Has anyone tried printing a shooter lane protector?

For my Ender 3, leveling the bed was the first major milestone. It printed for shit before leveling and that still doesnt guarantee adhesion. There are bed leveling models on thingiverse that work nicely. Essentially the trick for me was to level all four corners plus the center to where a piece of paper would begin to catch between the nozzle and bed.

Your pics look like an adhesion problem meaning the part failed to stick to the bed. Leveling is step 1, then getting temps right and optionally adding a brim.

The next learning for me was adding a brim to small parts. Sometimes its needed to give your print some extra material to adhere. For the sample rabbit, probably not? The samples usually have a solid base.

Next is just to learn your filament. Each one for me feels slightly different. It should have temp ranges on the spool. Work with those until it starts to both adhere well to the bed and print well.

Ive also read that keeping your room temp steady and maybe warm for a non enclosed printer can make a difference too. Avoid drafts.

Hope that helps Im only a few weeks ahead of you in printing experience.

I have an Ender 3 v2 that I've put about two 1kg spools of filament through while learning to make stuff. Now I am close to ramping up a design so I can sell it, but I'm having dependability issues. My print takes about 10 hours and will often fail at random points in the print. When it fails, it looks like under extrusion - the parts get gaps and/or start to get thin and brittle. I'm not getting adhesion problems and I feel like I've fine tuned the machine to eliminate any points of failure from wobble.

I've replaced nozzles, hot ends and extruder parts but it keeps happening. I'll get maybe one good print after I go through the machine, then a few failed prints. Am I expecting too much from an entry level printer? Does a printer exist that will deliver more reliable and maybe faster prints?

Replaced the extruder top end with an all metal creality kit, and the capricorn tubing. Also replaced the hot end with a red creality hot end. I don't think the extruder ever had issues.. I feel like it was the hot end getting clogged every time.

Retraction was set to 5mm at 60mm/s. Creality slicer was warning me about 60mm/s being too fast, but it's also default so that's odd. I'll play with retraction speed and see how things react.

Mostly Overture from Amazon. Today I was using Hatchbox - I've had problems with both.

I'm starting to wonder if the nature of my print is the problem. It's relatively tall and skinny, so I put 6 of them together for stability. Have been using a brim, but starting to wonder if a thicker raft would help. I did have a successful print overnight but then a bad one this morning.

Thanks for the tips! I do get most failures with overture silk green so that makes me wonder.

Here is a fail from today. It ran fine then got clogged but seemed to clear itself out. This bad layer or two ruins the print.

Im sure it was clogged because the extruder was covered in green dust.

20220820_163250 (resized).jpg

Just following up. I stopped using silk PLA and the problems are pretty much gone. Also started printing with a raft because the parts are tall and narrow, so a raft helps stabilize them.

From what I'm finding on amazon feedback, there are plenty of complaints around silk PLA. I'm just going to stop using them.

Sorry for the spam but for those who were helping with my clogging issue, I think I've stumbled on the solution.

A few weeks back, I changed the thickness of my print from 1mm to 1.5mm to give it more strength. This is about when my prints started to fail. The default infill (I think) for Standard Quality prints with the Creality Slicer is 10%. I think changing the thickness somehow caused confusion within the printer as it tried to start infilling. Once I switched to 100% infill, I'm getting nothing but perfect prints.

I don't really understand what's happening, just that it's working nicely. Something to do with how it's treating creating walls and infill in a situation when the walls must be thinner than the default setting of 0.8mm, because the entire part is thinner than 2 walls would be.

I started with a Udemy course called Designing for 3D Printing with Fusion 360. I only got through about 1/3 of the course which I think was a good sign - it got me enough skills to just start making stuff myself. One challenge is Fusion 360 seems to get updated semi regularly and something major might change in the user interface - the teacher in this Udemy course at least tries to explain all of this before the course starts.

If your ender 3 needs a ball bearing spool holder look no further: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5493788

Found one on youtube but it was paywalled, so I designed this one.

Unless you want to learn the craft of making 3d art, which I think would be learning Blender - then maybe start with an existing Sting like this one:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4682285

Then scale it up, print and paint. At least thats what I would try. Maybe can even print the blade in a metallic material.

