3D printing diary Week 4
Day 23: Olaf and the spider
When scrolling through Thingiverse with my daughter, we stumbled upon some figurines from the Frozen movies, and she wanted me to print Olaf, the snowman. Initially her wish was to have it in white, but when she noticed that the pink filament was on the printer, she changed her mind.
Even though it didn’t turn out well, she was very excited about it.
Olaf the snowman on Thingiverse
The spider I printed came out well and also got lots of play time that day.
Day 24: Getting the printer off the ground
For the first three weeks of my life as the proud owner of a 3D printer I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. This started to get uncomfortable so I decided to find a stable table for my Ender 3. I found an unused bedside table to put the printer on top of. The ability to sit more comfortably while working on the printer, or just staring at it, makes a difference.
The next bigger printing project I chose is a Frozen inspired castle consisting of two floors and some elaborate stairs. I decided to print it with white filament instead of opening up the transparent filament that might look even more like ice.
Day 25: More Ice Palace
The ground floor of the Ice Palace took almost 23 hours before I could move on to start printing the stairs.
The quality issues I noticed a couple of days ago started to become more noticeable. Especially on the Y-axis there seems to be significant movement — either on the bed or the hot end.
I’m procrastinating investigating this further.
Browsing on the Internet I found a building Kit for an enclosure based on some Ikea furniture. The company in the Netherlands ships the right pieces already prepared in combination with the Ikea furniture. It was made for a different printer, which means I’ll have to make a few modifications, which others shared.
Instructions — How to make your own 3D printer enclosure
The benefits of having an enclosure seem to be the following:
- Reduced noise level (my main reason)
- More stable temperature
- Eliminate draft of air that can impact print quality
Day 26: Ice Palace
The Frozen Castle is finished. The quality problems I mentioned are very visible with the castle. My daughter is still very excited about it.
Day 27: Improved print quality & swedish furniture
I improved the print quality by tightening the lower wheel on the hot end. Thanks to this change, the nozzle is more stable. This seemed to solve the issues I had during the previous couple of days.
I printed an Ikea style shelf for my daughter’s Sylvanian family house.
Day 28: My 2nd design — a drawer
A few days ago I printed a stand for my portal device I use to join video-meetings with. As a useful add-on I decided to design a little drawer for the lower part of the stand.
Day 29: Ant-Eater & Elephant
A while ago I came across a very neat animal puzzle that I’ve started printing. The two first animals I printed are an anteater and elephant.
The Animal puzzle can be found on Thingiverse. It consists of 16 different animals that form a puzzle when put together correctly.
Day 30: Maintenance
Time for some maintenance, because some of the parts I ordered on Aliexpress arrived. Aliexpress.com offers a great variety of 3D printing related parts for a significantly lower price than other sites. The drawback is that the delivery times are significantly higher as most things seem to be shipped directly from China. Today’s delivery was my first and I can’t complain.
Today I installed a better EPFT-tube — that’s the tube between the extruder (thingy that moves the filament) and the nozzle. At some point I’d like to experiment with different materials and for this I need a tube that can deal with higher temperatures.
Installation is relatively straight-forward and explained in this linked video — Ender 3 — TPTFE upgrade
I’m confident that my original tube would have sufficed for another few weeks or even months.
Someone on a Facebook group has suggested that I reduce the temperature from 220 C to 205 C. I started a longer print in which I reduced the speed and temperature. So far it looks promising.
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