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Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

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mnementh:

--- Quote from: bd139 on June 21, 2018, 06:44:06 am ---It’s weird when things invoke memories like that but it’s a good thing. The first thing I bought from Tandy as it was called here was a single red LED when I was about 7. This cost me a week’s pocket money at the time. My father only used bulbs and said that LEDs were not a thing and wouldn’t last. Then I found out I needed a resistor so had to wait for next weeks money as Archer would shaft you 15p for 5 :( ... still have that LED and resistor soldered together somewhere. Alas it lived longer than he did  :-DD

Printer looks rather nice. Congratulations. Playing with the idea of buying one here still but as usual I don’t have the space for it. I still get the idea of buying one and working that out afterwards. Even though it’s relatively crap I’m still considering the Anet A8 as you can get frame upgrade kits now and spread the investment over a few months then. Plus you can get the whole thing for £90 here.
--- End quote ---



I'm dead chuffed with it already; took me 20 minutes to have the frame fully assembled, then I got distracted for a couple hours with "daddy duties", then I tinkered and made sure the belts were running true/not dragging, added a strain relief on the hotend, and scraped the pre-print off the hotbed. You can see it in the background; they even included a putty knife, tho I'll need to sharpen it for it to be of any use. I've done my reality checks and verified the end-stops stop and it know where all the corners are; tomorrow I'll level the bed and do a print off one of the included files on the SD card.

Run, don't walk from any acrylic frame 3DP... even the Tarantula is a better printer. You want to get into something with real leadscrew instead of threaded rod, and the threaded rod supporting the Y-Axis deck is just a PITA to get square. You want either a monolithic aluminum plate like the GEEETECH, or one made of end-jointed 2020/2040 extrusion like these, where the right-angle cuts ensure everything goes together square. For your money, you're pretty much just getting stepping motors and a MKS BASE 1.4/1.4 controller with the small LCD.

For $310 (less $54 I had in affiliate points from Bang-'em-good) I got the Tornado; it has a better extruder, better 24V hotend, rock-solid aluminum frame and 300 x 300 x 400 build volume with 110V-powered (220V available) ceramic-plate hotbed pre-loaded with knock-off Build-Tak that everybody raves about how fast it heats up.  :-+

3DP is an area where it really pays to save up and spend a little more; I paid $110 more for this than the Tarantula, but I got easily 5x the printer and oodles less assache.


Cheers,


mnem
*toddles off to ded*

tautech:
mnem
Defpom got an Ender printer a few weeks back that looks very similar excepting the control system.
He had some DOA issues with it but it's now up and running.
There's a few vids about it on his YT page:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDefpom/videos

Looking forward to some of your 'creations'.

bitseeker:

--- Quote from: mnementh on June 21, 2018, 04:13:32 am ---[SLICE OF LIFE Random Mode]
Strange how something so mundane and unremarkable can trigger such a flood of memories...

--- End quote ---

Cool memories. And, yeah, we're all getting old. I try to ignore it. :-DD


--- Quote ---This was the first thing I ever bought by myself at a Radio Shack

--- End quote ---

Ah, Radio Shack. Those are memories, too. I used to read their catalogs like a book, learning about various components and thinking of the things I could make with them, including how I'd make my own version of products from the other sections of the catalog.

I still have the Forrest Mims Engineer's Mini Notebooks from Radio Shack.


--- Quote ---In other news...

BEHOLD! Gaze on in awe and terror; at the amazing CLEAR SPACE ON MY WORKBENCH! I've been working my tuchus off all week to make this hole; it's for a special project.

--- End quote ---

It's like seeing crop circles (or squares, as the case may be) in the middle of an open field. Shock and awe!


--- Quote --- 

My father's day present to myself was this; a Tevo Tornado 3D printer. It is based on the popular Tevo Tarantula basic design; with a number of bug-fixes and twice the build volume. More importantly, unlike the Tarantula, there are no acrylic parts and the thing comes 95% assembled out of the box.

--- End quote ---

Awesome! Those acrylic ones are...hrm...no good. What a poor choice for materials (except as a cost-cutting measure). I haven't yet jumped into 3DP, but it's certainly getting better. Maybe soon. Maybe.

I still wish there was a good way to reuse the leftover filament and unsuccessful prints. I saw a company had made a small machine that would melt chopped up material and attempt to spit it out as new filament, but it didn't seem to work very well.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: bitseeker on June 22, 2018, 12:05:27 am ---I haven't yet jumped into 3DP, but it's certainly getting better. Maybe soon. Maybe.

--- End quote ---

I'm never going to do that for two principal reasons:

* people seem to spend more time fettling with them than making things
* everytime I make something I use a different material; so far that's been PLA, bronze, nylon and SLA
PLA, hard, poor dimensional accuracy, poor detail (local hackspace):


Nylon, slightly flexible, good dimensional accuracy, medium detail (£12 delivered, IIRC):


SLA/photopolymer, hard, excellent dimensional accuracy, excellent detail (£2 delivered):


SLA, ~10cm high, 1mm thick, excellent 40mm*2mm thread (£12 delivered):

bd139:
Fettling is exactly what is involved unfortunately. They have the worst characteristics of the worse inkjet printers mxied with the paper jamming ability of the worst laser printers and the level of support of the worst troll that worked in Maplin. Honestly this and the space required are the only reasons I haven’t bothered yet. I could really do with a 3d printer but it’s not a mainstream plug and play device and never will be.

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