Attention 3d printer owners......................

[Willy510]

8 minutes ago, ShanesPlanet said:

thats a long link I can't see. I have no doubt that it can be very expensive. Hell, industrial use is a far cry from the requirements of most small home hobbyists. The good news is that it doesnt have to be overly expensive to just play in it a little bit. Its not the cheapest hobby I've ever picked up, but its far from the most expensive. It really is quite amazing at the sheer scale of some of these big badass printers. Just like my pickup that was a mere $4k, a bulldozer is $400k. No surprise the BIG equipment that is made to perform and designed with stability and durability in mind, are far more expensive. I'd gather your printers arent made in some sketchy chinese warehouse/sweat shop either.

I think I fixed the pic above now. 

Most of what you're paying for with the industrial printers is knowledge. You can spend a ton of money and print with virtually no knowledge or experience in printing and be successful repeatably.  I've made the same parts on my old $100 printer and on the $180K work printer and asked people to tell them apart and unless you know the materials that I use they usually can't figure out which one is which.  Unfortunately the printers in my lab belong to the government so I can't use them for personal projects,  my work printers have a cloud memory or what has been printed so there's no getting around it but my big printer at home has a bigger build envelope and is much cheaper to print with so no big deal.   Here's a pic of my little delta that's 1 meter tall sitting inside the frame for my giant delta. I designed and made that printer for around $1200 and it has a 347mmx1500mm build envelope.  The vases pic is about the max height for each printer at full diameter of the plate. Red came from the little printer

[RockyTop]

HEADS UP!  September of 2020

China is having many difficulties right now. COVID , Floods, Civil unrest. A drop in quality control is not surprising. 

While eSun filaments have always been a great product for me and will likely return to a great product I have received 30+ rolls from two separate suppliers that have contaminates in them. It causes the print to look like it has chickenpox.  These contaminates are embedded and can not be removed. The filament in question is black PLA+. If you do buy this product I suggest getting it from a place with a known good return policy like Amazon. half of what I have was purchased from a Canadian supplier that I am fighting with now. I will probably lose shipping cost both ways. They have been in heavy denial of any product defect without even looking at the product. Amazon took back the bad filament without question. 

[musk]

18 minutes ago, RockyTop said:

HEADS UP!  September of 2020

China is having many difficulties right now. COVID , Floods, Civil unrest. A drop in quality control is not surprising. 

While eSun filaments have always been a great product for me and will likely return to a great product I have received 30+ rolls from two separate suppliers that have contaminates in them. It causes the print to look like it has chickenpox.  These contaminates are embedded and can not be removed. The filament in question is black PLA+. If you do buy this product I suggest getting it from a place with a known good return policy like Amazon. half of what I have was purchased from a Canadian supplier that I am fighting with now. I will probably lose shipping cost both ways. They have been in heavy denial of any product defect without even looking at the product. Amazon took back the bad filament without question. 

I suspect that for many manufacturers, black colored filament is is the "hot-dog meat" which absorbs all the trimmings and waste from the other production lines. 

[RockyTop]

1 minute ago, musk said:

I suspect that for many manufacturers, black colored filament is is the "hot-dog meat" which absorbs all the trimmings and waste from the other production lines. 

I agree to a point. This looks more like the roof fell in during production or the machines got flooded or bombs went off. This is a non product material contamination. ...... and sorry for the Canadian reference. I hesitate to name the accrual supper. They are either in true disbelief or they are scum that are trying to flatten the curve on their losses and blame their customers. I don't know at this point. 

[Willy510]

23 hours ago, RockyTop said:

HEADS UP!  September of 2020

China is having many difficulties right now. COVID , Floods, Civil unrest. A drop in quality control is not surprising. 

While eSun filaments have always been a great product for me and will likely return to a great product I have received 30+ rolls from two separate suppliers that have contaminates in them. It causes the print to look like it has chickenpox.  These contaminates are embedded and can not be removed. The filament in question is black PLA+. If you do buy this product I suggest getting it from a place with a known good return policy like Amazon. half of what I have was purchased from a Canadian supplier that I am fighting with now. I will probably lose shipping cost both ways. They have been in heavy denial of any product defect without even looking at the product. Amazon took back the bad filament without question. 

