Creality 3D For Christmas – Impressions so Far

[Martin of WickParticipant @martinofwick]

Thanks for that Andrew,

I have an old plastic frame Anet 8 project machine which I am in the process of re configuring into the popular Al profile frame version (project with more stops than starts).

Some time back I did try to upload a Ramps/arduino combination board only managing an epic fail after a couple of days – I must have reviewed every online video on Utube but still never figured it out.

Perhaps I will try a MKS board as there are less steps to loading Marlin, but how do you manage without an SD card reader? – does that mean that the control screen has to be changed to a version with SD as well? Are there any recommended for the MKS board?

[Anonymous]

Since my internal gear and pinion were designed as 1DP it's simple to scale to 40DP. Here are the results:

By no means perfect, but this was using a 0.4mm nozzle. Just scale, export, inport into the slicer and use the standard settings. Plastic is PLA.

Andrew

[Martin of WickParticipant @martinofwick]

strewth! at 0.4mm nozzle too..

[Anonymous]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 02/01/2020 11:52:39:

Is there is an easier way?

Don't use multiple software packages written by computer geeks?

Mind you even using semi-professional 3D CAD I had problems modelling the smokebox nameplate for my traction engines. Although most of the issues revolved around having to use a non-linear scaling on the characters as none of the standard fonts had the correct height/width ratio. And then having to convert an assembly to a 'part' so I could create the CNC tool path.

Andrew

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Andrew Entwistle on 02/01/2020 11:14:37:

…

the most important feature that Marlin offers over bottom end printers is thermal protection (detection of sudden changes in temperature such as a temperature sensor falling out and causing a fire through thermal runaway).

…

Having Marlin is one of the features that attracted me to the Ender 3. Also, despite being a bottom end machine its fans claim it to have addressed many of the fiddly issues that put me off playing 3D earlier. Pleased to find there's truth in the praise – I expected a lot more tweaking to be necessary before getting even a half-decent result. It was almost too easy! I suppose the burgeoning market over the last 10 years has made the thing almost consumer friendly. Really sad though; now I can't claim to be a pioneer!

Dave

[Andrew EntwistleParticipant @andrewentwistle]

Hi Martin,

I forgot that it was too difficult to map the wiring of the Anet LCD ribbon cables to the MKS board, so I just bought a RepRapDiscount Full Graphic Smart Controller (about £12) which includes an SD card reader. In practice I alway use the printer connected to a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint, so don't need the SD support.

Andrew.

[Andrew EntwistleParticipant @andrewentwistle]

I did flash the original Anet control board to Marlin 1.1.18 with no problem, I only changed to the MKS board to get 256k memory, since the Anet board has only 32k memory and did not have space for mesh bed levelling.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 02/01/2020 15:24:39:

Since my internal gear and pinion were designed as 1DP it's simple to scale to 40DP. Here are the results:

By no means perfect, but this was using a 0.4mm nozzle. Just scale, export, inport into the slicer and use the standard settings. Plastic is PLA.

Andrew

.

Looks like Christmas 2020 might be a realistic ambition

MichaelG.

[Martin of WickParticipant @martinofwick]

Thanks Andrew,

inspired my to have another try.

[Bill Davies 2Participant @billdavies2]

Well, that's impressive, Andrew.

I haven't used Meccano in years (decades), but after a bit of browsing I discovered their gears aren't (all) a standard DP size: Meccano gear pitches. Interesting and surprising. I hope this doesn't upset MichaelG's plans.

Bill

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Bill Davies 2 on 02/01/2020 19:35:32:

[…]

I hope this doesn't upset MichaelG's plans.

.

Not at all, Bill … why would it ?

I have no specific interest in Meccano gears

MichaelG.

.

Edit : Please see my post yesterday at 21:52:46

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 02/01/2020 19:59:31

[Anonymous]

I've had a go at printing a thin wall box:

The box is nominally 25mm square and all wall thicknesses are 0.4mm, to match my nozzle. First time round without fiddling with the slicer the walls weren't printed. Should have spotted that in the slicer before printing. On the second go I set the wall thickness to 0.4mm in the slicer – and the walls were ignored. So I set it to 0.2mm and got a snotty message saying it was smaller than my nozzle setting. So I set it to 0.39mm and the message went away! Even better the walls appeared in the slicer representation. In practise the walls are 0.52mm, as measured with a groove micrometer.

Andrew

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

By the way for non round figure DPs and people wanting to tweak the size of the final gear (mentioned by someone early on), in FreeCAD gear function in the 'modules' entry box you can put a formula in there with diameters and DPs and it will evaluate it on the fly.

[jimmy bParticipant @jimmyb]

Andrew, I just had to have a go with my Aldi printer!

I drew up the same 25mm square with .4mm walls.

My Cura slicer (3.4.1, I'm happy with this version and have resisted updating), would not print the walls (I checked the layers, before printing).

