3D Printing 3D printer suggestions?

[Bill Hanson]

Almost have my printer together, but looks like I may be missing a set screw for the threaded vertical rod.



The bottom part of the stepper motor has a set screw for the shaft, but nothing in the upper hole so the vertical screw rod just sits there free. See picture.

Is it supposed to be like that? If not, can someone give me the correct size and I’ll just grab one from the hardware store.

Thanks in advance!
Bill

 

[cwbullet]

Yes, you are missing a screw. I just finished my 3rd day with an ender.

 

[jeffjblack]

You all have inspired me -- ordered a Creality Ender 3 pro from Amazon and should arrive today. Have been watching a lot of setup and mod videos over the last couple of days. Planning to do some rocketry stuff, but mainly to print things to help my wife, who is now having lots of hand problems (had her left thumb reconstructed for the 2nd time a couple of weeks ago, right is not much better), so have been looking at lots of places for ideas for things like bigger knobs, levers, jar openers, etc.

Any suggestions on particularly good youtube channels or sites to follow?

Also sprung for the upgraded metal extruder and hotend sock, along with some Hatchbox PLA. Today's main task is to clear space on my workbench out in the garage.

First order of business once I get it dialed in will be to do a new z-axis mount, extruder knob, spool holder, pcb cover, and tool tray (have thingiverse links if anyone is interested). I see there are a ton of other mods to do, but figured these would be a good start until I had some experience under my belt.

That said, if anyone has advice on "must do" mods, I'm all ears.

Have you seen https://www.tinkercad.com?

 

[OverTheTop]

I just checked what we have at work. Creality CR-10S and a CR-X. Lots of use for both these currently. The mech guys seem happy with the purchase of them.

There is also a FromLab and a StrataSys but they are out of reach for home 3D printer buys mostly.

 

[Bill Hanson]

Yes, you are missing a screw. I just finished my 3rd day with an ender.

Rizzzlefratz, heck, other curses as required.

Guess I’ll get to try the famous Creality support.

 

[Bill Hanson]

Have you seen https://www.tinkercad.com?

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes. I also have a Fusion 360 account.

I also have downloaded Slic3r and Cura, plus I see a slicing program on the stuff that came with the printer. Haven’t installed any of them yet but guess that’s my task for today after finishing some work for my day job.

 

[cwbullet]

Ram

Rizzzlefratz, heck, other curses as required.

Guess I’ll get to try the famous Creality support.

Famous or infamous?

 

[Bill Hanson]

Ram

Famous or infamous?

I believe that would be infamous. Sent in a request for help on their online system and still no joy after 2 days. At any rate, found a M3 screw that worked.

Now climbing the curve of getting the thing dialed in. First attempt was part stringing and part totally glued to the bed. After about 4 iterations of leveling (business card method seems to work best thus far) and cleaning clogged nozzles, etc., finally got something that started to look like a print. Still lots of stringing on first layer, and part of it wasn’t sticking, but seemed to be building up okay so I let it run.



5 hours later, here’s what I found:



Looks like it came unstuck from the bed and the rest of the filament just printed in the air.

I’m guessing I still don’t have the bed dialed in correctly and it should be a smidge closer to the nozzle. Any other ideas?

 

[cwbullet]

Yeah, Your Z is too high.

 

[Bill Hanson]

Yeah, Your Z is too high.

Think I have it sorted now. Did a more thorough job leveling the bed using https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2969712 that got me in the ballpark.

Seems to work just a bit better if you modify the gcode to use an initial z of 0.1 vice 0.2. Will have to keep chasing that down.

Two other key changes: replaced the PLA that came with the printer with Hatchbox PLA, and upgraded the Cura version to 4.0 (shipped with Cura 1.8 — yikes!).

After doing all that, was able to do a reasonably good print of an XYZ test cube. Still a little funky on the first level, and some minor layer shifting, but think I have a 90% solution.

Thanks for your advice!

Phone had trouble focusing on this for some reason, the sides actually look pretty good except for the slight layer shifts.