You may or may not get an answer from eSun but you may want to check with them to see if your distributor or seller is actually selling their products or a seconds run or counterfeit.  I've seen and had many counterfeit rolls of different manufactures over the years. 

[RockyTop]

I bought 30 rolls on Amazon. They actually came from 4 separate Suplliers. I sorted through them and got 6 good rolls. You can easily see the white fiber through the plastic sealed bag. After sorting visually I checked the batch numbers and they coincide with the problem rolls. I also ordered 2 rolls of inland. Inland brand is the not good enough for the eSun name filament. It had the same problem. I now have over $1,000 ties up in returns.
 

I found have found another brand that tests well ( heat and deformation tests) 

[.....]

On 9/3/2020 at 2:35 PM, RockyTop said:

I bought 30 rolls on Amazon. They actually came from 4 separate Suplliers. I sorted through them and got 6 good rolls. You can easily see the white fiber through the plastic sealed bag. After sorting visually I checked the batch numbers and they coincide with the problem rolls. I also ordered 2 rolls of inland. Inland brand is the not good enough for the eSun name filament. It had the same problem. I now have over $1,000 ties up in returns.
 

I found have found another brand that tests well ( heat and deformation tests) 

ha, i noticed that too. I was stocking up on esun and some of it wasnt performing great and lots of dust. I guess it aint dust as it seems to be white fibers. I was cussing like a sailor when I saw this all over my black. Still havent bothered putting a dust catcher on the extruder tho. I havent had the issue with my kodak filaments from argentina. So funny I would read this today, AFTER I just decided to burn thru my esun on bullshit so I can switch to kodak for most. I'm printing stupid 300x250mm signs for fun. I've got a large shelf to burn thru and then I can move away from this chinese crapolla. Thanks for the heads up. Maybe I should just print a ton of euc stands so I can have one for each day of the week. My last 2 stands took a roll of petg each, and that was me scrimping. Now THAT will burn thru some filament. Oddly, I havent noticed the issue on the petg tho, and thats what I use for load bearing filaments. My absolute favorite is ninjatek cheetah sapphire. Sadly, I cant think of anything to print with it and its too expensive to just waste...

Edited November 20, 2020 by ShanesPlanet

[atdlzpae]

That's a RIDICULOUS amount of filament!!! What are you building?

[.....]

Just now, atdlzpae said:

That's a RIDICULOUS amount of filament!!! What are you building?

junk for the landfill, what else is there?

[RockyTop]

@ShanesPlanetI got more info on the situation. The black eSun is no longer manufactured in China. They stared a NEW factory in Vietnam. They said that they are having problems in the cooling / drying process.  I hope they get things sorted out. Regardless selling stock that they know is bad is just bad business.  For now I am using other brands for black filament.  

[.....]

12 minutes ago, RockyTop said:

@ShanesPlanetI got more info on the situation. The black eSun is no longer manufactured in China. They stared a NEW factory in Vietnam. They said that they are having problems in the cooling / drying process.  I hope they get things sorted out. Regardless selling stock that they know is bad is just bad business.  For now I am using other brands for black filament.  

Wow, great info and good to know! I agree and because of this slight, I won't be bothering with them again. Too many choices to rely on a company with such poor QC. We spend HOURS on this stuff and there's too many other factors I need worry about. Quality of filament is a factor THEY need control for me, or they should be giving that shit away. I guess I'll make an euc sign then come up with other ways to rid my shelves of that stuff. Thanks!

Edited November 20, 2020 by ShanesPlanet

[mike_bike_kite]

5 hours ago, ShanesPlanet said:

junk for the landfill, what else is there?

There's some truth to the above. I live beside a big park and one my hobbies is organising volunteer litter picks to go round picking up the rubbish that gets left behind. We'll occasionally come across piles of rubbish hidden away in the woods that haven't been touched for decades. You know it's that old because thick tree roots have grown over the top of some of the piles. The disturbing thing is the plastic looks like it was just dumped yesterday.  Out of interest I looked up how long it takes for plastic to breakdown. I kept seeing a time of between 450 and 1000 years but this is only if the plastic is exposed to direct sunlight, if it's not exposed then it simply never breaks down.

[jesscoo]

On 6/6/2020 at 2:39 AM, Brand Don said:

What printer did you get? I am in the market as well

Im kinda new to 3d printing and planning to get my first 3d printer

[.....]