Edit: oops misread that you just want to hang it

Were you a kickstarter?

+1 for the ender 3 v2. I'm pushing 2 of them 24/7 (well almost).

Have been tempted to get the Bambulab tho.. because:
1. speed (assuming quality doesn't drop)
2. multi color

Not tempted by any other commercial 3d printers, not a bit.

Does your plunger suck?

So I'm making these Pindefender protectors and it seems a small percentage of buyers experience plunger issues after installing. Plunger is too weak or seems to rattle around too frequently. The current theory is that since the protector raises the ball up a few millimeters, it also pushes it forward a bit due to the design of Stern's auto-plunger and the manual plunger can no longer make a solid impact. (more instructions here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SvL_vl5BUNhT2pGlPR1mio4MoLIepGK8CUXT5bKNJPE/edit?usp=sharing)

So I printed up these plunger pucks - just a 9mmx3mm disc. 100% infill. They install into the shooter rubber tip, making the shooter a little longer without any major surgery.

My Avengers IQ has plunger issues with or without a protector. I can't full plunge more than 20% of the time. Using this plunger puck it's almost 100% as long as I get a smooth plunge. I haven't tracked this, but is this pretty common in new games?

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5564053

Capture (resized).PNG

For ender 3 owners, is there an extruder or hotend upgrade that will reduce clogs? I am changing filament once every few days and can't seem to get away from clogs. It's not usually a full clog, just a partial clog and I need to remove the tip and snake out the hot end.

Thanks. I do use the tubing cutter but will review.

I've went through probably 50 spools of PLA. Most brands are just fine (Hatchbox, Overture, Sunlu).. but today I received my third spool of Proto-pasta that just won't print. It clogs up the nozzle almost immediately. I've changed out nozzles, this stuff is just really spotty. Too bad cause its beautiful when it prints right.

Just experimenting with X1C. This is hatchbox metallic silver, plain black, proto pasta blood of my enemies (red eyes), overture glow in the dark teeth.

20230119_104432 (resized).jpg

12 hours and I think most of that was due to color changes.

All defaults so far, looks to be 0.2mm layer height. I did notice tonight that the red eyes bled into those layers of silver. It's slight, but that entire section has a red tint, even though it used a purge tower. I don't notice that with the other colors, only red.

I think this has been asked before but can someone remind me what apps to use to make sculpted models? I'm needing to get into sculpting and I'm not seeing that fusion360 can do that.

I picked up on it with a few videos and was able to run with it from there. Can start by making super simple things like washers and your creativity will take you further. There are some more advanced things that you'll have to go back and learn but all in all, pretty straight forward. A starter setup like the Ender 3 is $250 retail but often on sale for less.

I'm pretty happy with the supports too. With my ender 3 I didn't like using supports because it left marks on the piece, but x1c is supporting with less surface area it seems so they remove easily and don't leave marks.

Did you sculpt him too?

I can't really speak for the X1. It looks interesting, but I've tried a diode laser before and it was super underwhelming. This one may be better, but it's hard to say without trying it.

My experience has been with co2 lasers. I've used a 30w for years and it cut through acrylic in one pass, no issues. If I picked up another laser it would be the omtech 40w with a few upgrades.

The X1 doesn't have an enclosure (if I'm looking at the right model) so just be careful with what you cut. Acrylic is 'safe' but I still wouldn't want to breathe those fumes. Some materials will emit chemical warfare if you laser them, like PVC.

Something I wish I knew when I started - the work space on consumer grade lasers is pretty small. If the X1 has a 17x15 that's actually pretty big compared to co2 lasers. Some projects you might download and try to make, take a lot of space. If you buy plans from etsy for example, you may need to rearrange them and cut several sheets which can take a lot of extra effort and time. If you're just cutting small parts that you design, you might be happy with it.

If any of you reading this is experienced with injection molded parts and willing to give some advice, pm me? Thanks

Drafts are known to affect print quality so I'm happy to have the x1c enclosure. Have had much success with mine.. 2 years in and haven't had one clog.