The 3D Printer Thread

[egomeister]

Yazza54 said:

egomeister said:

What sort of things did you need to tweak for the TPU?

Lower print speed as well as making all print speeds equal, fast travel speed to combat stringing, turn retraction off, lower/fine tune volumetric flow rate, and a Biggie for me was resetting the extruder tension as if setup for hard filaments the tpu can easily get deformed when being pulled through and lead to jamming.

That was based on the settings already in the slicer? Are you using Bambu filament?

I have some Sunlu TPU already but I'm tempted to start off on this machine by sticking with their own material to see how I get on. The Sunlu seemed to work ok on my Ender apart from a small bit of stringing which was easy enough to clean up - I didn't bother changing any settings from what I used on PLA apart from no bed heating. Not sure why people reckon it was so difficult to print without a direct extruder.

[Yazza54]

egomeister said:

Yazza54 said:

egomeister said:

What sort of things did you need to tweak for the TPU?

Lower print speed as well as making all print speeds equal, fast travel speed to combat stringing, turn retraction off, lower/fine tune volumetric flow rate, and a Biggie for me was resetting the extruder tension as if setup for hard filaments the tpu can easily get deformed when being pulled through and lead to jamming.

That was based on the settings already in the slicer? Are you using Bambu filament?

I have some Sunlu TPU already but I'm tempted to start off on this machine by sticking with their own material to see how I get on. The Sunlu seemed to work ok on my Ender apart from a small bit of stringing which was easy enough to clean up - I didn't bother changing any settings from what I used on PLA apart from no bed heating. Not sure why people reckon it was so difficult to print without a direct extruder.

I don't think it matters what TPU you use, the base slicer settings will not work properly without some work. I'm using overture 95A TPU. I started with the bambulab 95A filament profile and modded it from there. And the 0.16 "optimal" line height profile and modified that too.

When you tell bambu studio what filament you're using all it does is adjust some basic things like nozzle and bed temp etc you still need to dial the rest in yourself.

All the speeds, infill, not crossing walls etc are in the line height profile and there's no tpu specific option for that you need to do it yourself.

And obviously the tension which is a hardware adjustment on the print head itself. I haven't tried turning retraction back on since I've reduced the tension, it might work better now, but it works well as it is and is realible, where before with high tension and retraction on constantly pulling the filament up and down it kept jamming up.

I'm also now running my TPU from a SUNLU heated dryer box, didn't actually have any issues without.it but I know TPU can take on moisture so wanted it to be consistent.

Edited by Yazza54 on Thursday 23 February 10:38

Edited by Yazza54 on Thursday 23 February 10:39

[egomeister]

I have both versions of the Sunlu dryer, but tend to only use them to pre-dry filament rather than store them during printing. The S2 is way better and a worthy upgrade - much more powerful and gives a more consistent heating through the chamber.

Might have a dabble with TPU in a couple of weeks after I have got this batch of PLA stuff done. Or carbon filled nylon. Or PC. Or....

[julian64]

Yazza54 said:

TPU velocity stacks. Got 95A TPU printing very nicely on my P1P now after a fair few teething problems and setup adjustments.

Interested in you use of these. Won't they melt in use?

[Yazza54]

julian64 said:

Yazza54 said:

TPU velocity stacks. Got 95A TPU printing very nicely on my P1P now after a fair few teething problems and setup adjustments.

Interested in you use of these. Won't they melt in use?

No. It doesn't get anywhere near hot enough in the airbox to melt them.

[julian64]

Yazza54 said:

julian64 said:

Yazza54 said:

TPU velocity stacks. Got 95A TPU printing very nicely on my P1P now after a fair few teething problems and setup adjustments.

Interested in you use of these. Won't they melt in use?

No. It doesn't get anywhere near hot enough in the airbox to melt them.

I've done this twice before. Once with a TVR cerbera, and once with a caterham. Both times they slowly deformed from the heat sink build up in the engine bay.

I then printed out and used in a greensand mould with aluminium. If you did have problems, I would go there next. But I would be interested if the materials you are using do make it any length of time because obviously things have improved since I last tried it, if thats the case.

[Yazza54]

julian64 said:

Yazza54 said:

julian64 said:

Yazza54 said:

TPU velocity stacks. Got 95A TPU printing very nicely on my P1P now after a fair few teething problems and setup adjustments.

Interested in you use of these. Won't they melt in use?

No. It doesn't get anywhere near hot enough in the airbox to melt them.

I've done this twice before. Once with a TVR cerbera, and once with a caterham. Both times they slowly deformed from the heat sink build up in the engine bay.

I then printed out and used in a greensand mould with aluminium. If you did have problems, I would go there next. But I would be interested if the materials you are using do make it any length of time because obviously things have improved since I last tried it, if thats the case.

In that application it may well not work but it ought to be fine in mine. It's a motorcycle engine, I doubt the heatsoak is anywhere near as bad. The original stacks were ABS plastic and that has a similar, if anything slightly lower heat resistance rating than the 95a TPU I'm using.

