff for right now. This stuff was spread out over my 4x8 work table. It always blows my mind how a little bit of organization condenses things so well.

These kind of photos are always fun to share. It's pretty cool to look at. Of course, there's a functional piece as well. All of these fasteners are in the database the label software uses. Going forward it's quick work to get the BOM packed.

In an effort to not accidentally grab fine thread I'm making their bins a different color:

I have a lot of the small Schaller bins that don't have labels, and more hardware that would benefit from being in the little bins. The Fusion model is all parameters. This makes different size bins a few mouse clicks. These turn out so nice. This is off the X1C: