Dulling the shine
One for Rick C…
Overture PLA Plus/Pro is giving me a much less shiny top surface, at least in the dark blue (love the color, by the way).
Related, while using my heat gun to de-string a print, I noticed that it did a nice job of slightly dulling the extremely shiny finish that I get on the bottom from printing on glass+hairspray. I had it set to 350°F with the fan on high, and kept moving and rotating the parts to avoid melting anything thicker than strings.
Note that this is unrelated to the use of heat guns to restore smooth plastic finishes, which involves reducing the impact of UV and oxidation damage without sanding/polishing off the surface layer.
Oh, and What was I printing? A bag clip, of course. 😁
More specifically, this stl, scaled up from this clip by a designer at Prusa. I found the original wore out too quickly when used to secure twice-folded-over coffee bags, so I scaled it up (a bit more XY, a lot more Z) and printed at 0.3mm, with 5 walls so it printed solid without any infill pattern. The (quite mild) stringing came from testing Cura’s “smart hiding” of layer-start positions with a spool of filament that’s a bit thicker than the nominal 1.75mm.
(picture is unrelated)
Don’t Be A Tool
In the grand tradition of using your 3D printer to print 3D printer accessories, quite a few people have designed little stands to hold all their 3D printer tools and published them to the various “search” sites. With few exceptions, they suck.
Common problems include:
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I need seven inches or more: requires at least 180mm in at least two dimensions. My printer’s build area is 255x155x170.
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Carve away anything that doesn’t look like an elephant: designed as a solid block of plastic with small holes for tools.
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If your love life requires close air support, something has gone very wrong: requires significant supports to print successfully.
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Hours will seem like days: all of the above contribute to ridiculous print times.
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Where does the third one go?: assumes specific workspace layout (wall-mount, pegboard, attaches to one model of printer, etc).
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One ring to rule them all: very-specifically-sized slots for every tool you could possibly need, not just the ones you actually use regularly.
There’s a pretty reasonable one designed specifically for the Dremel 3D45. Except for the part where it mounts to the right side of the printer, which isn’t where I use any of the tools.
File this one at Cults3D under “baffling” (even though it would fit nicely on my printer), because it has prominent storage for seven spare nozzles. Why? Not even “why do you need seven nozzles”, but “why do you have them all out on your workbench gathering dust in unlabeled bins?”.
Right now, I don’t want to print any of them, and I don’t want to spend the time to design my own, so my tool holder will continue to be a $5 box from Michaels. Maybe I’ll make a little organizer insert for it sometime, but honestly, I pretty much just use the scraper, flush cutters, emery boards, and a small sharp knife, and those fit on the lid of the box, with room left over for the calipers.
66%の誘惑
Next time, Nancy, maybe you shouldn’t buy your souvenir pens from China…
"That's the trouble with godhood: it robs you of your finer
judgement. A deity so rarely has to pay for his mistakes!”
"...while heroes... heroes have an infinite capacity for
stupidity! Thus are legends born!”
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