Lately I've been having a ton of fun printing with flexible filaments on my

3D Printing
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Lately I’ve been having a ton of fun printing with flexible filaments on my new Talos Spartan printer by @Alex_Lee ​.

My 5 year old son got into Pokemon, so I have been making him a bunch of figures in Flexible because they aren’t prone to breaking, and I have no fear of sharp corners taking out an eye as he and his 3 year old brother fight with them.

I haven’t had a printer with a bed that moves in Y prior to this. But with the inductive level probe this is probably one of the easiest printers I’ve ever used. Combine that with the new Bondtech mini direct drive extruder (by @Martin_Bondeus ​) and I can see myself having a lot of fun with flexibles going forward. I haven’t been able to print with flexible filament before the Spartan, because all of my other printers are 1.75mm filament Bowden extruders. So it’s like pushing a rope up hill… (my Bowden and tubes are almost a meter long because my other printers are big).

If you have some time check out what Alex has been up to with his Talos3D family of open source hardware. He has a very nice Delta (the Tria), a Cartesian (the Spartan), and a laser engraver all out on github.

Just thought I would share. Happy holidays, and happy printing :slight_smile:

[15 new items · Album by Eric Lien] Talos Spartan Sainsmart Flexible Filament V2
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BTW, I have been using exclusively Slic3r with this printer. I must say I am really impressed. I haven’t used it in forever because I have been a diehard Simplify3d user. But with some tuning the support in slic3r is worlds better than I remember it being. In fact if slic3r would just let me manually add/remove support where I want it, I could see being 100% happy with it as my daily driver.

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Also Alex has a G+ group for the Talos line too (for those interested in knowing more).

https://plus.google.com/communities/106411395795447750286

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@Eclsnowman Thank you for the kind words, it was fore runners like you that have inspired me to turn a few ideas into an actual design.

Your help was invaluable with the design of the more intricate parts and also for teaching me how to use Solidworks.

The machines are far from perfect, and I hope the community will help with bringing in more functionality into the printers. I consider these my two little cents into the large RepRap community’s bucket.

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Great job Alex!