So in February, I finally bought my 3DP and started printing parts for my long-awaited LR2. I got a handful of them made, and then I realized that the LR3 was already well on the way and was being tested. Life got busy, and I shelved my efforts for a while, but I’ve now begun printing the parts for the LR3.
I must say, LR3 looks like it solves a lot of the potential issues I had with LR2, and I’m really looking forward to carrying this one to the end.
I especially find it interesting that it uses EMT conduit. When I first discovered MPCNC/V1/etc in 2020, I had some 1.25" or 1.5" EMT lying around my basement and had begun playing around with how to use it for rails for a CNC. I love that it’s much cheaper, readily available, and, I assume, plenty strong for the purpose.
After 27 years in Brookhaven, we moved to Acworth last December, so we’re just down the road from you! Would love to connect and see your setup sometime.
Thanks to the input earlier today, I confirmed that I don’t need support material. That, plus some optimization tweaks, brought my print time down from 35h to a bit under 25h. To me, that’s huge. I’m still running it pretty conservatively, but it’s underway. It’s also the first piece I’ve ever printed in black (or anything other than my initial spool of red, for that matter).
It should be done by bedtime tomorrow, fingers crossed!
There’s a very small amount of uplift on both ends; this first end is probably the worst of the two. At this point I think I’ll keep going, unless you guys advise me otherwise?
Personally, when that happens to me, I put a blob of medium thickness crazy glue under there, but it would depend on your bed. I use the reverse side of a mirror tile, so I’m ok if I damage it- they cost like $4 for 12 . But I haven’t damaged one yet and I’ve done a fair bit of printing
A drop of CA… interesting I like that. In this case, considering the filament and energy cost… might be worth a drop of CA for insurance. A new print surface may cost less than a core failing late in the print. CA does pop off of non-porous surfaces easily too; so cleanup should go well.
In the past I’ve scrambled for blue masking tape on similar situations.
My print bed is what came with the printer. It’s glass but with a dot pattern of something, not sure what. Adhesion tends to be really good, sometimes almost too good. We now have 6-7 hours to go; we’re up between 3.5-3.75" high and it doesn’t seem to be getting worse. In hindsight, I should have given the bed a fresh cleaning before starting such a big job.
Closing in on the finish line… no further adhesion/curling/lifting problems. I think we’ll make it. I do love having a community to bounce this off of!
LOL – My wife doesn’t quite “get” what I’m building here, nor even why I wanted (AKA “needed” right?) a 3D printer in the first place. She would ask what I wanted to print, and I tried to explain that the 3DP isn’t so much a tool to make things in my case as it is a tool to make better other tools. Or to make other tools better, mostly for the woodworking shop. Occasionally, I’d point out that if I had a 3DP, I could make (x). “Well, (x) costs a whole lot less that a 3DP…” Finally, my birthday came around (again) and she relented. She honestly hasn’t paid much attention to anything I’ve done with it, though I try to point out the value or utility of various things I’ve done. It’s just not her thing, and that’s fine.
She knows I’ve been printing a LOT this week, and… same line of questioning… asked what I’m working on. Not to be totally evasive, but being honest and having gone through this with the 3DP, I explained that I’m building a tool for woodworking. Good enough for now.
SO – I’m almost finished with the LR core (yay!) and she comes into my office and looks at it. “Wow – that’s big! Have you printed anything that big before?” “No,” I reply. “This is the thing I said was taking almost 25 hours.”
Then she takes a closer look and asks, “Isn’t it going to run out of room? Aren’t you going to have to move that bar up some?” (referring to the X-axis/gantry) Teachable moment… the X axis moves up by itself as it goes. Now she understands better how 3D printers work.
I think you are approaching it right. Just wait for questions and point out some things you make.
I have been at this full time for years…years. Just this last 6 months or so I got most of my friends to understand it and my girlfriends kids just this month started asking me to print things for them.
I spent years telling my same friends what I do in the garage all day every time they ask. It took me printing a ton of party favors one evening to get them all on board and asking me to print stuff (things that can’t be printed of course). We were hanging out making jokes, I disappeared into the garage for 5 minutes, found a model, sliced it, and got it running on every printer in the farm, an hour or so later the joke was real and it was a hit.
To us it kinda seems like old tech at this point. I think in reality we are still way ahead of the curve and most have not caught up to the tech yet or the concept of it even.
LR Core done. First photo of it printing the outline was at 10:14pm yesterday. Cura said it would take 24:41 to print, and it finished at 11:18pm, so 25:04 in reality.
This is one big honkin’ BEAST of a part (compared to anything else I’ve printed, at least)!
And here she is. On the third shot you can see the extent of the uplift along the ends. I had intentionally started this print late in the evening, so that if anything went wrong while I was asleep, I would have only lost those hours. vs. having it finish during the night and risk it screwing up while I was asleep.
I’m very happy with it, though. Smooth, no layer offsets… it even fits a nut & screw snugly.
I think you’re right, Ryan. Even among my fellow engineer friends, I’m still the outlier in terms of having a 3DP, much less a CNC. While these things have become a lot more accessible in terms of price and user-friendliness (Cricut and Glowforge come to mind), I think there’s still that conceptual barrier to entry for most people. These are tools. They can be used for lots of things. From my wife’s perspective, yes, it would be cheaper to use a rock out of the yard to drive a nail instead of buying a hammer, but that’s not the point. The hammer does it better, faster, more effectively, and it can be used for so many other things.
(Early in our 20+ year marriage, I was going to buy some “other” kind of hammer. She asked, “Don’t you already have a hammer? Why would anyone need more than one hammer?” My reply: “Why would anyone need more than one pair of black shoes?” Stunned silence.)
Maybe it’s that it takes an unusual combination of creativity and lack of fear of the technology. I know a ton of creative people who want nothing to do with tech, and a ton of techies who either aren’t creative, or at least don’t get a vision of “what could be” and how to get there on their own efforts.
