3D Printer yet?

[HobGoblyn]

I can't believe you're still waiting mnementh 

I spent yesterday fitting the BLtouch to my CR10 V2, all seemed to go well, then I went to do a test print.  The printer went to go to the home position, but the BLtoouch didn't work and it started banging into my glass bed. Luckily I was watching it so turned it off within a couple of seconds.

I was confused, it worked perfectly when setting it up and testing and when I turn the printer on, it goes out and in like it's supposed to.

Then I realised the blue led wasn't on on the BLtouch

To cut a long story short, I discovered it's the creality cable that goes from main board to the socket by the extruder, as shown on this badly recorded vid.

[HobGoblyn]

Easy fix, the pins in the plug just needed squeezing a bit

[Zucca]

Congrats Goblyn, I also have to fix my ripped USB port.

BTW, Let's open the chapter slicer. No way I will pay for Simplify3D.
Now between Slic3r and Cura I can not decide. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[mnementh]

Well-done Z! I love the smell of angry pixies in the morning!!!

@HobGoblyn:

Yeah, this is going to balloon big enough to hurt them in the mainstream market. CReality has definitely painted themselves shady AF, and nobody to blame but themselves. With the shite QC and complete lack of vetting on this product, they'll be lucky if it doesn't sour the teat on E3 sales as well...

For maybe a month. Then it'll be business as usual; the bottom line is the bottom line when you can only spend so many dollars, and they cater to the "slightly more money than total bottom-feeders" and the "Finally willing to  gamble a couple-three hunnerd dollars on a entry-level 3DP" crowd. They'll We'll still buy them... warts, bullshit tacos and all, because CReality is still the best-polished turd floating in the China-Direct 3DP sea of shite. 


I prefer Cura... they seem to have a lot faster response time on updates, and a lot more turnover on new features. Slic3r was way anti-intuitive to me; I found myself constantly asking "Why the FUCK would anyone hide THAT there...?"

That said, I haven't been back since I started using Cura; it took a little reading, but Ultimaker's Cura support pages are thorough and very educational. You can literally teach yourself most of the art of 3DP if you just keep reading and printing and rereading until you grok in fullness. 


S3D tho... hands down the best GCode viewer. That is the main reason I keep thinking about plonking down the $$$. It really helps to be able to "see" the GCode before it runs.

mnem
 

[BroMarduk]

Ah, I adjusted the Z screw stop axis and installed the glass bed, any elegant suggestion (no paper clip, thing) on how to keep it in place?

The show must go on.

Try Swiss clips.  https://gulfcoast-robotics.com/products/4-swiss-mounting-clips-for-borosilicate-glass-bed.    Take up very little bed space on the glass.

[BroMarduk]

Sitting here with 2 Ulitmakers (3 & 2+ Extended) and an Ender 3 I'm upgrading for a friend and stumbled across this.

https://www.ogadget.com/x/biqu-bx?utm_medium=FB%20Group&utm_source=FB%20Group%20Giveaway&fbclid=IwAR0KITw3tvxIbIi1AkkkPXZ9yOL9MOP2Zmf-34nBaK98jVnlNqOqf75YskA

Has some interesting features for the "pre-release" price of $249.  (Seems its going through Kickstarter, so consider the risk).

Lightweight (219g) direct extruder,
400 MHz mainboard,
250mm x 250mm x 250mm print area (not on web page, but mentioned in FB group.)
Precision, silent steppers,
7" Touch Screen
All metal hot-end
Mean Well (Taiwanese) Power Supply
OctoPrint ready (just add Pi)

The video of the TPU cat that it supposedly printed got my attention (you have to join their FB group (BIQU BX Coming Soon...) to see the video unfortunately but I attached a screen shot (its squishy).

BIQU is the printer brand of Bigtree Tech, who are famous for their inexpensive upgrade boards for the Creality (and other) printers.

[Bassman59]

Ah, I adjusted the Z screw stop axis and installed the glass bed, any elegant suggestion (no paper clip, thing) on how to keep it in place?

The show must go on.

I use tape.  Scotch Magic here in the US.  Just ordinary office paper mending tape.  It has no stretch so it keeps things down and not moving.  It is easy to remove when necessary.  And has survived bed temps to 60 C.  Ymmv if you run the bed hotter.