I've had a mess with a heat gun as well with some scrap prints and they take a fair beating before they start going soft. Way more heat than they're gonna see in my application. The throttle bodies are rubber mounted to the head so insulated heat wise on that side, and given it's a race engine it won't be spending much time at low speeds where heat soak could be a problem.

I actually have my airbox temps logged, and on a hot day 20 Min race I didn't see over 26 degrees Celsius. Sat on start line, around 38 degrees, immediately starts dropping as soon as the cars moving, and this was a bloody hot day. I don't think it's anything to worry about at these temps and I have made them pretty stiff with plenty of infill.

If it was in a normal car engine bay, as you've said I don't think I would go this route. What TPU did you use?

Edited by Yazza54 on Friday 24th February 15:09

[geeks]

Jeez this hobby takes on a life of its lol.

I started with a stock E3 NEO that I had no intention of buggering around with. I now have a G10 bed surface (ok not really buggering around there) a Microswiss NG extruder on order and I have just finished printing up the parts for the Kevinakasam mod while I wait for the parts package to arrive.

Ah well, it's all fun I guess (until the wife catches me)

[Yazza54]

Yazza54 said:

egomeister said:

Yazza54 said:

egomeister said:

What sort of things did you need to tweak for the TPU?

Lower print speed as well as making all print speeds equal, fast travel speed to combat stringing, turn retraction off, lower/fine tune volumetric flow rate, and a Biggie for me was resetting the extruder tension as if setup for hard filaments the tpu can easily get deformed when being pulled through and lead to jamming.

That was based on the settings already in the slicer? Are you using Bambu filament?

I have some Sunlu TPU already but I'm tempted to start off on this machine by sticking with their own material to see how I get on. The Sunlu seemed to work ok on my Ender apart from a small bit of stringing which was easy enough to clean up - I didn't bother changing any settings from what I used on PLA apart from no bed heating. Not sure why people reckon it was so difficult to print without a direct extruder.

I don't think it matters what TPU you use, the base slicer settings will not work properly without some work. I'm using overture 95A TPU. I started with the bambulab 95A filament profile and modded it from there. And the 0.16 "optimal" line height profile and modified that too.

When you tell bambu studio what filament you're using all it does is adjust some basic things like nozzle and bed temp etc you still need to dial the rest in yourself.

All the speeds, infill, not crossing walls etc are in the line height profile and there's no tpu specific option for that you need to do it yourself.

And obviously the tension which is a hardware adjustment on the print head itself. I haven't tried turning retraction back on since I've reduced the tension, it might work better now, but it works well as it is and is realible, where before with high tension and retraction on constantly pulling the filament up and down it kept jamming up.

I'm also now running my TPU from a SUNLU heated dryer box, didn't actually have any issues without.it but I know TPU can take on moisture so wanted it to be consistent.

Edited by Yazza54 on Thursday 23 February 10:38

Edited by Yazza54 on Thursday 23 February 10:39

Can confirm that with the extruder tension backed off the TPU doesn't jam up with retraction turned back on and it's made the prints even nicer as it relieves a bit of nozzle pressure to combat oozing/stringing.

I received a hardened steel complete hotend last week so I may have a go with some carbon type filaments at some point.

[egomeister]

Yazza54 said:

Can confirm that with the extruder tension backed off the TPU doesn't jam up with retraction turned back on and it's made the prints even nicer as it relieves a bit of nozzle pressure to combat oozing/stringing.

I received a hardened steel complete hotend last week so I may have a go with some carbon type filaments at some point.

I know people using the PA-CF filament who are super impressed with it, but its very expensive. The PLA-CF is much better priced but obviously has the drawbacks of PLA.

PETG-CF has appeared on the Bambu EU store (@ 32EUR) so I expect we'll get that here soon. I'll pick up a spool as soon as it lands as I think that will be a great compromise of performance and price.

[Yazza54]

egomeister said:

Yazza54 said:

Can confirm that with the extruder tension backed off the TPU doesn't jam up with retraction turned back on and it's made the prints even nicer as it relieves a bit of nozzle pressure to combat oozing/stringing.

I received a hardened steel complete hotend last week so I may have a go with some carbon type filaments at some point.

I know people using the PA-CF filament who are super impressed with it, but its very expensive. The PLA-CF is much better priced but obviously has the drawbacks of PLA.

PETG-CF has appeared on the Bambu EU store (@ 32EUR) so I expect we'll get that here soon. I'll pick up a spool as soon as it lands as I think that will be a great compromise of performance and price.

Problem with PETG and PLA for the stuff I've been doing is temperature resistance that's why I went straight to printing ASA. I don't really have anything in mind for any of it at the moment but I'm sure I'll think of something!

[Baldchap]

Very late to the party on this but I'm at the point where I could do with a few bits and pieces making and a 3D printer seems like it might be the answer (plus I'm a geek and I like gadgets), given that my workshop will finally have ethernet as of today or tomorrow via my shiny new wireless B2B Bridge...

Anyone got any experience of the Snapmaker 350T? I like the idea of being able to CNC and laster engrave with the same device and reviews seem to indicate it's a pretty easy device to start with, but you never know these days who is being paid and supplied with kit on YouTube...

