real 3D modeling resources.

[CattyNebulart]

Well I got my printer just before christmas, but with the holidays and guest and all of that I was unable to fully assemble it. Working on it now though, but I will need more tools.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[classicdrogn]

With the number of bronies about - combine one of these with the models from GMod (here for Blender) and you can have actual show-accurate figures. Woo!

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[CattyNebulart]

Cool. I'm still waiting for a set of srews to do the final calibration of the heated bed, since the screws that came with it are exactly long enough, which makes the bed wobbly and hard to adjust. If the screws where 35 mm instead of 30 I would probably not bother, but as it is the bed occasionally hits the frame and is a bit wobbly because the screws are not all the way through the nuts.

Also soldering is hard, and debugging electronic circuits is remarkably similar and yet entirely different to debugging code.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[SkyeFire]

Was stalled for a while on my Prusa, as Real Life kept insisting on intruding.  And my Y-axis platform snapped off the bushings when the epoxy gave out.  But I've gotten a bit further in the last few days:  the Y-axis is back together and the belt is strung, now, using JB-Weld instead of the Loctite E-20H I was using before.

[SkyeFire]

Okay, I'm going to gripe a bit.

Lately, my Prusa build has just been one roadblock after another.  This came to a head last week when:
1. I found that my X-axis carriage could not be assembled as instructed without the belt clamp screws hitting the slide rod.  And the next screw size down was too short to reach the retained nut.  And nowhere in the errata or the 'net are there any mentions of this issue.  
2.  My X-axis carriage won't slide, despite being assembled properly, and even with the offending clamp screw removed.  I'll try reaming the PLA bushings a bit, but frankly, given that I bought my printed parts from Nophead and his parts have excellent build quality, I don't think the problem lies there.  
3.  Mounting the Pololu stepper motor daughterboards into the RAMPS board in the correct orientation is absolutely vital -- turning them around (and there is nothing to prevent that) will destroy them instantly on power-on.  Okay, I can overlook the lack of any safeguards there.  But then the official Wiki for these boards mentions how important the orientation is... and says NOTHING AT ALL about what the orientation should be!!!  I had to spend hours Googling about to find just one blog post with a photo that has (I hope) the correct orientation.  WTF, people?  Seriously.
4.  My RAMPS board turned out to have been factory-assembled with a heat sink that makes physically impossible to mount the Extruder Pololu.  Again, no mentions of this anywhere within Google's scope of search.
5.  My EBay stepper motors don't appear to work properly with my test control board, even after confirming that the board itself works properly.  Okay, this one is on me -- EBay practically defines "caveat emptor."

So, after some frustration and swearing, I took a step back to look at things.  The Prusa just keeps getting bogged down the further I go, and I've put nearly enough money into it to have bought a ready-to-use Makerbot.  I have learned a lot from it, though.
Meanwhile, my RepRapPro Huxley, which I received for supporting the IndiGoGo (think KickStarter) campaign, is in a box waiting to be built.  It's a complete single-source kit, all parts in one box, should go together and let me start printing with minimal fuss and/or tuning.  So, after some thought, that smart move seemed to be to put the Hux together fast and get printing, and turn my Prusa into my "beater" -- the one I could experiment with and break, while using the Hux to print fresh and improved parts for it (the Thingiverse categories for better Prusa parts is HUGE).

So, I started putting the Hux together this past weekend....  
Screeching halt.
The print quality of these parts is just embarrassing.  I know not everyone can be Nophead, but I really expected better from a company with "Pro" in the name.
And then the threaded rods -- all of them cut with the ends mangled enough to make threading nuts onto them darn near impossible.  The last time this happened (with the Prusa vitamins kit), I had to find a machinist with an 8mm thread die to recover the ends.  This time, being at home, I spent about three hours cutting myself up to get the nuts on for the main structure triangles.  I shudder to think what the rest of the rods are like.

So... here I am.  Spent more than enough money to buy a ready-to-run Makerbot, got two kits, and can't be certain either one will be workable.  Okay, I get it that this is a crowdsourced thing, and my Prusa problems are at least partly due to my pieced-together build approach using multi-sourced parts.  And maybe I shouldn't complain too loudly about the Hux, given the low donation I had to make to get it (but still, cutting threaded rod that badly just pisses me off!  It's not that hard to do it right!).  But right now, I'm just really, really cheesed.  I don't have the time or the resources to keep re-making or hand-building every part on these things, and frankly I'm feeling like I've been taken to the cleaners.
I suppose I'll feel more charitable after I cool off and get some perspective.  But right now, I just want to kick some people where it really hurts.

