troez3D

Hey guys, firstly an update on the printer... I reached out to Cetus customer support and as usual they were quick to reply and after a brief back and forth they have agreed to ship me a new extruder cable and heater module. It is so refreshing to have great customer service from a company, especially with the common belief that Chinese companies aren't as good as western ones in this regard. On that note I'd just like to say that I also have a Chinese phone (Oneplus 3T) and it has been better than any other smart phone I have had previously, including Samsung and my work iPhone. So I'd like to thank Jason and Cecilia from Cetus/Tiertime for all their help! Anyway. This week, as I'm still without a printer, I thought I would talk a bit about maker coins, what they are and why people have them. So why should you create your own?  First off creating your own makercoin from scratch is a great way to learn modelling programs.  It can be as simple or as comp...

Hey guys, one of the most important things to think about when 3D printing is the support material.  With out sufficient support, models with steep overhangs or floating parts will simply fail to print correctly and you will end up with a pile of spaghetti. Most slicing programs will be able to create their own support, as mentioned in my "How to print" series of posts, however, for some models this is simply not good enough.  The most widely used alternative is Meshmixer, and in this post we're going to look at how to generate support material using it's analysis tools. Import the model, this step is fairly self explanatory.  Open Meshmixer and import the model you wish to print, either by clicking on the import button on the home screen and navigating to your model, or dragging your model into the program. I'll be using the standard bunny included in the program for this tutorial. Head over to the menu bar on the left of the screen and click on anal...

Welcome to my basics of 3D printing part 2! As a recap last week we looked at; Preparing the Model for 3D Printing Where to get the Model from. Slicing the model ready for the printer. This week we will actually get to printing! so without further ado....  Settings The settings you choose will determine the overall quality of the print and how long it takes.  Remember not every item needs to be the highest resolution possible,  for example if you're printing some sort of mechanical piece, something that will not be seen or just something where surface detail is not important, you should consider turning the layer height up.  On the flip side, if you're printing a display piece  or a miniature with lots of intricate surface detail, then you will want to go as high resolution as possible.  Most printers will print in the range of 0.05mm to 0.3mm layer heights comfortably.  However, one of the quirks of my little Cetus is that it will not pr...

Hey guys, over the next two weeks I'm going to have a quick look at the basics of 3D printing.  I've split it into two posts as even though I'm only looking at the very basics, there is still quite a bit to cover. Disclaimer - if you already know how to 3D print you probably want to skip this one. But I would feel bad letting you leave without something, so here's a picture of my cats holding hands; Right now into the meat of things.  This is going to be a long post guys so I'm going to split it into seven parts over two posts so you can read in sections if you need to; Post 1. Preparation The Model Slicing Post 2 Print Settings Check it! Printing Finishing Preparation Good preparation will solve 90% of any problems you might encounter.  Most failedprints I've had are down to me not setting something up properly or overlooking something I thought I had correctly set up previously. Firstly, what filament are you using?  What ar...