Why Everyone Should Get a 3d Printer

I don't think that nearly enough people have 3d printers.  So, here is my post on why you should get a 3d printer.

1. Anything you can imagine is real.  If you want to create a new type of cell phone case, go for it...  The only thing that limits you is your mind.  When designing using 3d modeling, it is like making a puzzle and doing the puzzle at the same time.  You have to make sure all your parts fit together and work, and that it's printable on your printer.  However, unlike a normal puzzle in which you solve something that has been solved 1000's of times, what you make is new, and has never been done before by anyone ever.

2. If you are a teenager it helps get you away from the TV.  Whenever I got my Printrbot, my TV watching probably cut in half.  Generally when a teen gets home, they do one of four things, homework, watch TV, play video games, or hangout with people. Three of four of those activities are mindless, 3d printing gives people a fifth option, where they can solve puzzles, while having fun, and possible contributing something good and new to society(by posting on thingiverse).

3. It can save you money, and you can get things speedily. the RepRap project estimates that having a 3d printing can save the average consumer can save $300-2100 a year.  I tend to disagree with this claim, I believe you can save probably $100-$150 a year. However, rather than saving money, its better, because you can have what you want nearly instantly.  If you break your measuring cup, you can have a new one within the hour and still bake the cake in time for dessert, and you avoid having to buy an entire set of cups.( I know a random example, but it could happen)  You could also print out a new case for your phone right when you get your phone, to avoid those 3-7 days before your case comes in the mail and you risk breaking your phone.

However, as much I think that everyone should get a 3d printer right this second, for the average consumer to be satisfied, they should wait till the norms for printer are, above 300 mm/s, 200mm by 200 mm build area, and dual extruder, while costing less that $400. Right now, consumer will be frustrated with failed prints, not enough area to build what they want,  and long wait times.

How to Unclog hot end(extruder) on Your 3d printer with Little Disassembly

Image courtesy of Printrbottalk

 I have been fortunate to not have gotten any clogs in my extruder in the last four months, which is really awesome and means the filament over at matterhackers is really high quality, while also being cheap.  But, last week I got my first clog.  The first thing I did, was identify that it was indeed a clog, second I took the extruder assembly off of the Simple, then looked for a way to take it apart.  After struggling for about ten minutes, I looked upon the interwebs for help.  I still could not find a guide on how to take apart the extruder.  So, I unscrewed all the bolts and the nozzle, and dug inside with a paperclip.  I also tried pushing filament through the top and got nowhere.  Finally, I tried pushing filament into the bottom of the extruder.  It when through with little effort, and cleared out the extruder.  I then reassembled and everything worked well again  Upon assembling, I realized that I could have unclogged the extruder by simply taking off the nozzle and nothing else.  So, Here is my guide on how to fix a clogged extruder with minimal disassembly.

1.  Unscrew the nozzle from the hot end.
2.  Raise the Z axis to max height and heat the hot end to the maximum temperature that you are comfortable with.( For me using the Ubis hot end its about 250 Celsius)
3.  Wait for temperature to be reached.
4.  Remove the filament from the top of the extruder, and put into the bottom of the hot end.
5.  Apply pressure to the filament making it go slowly upwards into the cold end, this the trickiest part of the whole operation, if you go to fast the filament will be liquid coming out of the cold end, which results in a mess.  If you go to slowly the cold end will totally cool it making it extremely hard to get out.  So, just go fairly fast until you see the filament start coming out the of the cold end, then slow down.
6. Cut the filament from the botom of the hot-end and pull the remaining amount through the top of the cold end.
7. Screw the nozzle back on.
8. Manually check that the filament flows.
9. If it does, you are done, if it does not go back to step 1.

Multidesign Cookie Cutter

Image courtesy of "My MIni Factory"

There is a contest put on by My Mini Factory, to see who can produce the best 3d printable Christmas design.  The key word here is printable.  Most people think a 3d printer can produce anything, they are right and wrong, they are right that they can produce almost anything, they would be wrong in thinking that it can be produced in one part, with no knowledge of 3d printer.  To design for a single extruder 3d printer is quite difficult, your object can have very little overhang or negative space.  I think of them as the computers in the 80's, you can see potential, but it's by no means perfect.

So, anyway here is my entry.  It is a multi-design cookie cutter, basically, what it does it is cut out cookies in different shapes as your roll it along the flattened out cookie dough.  It took me about 3 hours to design.  To make it 3d printable I hat to sectionalize it into 10 different parts, inside of 5 different .STL's.  If I may say so it looks pretty badass, well as badass as a cookie cutter can be...  Any who this beast(yes I just called a cookie cutter a beast, deal with it), weighs around 86 grams, which depending on where you get your filament from, costs between $1 and $4 to make.  It sports 3 different designs, a snowman, a gingerbread man, and a Christmas star.  On their printers's it took roughly 3 and a half hours to full print.
If you would like more pictures, click here and consider making an account and downloading, it would help me win.


Why did I do this?  The grand prize for the item that gets the most downloads, is an Ultimaker.  An Ultimaker is pretty much the best FFF printer around, it is seven times faster than mine has 10 times the build area, and is way more accurate.  Think of my printer as a hoopty car(Im not sure if it is just my family that calls old, broken down cars this, but that is what I mean)  And an Ultimaker is like a nice Suburu.  I really hope I win. I guess in 3 to 4 week I'll know, I'll keep y'all posted on how its going.  I hope you enjoyed this blog post.  As always have a nerdy day.

The Perfect 3d Printer for Consumers

An example of a Delta printer.  Image courtesy of "SolidSmack"

Here is my idea of a perfect 3d printer, targeted at consumers:

It would need to be fast, while remaining cheap.  So, i would ditch the traditional Mendel style 3d printer, and go with the far less popular delta style of 3d printer.  The delta is much faster because instead of moving the whole print tray, or the whole extruder in a linear motion, it sort of swings the extruder around to create an object making it much faster.  It should be able to printer at 200 mm/s maximum.  This allows you to create most objects in less than an hour.  

The print area should be at least 6x6x6 inches.  This is where Deltas are slightly flawed.  Instead of being a square like a Mendel, it has a circle build tray.  So to get a square object that is 6x6 like a Tardis, you would actually need about 8x8. This is not to big of a problem though, it just equates to a larger overall footprint. The whole printer would have a foot print of roughly 14 inch diameter, and 30 inches tall(the way the Z axis is designed, it has a lot of wasted space while the X and Y axis are quite efficient.  

It needs dual extruder. Not for colors, but for support material.  One of the biggest drawbacks of most 3d printers is that they can’t make everything.  If I told someone to design something to print on my printer, it would likely be unprintable.  This is because my printer like most other sub $3000 dollar printers, have a single extruder, so if anything has overhang it can’t print it well, or even at all.  Dual extruder let you print anything because you can put water soluble support material in the second extruder. 

It needs to cost $300, that is the most consumers can probably afford.  I believe that each printer could cost as little as $350 to make. This leave the only way to make a profit, is through material sales. I think that material should cost $40 for .75kilos. It only costs around 3 bucks to make it.  Take into account that most people use about .75 kilos a month, there could be a very healthy profit with the first year (around $400).

It needs to be launched by a big company, such as Google.  This is because a large company is needed to launch a project like this and show all of the world what it is capable of through advertising.  It would also be the first printer to be launched by a large company, this would help instill trust, that it can deliver as promised.  The printer also needs wifi, so you can print while not being physically attached to the printer.