Texas Primo (Upgrading a part Burly/part 525)

:frowning_with_open_mouth: :scream:

Noooooooooo

It’s alive again!

Now with mo powah.

This isn’t that hard of a cut, but even it was skipping with the parallel wiring.

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Awesome! That makes me feel great…I bet it is a much better feeling on your end.

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My confidence in my machine being able to do something definitely went up.

I’ve been thinking about ways to reduce the print time as much as possible but I may want to rethink that based on all the issues people are experiencing

Old thread, but in case it helps anyone…

It’s probably been done before, but I saved some time on my prints using a 0.6mm nozzle. Main advice I would give to anyone wanting to go down this road is to make sure your profile is tuned well. I think my parts came out OK, but they were slightly tighter on tolerances than I think they were designed to be. Main place I saw this show up is in the parts that sit on top of the feet…3 out of 4 have small splits at the nut trap, which I’m guessing may have been caused by the nut trap being a little small, and layer adhesion not being as good as it could have been.

Thankfully, those cracks are small, and I don’t think they’re affecting the clamping ability of that joint. Will definitely be keeping an eye on other parts to make sure I don’t see additional cracking.

Another suggestion for folks using Ender 3 printers is to check out Chuck Hellebuyck’s profiles, which seem to do a good job with printing significantly faster while maintaining good quality: CHEP | 3D model uploads | Thangs

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I think I used my CNC twice last year.

I really need to get out there and play with it more. Other projects have had my interest.

I only used my laser a few times last year also.

A lot of this is because we picked up a travel trailer over the summer and have been spending a lot of weekends camping.

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Sounds like fun and easier than tent camping.
In a pinch if you need a fix, a hatchet is basically a low resolution CNC…

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:rofl:

My son got one of those for Christmas.

My survival shovel has a small saw blade built into the handle.

Off topic but you can run an Ender 3 pretty fast. It’s all in the profiles and ya you are not going to get Bambu or Voron type speeds but for example here is what my Ender 3 runs and gets great prints. With things like pressure/linear advance, input shaper, etc. has helped a ton in last couple years. The default speeds and accels are way to low. Obviously you have to make sure your hotend can keep up with it but thats a whole different rathole.

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@kwledbetter Thanks!

I’ll take a look. I run multiple Ender 3s, so I may try these settings with one and tweak from there.

Are you running stock hot-end? I’ve added improved cooling ducts to all of mine (Bullseye on two, and mini Satsana on another), and I’m getting ready to change one over to an all-metal hot-end, as I’ve been having some real struggles with getting PETG to print well lately, so want to give myself a little more headroom on max temp.

I have an ender3 and I wouldn’t have dreamed it would go this fast. I was looking at putting a new direct drive on it to go faster… something like I read about here. What hot end is needed to go faster? I still have the stock. I’ve upgraded to a dual geared extruder and put a better fan setup on it and the blue tube. I’m happy with print quality at the moment, but 40 is way slower than 180…

Do an all metal HE. Dragonfly is what I run as its a drop in replacement but there are plenty of good ones. E3D V6, Microswiss, etc that with a printed bracket will mount very easily. Are you running the stock extruder? It’s not the best but works. I printed a Voron M4 for mine and never looked back. Been running this setup for over 2 years with zero complaints!

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The speed of your machine is limited to the performance of its slowest component. For the Ender 3 and any other bed slinger that would be the bed. So test how fast you can move the bed and that’s where your ceiling is. Also note that acceleration is just as important as speed for fast movements. Use this calculator to determine what speed your print move will actually reach. For instance the example of 180mm/s @3k accel means a print move will only ever reach that speed at a straight line distance of 11mm or more.

My best advise for speed gains for an Ender 3 is to find your fastest, reliable speed and acceleration for Y and then use slicer settings to see where you can save time. Things like only printing infill every 2 layers can speed up a print without changing anything on your printer.

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A direct drive in your case wouldn’t affect speed in a positive way. You’d be adding more weight to the carriage putting more stress on the X motor. A bowden setup is much lighter if that is what your Ender has installed. Direct drives are nice but don’t expect any speed improvement.

Replacing a PTFE lined hotend with an all metal hotend allows you to print at higher temperatures. However, higher temp materials normally require enclosures as they are adversely affected by cold ambient temps and drafts. If you plan on only printing materials like PLA and PETG, there is really no need upgrade to all metal.

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So, I say this as someone who, even with 4+ years of experience under my belt, still have much to learn about 3D printing…my understanding regarding temperature and PLA / PETG is that at extremes, printing hotter can, within a particular range, enable faster printing without outstripping the ability of the hot end to deliver material at the speed the nozzle is moving. CNC Kitchen has done a lot of testing on this front, in terms of the amount of material that can be extruded at a given nozzle diameter and speed.

This is just one of the many topics in 3D printing that make me wish I could work on stuff like this full-time, as it’s a lot harder to learn and keep track of the many variables involved when you’re doing projects every few weeks or months, rather than working and tweaking on a day-to-day basis.

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Extruder? Or hot-end? One of the first things I generally do on any Ender 3 is replace the plastic extruder with a metal one, for better durability. My hot-end is stock apart from swapping out the stock shroud and blower for the Bullseye or mini Satsana. The Bullseye have given me great bridging and performance, but I love the fact that the mini Satsana is much simpler and faster to print.

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Yes. You are right. You will get better flow at higher temps in general. For instance average printing temp for ABS is around 245°C. But for with very fast machine I’ll print at 260°C to avoid “cold core” extrusions. Same for larger nozzles.

PLA prints around 210°C and PETG 230°C I think? PLA I don’t think you’d ever get close to hitting the limit of a PTFE tube. It’s plausible to get PETG up to 250°C maybe? But I’d imagine that situation would never occur with the speeds of a stock Ender unless you’re using a large diameter nozzle and juicing the Ender for all it’s worth.

I’m not against the metal hotend per se. But in this situation I’m not sure it’s necessary.

Good point though.

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So ya replacing the extruder is way may important as tge stock ender 3 one is crap and breaks. Its not that you’ll melt the ptfe but its prone to backing out, it does get nasty and need to be trimmed over time etc. An all metal HE just is less to worry about and maintenance.

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Last update to this thread was Jan 11. I find myself still only using the CNC a few times a year.

But! Due to recent events, I find myself printing a new Kobalt router mount. I’m also going to try to use the machine to CNC cut some parts for my Kayak build I’m working on.

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