The unofficial 3D printing thread

[Gameface]

I've kind of felt like I missed the bus on 3D printing. Recently I was in Denver and a guy I was working with was way into 3D printing and when I told him that I felt like I missed the bus he basically said there has never been a better time to jump in. I understand what he is saying because hardware options are better than ever (as he explained) but I think people who have been in the space are the ones who will have the best idea of what new equipment is great and which is garbage. They will also know how and why they are going to use this great new hardware.

Anyway, I wanted in. In my typical fashion I didn't really want to splash around in the kiddie pool to get started so I bought the 3D printer pictured above. It is a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon. I'm looking forward to getting started and I have some ideas for what I eventually want to do but my initial goal will be learning the equipment, getting some practice in, reading forums, reading forums, reading forums, watching YouTubes (I'll skip listing this one 3 times, but you get it), getting some more practice in and then hopefully start doing something really cool.

As I hit the ORDER button on the printer above I figured there had to be some jazzfanzers who have done some 3D printing and so I started this thread.

Enjoy!

 

[Gameface]

Third time is the charm!

I started off a bit rough because I don't know what I'm doing. I got my printer and today I set it up. I tried doing what seems like the standard first thing and printed the "3D Benchy" which is a little boat. It has several features that you can use to troubleshoot your printer and it is also used as a sort of speed test to see if your fast prints will come out without any problems. The Bambu Lab X1 Carbon is supposed to have a really solid benchy out of the box that finishes in well under 30 min, which I am informed is a very good time for an out of the box printer.

My printer came with three small-ish spools of filament and I didn't pay too much attention and installed them with the white spool first, the black spool second and the green spool third in the AMS (automatic material system I think). I selected the benchy file and went for it after having done all the calibration stuff. It seemed bad from the start and eventually had what is called a "spaghetti failure" which is pretty much what it sounds like. Instead of a little boat I had the first few layers and then a mess of stands that looked like a bunch of spaghetti. I reset, and tried again. Failed again. Then I searched YT for a video "First run on a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon" and found a 9 min video and 5 min in I saw that the person had an issue with which filament the printer detected and it seemed to want the basic PLA in the first slot. I went and looked at my spools and the white filament was support structure material and that's what it was trying to build the benchy from. So that's why it failed. I had to fumble around for a bit to figure out how to unload the spools and I switched the support material with the green basic PLA.

Using the right material worked and now I'm the proud owner of a little green boat that looks pretty good. After that I printed a scraper that scrapes the stuff off the printing surface and that worked too.

So yeah, I'm basically a pro now.

 

[Miggs]

Hopefully you don’t do Malkovich in In the Line of Fire.

He was using poured plastics iirc, not 3D printing. But yeah.