6 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

There's some truth to the above. I live beside a big park and one my hobbies is organising volunteer litter picks to go round picking up the rubbish that gets left behind. We'll occasionally come across piles of rubbish hidden away in the woods that haven't been touched for decades. You know it's that old because thick tree roots have grown over the top of some of the piles. The disturbing thing is the plastic looks like it was just dumped yesterday.  Out of interest I looked up how long it takes for plastic to breakdown. I kept seeing a time of between 450 and 1000 years but this is only if the plastic is exposed to direct sunlight, if it's not exposed then it simply never breaks down.

sad isnt it? A lot of the pla I use IS corn based, but I'm sure the additives make it last quite a while. My local landfill is uppity and they got mad when i called it a dump. Its called a 'waste recycling facility'. I found it irnoic as they directed me to a back lot to DUMP my trash so it could be buried.  I'm a litterbug, but I just happen to try and make sure it all gets piled up in the same area and they just happen to be making mountains out of it. Hell, we gotta have low value locations to give people financial choices of where to live

[RockyTop]

8 hours ago, jesscoo said:

Im kinda new to 3d printing and planning to get my first 3d printer

I did not listen to people when the told me to go with the Creality printers. I liked the build of other printers better. They told me that the Creality printers were the best for the money and had a better community of users. .... More support, options, cheap replacement parts and upgrades. Did I listen ?  No!!  I bought the best printer ever made. ... It is sitting in my closet gathering dust.  I now have 14 creality printers. Prusa is better. They just don’t build one big enough for what I need. 
 

I suggest: Ender 3, Ender 5 plus, ( Ender 5 not so good) CR10 and Prusa. They make other good printers too, just make sure that a large community Is out there using them. Don’t buy an odd limited run, or off brand. 
 

 

[atdlzpae]

IDK... Prusa (both Mk2 and Mk3/Mk3s) were a constant pain, mainly due to the extruder.
I really admire Joseph Prusa for his innovation and open-sourceness, but CR-10s is a better value for money in my little printing experience. Maybe because bowden is a simpler mechanism? IDK.

Also, Creality printers are almost completely assembled, while Prusa can be bought in parts. More expensive + 4h of work + a chance that you'll break something during assembly.

Edited November 20, 2020 by atdlzpae

[null]

Some 3D printers (or stuff in general) get overrated because of circle jerk, I bought the lulzbot taz 4 which was expensive and raved about back in the days, and hated it. My next printer was 5x cheaper and so much better (Dagoma d200) 🤷🏼

Edited November 20, 2020 by null

[.....]

My creality cr10 v3 came mostly assembled and poorly. I had to take it all apart and reassemble the damn thing anyhow. They lied about it having an all metal hot end too. Blatantly lied, as I waited and preordered because of that (titan direct too), and its a standard hot end. However, I tried an all metal aftermarket and the standard was better. So, I ordered spares and it was stupid cheap for the entire assemblies. Like $25 for the entire hot end, fans, nozzle, shroud and sock.

Customer service from creality... doesnt exist. Any kind of support is limited to 3rd party and forums. Parts are cheap as you would expect. Aside from the blatant lie, poor build and lack of even email responses (I wanted to buy something and they NEVER returned my emails, its been months), its a decent little printer. I installed new wheels, as the factory ones had chunks missing. I installed their textured glass upside down so its smooth. I also had to install newer marlin firmware, as the shit they had for the v3 printer, wasnt even modified from the v2, to show the proper name. Lazy assholes! But hell, the printer works. At the price I paid and the effort, I do think I could have done MUCH better by just building my own. They have newer steppers out now that are quieter, more efficient and dont even need stop switches, as they recognize current load. Direct drive extrusion is awesome, but if I was dedicating to a pla or petg machine, I'd perhaps go bowden and make that gantry light as a feather.

I dont know if I'll get another printer, but if i do, I will probably build it and stay with a  smaller footprint. Having a big bed is nice, but a LOT of prints are small, and smaller beds and frames print better (other factors aside). I looked into expensive branded printers, and they all just seem like variances of the same parts I can get. I think that unless you want to spend BIG money, these consumer printers are all very finicky and somewhat similar. Hell, a great idea would be to buy up printer you like from ebay, and use it as a platform to build off of. People find that 3d printing isnt just click and print and sell at losses all the time.

