Picked up my third 3D printer. I wanted to learn as much about 3D printing so I started with the Printrbot Simple kit, and once I was able to do that, I started to purchase used 3D printers. Somehow it was actually cheaper to buy these used but already assembled printers from people who spent three times as much buying them as kits that they had to put together themselves. This latest printer is the Rostock 3D Printer from SeeMeCNC. Personally I don’t know if I would have assembled this printer as well as it is right now; the gentleman whom I purchased it from had professional CNC experience. I was worried about any damages that may occur transporting it from the drive back. Everything seems to be working well but there are issues with the filament. I know that filament does to some effect “warp” when exposed to the moisture from the air. This is what I believe led to some jamming issues, which are resolved since I removed the jammed filament. I’ll need to buy some new ABS filament. My attempt to use PLA was thwarted because this particular 3D printer has much longer Teflon tubular pathway for the extruder to travel through. As you might already know, PLA is much more brittle than ABS so it chipped immediately when I attempted to feed it through the extruder.
The image to the left are all three of the printers I’m using. To the left is the Printrbot Simple, the middle is the Bukobot, and the one to the right is the Rostock model from SeeMeCNC. Unfortunately I came to the realization that I can’t run one program off Repetier to run all three machines. I was even contemplating installing the hardware to run an SD card through for immediate printing. 3D printing can be very complicated and usually you print based on limitations you have on your machine based on the build volume and what materials you use, what angle you want it printed, how dense you want the infill to be, etc. Each printer literally operates in different ways even though they accomplish the same task. In my opinion, it would be more optimal to be able to run the software on the computer so you can manually control the printer. Ultimately, I have no choice but to get separate computers to run each printer because each version of Repetier I run will be different to each printer. And you cannot change the settings each time you jump from one printer to the other because each printer has its own preferred configuration. The gentleman who sold me the Rostack was kind enough to configure it for me on my laptop.
There are a lot of headaches involved in this process and a lot of money invested in this ( perhaps some might say wasted ) but I’m definitely learning a lot from each printer that you wouldn’t necessarily learn from school and definitely wouldn’t if I had a Makerbot or a more industrial 3D printer.
Tonight I will be having a 3D printing workshop for the Green Advanced Manufacturing Program (GAMC) students at CityTech titled, “3D Printing Industry: From Local to Global,” which covers a little bit of history regarding 3D printing and its current applications in manufacturing, construction, and biomedical applications. I will give the students a little refresher on Inventor before that and lastly show them how to save the .ipt as an .stl extension, then show them how to print their design on the Makerbot Replicator 5th Generation model. The previous workshop was held last Saturday and it went very very well.
