New toy, Afinia 3D printer

[PeterGrant]

Have you tested their filaments? Printing with ABS filament is fairly straight forward; although compared with PLA, a heated print platform is required. Remember that the first layer is bonding with the print platform. If the print is not firmly attached to the platform, the print will fail. Anyways, I got 12 spools of ABS filament in a Saver Pack deals at 3d2print.net for only €299,95. So far, I never had any issues with melting point.

[PeterGrant]

So how’s it building your first 3D printer ? My brother also owns an Afinia-3D-printer; he assembled the machine so easily. Anyways, have you also tried your first print? I remember when we first tried it out, we used filament like this http://www.3d2print.net/shop/3d-prin...ylon-filament/ and the Eiffel tower as the model.

[Robin Hewitt]

Anyways, have you also tried your first print?

According to the books I have printed and sold 1137 items at £3.95 each incl. The printer required one new nozzle assembly and now has an annoying habit of stepping all 4 motors when it is supposed to be idle. I can work around that but without new toy enthusiasm I doubt I will chase the fault.

Plastic choice in ABS seems to be between pukka CIBA and cheap Chinese, quite honestly the cheap Chinese seems to stick to itself better, choice probably depends on how long the plastic has to cool down before it is revisited by the nozzle.

Lifting at the corners when you print a large flat base is a right royal pain in the bum, I never got anywhere trying to fix that one, nothing I tried worked. Once it starts to lift you can never develop a criss cross pattern, it just lifts in to the nozzle smears to a solid fill and gets worse.

[njhussey]

Damn you Robin.......now I want one :)

Would be useful to be able to make my own gears for my RC helis...guess I'll have to add that to the long list of "nice to haves" that I currently have!

[Robin Hewitt]

Yes, I forgot about the heated bed. Also what goes on the heated bed! Mine came with perf board, bulldog clips and a scraper thing so you can get it back to flat for the next job. Other options seem to be paint and tape. Apparently it has to get a good grip on the bed or things go to hell in a handbasket PDQ. I haven't had any problems, yet.

Close up pics. It seemed a bit unkind to point digi-microscope at it before I had it all figured out, but I'm not selling 3D printers so what do I care.

3d1.jpg shows the printed item still attached to the perf board with the "support raft" still in place.
3d1a.jpg is a close up of a gear tooth top.
3d1b.jpg shows a gear tooth from the side
3d1c.jpg shows an M4 spacer pushed in to a hex hole. It couldn't quite smear the plastic surface on the thin edge so you can see the internal structure.
3d1d.jpg is about as bad as it can get. This is the botttom of a 27.5mm tube resting on the bed so it is all requiring support from below.


Edit: To be fair I should remind you that I haven't pressed the "Fine" button yet. This slows everything down so it can get more heat into the plastic. These were printed using the default settings which is reasonably quick. The big gear took about an hour 45.

[Washout]

I've been itching to get or built a 3D printer for a while and almost ordered a Makerbot Replicator until I saw these: Formlabs - High Resolution Desktop 3D Printer

Chris

[Robin Hewitt]

I've been itching to get or built a 3D printer for a while and almost ordered a Makerbot Replicator until I saw these: Formlabs - High Resolution Desktop 3D Printer

Yes it is delicious, but this is the kickstart resin printer I mentioned. I understand they got whacked with a patent violation

[Chas]

Yes it is delicious, but this is the kickstart resin printer I mentioned. I understand they got whacked with a patent violation

& they'll be bogged down in that lawsuit till the money runs out. The kickstarters 'might' get their machines but I doubt they'll risk any kind of mass production & I doubt they'll win the lawsuit. Which is a damned shame.

[Musht]

& they'll be bogged down in that lawsuit till the money runs out. The kickstarters 'might' get their machines but I doubt they'll risk any kind of mass production & I doubt they'll win the lawsuit. Which is a damned shame.

Patent appears to be a software rather than hardware one:

BBC News - Kickstarter sued over 3D Systems' printer patent

ok possibly a significant feature , but U.S patent suit only popular one when LED patent wars were still hot was to relocate the H.Q. , at least on paper, to Canada, outside reach of U.S. patent system.

Form Labs don`t seem overly bothered, but with 2.8m USD of investors money, stay calm and carry on ;-)

FORM 1: An affordable, professional 3D printer by Formlabs » Our Number One Priority — Kickstarter

Patent expires in 2 years anyway, the DLP SLA cat is out of the bag, some places there into mixing their own photosensitive resins.

Afinia looks like a very useable FDM design for actually making parts, ABS being straight off useablle for things like gear cogs if can do resolution.

[Robin Hewitt]

At last, something useful !

I saw this on thingiverse and made it twice before I realised his design was crap.

Redrew it from scratch and it works a treat.

http://www.robinhewitt.net/Printing.wmv

Has to be good for 99p on ebay