I've read the last couple of big boy pages but there's so much I don't know. Is there an up to date online resource that doesn't require any prior 3D Printing knowledge that I can start off with to learn the terminology and get a good grounding before I spend any money?

Thanks in advance.

[Zero Fuchs]

Baldchap said:

Very late to the party on this but I'm at the point where I could do with a few bits and pieces making and a 3D printer seems like it might be the answer (plus I'm a geek and I like gadgets), given that my workshop will finally have ethernet as of today or tomorrow via my shiny new wireless B2B Bridge...

Anyone got any experience of the Snapmaker 350T? I like the idea of being able to CNC and laster engrave with the same device and reviews seem to indicate it's a pretty easy device to start with, but you never know these days who is being paid and supplied with kit on YouTube...

I've read the last couple of big boy pages but there's so much I don't know. Is there an up to date online resource that doesn't require any prior 3D Printing knowledge that I can start off with to learn the terminology and get a good grounding before I spend any money?

Thanks in advance.

I took the plunge and bought the Snapmaker 350T bundle. It was on offer for about £1300 on Amazon before Christmas so not too bad. It's expensive but I didn't buy it for personal use but for work via the company.

Obviously there's diminishing returns (so a well sorted Ender is likely to be almost as good) but overall I'm really happy. If you're a nerd like me you'll love putting it together. Build quality, packaging and documentation is first class. As an engineer myself I was really impressed with the entire package. It's quite beautiful really.

The slicing software, Luban is basic and I'm going to try some others. But it's really fine for my purposes so far (tooling, prototypes etc) and results are pretty good straight out the box

I've only used the PLA that came with the printer and also some PETG (Voxelab) and TPU (Overture). PLA is great, PETG trickier to get right and TPU a bit more demanding. TPU only printed for me once I'd replaced the spring on the print head for a biro pen spring to reduce the feed compression. Once I'd done that it was perfect.

I've not used the CNC head yet but the laser is brilliant for a low power unit. I've etched my company logo on slate coasters and on wood with good effect. It cuts too but isn't powerful enough to cut much thicker than a few mm.

Downsides? The fan is quite noisy and the printer is supposed to be noisier than most. Also all the wiring is a bit messy but it's not an issue for me really.

If you can find a good deal then I'd say go for it.

Any questions then feel free. Happy to post pics if needed.

[Big Rig]

Anyone else with a Bambu labs P1P or X1C? I have the latter and I’m blown away by it. So glad I never bought a Prusa!

[Yazza54]

Big Rig said:

Anyone else with a Bambu labs P1P or X1C? I have the latter and I’m blown away by it. So glad I never bought a Prusa!

P1P here

[Big Rig]

I’ve got both. Bambu labs replaced a faulty P1P I had originally purchased but had none in stock so gave me an X1C for the same price. But I loved it so much I bought another P1P which funnily I haven’t used since it arrived, it’s still in the box. Will get it on flea bay at some point.

I’ve just downloaded OrcaSlicer which is a fork of Bambu slicer which a lot more options and better calibration functions I’m told. Will give it a whirl on my next print.

[Russ35]

I've got a P1P, currently as shipped (with the early bird gifts, aux fan, camera and led lights strip).

Just ordered the hardened 0.4 and 0.6mm nozzles and will probably get the upgraded extruder when they have them in stock.

Currently looking at replacing the camera as the frame rate is so slow, I have an esp32-cam module, but it appears very temperature dependant. If I have the door of my enclosure off it seems to stream for a while, but if I put the door on it will only stream for a few minutes before stopping.

Orca Slicer is the new name for softfever that I linked to a couple of pages back.

Since getting the P1P I've not used my Ender 3. I'm just setting it up again as it has my colour changer on it.

[Yazza54]

Didn't know there was a new extruder coming out? What's the purpose of that? The only issue I've had is I needed to re tension the belts which took all of 60 seconds.

Edit: I assume you mean the hardened gears, seems totally unnecessary to me. Struggle to see how any filament is going to wear them out while they pull them through, also the standard setup / standard tension already pulls hard filaments with ease. I've backed my tensioner off a long way for printing TPU and it still works fine gripping ASA and pulling it out of my dryer box which is definitely more taxing on the extruder than pulling it off the rear filament hanger.

Edited by Yazza54 on Tuesday 14th March 19:31

[Russ35]

Its actually hardened steel gears to replace the standard gears (stainless steel?). Less wear if using the more abrasive filaments, CF, wood, glow in the dark etc.Same as replacing brass nozzles with hardened steel nozzles. A video on replacing the existing gears https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAsR372uLno on the P1P

And I'm an idiot and should not be placing orders at 2am. I'm sure that their website said the hardened gears were out of stock, and the replacement standard extruder was in stock.When it is the other way around so I could have ordered the gears this morning when I placed my order for nozzles So £4 for shipping the gears.

[Yazza54]

Pimp my P1P

Hardened steel on left and original stainless nozzle on right.



And if anyone was wondering just how much less tension is needed on the extruder to print flawless TPU without jamming...



I've also ordered the hardened steel gears for the extruder, still not convinced they're necessary but for 20 quid.. why not. I'm already balls deep so let's go deeper