Tag Archives: Simplify3D

Print Diary – July 30th – Taking the Plunge!

August 2, 2015 VickyTGAW Leave a comment

Going for the Craft Fair
My town has an annual craft fair every September and June. After much discussion with my husband, we decided we are going to try to do the fair’s very first 3D Printed booth this year. If anything, we will be testing the waters for future 3D printing vendors. I applied for an official business license with my town. Yikes! : )

My prints today were some items in preparation for the faire– orioles, coasters, monarch butterflies.

Process Improvement
I did improve my bird printing process. Previously, I was printing all the birds at 0.10 layers. This allowed me to get more layers in of colors so they filled in better, but keeping the overall detail small.

Well I realized the backing of the bird didn’t need to be that short. In Simplify3D, I added an additional process where I printed the bottom of my birds at 0.2mm layers and then decreased down to 0.10 when I got to my color switches.

The result– it’s now quite fast to produce out a full bed of birds!

Science-Themed Pendant by Rosie Campbell
I did also try out the Science Themed Pendant by Rosie Campbell. It’s lovely and licensed Creative Commons (with commercial use). I like it, I’m satisfied with the print. I can see myself wearing it.

But…

Man, that hole is awfully small. It could be done— but you might need one of those needle threaders to do it.

Nonetheless, it’s lovely!

3D Printing, Print Diary, Slicing

Print Diary – July 24, 2015 – Fun with Sharkz!

July 25, 2015 VickyTGAW Leave a comment

My intent when I woke up in the morning was to do my reprint of the Mobius Strip USB Holder. As I perused reddit over my morning coffee, however, I found a delightful little tangent– Sharkz from Thingiverse user Murray Clark. It’s a small object, so it is a fast print. It prints without supports and it moves. It can function as a little bag clip…or clothes hangers…or I even saw one maker using them as clip on earrings.

I have a four year old and a two year old and imaging their faces playing with the Sharkz was just too tempting to resist. The four year old in particular. He’s a Sharknado fan. : )

Simplify3D Settings
My print settings were really straight forward. Nothing fancy at all. In fact, I pretty much stole everything from the Thingiverse Instructions tab. They recommended 4 perimeters and an Infill of 60% to give the Sharkz a sturdy bite. They also recommended a layer height of 0.2 mm. Easy peasy.

Under the Layer tab:
- Layer Height: 0.20
- Infill: 60%
- Outline/Perimeter Shells: 4
Under the Other tab:
For my bridge speed, I used some tried and true settings I originally got from Ed Nisley’s blog when he printed the Bridge Calibration test.
- Bridging Speed Multiplier – 125% (This should come out to 6000 mm/min which is 100mm/second)

Confirming Bridging Settings
Since bridging was going to be key to the Sharkz’s jaw movement, I used my little hack to make sure my bridge settings were going to take effect. I temporary set my Bridging Speed Multiplier to 600%. I did a preview. The preview color codes by the print speed, so that made my bridge areas bright red. I changed it back to 125% and printed away.

Sharkz = Fun
The bridges worked well and our little sharks do have quite a bite. They proved to be fun for the whole family, including my 69-year old mother.

A fun, quick little tangent.

Print Diary, Slicing

Print Diary – July 19th – July 22nd

July 22, 2015 VickyTGAW Leave a comment

Quick order of business– in my print diary posts, settings and strategies are not necessary solid conclusions, just a documentation of what I tried and my observed results.

My programming day job was going to be exceptional busy, so I needed some more hands-off experiments. One of the things I covet with my new hoarding tendencies is a rock tumbler to polish my bronzeFill.

“But we have a rock tumbler,” my husband said. He pointed to a free one we got from our neighbor a few years ago. The one sitting on a book shelf in behind a commemorative Star Trek plate collecting dust. The thing is– it’s for kids and not at all like the fancy rock tumbler in the Barnacules Nerdgasm video. And the barrel is tiny!

But I did just splurge on a whole lot of filament. There was no harm in experimenting with this free, tiny rock tumbler. I did have a project that would fit in the barrel. The Elements of Harmony Di.

I designed it for my favorite Brony‘s birthday this past January. It looks amazing in Shapeways’ Stainless Steel.

Back in April when I first got the MakerGear M2 I had run through several runs and iterations perfecting the Di in Black PLA. I did end with something I was satisfied with. But I wanted to resurrect the experiments with a couple of changes:

Back then I was concerned with the shininess of the bottom layer and how it looked so different from the rest of the die. I ended up using a raft to give it a similiar texture and feel. Don’t need that anymore. If I’m printing in bronzeFill, it’s all going to shine up. This was also back in the day before I discovered how amazing hairspray and the gluestick is. Another reason I can ditch the raft.
Back then I was using Slic3r. I tend to user Simplify3d nowadays. In my experience, I’ve had better results with bridging with Slic3r than with Simplify3d. So my experiments were an ongoing effort to try to improve my bridging in Simplify3d.

