Huh, any particular ABS brand(s)? I am tempted to grab a roll. I’ve been running polymaker’s ASA and other than warpage on big parts with my lower chamber temps (yay big printer with lots of enclosure surface area) it prints fairly well.
I run the filter inside an enclosed printer with an exhaust fan.
You’re saying ABS is printing easier for you than ASA? That’s interesting. From my limited understanding, ASA has the reputation of being easier to print.
What brands/blends? I’ve been printing basically only ASA and PETG for a little while now. Haven’t tried ABS.
It will decompose, but only it a hot compost pile.
To some extent, this means large scale composting, but you could theoretically do it at home if you live somewhere with four seasons (specifically fall) and have trees that drop leaves on your property or nearby. Let your grass get a bit taller as the trees start turning and mulch/bag the grass and leaf mixture. Bonus points if you have a ratio of 30 carbon (brown stuff) to 1 nitrogen (green stuff) by weight. “Normal” composting into. This is why big piles of fresh mulch get pretty warm and stream in the middle.
I don’t know what it would take to break down PLA in compost, but suspect it would take more time than a typical home pile if you manage to get it hot. It would probably be benefit from shredding to speed things up, as would the rest of the stuff in a typical compost pile. Amusingly, your PLA is probably ripe for getting whacked with a hammer, or a hammer mill.
Do you live in a warmer climate and/or have radiator heat? From what I’ve read, carneverous plants like higher humidity and Midwest winters + forced air make for a pretty dry house.
Also, be careful with bottled water. They all have some level of minerals in them to get their flavor profile. That said, if you’ve been doing this for any period of time carry on!
That looks like under-extrusion to me.
Here’s the quick “tune your extruder” arc:
After you get #1, never touch it again unless you change things like your extruder gears. #2/#3 are a good idea whenever you start a new roll of filament, although I personally don’t bother unless I’m trying a new material, brand, or color.
The PWM signal once it starts getting jittery is basically only 0 or 100% and corresponds pretty well to the swings in temperature.
I’ve moved the head hot and cold by hand and haven’t gotten any weird behavior. Normally when I have a wire break there’s a very specific location that will reliably fail. That’s not the case this time.
I wouldn’t think so, the printer never did this previously. I need to put together some g-code to make the print head move around at a pretty high rate, but without actually extruding anything.
I suspect it’s motion/jiggling around related. I guess I could whip up some g-code to see what happens when the printer is still vs when it’s moving rapidly.
Thanks for the nudge, will follow up.
Agree that the result won’t be a perfect print, but I personally prefer this route over printing the other half, sanding the first half flat to account for a partial layer like you said, and then gluing.
I guess it comes down to what you goal is. 90% of my prints are functional and I don’t really care if they’re a bit ugly at times.
Do you have a pair of calipers that you can use to measure print height? If yes, don’t take it off the bed. Measure the height of the print, delete those layers out of the gcode (it’s just a text document after all), and reset. Note that the gcode and printer setup might require some fiddling to get right, but I’ve resumed prints like this without problems before. They don’t all look perfect at this layer, but they’re certain better than nothing. Once the print loses its hold on the bed, all bets are off.
This was a good read. Anyone who’se purchased any of his anthologies will be familiar with some of the content, but the appeal to live a fulfilling life and how hard that can be as you get older was refreshing.
Find people who care about what they’re working on and they’ll go well beyond the extra mile. As an extra motivator, make it clear the company won’t be around if they don’t succeed. I’m sure these employees have shares, but tha only really matters if the company succeeds (extra motivation!). Unfortunately, there have been a ton of green/green-adjacent automotive “startups” that have struggled to gain a foothold. See also:
(I’m sure many others)
Ha, this is true as does amortizing things like the coffee maker that needs replacing every 5 years, white vinegar for monthly descaling, the Stanley thermos I bought 4 years ago to bring coffee to work, etc.
Let’s say that it takes 15 minutes to brew the pot of coffee at 1,500 watts. That’s 0.375 watt hours. At $0.20/kwh that’s $0.075/pot. Yay for dumping it into a thermos once it’s brewed.
All in, even if you added an extra $0.50/day brewing at home is still way cheaper.
Stay away from espresso and super “high end” artisan beans and you can have a very solid coffee hobby for not a whole lot of $$. We do a mix of drip, French press, and cold brew. The cost per cup is basically the same for each and the equipment was not very expensive.
You got me curious, so I did the math for us.
I am a drip coffee person, drink far too much coffee (40 oz) throughout the day, and work on a fairly large corporate campus so I have easy access to hot/fresh coffee that I can purchase. Even though there are multiple branded places to get coffee from on campus, they have similar pricing.
My wife and I split a pot of coffee. It takes us 3 oz of coffee beans to brew it. I can buy a 20 oz bag of the coffee beans we use for $15.29, which works out to $2.30/pot. We often stock up on the beans when they go on sale, but I don’t know what we paid for them the last time around.
So… since my wife also drinks coffee let’s say that the price spread between purchased already brewed coffee vs brewed at home coffee is between $6.50-$10.60/day. Splitting the difference = $8.85. Doing that 365 days/year = $3,120 saved.
The fact that I have coworkers who drink a similar quantity of espresso based (more $$) drinks at work is insane.
Do this over a 25 year career, invest the money monthly ($260), plan for a conservative 5% rete of return and you’ll have $162,577 - only half of which is principal.
Apply this pattern of thinking over a number of different spending categories and you’ll be way better off financially. That said, the stats on the billionaire class are eye watering and no amount of frugality will catch any of us up to them.
Are you in Europe? In the US, our 120 volt mains limit the size of what can go in our normal outlets. I’ve never seen an electronic grill, unless you mean something that we would call a griddle.
Is the print stopping or does the printer keep going like all is well?
If the printer is continuing like everything is normal, you can surmise that the issue is either the heater, the extruder, or the filament path.
What does your temp graph look like during the print? Oscillations = potential wiring issue, especially if they’re not present for the whole print.
Have you caught the printer doing this? Is the extruder clicking? If yes, something is preventing the filament from moving through the extruder. You’re either developing a clog or something is preventing the filament from feeding (binding, etc).
If the extruder isn’t clicking, and the print continues for a bit, does the extruder slowly chew through the filament? If yes, you probably need more tension on the feed screw. I would still suggest looking for souces of binding.
Except BBQs are often against fire code so they’re not allowed 😭
You’ve discovered cold brew!