[classicdrogn]

Understandable, getting kicked in the wallet hurts and you've certainly been that. I don't have anything useful to say beyond that, except that it sounds like a great time to do something else for a while, and you've already decided that for yourself.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[CattyNebulart]

The People at reprap pro have already apologised about the threaded rods, especially as their supplier promised that it wouldn't be an issue. IIRC they have since found a new supplier. I am lucky and managed to fix my one rod that needed fixing enough in a few minutes with a file.

However the screws holding the heated bed up are too short I ordered some longer ones from Amazon in early Jan, and they should be arriving tomorrow.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[SkyeFire]

Really?  Hm, I hadn't heard about that.  But then, I'm not "plugged in" to any of the forums or social networks related to RepRapping.  I suppose I should start looking into that.

[CattyNebulart]

for help the IRC chanells can't be beat. Email for official support is more iffy.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[VladimirTherin]

Have you guys ever looked at shapeways.com ? Professional 3d printing done in various materials, you can upload your own model and they will print and mail it to you.

Example:

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/reno

Really tempted to make a stab at modeling some of my characters to see if I can get something even halfway tolerable as a custom figurine.
Also, various parts and custom cases :
http://www.shapeways.com/...or-the-Raspberry-Pi.html
I would be really interested in anyones impressions if they have ever used these guys.

[CattyNebulart]

Well the screws I was waiting for have arrived as so I just am finishing up the calibration process. I don't have a successful build yet, but I will soon.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[classicdrogn]

I know of Shapeways, but have never ordered from them. If you look in their catalogue a lot of the things have pictures of the finished part, and if you look on Youtube for "the oh cube" you'll find a twisty puzzle guy who does a ton of demonstrations of his stuff, all made by Shapeways. The only problem with Shapeways is how expensive stuff is, most of the puzzle cubes for example are in the $200 range. something the size of a 25mm gaming figure tends to be $12-20, That's not out of range for most people who'd be buying cra- I mean, Warhammer 40K or similar mini figs, but still kind of up there for single, plastic ones.

Even so, tolerances and durability suitable for making a 13x13x13 Rubiks cube, that's fairly impressive.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[SkyeFire]

Turns out my Hux's smooth rods are cut badly too -- the ends are mushroomed a bit.  And while trying to assemble the rest of the primary frame, one of the vertex pieces snapped.   

The good news is that RepRapPro has offered to swap out my rods and printed parts.  This is going to put an unpleasant delay in my build schedule, but that was already shot anyway.  And I have to give props to RRP for stepping right up without hesitation.

[VladimirTherin]

Part of that is the mark-up they allow people who publish their models to set. If you see something listed on their site with a price tag, thats actual print price plus whatever the designers have set.

[CattyNebulart]

Print attempt 1: the print head moves but nothing comes out.

Print attempt 2-20: messing with skeinforge settings, not enough luck.

Print attempt 21: switched to Slic3r, next print attempt the first layer prints more or less successfully, but half remains attached to the nozzle messing up the next few layers. Aborting print but success is visible from here and it looks sweet.

Spend some time adjusting the heated bed more carefully.

Print attempt 22-33: the PLA will not stick to the aluminium heated bed.

...yadiyadi yada...

print attempt 100: It works! It Lives! printing onto blue tape and messing with all kinds of settings seems to have worked! The parts being printed are incredibly ugly but they are one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

print attempt 101-111: tweaking settings and getting marginal improvements in print quality.slowly but surely it's improving, except when it gets worse.

Yay, I have succeeded in a print! the parts are ugly but getting better! Does happy dance.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bob Schroeck]

Congratulations!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[classicdrogn]

Always good to see something you've built become functional! Now comes the tweaking...

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[CattyNebulart]

Thanks, success after so long feels good.

Well more calibration more tweaking. It has gone from "that is a square because I say that is a square." through "where you trying to print a square?" up to "yup that looks like a square." Which is a huge improvement but it's still pretty bad. I am sure I will spend more time calibrating than I did building it.

There are people who claim to be able to calibrate it in 20 minutes... ()^_^ I'm not one of them.

I wish you luck SkyeFire, the assembly is easy enough, but I recommend reading the entire instruction set before beginning, since some steps are easier if done out of order, esspecially in places where you need to have nuts in the plastic and then you add a screw. putting the nuts in the plastic first before the plastic piece is mounted tends to make it much much easier to assemble than trying to get the nuts in when it's already mounted. Use a little blue tape to keep the nuts in, you'll need blue-tape anyway since it is invaluable in holding the pieces together while you work. Plus PLA will stick to it very very strongly, so putting a layer on the heated bed makes it work much better.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[SkyeFire]

if it's not one thing it's another.  

I got my replacement parts for my Huxley from RepRapPro a couple weeks back, and while I was on vacation last week set out to do a marathon build session....

