OK So here's the thing.

3D Printing
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1

OK So here’s the thing. I have a great reprap style of printer with a large print bed (310mm by 410mm). And it is truly a nice machine…

…however, I am yet to have a successful print larger than a 20mm cube. I have reached a point of despair that I don’t think I can return from. I have spent the day getting to about the height of a few nanometres before everything fails. Sheets of rice paper have more substance than the things I am printing.

So after 5 months of torture, I feel I need to go to something a bit more … reliable.

Something I can load a filament in to (any filament from PLA to HIPS, by any manufacturer) set it to print and 8 times out of 10 have something that looks like the STL file. And something that generally will have a flat bed that does not require a large element of luck to get flat.

What should I buy (the rig I will be returning was around 2500GBP so I wont be making something myself).

2

Post up pics of what your prints look like - maybe it’s something simple that you missed?

3

Trust me - I’ve been there. The prints show that I’m either too close to the print bed or too far away or both.

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Pic of the prints and details of the printer design will be good, it is not that hard to make these work :slight_smile:

5

You might want to turn on rafts just to get started… Rafts can help handle all sorts of initial setup issues.

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Posted…

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Filament “from PLA to HIPS” (i.e. not including more exotic things like TPE or polycarbonate) is not an unreasonable request, but “from any manufacturer” is not. Not all filament is created equal, and no printer will be able to to reliably print with filament that balloons up to 110% of the nominal diameter, or that has ball bearings embedded in it.

8

OK true. We have had some rough filament. But we do have a selection of reasonably good filament now (all at 1.75) and it would be nice to print something other than a cube with it.

Tell me more about the ball bearings.

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A couple of people have reported finding ball bearings embedded in filament. Example: http://richrap.blogspot.com/2012/06/jammed-frggn-nozzle-30doc-days-1518.html

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@Rex_Bigger it doesn’t help having a currently non responsive manufacturer! I can see them marketing away on social media with new products.