This is one of those, “if you have to ask” scenarios. If the little voice in your head is saying maybe this isn’t such a good idea, maybe it’s not such a good idea.
I worded this to get your attention (and that worked). Personally I think it’s fine but it does make an interesting question that I want to hear the crowd opinion on.
Also, what do other people do to reduce noise when you don’t have a spare room far away from your bed…? Better rubber feet isn’t doing much in this case.
You could use a lot other material in that case. The concrete itself is a non-sequitur, your isolating the base with another base with rubber between both. Concrete, wood, plastic. Anything at that point between the two rubber pieces.
Massive, won’t melt, won’t catch fire. Ceramic tiles would work just as well imho, though a tad lighter (which might actually be good, given the thickness of that shelf)
Honestly, if you are doing well for yourself, post these files and spread the word on medical forums. If you’re not, stop posting this on Lemmy, go to a patent attorney (assuming others don’t exist), and sell these. This is a wonderful idea, and while I’m almost always for giving away when you can, this is one of those moments where a simple thing is 100% genius. Good on you.
Thank you. Never would have thought about patenting something like this. Will have to see if a patent already exist. Will have to look into that eventually. Still in Testing phase currently.
Yeah, the potential for a medical place to hank this idea because it saves their techs 6 minutes a day each, ends up being millions a year, per company. OP is legit sitting on a billion dollar idea.
If you have one of the consumer metal printers and a consumer plastic printer, it means you can print your own car parts from aluminum, iron, or lower carbon steel pellets, and all the trim with the plastic printer.
Congratulations, you have a body shop, and an example car.
Getting ahold of the original specifications becomes the biggest challenge at that point, so that you can manufacture the parts within tolerance.
slaps roofThis baby has been going since the early '20s. We’ve been through a lot together, almost every part has been replaced, and it’s still not reliable!
I’ve made a few logos. One of them I used to make a stamping die that deformed some sheet metal. Worked shockingly well.
I’ve also made a simple phone mount and a lens for the glovebox. My ultimate plan is to make the housing for new headlights, but lack of time and wanting to scan rather than measure the sheetmetal opening has slowed me down on that project.
I’ll tell you what, using that points distributor on my Lulzbot has sped up printing considerably! Unfortunately the print nozzle connected to the 401 nailhead sure makes the Buick hard to start.
I doubt anything practical can be done to help with her current situation, but I think the community should be more aware of her work and the pressure she’s under from the Chinese government.
This, more than anything I’ve seen on Lemmy or reddit, makes me want to get a 3D printer. I know they’re great for lots of different applications, but this speaks to me.
Oh stuff like this was the main reason I wanted a 3D printer to begin with. I spend so much time just walking around my house looking for something I can make better with a print. It’s my favorite problems solving.
Have you ever considered learning to make things out of wood? You can get a decent like table saw and learn to make something like this for less than a printer. Then once you’re hooked you can buy an entire house because it has a great 3 car garage and than justify rewiring it for big 220v saws and drop 5 figures on tools because you’re going to use them on the remodel. I could make some really pretty organizers now…
This is me as well, but my saw and tools don’t get nearly as much love as my printer nowadays. Partially because of health issues but honestly I get into stuff and buy all the things I need to make awesome stuff but then move on to other projects. I think I just like buying nice equipment.
LMAO, i seriously thought about doing some kind of crazy rube goldberg setup for it. I’m still contemplating running a water line to the water dispenser so it’s always topped off too.
You should. My best friend hates adding water to his keurig machine. So he designed a float and such, mailed me the tank lid and components with a diagram of how they should fit. I designed and built the rack that fits on the lid and mailed it all back to him. Works like a charm.
Nice. I just might give it a go. The fridge is just on the other side of that wall so it would be easy to tap into the water line and run it through the wall. Thanks!
I’m all about the FreeCAD. I was one of the main people answering questions and posting on the FreeCAD reddit before reddit completely died on the 10th of June. Feel free to ask questions here.
Not OP, but you know 3D printer lovers love to print custom parts 🤣. Does your boxes fit perfectly in your drawer? Do you have a slicing tool for them? Have you ever tried to cut aluminium or plastic foil with the edge of the box? Dont bother replaying lol, I think OPs drawer is cool 😉
When you have a 3D printer, you have a compulsion to come up with uses for it, even if they’re useless. 3D printers are great, but there’s this urge to find more ways to use it, rather than be driven by what you want/need.
I like to do this but it’s much cheaper to buy bags in the giant packs. Those don’t fit in my drawer because they aren’t the normal size/shape. Or sometimes if I mix/match brands the boxes don’t fit together in the drawer. Uncommon, but happens.
Not saying this is 100% needed, but it’s not without use.
Cooling fan cooled the spaghetti, and when enough got formed, outer perimeters started building the Z support. After some time, the infill actually caught to the flying spaghetti and created a “solid” bottom layer upon other layers managed to stick. Due to the flexible nature of spaghetti structure, the printed part was wobbling quite much and couldn’t retain the dimensional accuracy 😕
But seriously, I don’t think I have the right experience to give specific advice.
Just build the printer, and try not to break anything. Work slowly, and if you mess up, try to understand what went wrong, take it apart and do it again. Watch some YouTube videos if you want to see other people doing it.
When it comes time to print, start with small objects and work through any problems, before wasting filament on big objects.
Hm. That’s all pretty good advice in general, thank you! Though I’m definitely not afraid to break stuff. I think that’s generally how I learn.
