There are some 3D printing myths we need to dispel. Because it seems (and I’m guilty here too) that opinions about what works in 3D printing is like assholes everyone has one…
The Prusa i3 is very good but that doesn’t mean all the clones are shit.
PLA plastic is not soft and wont fall apart 1st time you take it outside. It’s not butter and just because stainless steel is harder than mild steel doesn’t mean mild steel is rubbish it still works, as does pla.
Ptfe lined hotends are not crap. If you don’t want to print nylon or polycarbonate you’re probably going to be ok with a ptfe lined hotend.
Your printer is not the best printer ever built. Somewhere in a garage someone who’s never heard of this group probably has one that can print a benchy upside down flawlessly. Deal with it.
Just like buying a cheap printer for $50 and being surprised it’s prints like crap (duh…) buying a $5000 print and no knowing that you cant print benchy upside down isn’t going to give you any better results. (Although I’d like to think most of us know that)
Like everything in life there are school fees in 3D printing. Till you figure things out you’re going to have print failures. Buying S3D because cura or slic3r sucks is not slic3r or cura’s fault it’s yours for not spending time learning how it works. Doesn’t mean S3D is a waste of money just there are many of us that print with other slicers and we are happy with how they work.
Just because it’s not your opinion doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Sometimes you’re wrong, you don’t lean by flapping your lips you learn by listening. (This one applies to everything in your life , but that’s just my opinion)
There is no 1 design that is best, Cartesian is better at some things than delta and visa versa.
It a hard fact you need to learn that people make their own experiences I’m here because I have a passion for 3D printing and everyone’s here because of whatever other reason they have, it’s not right or wrong it’s just different. Unless you’re spamming the group then you’re wrong and stupid and I don’t care for your opinion.
This should be interesting to see the responses when I wake up tomorrow…
I always enjoy people being like “oh my machine is working like shit I need to go buy S3D and all my problems will go away…” I’ve used almost exclusively Cura and not once have had a customer complain about an orders print quality.
People like to encourage the support of the REAL innovators in the 3D printing field. Yes, the clones are garbage when compared to the i3. They will fucking BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN if you’re not an experienced user. Dunno about you, but I wouldn’t be able to fucking sleep if I suggested someone buy a Wanhao knockoff and they died over it…
PLA is garbage out in the heat. You obviously don’t live in Florida or any hot area whatsoever. First time you forget it in the car, it WILL fall apart. Especially if it’s under any kind of screw head tension, etc. So that’s where you’re “myth busting” is wrong. Just because you live in Canada and the temp never goes above 20C outside, doesn’t mean that these problems don’t exist.
PTFE lined hotends are the lower end of the spectrum. The only worth-a-shit PTFE lined hotend I’ve ever used was the J-head because it used a very thick fiber-filled PTFE liner.
YES HUH!!!
will be editing this an updating it piece by piece.
Just because you can get a Ford Pinto to 800hp with a lot of money and a lot of love, does not mean the platform isn’t shit. Slic3r is garbage speed-wise…it’s the Skeinforge of this generation. It’s also far worse with invalid models, and support material. Cura has come a long way, and is a fine slicer – it all depends on what you need. S3D is terrible with Delta geometry – you have to fudge numbers to get it to correctly match. No problem with complaining about each platforms shortcomings. As a whole, S3D is better than Slic3r, KISS, or Cura…doesn’t surprise me, its developers are interested in making a living off of it.
Yes, but I’m going to call out opinions parading as facts, and present whatever factual information I have.
There is nothing that a delta is better than a cartesian on. Nothing. Delta printers being no benefits whatsoever to printing other than perhaps a lower part count. And they bring enough garbage with them that they’re not worth having. They’re fine if you aspire to be a mechanical engineer, and love figuring stuff out, but they bring no advantages whatsoever.
Are deltas really that bad? How hard would it be to go from delta technology to learning Cartesian or core xy? Ive only worked with delta since ive been into 3d printing. I never changed because i didn’t want to have to learn the mechanics all over again. Right now i have 3 deltas, my biggest being 6ft tall, with self grid leveling.
If i wanted to build a 4ft square core xy, what are we talking about difficulty?
