Thread: Adventures in 3D printing bibs and bobs for a home workshop

Printer enclosure is almost finished.
HT is a Arduino dual sensor Humidity/Temp to measure H/T inside and outside the enclosure
F is a 120 mm fan for venting if required - have to vent that outside. I can't believe SWMBO is letting me put a hole in the wall!.
enc2.JPG

The full width door on the front of the enclosure is on loose pin hinges so easily comes right off if needed.
Then the front half of the enclosure comes away without needing to lift it over the printer.
This then allows full service access to the printer.
The back half has the power cord trapdoor, the fan and HT sensor stuff all built in and that can stay there unless the hole printer.
The front and back halves are held together by a couple of 3D printed clamps.

There's an access panel in the lower edge of the door for printer LCD panel access with the door closed.
I'll be putting a small transparent door over that.
access.JPG

Just have to add some better lighting.

I got a 3D printer for Christmas, I have assembled but not used yet. This gives me incentive to start learning. My 5 year old granddaughter is coming for a visit, I will get her to teach me how to use it.

Originally Posted by Bucky

I got a 3D printer for Christmas, I have assembled but not used yet. This gives me incentive to start learning. My 5 year old granddaughter is coming for a visit, I will get her to teach me how to use it.

My son gave me 3D printer in 2015?
He wasn't allowed to have a 3D printer but he thought by buying me one for Xmas he could then use it.

It was a small "Printerbot" printer, volume (150x150x150mm) and came as laser cut plywood kit with a bunch of fasteners and had to be assembled - no written instructions - one had to sit thru 10 x 1 hour Youtube videos watching someone putting it together. It was filmed from above the assembler and every now and now then the assemblers scabby bald scalp would appear in the view at the lower half of the screen and block the view. The videos also referred to other models of 3D printer kits which made things more confusing.

I persistent thru 9+ hours of the video and build, and then got stuck and it sat there for months - mainly because I could think of nothing to do with it.
Finally my son said "how's the printer?" and I told him about it and he offered to take it home and take a look.
Within a couple of hours he had sent me a photo of his first "blob"
It stayed at his house and he rebuilt it several times over and bought several more

About 2 years ago he bought his third printer and gave me back the now very modified Printerbot but it sat on my electronics workbench collecting dust. Meanwhile son is showing me all sorts of things he's making with his and about 6 months ago I decided there were enough generic plans out there that made it worthwhile to buy a decent one with a reasonable print volume (mine is 300 x 300 x 400 mm). It came almost fully assembled - time from opening the box to printing was about 75 minute. However I did have my son helping me and admit I have since been on the phone to him a few times for "tech support". This makes a big difference.

I got the printer about 4 weeks ago and it has been running more or less 24/7, mainly testing different printer settings and filament types.
SWMBO has found Thingiverse and I now also have a long list of craft/sewing widgets to print out for her.

Once I really get up to speed I feel I won't have to watch it as carefully as I do no,w and most of time I will be able to go do other things while it churns away.

This is the latest print.

Yarnbowl.jpg

It's a "yarn bowl" printed using "Wood filled PLA" plastic.
Print time was 23 hours and it requires about $7 worth of plastic filament and about $1.50 worth of electricity although about half of that was done during the day so Solar covered that.
I could probably halve the time by changing a few settings and speeding things up somewhat.
Likewise I could improve the finish by taking a bit longer
Apart from preventing me from printing out something else I'm not fussed about the time it takes as I'm almost at the point where I walk away and let it do its thing.

I made one for SWMBO and now all the knitters and Crochet'ers in the family want one.
Not exactly the most attractive unit around, but according to SWMBO, and a sister who got the second one, they are highly functional.