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...

This week will be a brief update on how my attempts to fix my poor little printer are going. So last week I had tried, different materials, changing settings and changing to brand new nozzles and none of these things made a blind bit of difference leading me to believe that the problem was a little more serious than just a blocked nozzle. I settled on the most obvious explanation; there was something wrong with the heating element on the extruder head, either with the sensor or the heater itself. I had one more thing I could try before going to Cetus customer service and asking for help, I had previously had an issue with the extruder motor which wasn't turning properly and upon talking to Cetus, they sent me a new ribbon cable and PCB for the printer.  As it turned out it was a fault with the ribbon cable, causing the motor to not be able to draw enough power so I after that I had a spare PCB. I thought maybe the fault was with the board itself so on Sunday I got my screwd...

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...

A lot of times I talk to people about 3D printing they aren't aware that there is more than one type, so I thought in this blog post I'd give a super quick run down of the main types out there and a few pros and cons of each. FDM/FFF First and foremost, the type of printing that most people would immediately think of would be Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) or Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF).  This method uses a heated nozzle to heat a filament of plastic and then lay it down onto a print surface one layer at a time.  It is by far the most popular type of printer out there for enthusiasts and home makers due to it's relatively low cost and ease of use. The price range of FDM printers is huge, with even just the consumer market ranging from a couple hundred pounds all the way up to the thousands. Popular Printers I will clarify that there are literally hundreds of printers in this category so I have just picked a few that I have first hand experience with;...

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...