troez3D

Any of you who know me in real life will probably know that I'm getting married this weekend. Because of that, the last few blog posts have been a little on the short side due to me having my priorities lie elsewhere!  However this week I thought I'd quickly show off a few of the items I have been printing for the big day and how 3D Printing has made things a little bit easier/cheaper for us. Names for Drinks One way we are going to help people find their drinks in the sea of drinking that will be our wedding (I'm assuming) was to 3D Print everyone's name and to tie it to a small inflatable flamingo drinks holder. Table Numbers I have also printed large numbers that will be tied to the picnic baskets to help people find their allocated picnic. Seating Plan Numbers The numbers were also printed at a smaller scale without the loop on top to be attached to the seating plan at the entrance of the venue.   Cake Tier One of the ...

Hey guys, little review again this week.  A few months ago my fiancée got me a small, clip-on macrolens for my phone.  It has 3 modes; macro, supermacro and fisheye. I haven't been using the fish eye very much but the two macro lenses are great for taking images of my 3d prints. It's super easy to use, it just clips over the phone camera, with kind of a clothes peg type arrangement. It has a thin layer of foam on the inside too prevent damage to the phone.  The lenses screw into the peg, with the macro and supermacro (as I've named it) being a two part lens. With both parts together you get a standard macro effect but with the smaller part on its own it real zooms in and allows the phone to focus on close up detail.  Here are some photos using the various modes ; Seems a bit 'fishy' to me... Now as it was a small gift, I don't know how much it actually cost but if you look online you can find very similar lens kits for ...

Hey guys, so since last week the new extruder module from Cetus arrived and has been installed.  And good news everyone! She lives once more! It seems to be a slight redesign on the old module, with a new, more refined heater module and a new much quieter fan.  The old heater module was just wrapped in sort of a foil, whereas this new one seems to be a nice package with a rubberised cover on it. They also sent the new extruder with a nozzle installed, so I got a free nozzle out of it! So what have i printed since fixing it?  Just a few little pieces, a tiny excavator and jet plane.  I also finally finished the centurion Mech that has been waiting for it's arms since the printer broke! Starman!! Bulldog tank for Battletech Companion Cubes Tiny excavator I am now printing a MiniNuke from Fallout 4 to be used as a storage unit when it's done. I'll do a write up on it when its done and painted. I think that will do for this week....

Hey guys.  First off, not much of an update with the printer this week.  The replacement parts should be on the way but according to the tracking page they haven't yet left China, so if that doesn't change in the next couple of days I'll get back in touch with CS. So today, as this is a POTM week, I thought I'd touch on something pretty cool that happened at work last week. In 2017 I managed to convince my office that we should get hold of a 3D printer to be able to produced physical models of the digital models we already had for projects.  I settled on the Prusa MK2 as at the time it was the best quality for money FDM printer on the market. I had done some bits and pieces at work, including printing a pretty cool bridge model for a site team that wanted to present it to a client at the end of the project, I even presented it on a nice stained wood base. The other month I was given another interesting set of models to print. I was provided with an ex...

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...

So remember how I said last week I thought I had fixed my jamming issue? Well I was wrong. I'm not sure if it's the material, which it shouldn't be as it's the same brand I always use or if the nozzle is buggered, which seems more likely as it's the same nozzle that came with the machine last September. In any case, the only way to sort this out was to change the variables one at a time until it fixed itself and to do that I did following over the past couple of days; Change the material and try and print with the same nozzle and settings. This didn't work, not much more to say about it.  I did a cold pull This involves extruding filament through the nozzle until it is full, then letting it cool to just above the glass temp of the plastic, in this case around 100, and then manually pulling the filament out.  If done correctly it should come out with a little pop in the exact shape of the inside of the nozzle, pulling any debris with it. I th...