I have a cr-10 and a prusa mk3. I end the prusa 90 percent of the time.
I’ll get a Prusa i3 MK3S with the MMU 2.0 Kit
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And 0.8 resolution?
Generally you should avoid going over 3/4 of your nozzle size in resolution.
So 0.6mm is the max I would go with a 0.8mm nozzle.
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I’m using an Ender 3 with a direct drive extruder and a few other upgrades. If you want to print flex materials like TPU I would strongly reccomend the upgrade.
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Well, resolution is really more layer height a lot of the time, which I usually have a .48, for stregnth.
but you can easily keep the layer height at .15 if needed. Or, you have perimeters set to .15 and the infill at .45.
With a .8mm nozzle you won’t get details like inlaid text very well, but for your average Eskate 3D printable, risers, mounts, cases, thats all well within the resolution of .8mm nozzles. Cogged pully’s might be pushing it, that may be more suited for a .6, but I’ve never tried so its possible even that it can pull off.
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Can you talk about your setup a bit?
Ender 3 all day.
Although recently I’ve been struggling with my prints not sure if it’s just settings or the firmware upgrade I did.
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Using a Makergear M2E with a .5mm steel nozzle. It’s been pretty awesome so far. Prints everything I put in it. It was pricey considering some small issues that made me remake the way the bed is secured to the heat plate. I also purchased a printbite+ bed that’s made warping a thing of the past. In retrospect I should have probably bought a Prussia but the M2E is all metal and it prints while my boat is rocking without skipping a step. So I’m still happy in the end. I’m also pretty sure it’s getting close to paying for itself soon.
Ender 3 as well, such an easy printer to setup.
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Hmu if you need any potentially useful advice! I’ve messed up a lot of prints and settings.
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I currently own a Creality CR-10S and a Prusa i3 MK3. I also bought an Ender-3 for my dad as a gift so I have experience with that model as well. Iv’e previously owned a Printr-Bot as well.
The CR-10S is awesome for build volume, and I still use it often. Some must have upgrades for the CR-10(and any low/mid end printer) are the Auto Bed Lever sensor(ABL) and a PEI sheet on top of mirror tiles(from the hardware store). After some fine tuning, iv’e been able to get really good results from my CR-10. You really can’t beat the price for value here.
The Ender 3 is an awesome budget printer. After installing a PEI sheet and ABL my father and I are getting great prints out of it. It’s an awesome rig for the price.
The Prusa MK3 is my go to printer. It’s solid and reliable. I love the flexible magnetic build plate. I can not print for a month, fire it up and it puts out perfect prints every time. Iv’e used it to print ABS, FLEX, SEMI-FLEX, PETG, PLA, NYLON(only once), Wood Filament and probably many others. Heat up time is super fast, print times are twice as fast as the CR-10 and Ender 3. You can tell the difference in quality when you compare parts printed on the prusa compared to the other 2 printers. The thing is also DEAD SILENT, you may not even know its printing when it’s in the same room.
PRINTR BOT – This was my first printer, it was super reliable, and built pretty nicely. I ended up selling it because it just became outdated, and printrbot really didnt keep up with the market/price. It never came with a heated bed, build volume was tiny. Adjustments for the height were difficult to input(it had no controls, just a usb port. When it was printing, it printed good, it was just too difficult to setup for each print.
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Nice write up! I definitely agree with you on the Creality CR-10S. Its build volume and print results our almost on par with higher end printers offering the same services.
I’d like a crash course on the do’s and don’t s during the design process for better printing. I have yet to print anything but I have started designing. So I still have to learn how to ready things for print.
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Makers Muse has some really good videos on that sort of thing.
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Yah there’s honestly not much you need to stay away from but adding fillets or rounding out sharp corners helps since the machine can’t really make an instant stop and change in direction. This also helps with how the materials warp as they cool, sharp corners will be more likely to lift off the bed. If you have holes in parts ideally want to print with them facing up/down so it just leaves an empty space, basically think of modelling everything as a cup with the open side facing up ideally to avoid need for supports but with MK3 or any other well tuned printer removing the support material is typically pretty easy and can be done by hand or with needle nose pliers (slic3r slicer does a particularly good job with this, when I used cura in the past it made supports that were harder to remove).
Would add good to print 2D 1:1 drawings to compare sizes and keep printer tolerance in mind, a 3mm screw probably needs a 3.4mm hole to pass through without being screwed in. Slicing sections out of your model to test print parts that need to fit hardware or other parts will save a lot of time.
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Just ordered a cr10s. Looking forward to playing around with it.
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Last question how many walls do you use? 6?
It varies quite a lot depending upon the design.
One of the biggest reasons is infill and gaps.
If you have an item with areas that becomes solid at 10 walls thick, and you were to have 6 perimeters, the perimeter wall from one side is going to meet the wall from the other, and you typically have gaps.
So I’ll often do fewer perimeters in order to avoid unwanted gaps, particularly when I’m printing solid parts, because infill does a better job eliminating gaps than perimeters do.
Most often though, I’m printing 4 perimeters. That ends up being about 3.5mm thick, which is quite strong.
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