Fyi yesterday I had a lulzbot mini, a 1250$ printer, almost catch fire. Luckily it only melted the bed wires, but it completely burned through them and the insulation.
No 3d printer is safe unattended.
Slic3r is awesome if you know what you’re doing and know how to calibrate everything. All of the exposed settings allow you to customize to your specific print job. The quality I get from slic3r is much higher than anything I get from cura. If you don’t have the time or experience then you should stick with cura or S3d.
No 3d printer is good out of the box. They all make compromises to save costs. I have gone through countless designs and on each one I found room for improvement. This includes the i3 which has plenty of faults.
No hotend is perfect, again you’re making compromises for your specific needs.
PLA is very brittle when not stored properly or when continuously exposed. It’s not made to handle repeated stress, it has no elasticity. A 3d printer made out of PLA will eventually crack at the stress points, if it can handle the heat.
I have used PLA parts (clamps, clips and joiners) to support my outdoor garden trellises for a couple of years now and they are doing a good job. There is some obvious wear, but they still function well.
Sydney summers often get as hot as 46 degrees (114 degrees Imperial), so the trick is to design them thicker and print 100% infill to cope, plus to use multiple clips for extra strength to reduce the load on any individual clip.
The reality is that any plastic exposed to that heat, sun and humidity will have a hard time, but printed PLA is the most simple, cost-effective and customisable solution I know of.
Of course, indoors is where most of my customised PLA parts are used, and it’s perfect in that context.
My guess is that inside a closed-up car in the summer the temperature far exceeds ambient, and PLA is likely to turn into a blob in that context.
I think deltas are cool. But they are not simple. And in my limited experience ’ keep it simple stupid!’ Is one of the most important rules when building anything. And in some ways I found building a corexy simpler than a ‘normal’ cartesian. @ThantiK , PTFE liners are not allways bad. My hotend is connected to the extruder via a long barrel, more than 10 cm. A PTFE liner reduces a lot of friction. But it stops before the heaterblock. So it depends what you use it for.
@ThantiK Agree with the whole “pla sucks in the heat” thing. Angus from Maker’s Muse recently did a test, something like 5 or 10 minutes in a car in Australia is enough to deform a PLA print. So while your print might not be meant to be used in a car, even if you’re just transporting it or shipping it, you need to turn the A/C on. lol.
@ThantiK normally we have lots of trouble with each other but this time your right in almost every aspect. But for PTfE liners. Depends on how far it goes into your hotend. In the chimera its only on the cold side. I print PC any nylon with it. No problems. Havent changed the ptfe since the beginning. It reduces friction very good in comparison with a all metal hot end. But nothing serious there it just helps a bit.
And yes PLA is for starters, maybe prototypes for the final print and nothing more. Even here in germany you take PLA outside and if you leave it there for half an hour in the summer or in your car its kindof unstable. Yeah for people who just print pokemons with spiral vase…yeah go for it. Kindof cannot understand it but do it ^^
For me and maybe few others we use printers for practical thing such as spare parts (me manly fot household or cars) and filament needs to be heat resistant. Pla is very stiff and strong when cold but thats all there is to it. Printing PC, ABS and others isnt that tricky once you set up everything correctly and got yourself a case for your printer…
Yeah and to deltas: the mechanics and firmware to it is cool. But thats it. I allways hear people say they can print higher thats why they are better… No the fact is because of their construction they can mainly print in the Z direction. But building a cartesian for that height it no problem at all. Not at all. Mine prints 300mm high. So whats the problem?
A factor that hasn’t been mentioned yet for PLA is that it creeps under high load even at room temperature. For load-bearing parts, you have to use MUCH thicker cross-sections than other plastics in order to get internal stresses down so it doesn’t creep to fracture in weeks or months or years. It’s only “strong” for short-term loads where creep is a non-issue. Everybody I know who has long-lived PLA load-bearing parts in service without cracking has them over-engineered like crazy compared to the amount of material you’d need with any other plastic.
That said, some of the modern “tough” or annealable PLAs are doing nice things with the crystallinity properties to address the downsides. It’s getting better.