Some odds and ends of the past couple of days.

New Slic3r is Beautiful!
I went ahead and used this as an excuse to download and use the new 1.2.9 version. My impression is positive. The new 3D View is lovely, but I’m most pleased to see the new “Layer” and “Preview” views. The Preview view is of particular interest to me as I like to scrutinize print lines and patterns.

Now, I did end up crashing new Slic3r three or four times. My hypothesis is that I was changing multiple settings in a row while it was trying to regenerate it’s previews. That’s not a conclusion– just a hunch.

Cooling, You Idiot!
I mentioned I have had better luck bridging (and sometimes overhangs) in Slic3r than Simplify3d. A few months ago, I opened both and started scrutinized settings and trying to get my Simplify3d to match my Slic3r results. Because I’m anal, I took screenshots and made notes of the changes and why I tried them. Well, I pulled up Cooling and I made NO changes and I wrote down that I had made no changes.

Back then, I hadn’t realized the extent cooling played a role, specifically in overhangs. I would learn that when I mastered the 3D Hubs Marvin.

I went ahead and made some changes in the Cooling tab:

Under Speed Overrides changed Adjust printing speed for layers below from 15 seconds to 30 seconds
Under Fan Overrides, I checked Increase fan speed for layers below and changed the seconds from 45 to 60
Under Fan Overrides, I checked Bridging fan speed override.

Note– Since my Fan Speed is already 100 for everything after the first layer, I do not expect any change from my Fan Overrides section. (But the settings are in place should I tweak fan settings at a later date).

I have a feeling the Speed Override alone would have made my 3D Hubs Marvin endeavor a whole lot easier. The jury is still out on that, however, as I haven’t tested him out. : )

Simplify3D Bridging Hack
I also have a new version of Simplify3d which I had been hoping would fix a perimeter bridging issue I had noted. Quick tip, if you ever want to see where the Bridging Settings are taking effect set your Bridging Speed SUPER high– like 600%.

Then when you preview your layers, those items are color coded in red and orange. Unfortunately, that revealed that my bridging settings were still not taking effect where I wanted them.

In the case of my dice, I had a lucky workaround. My perimeters of the bottom face were doing okay. It was the infill that was drooping and sagging. There were only two places on the dice considered “Solid Infill”. So I changed my Solid Infill speed to match what I wanted for the Bridging Speed.

And I could see that bottom layer was going to print at a faster “bridge” speed.

This doesn’t help with things like the Bridging Extrusion Multiplier, but guess what– in the case of my dice, it was enough! I got my satisfactory results.

P.S. I could have always gone with supports. I was just being stubborn.

So at the end of these experiments– I have a handful of dice to run through our el cheapo rock tumbler. Wish me luck!

3D Printing, Print Diary, Shapeways, Slicing

Print Diary – July 15, 2015

July 16, 2015 VickyTGAW Leave a comment

Amateur Hour
My morning print could be aptly described as “amateur hour”. I decided to make another stab at my two color cardinal. I had a busy workday, so the print wasn’t my top priority and I did note my filament had come uncoiled as I put it on the machine, but I didn’t think much of it. I got the print started, confirmed the first layer was going well and then I directed my attention to some programming projects.

All of a sudden I noticed the infill of the cardinal, which is usually quite smooth, was very much NOT so.

It was shortly there after, I noticed that all those loose coils had worked themselves in a nice, extruding-thwarting, knot.

I was able to undo the knot and the print resumed. Now, I have seen first hand how the quality and quantity of the infill can impact your top layer.

An illustration of how infill & top layer settings can make a big difference in #3DPrinting. The top example- 40% infill with 15 solid layers at top. The bottom example, 10% infill with 3 solid layers at top.

A photo posted by Vicky Somma (@vickytgaw) on Jun 16, 2015 at 5:51pm PDT

I was printing at 0.10 mm layers and at this point, I knew I had enough layers for my bird to recover. I felt that he would still end up with a smooth body and head. And I was right! Sure enough, layer by layer, the surface smoothed out and was looking rather fine.

But then…. ANOTHER KNOT.

Seriously! I let the exact same thing happen AGAIN. You would never guess that I spent 10 years working on Quality Control Software. You would never guess that I have heard of phrases like “corrective and preventative action”. : )

Anyway, at that point, I was just two layers away from one of my visible surfaces. I knew the bird would not recover.

But I let the print continue.

