I just received a Monoprice MP Select Mini v2 and I'm currently "Printing the Cat".

So far the test print is going flawlessly. After watching all the videos online I'm pleasantly surprised by the resolution. You can see the z-axis ridges on the zoomed in videos on YouTube but it looks really nice in real life.

I've really got to get better at 3D CAD. Can you suggest some tutorials?

Start with the Maker's Muse channel on Youtube. He has a lot of great tutorials.

No, but if I had one, the first thing I'd print is a 3D printer. What's the return policy on these things?

what CAD program are you using? I'm using fusion360 because its free & I used autocad back in the day - philosophy is similar.
The MP selects are nice cheap machines. I have a DaVinci that is almost worn out after 4 years. It's spit out a lot of plastic making giant lego's

quote:

Originally posted by zipriderson:
No, but if I had one, the first thing I'd print is a 3D printer. What's the return policy on these things?

This is actually the point of a project called RepRap.

The RepRap project is a collection of 3D printer designs based on the philosophy of making 3D printing more available through mostly 3D-printable 3D printers. The general idea is that if you can design a component to be 3D printable, do that. If the component isn't 3D printable, at least try to use something you can get at a regular hardware store instead of requiring specialized parts.

The end result is that for most of the RepRap designs, you need special motors and a special control board but you can get everything else from another 3D printer or a hardware store.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
what CAD program are you using? I'm using fusion360 because its free & I used autocad back in the day - philosophy is similar.
The MP selects are nice cheap machines. I have a DaVinci that is almost worn out after 4 years. It's spit out a lot of plastic making giant lego's

Cura seems to be the commonly used program. I have a copy of Vectric Vcarve but I don't know if it is compatible.

Cura isn't a CAD program, it's a slicer and 3D printer control program.

CAD is short for Computer Aided Design - it's the program that you use to produce the 3D models.

Cura takes a 3D model that was produced in a CAD program, knows all the details of your specific 3D printer, and generates the instructions for your printer to print the thing (the name "slicer" comes from the idea of slicing the 3D models into the layers your 3D printer lays down, although this type of software does more than just slicing into layers). It can optionally also actually send the instructions to the printer. Most printers also let you put the instructions on a USB stick or SD card and stick it in the printer so that you can print without a connection to a computer.

For CAD, I will echo snidera's recommendation of Autodesk Fusion360.

It's free for noncommercial use, and it makes use of advancements in CAD software that came out of Autodesk's (and other companies') incredibly expensive CAD products.

Free Fusion360 today does things that you had to pay for $5,000-10,000 per seat CAD packages to get a few years ago.

My son has a friend whose dad has one and they just printed my boy an X-Wing. Pretty cool. It’s going to put Revell and Tamiya out of business.

Fusion 360 is listed at $495/year for subscription. I don't see a free version on the site.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:
https://www.autodesk.com/campa...on-360-for-hobbyists

Thanks! Why can't I find anything? I apologize for my lack of google fu.

I don't mind paying for a program but I don't think paying a subscription would work for me as I'm not going to use it daily or anything like that.

Do you know if it has a gear maker plug in?

A early demonstration of #D printing shown to a early group of technology pioneers...…

Looks like they were impressed.

Autodesk has a web program called tinkercad that can output to a 3D printer. Cool and free. It has also added a blockify function in case your into minecraft style block building.

To see and download countless print objects I recommend thingverse. It is a great share site for 3D objects. Pretty amazing.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:
https://www.autodesk.com/campa...on-360-for-hobbyists

Thanks! Why can't I find anything? I apologize for my lack of google fu.

I don't mind paying for a program but I don't think paying a subscription would work for me as I'm not going to use it daily or anything like that.

Do you know if it has a gear maker plug in?

I don't think there is one built in by default.

In mechanical design, people rarely make their own gears, because they are complex to machine (read: expensive). They almost always just buy gears. To keep things simple and reduce the rendering load on the computer, gears in part assemblies are usually just represented by cylinders of the correct size.

Things are, of course, a little different with 3D printing.

There are a couple of approaches you can take.

The easiest is that McMaster Carr, a gigantic supplier of all things mechanical, provides freely available 3D models (in standard formats) of most of what they sell - so you can just find the gear you want on McMaster and download the 3D model for it and use that, possibly with some editing for things like mounting holes. I think Fusion360 has a built-in "import from McMaster" button that lets you browse McMaster's model files by nested categories (they have to be nested - the McMaster print catalog is bigger than most phonebooks).

I believe there are also some third-party plugins available for making gears, as well as parametric 3D model files where you can set the desired properties of the gear and have it automatically modify itself to fit.

I forgot one of the most important things...

Make darned sure that you have power for the 3D printer washed through a UPS, and ideally above a 650 size.

All it takes is one power flicker or bump and a 6,8, 10 hour 3D print is trash without the UPS.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rinehart,

Got my printer late last night - a day EARLY which is amazing considering the holidays and the 'rona.

Waited until today to assemble it. Trying to decipher Chinglish instructions and pictograms when I'm tired is guaranteed to end badly.

Assembly went well, then I spent a couple of hours trying to get it to talk to my computer via the USB port. No go, can't find drivers, computer thinks it's some random USB port.

Initially, it wouldn't read the gcode files on the micro USB either, but one of my random attempts to fix the problem worked. Suspect the failures to read where when I had both the SD card and the USB cable hooked up.

Any-hoo, leveled the print table, ran the pre-heat routine and printed out a test object from a file on the card:



VERY impressed with the finish, print time was about an hour and 15 minutes, object is about an inch tall and the base is sits on is roughly 2 inches in diameter and 1/4 inch thick. I estimate that the total amount of material laid down is equal to or less than most objects I'll be printing for my 1:64 models.



I've gotten enough of the basics of TinkerCAD to create some objects for the 1:64 steam engine I'm working on and used Cura to create the gcode. I'll try my first original print tomorrow.

quote:

Originally posted by zipriderson:
No, but if I had one, the first thing I'd print is a 3D printer. What's the return policy on these things?

Haha, we've got a nice (read: not hobby grade) 3D printer at work -- it's amazing how many of its own parts are printed.

"The robots are building themselves!"

One thing you should keep in mind is to always use high quality PLA plastic. The good stuff has a very tight tolerance on diameter and has better purity than the cheap stuff. I can highly recommend Hatchbox brand for consistency.

I use an Ultimaker 5S almost daily at work and I've found the Hatchbox material to be the most dependable.

Inland brand was terrible for me and took hours to clean out the heat tip the last time I used it. Couldn't find settings that would work consistantly and was stuck cleaning the tip every time it clogged up and cooked.

PM me if you ever need to have a custom part laid out in Inventor, I work with it daily.

Ken

quote:

Originally posted by KenS:
One thing you should keep in mind is to always use high quality PLA plastic. The good stuff has a very tight tolerance on diameter and has better purity than the cheap stuff. I can highly recommend Hatchbox brand for consistency.

I use an Ultimaker 5S almost daily at work and I've found the Hatchbox material to be the most dependable.

Inland brand was terrible for me and took hours to clean out the heat tip the last time I used it. Couldn't find settings that would work consistantly and was stuck cleaning the tip every time it clogged up and cooked.

PM me if you ever need to have a custom part laid out in Inventor, I work with it daily.

Ken

Thanks for the tips and the offer!

That was printed with whatever sample material came with the printer. I have a reel of SunLu coming based on recommendations from a cyber-friend that prints a lot but I'll sure check out Hatchbox.