The new printed parts are consistently printed 1-2mm thicker than they're supposed to be in certain dimensions.  I checked using calipers.  It was bad enough that some parts were utterly unusable, in that the holes for certain screws were deeper than the screw was long.  
Of course, this didn't become apparent until I hit the Z-axis assembly stage, b/c the over-thickness was taken up in the rest of the assembly by using up every bit of spare thread on the threaded rods.  Being too pissed off to bother going round the rosebush again with RepRapPro on this, I resorted to some creative milling and some use of the old poor-quality PLA parts (although if they ever get around to asking for the original parts in exchange, I'm giving them a big ol' raspberry.  Spare parts in exchange for my frustration seems fair).

I actually think it was going okay, until I tried putting the X-axis parts onto the Z-axis rods.  Now I've got a serious snag.  You see, these printed parts accept some clip-in Igus bushings like this.  The instructions say to ream out the holes that hold the bushings using a 7mm drill bit, which I've done.  But even after removing enough material that I'm nervous, the bushings still grip the Z-axis smooth rods so tightly that gravity can't pull down X-axis assembly down (I'm confident it's not an alignment issue -- I feel the similar resistance with only one rod attached).  Which means that when I try to drive the print head down, these "anti-backlash springs" aren't going to be able to do their jobs.
So, Googling about comes up with nothing.  And pinging some of the RepRap discussion fora have generated silence.  So I'm stuck trying to figure out, just how much stiction is enough/too much on these rails?  And why reaming out the holes to the design diameter hasn't worked?  And just how much more material can I ream out freehand before I compromise the stability of the axis?

[CattyNebulart]

if you have removed enough material so that the smooth rod can go through the bushings you are nearly there. I recommend testing each hole separately, and very slowly and carefully remove a bit of material with a fine file or drill bit. The rod should slide fairly smoothly through the bushings. This step is a real pain because the bushings are hard to get in and out. The rods could theoretically have quite a bit of resistance and still work, but ideally they would have 0 friction while stopping any sideways movement.

You are not going to get to the ideal state, the best you can do is to get to fairly low friction.
The failure mode if the friction is too high is that when you are trying to pull the X-Axis and extruder up along the z-axis you will instead push the Z-axis of it mountings. These are just friction fitted to the Z-Axis motors and if the friction on the guide rods is too high either the clear plastic things or the white things will be pushed off.
The failure mode if the guide rods allow sideways movement is some additional jitter in your build.

A useful guide is that if the X-Axis can slide down the rod under the force of gravity then it's just right or too loose. If it takes a body builder to slide the X-Axis along the rod then it's too tight. So some resistance but not too much. I wish I could give you hard numbers but I don't know myself. That said if you can get the guide rods through the bushings removing 0.1 mm will remove too much material so be very very gentle. You might already be at the right level of friction, its kinda hard to tell.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[CattyNebulart]

So SkyeFire how is the build going? I must admit I'm curious.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[SkyeFire]

Dead standstill since my last post.  Every time I want to sit down and put an hour or two into it, something pops up to eat my time.  It doesn't help that I'm working generally 14hr days 6 days/week, either.

RANT:  they used linear bearings on every other axis of this machine -- WHY not on the Z axis rods as well, huh?

[CattyNebulart]

Ouch I feel for you. 14 hour days is insane.

As for why no linear bearings on the Z-Axis, I'm guessing that bushings are cheaper and it's easier to assemble. Also the Z-Axis assembly can handle a lot more friction than either of the other axes. (Axises?)
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[ECSNorway]

Speaking of 3d printing, just got my first order back from Shapeways.

And damn, but they are turning out some gorgeous work.

People complain about getting 'stepping' on curved bits of their minis?

Not that I can see at this point in the game.

I printed in their "white strong & flexible" material, generally the cheapest minis-suitable material in their catalog.

There's a slight bit of fuzz to the output, but that should come off in cleanup, if nothing else with a little very light sanding.

Highly recommend Trata Kam Orbital Shipyards http://www.shapeways.com/shops/tratakam

and Ghostrunner Designs http://www.shapeways.com/shops/ghostrunner
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[SkyeFire]

Well, I could fill another whole page with the latest issues I've discovered with the Huxley kit, but I'll grit my teeth and refrain.  Especially since I was able to make some progress anyway.After being stuck for some time on the whole Z-axis thing, I just brought the entire kit to work with me and enlisted some after-hours help from a master mechanic, who eyeballed in the exact issues with the bushing fit and proceeded to hand-file the offending plastic away.  We then proceeded to assemble the entire Z-axis and most of the Extruder (which can NOT be assembled by following the instructions).  On my agenda for tonight (fingers crossed) is the heated bed, and the rest of the extruder/hot-end subsystem.  And maybe start on the electronics, time permitting.