I tried your tip of 0.39 wall and it worked! I have a wall of 0.4 to 0.5 thickness. Quite impressive for a printer that cost £150 (this one is Aldi's black Friday sale one, my other was full price).Printed with PLA filament (cheap stuff- see below)

I have found that filament is the biggest factor in getting good prints. I have bought some packs of 25 different colour samples of PLA (10M long, so good for most prints) and not had any problems. Some filament from 3DQF was that bad it went in the bin. I can recommend 3Dfilaprint for good quality PLA.

Jim

[Bill Davies 2Participant @billdavies2]

Michael, I assumed the 40DP was for meccano gears, perhaps from Andrew's following post. Pretty small change gears!

Bill

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Bill Davies 2 on 03/01/2020 18:59:08:

Michael, I assumed the 40DP was for meccano gears, perhaps from Andrew's following post. Pretty small change gears!

Bill

.

We still have our wires crossed, Bill

I posted the following note on Christmas day, on the ‘What did you do” thread:

[quote]

Today, just out of curiosity, I removed the focus block from a large Russian microscope.

The coarse focus is quite conventional and moves the stage by rack & pinion

The fine focus has a simple gearbox [spur gears and pinions] , driving a geared sector which is effectively one arm of a 'bell crank' that raises or lowers the whole stage assembly.

Simple, robust, Russian engineering which reliably delivers movement at the micron level.

[/quote]

.

Hopefully that explains my general interest in ‘gears for small mechanisms’

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 03/01/2020 19:59:03

[Bill Davies 2Participant @billdavies2]

No, I didn't really think change gears, Michael. Regarding the Russian microsope, I'm surprised at the use of DP, I would have expected module or perhaps some metric circular pitch. It sound like an interesting project.

I can vouch for Russian robustness having used Russian milling machines that my company took as part-payment decades ago.

Bill

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 03/01/2020 19:56:39:

[…]

.

Hopefully that explains my general interest in ‘gears for small mechanisms’

.

Note [just for clarity] :

I have a special interest in mechanisms related to microscopes, and a wider interest in other small mechanisms [regardless of their persuasion in terms of Module/DP, Involute/Cycloidal, or whatever]

… It’s the size that’s interesting to me; not the shape or any particular system of measurement.

MichaelG.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

The grey one is a Mod1 20 degree 30 tooth changewheel printed in PLA on a Ultimaker Pro 3 (as an obviously necessary test piece for the printer at work) which is about £1600. 25% density took 50 minutes. The other gear is the original injection moulded Hobbymat gear in perhaps nylon.

The hole is 20mm and with a slight sandpapering to smooth the layers inside fits snugly on the mandrel. You can see that each tooth is two layers fitting tight together then a third not quite going up into the whole of the tooth leaving a small void. The fit with the originals is 'perfect'.

The design was done in Freecad and the outer across teeth diameter measurement is just 7 thou greater than the original.
I haven't done a strength test yet.

In use they fit on a steel bush with a key to join two together with a 8mm hole to go on the banjo stud. I might try a printed bush or even a fully printed pair of gears to reduce the effort of setting gear trains. The possible drawback of running plastic on the steel stud is dirt and swarf pickup making a grinding lap. Perhaps a thin brass tube would help that.
The 20 tooth gear in the set is too small to have a 20mm hole so it has a special bush. This is the first target for printing as a whole. I have limited access to the printer but watch this space.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

On the more general subject of plastic gears:

Today’s raid on the Charity Shop bagged a box of K’nex parts, including a pair of the large gears

**LINK**

https://www.knexusergroup.org.uk/en/info_K91998.html

Having previously only admired these from afar: I was impressed both by the quality of the moulding, and the clever tooth-shape [which lets the same gear serve as spur or contrate]

MichaelG.

[with apologies for the digression]

[jimmy bParticipant @jimmyb]

I'm now reading through Neil's book.

Quite a good read!

Jim

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

How are you getting on, Dave?

My Sovol SV01 (arrived yesterday) has made two virtually perfect sample cubes today, in two different PLA filaments – one in the 1/2kg sample of filament supplied with the printer and the other needing a much higher extrusion temperature. Better than 0.2mm range of measurements in 30mm and no surface defects, so good enough for me.

Got to get my head round the slicer and supplied files next. Then onto drawing in CAD.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by not done it yet on 29/01/2020 23:52:28:

How are you getting on, Dave?

…

Slowly!

Ages ago I started a MEW article on producing model signage in software and abandoned it because the draft read like a knitting pattern, only less interesting! Great images, terrible text. The idea was to print the results on a 3D printer, either to make moulds or actual signs. At the time I didn't have a printer.

Now I've got one, my target is signage again, and it's not as straightforward as expected. I've hit trouble converting text and paths drawn with Inkscape into a printable STL unlike this mangled engine plate which upsets the slicer:

In the ELS thread Rockingdodge showed a 3D printed box he'd designed in Inkscape and Fusion360 using a method I'd completely missed. While Fusion 360 is also a little tricky with text its much easier to use than other methods I've tried, and I got this STL from it yesterday:

Not tried to 3D print it yet, but the Creatility Slicer loads it OK.