The current motherboard in my printer is almost 100% functional except for one specific module that I completely fried (and as a result, my parts fans run at 100% all the time). I may have shorted a couple wires as I was working on some extensions. Whoops! Though as a result of that, I have a much better handle on how wiring works on these things and it’s a lot simpler than I thought originally. The sparks were fun though!
Honestly I sorta wonder if I should document my build process and post it to Lemmy. It might be cool to have a “Here’s how to convert” guide.
These printers come with that too. Just most didn’t have it turned off overnight when this happened.
They should have it turned off because the Bambu lab printed have been tested and shown to draw much more power when idle compared to other printers. It’s not much but overtime it adds up.
If you set up octoprint (or any form of networked printing) and don’t mind the horrors of potentially killing an OS (that you can easily reflash and that won’t have an issue if it isn’t a knockoff sd card): I love that my anycubic and its pi running octoprint both just go through a smart plug. When I want to do a print I turn it on from my phone/HA, wait like a minute, and I am good to go with a camera pointed at the print bed for monitoring. And then turn it off when I am done.
Is the smart plug company going to turn it on in the middle of the night? You’ve just moved the problem from one closed, proprietary technology to a different closed, proprietary technology.
Not all smart plugs are proprietary. You could even make one yourself with an ESP-01, a relay, and open-source firmware like ESP Home if you know what you’re doing to make it safe at that kind of voltage. If you’re overconfident in your ability to make it safe, then you’ve still got an untrustworthy smart plug at the end of the process, so it’s not necessarily a good idea, but it’s not proprietary.
I've got my smart plugs on Zigbee, through Home Assistant, so they're not on the cloud. But that did require some research so I could get the right devices, because it's a bit of a minefield trying to find smart devices that don't need to be cloud based.
Yes, PLA creeps ridiculously fast in hot conditions it is unsuitable for use in any environment over 35C tbh.
PETG is better but will still warp/fade over time if it’s exposed to the sun, and likely need replacing.
You need to be printing in ABS or ideally ASA if you want all-weather resistant cases. Which means now your printer needs an enclosure and ventilation…
Yeah ABS is super finicky to print, a temp controlled enclosure is mandatory and you often need perfectly prepped full adhesive plates with large print brims. But it’s definitely the only true weather-tolerant plastic if you can get it to behave.
I just put a Amazon box over my printer, turned on brim, turned off part cooling and put glue stick over the print area! No warping from it! Did a lot of my voron parts like this before I built a proper enclosure!
It doesn’t have to be anything super complicated, it just needs to keep the heat in
An Amazon box probably works really well as a free enclosure, but I’d worry about the fire risk. The enclosure I made I put a fire detector in just to be safe, making it out of paper would make me very paranoid.
I did the same when printing my Voron parts in ASA. I didn’t use a glue stick and everything went pretty smoothly. I even put cardboard panels on my Voron while printing my magnetic panel clips, lol
ASA seems like an easier-to-print alternative to ABS, afaik only downsides are higher cost and fewer colours to choose from. Supposedly possible to print ASA without enclosure.
Honestly this is a bit extreme in my opinion. I have been printing ABS for some years now. It is what i print in the most in fact. I am using a prusa MK3 (now S) without a enclosure. and it works just fine even rather large prints. Only thing to keep in mind is the fumes. In my case the printer is in a separate room which is well ventilated.
It depends heavily on your printing base. If you have a plate you can glue/put ABS slurry to, you’ll have enough adhesion that peeling is very unlikely to happen without an enclosure. If you’re trying to print directly onto a textured or PEI sheet without an enclosure, it’s gonna probably mess up.
In my case i do not use any sort of glue. I just print straight on the texured or PEI sheet. Never really hat issues. If it does not stick welll, I clean it with dishsoap. Seems to work best after a wile of use.
Yes, if you’re cleaning your build plate regularly you’ll probably not need the glue. I’ve had to do it once for a very weird part that was wide but with a small cross section though, and if the environment is cool it can and still will want to peel away from the plate.
I printed a sprinkler to stick on the end of my watering can out of PLA.
Its been outside in all weather, including direct sunlight, for three years now. And water runs through it almost every day for 8 months of the year. It’s a little faded, but that’s it.
IMO the things people say about PLA regarding exposure are vastly over stated.
I think it depends on the usage. If the size/shape doesn’t matter or is mated to metal, then PLA is more than fine in colder climates (i.e. not Texas), but as soon as the average temp of it’s operating environment is within the Glass Temp range then PLA isn’t good.
In your sprinkler’s case, the water is chilling it bellow glass temp when operating.
I don’t think your particular case would have any creep as it’s not mechanically leveraged in any real way.
If you were to print something like a cupholder for a stroller or bike where it’s holding something up with some weight while in the heat is where you would notice it especially with repeated impact. Most likely wouldn’t outright fail but under constant load you would notice it starting to bend a little. That said you can absolutely over engineer it to prevent that rather than switching materials which can be a huge pain depending on the printer.
I did my hydroponic tower in PETG but it honestly would’ve been ok in PLA since it’s just a static fixture. I’ve had a PLA badge on my car for 3 years in 110+ summers and similar to you I’ve only noticed fading on the raised white lettering.
It can survive fine when under no load. It probably fades color less than abs does actually. However When experiencing any kind of mechanical load - say, a tablet squeezing at the edges for a friction fit - it fails rapidly at elevated temperatures.
That’s exactly how I know. Made some very nice interior car parts and experimented with the 3 plastics. PLA failed in a day, PETG made it a week before it sagged too much to be usable, but ABS is still going.
ahhh, TPU is addictive isn’t it. So squishy and flexy. I’ve even made gaskets out of it for an ATV- not good ones, because it fails to seal when too cold, but gaskets that still work nonetheless.
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