Failures in life (and 3D Printing) can also be “Learning Opportunities”. In this case, I wanted to see how my wing detail later in the print would look. It didn’t matter how shabby the rest of the bird looked. I would still be able to assess whether my “peeks of black” were going to be effective in the wing. The overall print would be a fail, but I would still gain some knowledge.

Experiments with Wing Detail
Later in the afternoon, I decided to give the cardinal another whirl. This time I made sure I wasn’t sloppy with my filament. And to keep the learning going with the print, I decided to play with the print lines in the wing.

I remembered seeing the “Owliver Belt Buckle” by Shapeways Designer Michael Mueller in Grey Polished Steel a while back. One of the things that really struck me about the design is how amazingly the print lines added to the feather effect.

Although I was working in plastic, it occurred to me that perhaps my feather detail could also benefit from some changes in the print lines. Perhaps instead of the straight lines on the wing, something like concentric lines that followed the contour of the feather/wing would look nice. But I wanted to keep the body-as in. I wanted to keep the diagonal straight lines there.

This experiment was easy to set up in Simplify3d. For more detail instructions, I suggest referring to their Different Setting for Different Regions of the Model Tutorial.

Quick synopsis – You use the Cross Section View to determine the actual height of where you want to make setting changes. Then you set up multiple processes (aka Settings). In the Advanced tab you can define the scope of the settings– where they should begin and end.

Quick note– I didn’t test it out in Simplify3d v3.0.0, but in v2.2.2 I had to be careful to turn my fan on for the first layer in my second batch of settings (because it isn’t actually a first layer– it just thinks it is)

Another multiprocess note- I have seen a bug with these multi-processes and rafts. I have not tested to see if it is corrected in v3.0.0

With my wing settings, under the Infill tab, I changed my External Fill Pattern to Concentric.

When the print was done, I was able to decide which External Fill Pattern I liked best in the wing.

Rectilinear

Concentric

Conclusion: The original! I liked the original rectilinear better. Does that mean I wasted my time? Nah… at least now I know*. : )

*I’m paraphrasing Barnacules Nerdgasm here (from his BronzeFill polishing experiments).

3D Modeling, 3D Printing, Print Diary, Slicing

Print Diary – July 14, 2015

July 15, 2015 VickyTGAW Leave a comment

M2 Lubrication
Today I did something scary (for me). My comfort level is more in the modeling and the software side, but the MakerGear M2 was due for some monthly maintenance. According to the documentation I received with the printer, I needed to:

Clean the X and Y linear rails, and the Z leadscrew, of grease, then apply a fresh coat to each – a dot of white lithium grease in each of the long grooves on the X and Y rails, and a dot in four consecutive troughs of the Z leadscrew; once applied, move that axis through its full travel multiple times to spread the grease.

Okay. So first step. I needed to confirm what I thought was the X and Y rails and the Z leadscrew was accurate. With that, I did some poking in the M2 Assembly Instructions. My conclusion seemed accurate (I’m happy to consider evidence to the contrary).

The M2 What’s in the Box manual that shipped with my printer helpfully had pictures of the Lithium Grease and the Applicator, so I knew exactly what supplies to use.

I did my dabbing.

Then I opened my Simplify3D, went to Tools->Machine Control Panel and then clicked on the Jog Controls tab. I used the various X, Y, and Z movements to move the printer around to spread the grease.

It turned out to be pretty easy and not very scary at all.

Cardinal Progress
I did a test run of my two-color Cardinal. With a item like this, the point of focus is going to be on the top, so when I slice in Simplify3d, I give some scrutiny to the my top level (As opposed to say a 3D scan of a person– there the top of the object isn’t the center of focus). I noted with my cardinal there was an oddity in the top.

Even though that section was going to be all red, I didn’t want that odd texture in the mix. I wanted a nice, smooth surface for viewing pleasure. I’ve seen this issue before and I knew what I was up against– I didn’t have a completely flat surface where I wanted one.

I opened my modeling software back up (Blender) and the issue was I had a number of vertices that weren’t exactly the same as the others of that level. In the example below -0.00933 instead of 0. This caused the surface to not be exactly flat and when it came to slicing time, the printer has to translate that into layers. To adjust for the non-flat surface, part of the cardinal’s chest did not go as high as everything else.

I adjusted my vertices to make them exact and make a nice flat surface. When I sliced again you can see the difference.

My test print is coming along. The cardinal is cute, though this doesn’t represent my vision. He’s supposed to have red on his wing with just snippets of black poking through. I had a lapse of concentration during the last filament change to red and ended up mucking up the exchange by going the wrong way on the Z axis.

The Chickadee and His Friend

Live and learn! Tomorrow is another day and another print. : )

TGAW 3D