Topic: Some notes about my introduction into 3D printing (solidoodle 3rd gen)
I have the Solidoodle 3rd Gen at my work (w/wood platform and stock bed with kapton tape). We're an internet company that makes niche market products and sells them online, over the phone and in stores across the world. Getting a 3d printer seemed like the perfect logical advancement to take to bolster our internal R&D capabilities. I still think it is but here are some notes about my foray into it so far.
First, I was having problems (like everyone it seems) with prints curling. This appears to be the very first thing anyone and everyone runs into. I started out with the print bed temp at around 60°F initially and gradually adjusted it higher and higher up to 85°F. The highest print bed temperature appeared to "help" but the larger prints were still consistently having problems with curling no matter what. The magic bullet here was hairspray. Boom, instantly no more curling. Getting to this point of realizing that was the answer was enormously frustrating. I actually even built a full acrylic heatbox to try to resolve this problem. I think I will still end up using it but will have to mod the printer first for it to make sense.
One of the things I noticed is that with the heatbox setup, I could easily get into the 90 to 100 degree F range for ambient temperature inside the print area. This was great, except that at about 82°F and up, the y-axis started slipping. The higher the ambient temp, the earlier y-axis started to slip. I got up to around 93°F ambient in the heatbox and the prints would basically become totally useless at the very first layer. Interesting. The electronics are VERY VERY sensitive to heat. I don't have any fans installed on the electronics at this point but I'm actually just planning on the removing the entire electronics board from the 3d printer and installing it in it's own box with fans.
The other problem I'm finding is that the stock fill settings on the version of Repetier/Slic3r I'm using produces prints with the consistency of paper mache. I don't know who in their right mind would ever think these stock settings are usable in the slightest degree but I still haven't figured out how to adjust the fill and layer settings to get solid plastic prints that I can't break with my bare hands. It seems like such a stupid simple thing but I literally can't find any good guides detailing how this works...!
I feel like I need to start a website detailing how to setup FDM 3D printers and likely pitfalls and exactly how to tune them. Hunting through forums is great but it's an enormous and time-consuming crap-shoot with very few actually definitive answers. The solidoodle really should have an instruction booklet saying things like "Ambient temperature must be below 80°F for the electronics to work. You won't get prints that don't curl unless you apply hairspray to the print bed."
Something like that would have saved me a good 2 months worth of time.
