3D printing

A few years ago I was looking at 3D printing but couldn't find my self buying one because of the poor quality of the prints in prespective to the price of the printer.
Having designed a few things on in 3D and having them print in high quality resin for my 0 gauge modelrailroad, I kept looking a the printers. And when my son-in-law had printed a few things for me on his own 3D printer, it started to get the quality I want for my projects.

So the end of may 2019 I decided it was time to buy my own and started to look for a simple kitt which would keep a balance between print quality and resolution and price. My good friend Wijnand PD5WL owned  a Creality Ender-3 Pro sinds feb 2019 and having seen a few of his prints, my choice was made.

And early June 2019 my own Creality Ender-3 Pro was deliverd.  So I could start the construction of the printer. Wijnand gave me a few tips and told me that there ares ome "must have" and some "nice to have" upgrades which you could print your own.  So the  fist things I printed where these upgrades :

I can say they indeed are a must have.

Current printer setup

I installed the printer on a IKEA 2x2 KALLAX. It's a sollid base and the 4 spaces give room to store tools and filements (and more stuff offcourse).

A few tips :

  1. Install a smoke alarm above the printer. You are working with heat and you may never now.
  2. Never leave the printer running when your not home. See tip #1.
  3. Put some foam blocks underneed you printer. When the printer is printing  it may resonate on the table and make some annoying sound.
  4. Don't throw away your mis prints, a local hacker/maker space may have some use for it (recycling).

 

Update 6 Jan 2023 :

Recently I damaged my magnetic heat bed plate and because my heat bed isn't flat any more through the extensive usage, I replace with a glass heat bed plate.

glass_heatbed_plate

And have to say, the prints are looking much better now. I have left the original magnetic sticker underneath it , so I can use the damaged magnetic plate to print PETG when I want to (you don't want to print PETG on a coted glass plate).

 

Recommended video's

Some good video's which helped me :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTt8P6BmnB4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBJwic_ompA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrQnIy9g4nI

A new printer

Recently my son-in-law-ad (ad = ast deurgit / if they get married) got a tip that the Creality company had a nice set offer for the LD-002R resin printer. That set would include the LD-002R resin printer and the UW-01 washing and curing unit for a very reasonable price. 

ld002r-001

We are both model railroad enthusiast's and builders and often are confronted with the resolution limitations of our current printers. So this could be great upgrade on that. So we decided to team up and buy a set together because we both don't need the printer full-time. 
While we waited to started to look around for "needed" upgrades for the printer and found this video.

 After a few days the only the LD-002R printer arrived, and I started to worry that something went wrong in the shipping process. One e-mail to the service desk of Creality eased up my mind because the parts where shipped from 2 locations and 2 days later, the UW-01 and a bottle of Resin arrived. We unboxed them, did some dry test runs to see if everything was working and made some room in my hamradio shack. 

ld002r-002

My Creality 3D Ender 3 Pro is running to print a few upgrades and we wait for the isopropyl alcohol to arrive. Because that's one thing you defiantly need.


To be continued.

 

Find 3D things to print.

Before I owned a 3D printer I made some 3D designed and posted them on my Thingiverse.com account to share them with other 3D printers. I'm still use Thingiverse a lot to look for cool designs and frequenctly upload my designs to it.