Perhaps use Kapton (Polyimide) tape?

[mnementh]

Sitting here with 2 Ulitmakers (3 & 2+ Extended) and an Ender 3 I'm upgrading for a friend and stumbled across this.

https://www.ogadget.com/x/biqu-bx?utm_medium=FB%20Group&utm_source=FB%20Group%20Giveaway&fbclid=IwAR0KITw3tvxIbIi1AkkkPXZ9yOL9MOP2Zmf-34nBaK98jVnlNqOqf75YskA

Has some interesting features for the "pre-release" price of $249.  (Seems its going through Kickstarter, so consider the risk).

Lightweight (219g) direct extruder,
400 MHz mainboard,
250mm x 250mm x 250mm print area (not on web page, but mentioned in FB group.)
Precision, silent steppers,
7" Touch Screen
All metal hot-end
Mean Well (Taiwanese) Power Supply
OctoPrint ready (just add Pi)

The video of the TPU cat that it supposedly printed got my attention (you have to join their FB group (BIQU BX Coming Soon...) to see the video unfortunately but I attached a screen shot (its squishy).

BIQU is the printer brand of Bigtree Tech, who are famous for their inexpensive upgrade boards for the Creality (and other) printers.

Ummm.... yeah. I was in on the "Super Early Bird" notification with the CR6-SE... responded immediately only to find they'd had a FurkBook-only pre-release party where all those slots were announced 12 hours early, and all the people on the mailing list were left out in the cold, only able to to get in on the general release.

It went downhill from there.

After seeing HobGoblyn's assache adventures with his BTT board and E3, not exactly excited by the prospect of joining another such China-Direct 3DP KickStarter. And certainly not on a printer they're going to try and sell for $500/copy absolutely as soon as they think they can get away with it.

mnem
I've had enough butthurt for a while, thanks. Not interested in volunteering for more.   

[Zucca]

I'm allergic to Kickstarter now, I got my fingers burned once.
I will do again the same mistake if it is not a lot of money, I am not in a hurry to have it (=can wait for 2 years), and I am sure I can fix somehow if it is shit.

PS: The Ender 5 is a good base to do the upgrades (dual Z is already on the super slow boat from china).

[BroMarduk]

Ummm.... yeah. I was in on the "Super Early Bird" notification with the CR6-SE... responded immediately only to find they'd had a FurkBook-only pre-release party where all those slots were announced 12 hours early, and all the people on the mailing list were left out in the cold, only able to to get in on the general release.

It went downhill from there.

After seeing HobGoblyn's assache adventures with his BTT board and E3, not exactly excited by the prospect of joining another such China-Direct 3DP KickStarter. And certainly not on a printer they're going to try and sell for $500/copy absolutely as soon as they think they can get away with it.

mnem
I've had enough butthurt for a while, thanks. Not interested in volunteering for more.   

Points all taken.  I've had mixed results with the BTT boards and considering its a new hotend/extruder and board I'm sure it will be a fun beta testing exercise.   Assuming I can grab one at the pre-release price, then I may go for it.  If not, I won't be paying $500 until its a much more mature product.   All that said, it does have potential (at least according to the marketing spin).

[mnementh]

I'm allergic to Kickstarter now, I got my fingers burned once.
I will do again the same mistake if it is not a lot of money, I am not in a hurry to have it (=can wait for 2 years), and I am sure I can fix somehow if it is shit.

PS: The Ender 5 is a good base to do the upgrades (dual Z is already on the super slow boat from china).

Oh, the ONLY reason I was willing to gamble that kind of money was the CReality name and reputation for actually being one of the few China-direct 3DP vendors that didn't just leave you twisting in the wind, but would actually address problems with faulty components, etc. Sadly, decisions made here by their executive offices have quite soured me on that reputation.

I expect now to be, like with my Diggro, pretty much on my own once it arrives. The thrill of having investors who don't expect a percentage of the profit has obviously fucked up their grey matter; or perhaps this is another case of them simply not thinking the way we do. 

In related news, I've received a response from an admin on the CReality forum with an eMail at CReality, and a response to the eMail I sent there. Hopefully this will mean my address actually gets updated before my printer goes out... then the 30-50 day wait for shipping. 

mnem
 

[Zucca]

Did this kiskstarter end 2013, shipping in 2014. I put my USA address in it. In Dec. 2014 I move out back to Europe. Of course the printer was not delivered yet. "No sorry we can't change address to Europe" , so I sent it to a friend of mine in USA. 

