3D printer

My 3D printer finally arrived. It was brought down here for us by Rod and Sue and we are very grateful.

After unpacking it I set it up and printed my first test piece. It’s called a benchy but is really a small tug boat. After that, I was off and running. I had two rolls of filament from when we bought the last printer so we were fine for a while. Also, the new printer came with a roll of green.

I keep getting asked, “What do you make, it seems to be so impractical.” Well, so far I’ve designed and printed several prototype pieces for the hydroponics setup when we get back to Canada as well as some other pieces.

Not all of the prints are a success for various reasons. I tried three different prints with the green filament I got from Bambu Labs and all but one was a disaster and the one that did print wasn’t very good. I contacted them and they sent me a test cube which turned out perfect. It was only some of the stuff I designed that wasn’t right so I thought I goofed up somewhere. When I did the same designs in a different colour they were fine, so I don’t know.

All the following are my designs except the Benchy, the cutter holder and the jewel box.

The printer has four speeds, quiet (slow), normal, sport mode and ludicrous. I have tried them all. Normal of course is the best. A print I did with sport mode survived but the quality wasn’t very good. Ludicrous is just that. It was very fast and shook the whole table. I had to slow it down to save the print. I’m sure these fast speeds are helpful in some instances but for now, I’ll stick to normal.

Rosalie has been printing up a storm with her new 3D pen. She’s having a lot of fun and I’ve only had to help minimally.

I love the minion. Her 3D pen takes the same filament as my printer so I have to watch her as she likes to steal some from time to time. If I have some left on the roll when I’m done I give it to her, but I do make her beg.