Although Fusion360 simplifies working with Inkscape text, converting to STL is done in the Cloud, which takes age. Also, I prefer Linux to Windows, and Linux nearly works. So at the moment I'm experimenting Rockingdodges method with FreeCAD: at the moment complicated and unreliable, but that may be because I'm using the wrong combination of tools.

Another time-waster: my nephew asked me to print a statuette representing the head of North Korea's Great Leader on the body of Rodin's "The Thinker". This involves editing two STL models available on the web and merging them together. Though I'm sure it can be done, I'm struggling to make it happen!

In short, I'm Lost In CAD mainly because I'm trying to walk before I can run. I suppose it's obvious in retrospect, but I was expecting setting up the printer to be more difficult than designing in software, actually it's the reverse! Once you know roughly how they work, quite easy to model simple 3D objects like boxes in CAD. Much harder using two or three software tools in concert because they all have to be mastered.

Supposed to be working on a giant domestic tidy up and redecorating project, not armchair engineering!

Can you say more about your Sovol – it looks like an improved Creality?

Dave

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Posted by not done it yet on 29/01/2020 23:52:28:

My Sovol SV01 (arrived yesterday) has made two virtually perfect sample cubes today, in two different PLA filaments – one in the 1/2kg sample of filament supplied with the printer and the other needing a much higher extrusion temperature. Better than 0.2mm range of measurements in 30mm and no surface defects, so good enough for me.

Got to get my head round the slicer and supplied files next. Then onto drawing in CAD.

Good to hear NDIY

I've busy printing vacuum/cyclone/machinery adaptors with my Sovol and I'm quite happy with the results thus far. I found an existing (Thingiverse) Open SCAD adaptor design that being parametric was very easily changed (a few minutes) to my various 'outlet' sizes and then sliced and printed. I've also designed a few simple objects myself in SCAD and found it very quick to pick up the basics. It may not compete with Fusion 360 for complicated engineering stuff – but for the things I'm likely to need for my 3D printing – it seems very proficient.

For my 'engineering' CAD, I'm going to stick with (2D) TurboCAD for now as I've used it for many years and I'm comfortable with it – but SCAD has certainly extended my 3D capability without requiring a lot of my time.

In fact I've probably spent more effort trying to understand Cura and have found a few things that seem to help. After watching many videos about using masking tape, Pritt sticks etc (for bed adhesion) I tried them but decided that with the Sovol heated glass bed they were not really required. What I have done is set up Cura to do helpful things like turning the fan off on the first layer and also experimented with infill densities and layer thickness to try to get a good balance between print times, print quality and material usage. Still much to learn though.

So my impressions so far are positive but I do view 3DP as just another tool in the locker and a couple of times recently I've been tempted to print something when there was actually a much simpler way to do the job (e.g. a wooden plug in one case!). However, the uses that I have found for 3DP so far would have been difficult to under take using other approaches – so I'm satisfied that the Sovol will earn its keep.

Regards,

IanT

PS NDIY – If you haven't already done so – watch the Sovol company YouTubes and the g-code they provide on-screen on the setting-up one. You can type this into directly Cura to automatically retract the filament etc at the end of your print… PM if you cannot find it.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Dave,

I have nothing else to compare my Sovol with but basically it comes mostly assembled and can be up and working in about half an hour. I knew (know) very little about 3DP but I had my Sovol working very quickly and it seems to have some of the desirable 'upgrades' that I've seen mentioned in the many Youtubes I've watched – such as the heated glass bed, stiffer bed springs and a direct-feed extruder (apparently better for flexible filament types).

I never got too far with Fusion 360 myself, so again I don't know how Fusion 'text' works but here is a simple Open SCAD example that I've just 'cut-n-pasted' from a G1MRA tutorial on SCAD by Adrian Johnson (G13DCircle – see Groups.io)

$fn=180; length=20;

difference(){ intersection() { cube([length*2,length,4], center=true); cylinder(d=2*length, h=8, center=true); } translate([-0.75*length,0,0]) cylinder(d=5, h=8,center=true); }

translate([-0.4*length,1,1]) linear_extrude(2)text("Shed", 6 ); translate([-0.4*length,-6,1]) linear_extrude(2)text("Door", 6);

This copy hasn't formatted very well to here I'm afraid but most of the 'script' is actually involved in the 'keyfob' shape itself (e.g. the rounded edges & hanging hole) – and the actual 'text' part is pretty simple. It probably looks somewhat complicated but actually the script breaks down into a few simple commands that define and merge a few basic shapes. When I first looked at SCAD I was more than a bit doubtful about using it but if you start with a few simple objects then it is something that can be learned in stages whilst still getting useful results.'

In this example – I just copied the text from Adrian's PDF example and pasted it into Open SCAD to immediately get to this image (which I could print if required – the text being easily edited:

Hope this helps

Regards,

IanT

[Author]

Posts