Basically anothere kickstarter rule is: do not change your address for the next two years.

[GlennSprigg]

I was recently wondering!!!... Although there are very cheap & obviously rubbish 3D Printers that can now be bought
for as little as $79 now, (as in the video below), could they be modified into something more useful ??   
I mean, if $79 gets you some software, and a bunch of hardware virtually making a 'CNC' machine, can it be repurposed?
I know it wouldn't have the strength to Mill most metals etc, but maybe 'mill' off copper to make Circuit-Boards, by working
with a 'negative' so it removes all the copper 'not' needed, etc etc. There must be many other uses. Surely it wouldn't be
too hard to replace the Head with other simple devices, for varied uses, and for such a low cost?   
Food for thought...

[Monkeh]

The software is free. As for the hardware, they're not nearly rigid or square enough to do PCB milling and you won't have much original left by the time you're done making them better.

[CatalinaWOW]

Work area is extremely small, but you could do low precision things like cake decorating or laying down hot glue for glitter decorations on patches.

All in all, go up a couple hundred bucks and get a printer that works. 

[mnementh]

Yeah, seriously. Any 3DP that isn't based on al extrusion or metal plates/angles is eventually going to become a lack-of-rigidity clusterfuck in short order, requiring periodic, in some cases frequent realignment of the chassis. A great many of those that ARE made of metal will become such a clusterfuck very quickly, because the manufacturer tries to get away with the fewest number of cuts and doesn't properly design so the frame self-aligns into a properly rigid collection of planes.

The CReality Ender product line teeters on the edge of that balance; they are pretty much the bottom of the barrel for anything really useful.

As Monkeh said; the software is free (in the *NIX flavor of the word; you pay for it by investing your time learning a new language) so really nothing useful there. The uber-cheap kits all try to leverage some warehouse score of weird non-standard hardware (steppers, long-ago abandoned hotend parts, sliders, rollers etc) or injection-molded ABS with precision faults that are visible to the naked eye, and almost never have a heated bed, so *blerk*... nothing useful there for the building of a decent 3DP. It's just money pissed away on junk that will take up space in the Tinkerer's Cupboard of Doom ( we all have one) until our kids have to haul it off to the dumpster when we die.

TL/DR: They all exist pretty much to suck money out of the pockets of clueless noobs hoping to get a start in 3DP for cheap. 

Arguably, CReality is ALSO of that ilk... for sure so are most of their clones.

When you get into that price bracket, everything is a tradeoff... a better part A costs a dollar or three more, which WILL come out of the finished product in the form of a cheaper part B somewhere else. you need to be more knowledgeable than the typical noob to be able to choose those tradeoffs in a sane & productive fashion.

I learned those lessons the hard way with my Tevo Tarantulas... I would never EVER recommend one of them as a first printer for anyone. 

Due to the huge customer support base, I really can only recommend something like the E3/E3 Pro right now for someone wanting to get into 3DP on the cheap, and after seeing HobGoblyn's adventures with his, I further recommend ONLY from a store on Amazon where you have a reasonable right of refusal if your particular unit turns out to be a shitshow.

If you have more money to spend, there are a world of options out there... but as I'm the original cheap-ass dwagon, I only have first-hand experience of those by helping others fix theirs, so I'm not a good person to ask, as I will tend to be a bit prejudiced based on HAVING TO help people fix theirs.

As I still haven't received MY CR6-SE, despite being one of the very firstest KS backers, I really can't recommend for or against... and by the time I DO get mine, pretty much everybody who knows anything about 3DP will have had a chance to dissect them in microscopic detail, and my opinion is already tainted by the whole thing.

Right now, if you can get one off Amazon for the roughly USD$180 I paid for mine, I can definitely still recommend the Diggro Alpha-3/Longer LK4 Pro. The fact of getting it from AMAZON for that price with touchscreen UI was the only reason I took a gamble on mine; IMO it was a gamble that paid off.

mnem
 

[Bassman59]

Due to the huge customer support base, I really can only recommend something like the E3/E3 Pro right now for someone wanting to get into 3DP on the cheap, and after seeing HobGoblyn's adventures with his, I further recommend ONLY from a store on Amazon where you have a reasonable right of refusal if your particular unit turns out to be a shitshow.