Edited November 21, 2020 by ShanesPlanet

[RockyTop]

Printers in general require lots of tweaking and maintenance. Figuring out why it is doing something wrong is the frustrating part. I have learned he hard way to just leave it alone if it printing well. I used to do monthly maintenance on every printer. Now I have reduced to just cleaning, checking wear and keeping a log of things that I have done to each printer. The most predictable wear parts are the bowden tube and the drive gear. Changing other parts preemptively seems to cause more problems. Some nozzles are bad from the start. Some last a long time and others last weeks. My best printing machine right now has had the same nozzle printing 24/7 for the last 3 months. 

Overall it is amazing that a cheap mechanical machine can run so well.

 

 

[jesscoo]

On 11/21/2020 at 3:08 AM, RockyTop said:

I did not listen to people when the told me to go with the Creality printers. I liked the build of other printers better. They told me that the Creality printers were the best for the money and had a better community of users. .... More support, options, cheap replacement parts and upgrades. Did I listen ?  No!!  I bought the best printer ever made. ... It is sitting in my closet gathering dust.  I now have 14 creality printers. Prusa is better. They just don’t build one big enough for what I need. 
 

I suggest: Ender 3, Ender 5 plus, ( Ender 5 not so good) CR10 and Prusa. They make other good printers too, just make sure that a large community Is out there using them. Don’t buy an odd limited run, or off brand. 
 

 

Thanks for the suggestion.
Looked it up online and seems Creality's Ender3 serie has the most reviews and good feedbacks...
I will probably choose Creality 3d printer for the combined price and print size. Looking forward to my first 3d printer......

[.....]

The ender 3 is very popular. Gotta be careful tho, I am pretty sure the ender 3 v2 doesnt support the m600 (filament change) command. There may be a work around, but the command enables you to change colors mid print easily. I'm not sure the 3 v2 comes with a filament break sensor either. The ender 3 requires an external bootloader to flash the newer Marlin firmware that enables filament changes mid print or embedded gcode change.  Just a heads up, if you plan on the 3 v2 route. Plan on buying a cheap programmer too. Be ready for a LOT of tinkering and trial/error. Im a kodak and ninjatek filament fan fwiw. Smooth glass and glue stick is my preferred bed. No glue most times. Have fun with it! Be sure to watch e-step calibration, bed leveling and setup videos. A cheap vernier caliper will come in VERY handy as well.

Edited November 23, 2020 by ShanesPlanet

[Mantraguy]

Just thought I'd bring this thread back from the dead... I have a Creality Ender 5 Plus on the way - should arrive Tuesday - so I'm sure I'll be asking lots of dumb questions here as I get started with the hands-on learning (have already invested many days of youtube videos and all3dp.com articles)! Looking forward to wasting as much time as @ShanesPlanet!

[RockyTop]

@Mantraguy TURN OFF economic mode. After starting a print hit Adjust > economic mode off. If you get a newer Ender 5 plus it might be turned off from factory. This feature turns the bed off after the first few layers. The print cools and stops sticking to the bed. Worst feature ever!!   Remember that 3D printing is as rewarding as it is frustrating. One day at a time. keep that bed level. The first layer is the most important. 60 bed and 190 - 210 nozzle is the best place to start with PLA . 

Update: It has been a while. I posted that eSun was having problems with its filament. They have fixed the problem. I am sure that a few bad rolls are out there somewhere. I have not got a bad roll in several months.  eSun plus is by far the strongest filament that I have found.  60 bed 210 nozzle 

 

[RockyTop]

Is this not the sexiest 3D printed 2” wide packing tape dispenser you have seen on this forum today or what!!? 
 

I was just goofing around waiting for my rental car and designed this tape dispenser. I forgot about it for a year. Then I came across it yesterday and decided to print it out. I made few quick changes to get rid of the slot bleed through. Not sure if I am ever going to print another tho. 

STL https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5118264

Said nobody: How did you make the cutter?  $0.99 cent hacksaw blade. 

Edited November 10, 2021 by RockyTop

[RockyTop]

 
LOOK WHATS OUT!   
Ok, maybe you don’t get it but this is big! XL in fact. Prusa just released their newest printer and it has all the improvements that I have been dreaming of. Next level stuff!!  ( 2nd - 3rd Q 2022) I put my deposit down. …. And so did my daughter. … I