Sunday 24 March 2013

Pretty in Pink

I seem to have sorted my over-heating issues from a few weeks ago, and have been steadily designing/printing various bits for around the house.  Most of these are too bespoke to bother putting on thingiverse, fortunately, they were all pretty fast to model and print:

  • Spice rack for the kitchen - aluminium channel with printed under-cabinet hangers
  • Brackets to hold fluorescent under-cabinet lights
  • Large washers for holding an Ikea cabinet (lost the originals)
  • A "laser" gun toy that straps to my sons forearm - his design
  • A clip for holding a blackout blind closed
  • A replacement holder for a magnifying glass
  • Sword hilt for my son (the original one got trashed)
  • Flexible bracelet for my daughter
My biggest project to date has in fact been the awesome Giant lego Darth Vader model from thingiverse, in pink:



This is also my first commission, got another to do in black when the filament arrives next week - great fun!

The foamboard heated chamber is working well, but I tend to leave the top flap open to stop it getting too warm.  I've also finished playing with my custom start/end gcode for slic3r:

Start G-Code
M104 S0
M83
M140 S80
G28
G1Y98F9000
M190 S80
G1X5Y98Z150F9000
M104 S210
G1X5Y98Z1F9000
G1Z0.05
M109 S210
G1Z5
G1X15


End G-Code
M103
M108 S50.0
M113 S0.0
M104 S0
M140 S0
M106
G1X0Y0F9000
G91
G1Z20
G90
M84
M190 S0
G4 P200000
M83
G28
M84
M107

Which is making for very reliable prints.  I am still getting the odd part warping up at the corners and don't feel confident printing full plates, but then I also need to get some pure acetate to clean the glass, so that's probably a contributing factor.

I've also been somewhat paranoid about leaving the printer unattended, so installed an LED light strip and a webcam.  I then run a livestream feed during prints, which I can monitor on pretty much any device (ipad, blackberry, iphone, etc) - surreal moment this afternoon when I found myself watching a print on my wife's android phone whilst at a softplay with my kids!



I have a more complex project almost complete - a DSLR follow focus unit - which I'll post about when it's been properly tested.


4 comments:

  1. I like the webcam idea. But do you have any way to kill the print remotely if something goes wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  2. not yet - but have just about got botqueue working, which allows for remote kill. Also keen to look at a filament feed sensor that will pause the job if the filament runs out/jams.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have a look at Octoprint (https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint). It has webcam support, allows you to start/stop/pause, as well as preheat. It will run on Linux or a $35 Raspberry Pi.

      Delete
    2. Hi Mark
      Thanks for that - haven't heard of Octoprint before... will have to get hold of a Pi now :)

      Delete