I bought an Ender 3 Pro last month, based on the recommendation of two friends who own the thing as well as slicer support (Cura). For $204 shipped, it's a lot better than I expected. The assembly directions were useless but there's a guy on the YT who made a video that walks you through the build process.

It's got the stock firmware which seems to work well enough. The control board does have some stupid design decisions, the main one being that if you connect something to the USB port, that port powers the extruder fan, even when the main power supply is off. (and there are workarounds for that.) I can't imagine that this fan will last very long if powered up continuously.

I set up Octaprint on an old Mac mini but the USB-serial drivers needed to talk to the printer are buggy as fuck and kept crashing. So I dug out my old Raspberry Pi (possibly the first generation?) and despite the dire warnings that it might not be suitable, I installed Octoprint on it, and ... yeah, I ended up ordering a Pi 4.

I also bought the $80 "tent" for the machine, seeing as how it lives in basically a shed. The tent keeps it clean.

The 3 Pro came with the magnetic build surface which makes removing the work easy, but each print has a "skirt" of a layer of PLA around the design and getting that off of the build surface is difficult. Maybe I'll get the borosilicate build plate.

Most of my issues with it so far are my inexperience in doing mechanical packaging design. My main interest here is enclosures and panels for electronics projects. And even though I've been doing FPGAs for two decades now and I know that "a design is only as good as its models" I keep bumping into the problem of inaccurate models for the things on my boards. So a dumb thing like the incorrect height of a rotary encoder body meant nine hours wasted for a print to finish. (I'm now in the habit of setting up prints to start at night before going to sleep and checking on them in the morning. Or I'll run the printer when I'm at the office.)

The long print times has me concerned -- what's the actual duty cycle of these things? How long should I expect it to work before I need to futz with the extruder or something else?

Since the printer is in the same room as the DVR for my security cameras, I pointed a camera at the printer and I can see it working. When I see that it stops, I can shut off the printer's main supply remotely (there's a Wemo switch on it).

If you have more money to spend, there are a world of options out there... but as I'm the original cheap-ass dwagon, I only have first-hand experience of those by helping others fix theirs, so I'm not a good person to ask, as I will tend to be a bit prejudiced based on HAVING TO help people fix theirs.

A couple of friends have asked whether they should get the Ender Pro 3, and I said, "it all depends on your willingness to futz with the thing. If you just want to get work done, spend the $1300 and buy the Dremel. That comes with actual support, actual software, and it's built to live in an office and not in a toolshed."

As I still haven't received MY CR6-SE, despite being one of the very firstest KS backers, I really can't recommend for or against... and by the time I DO get mine, pretty much everybody who knows anything about 3DP will have had a chance to dissect them in microscopic detail, and my opinion is already tainted by the whole thing.

My rule about Kickstarter and Indie GoGo and the rest of them: they simply don't exist.

[mnementh]

I've backed a couple dozen projects on KS... in all honesty, this is the first one where a vendor out & out lied to their customer base and blatantly used those customers in this fashion, and the first where there wasn't a clear and obvious attempt by the vendor to actually fulfill delivery on the promised timetable.

It is an experience I will not forget, especially when someone asks me how I feel about CReality as a company. Maybe I've been lucky up to now, or maybe I've just been extra-paranoid and that has protected me.

But I expect the difference is that this one time, I trusted CReality based on existing reputation, instead of asking myself "Why would an established manufacturer choose to release via KickStarter rather than retail as they've done all along?"

If I had asked that question, I'd probably already have my CR6-SE by now; purchased retail.

mnem

[Zucca]

Meanwhile at the CReality Headquarter



Happy now menm?

[mnementh]

 





No regrets.

mnem

[mnementh]

I've received "confirmation" from CReality that my address has been successfully updated; in a shocking coincidence, they've just posted this "Update":



It's like they just can't stop digging the hole...

mnem
 

[xrunner]

[Zucca]

First print.. ready for lots of fishes slap on my face.

[xrunner]

The longest journey begins with a single step.

[mnementh]

First print.. ready for lots of fishes slap on my face.

Not as cute as my first off the plate. 

Time to print something useful... https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/3d-printer-yet/msg2976002/#msg2976002

mnem