Tag: 3dprinting

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Fan Repair (Again)

Remember when I made a shelf for my fan? What I forgot to mention is that I repaired that fan back in June of 2020. I should note that I’ve had this fan for at least 20 years and honestly I’m sort of surprised it’s still going. The repair in 2020 involved replacing the oscillating motor which I was able to determine was a “OEM TYJ50-8A19 Universal Microwave Turntable Motor 4 / 4.8 RPM”. I found one on eBay for less than $10 USD and replacing it was pretty straightforward.

And it worked great! For a while… and then the fan stopped oscillating properly again, and I just sort of let it sit like that for a long time. I prefer fans that oscillate but if they don’t I can live with it…

Well, I got sick of living with it so I popped it open again and discovered the gear was missing a tooth. I used the OpenSCAD Gear Library with Customizer to create a new gear that matched the old one and put it in place and it is oscillating again. Huzzah!

I figured if the gear wears out again I can just print a new one. I used PLA but if needed I could do ASA or ABS or whatever else I have on hand. Also, it occasionally “clicks” when oscillating so the repairs might not be completely done, so this is probably not the end of the stupid fan story. Sorry!

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Properly Sorting Bambu Lab SD Card Files

For some production printers I want to be able to walk up to the printer and use the control pad to start a print. The P1S doesn’t have the most beautiful easy to use control, but it does work.

I’ve basically got about ten different parts that we regularly print, with variations. For instance, you can print one of each part, or run a print that is 8 hours long, or 4 hours, or 2, etc. This allows us to run jobs that match up with the work day easily so we can start a longer job before we leave at 5pm. (There are some 8+ hour jobs that can run overnight as well.)

The issue is, the sorting order of the files on the SD cards shown on the display is by date modified, which works in some cases, but I’ve got files named like so: A001, A002, A005… B001, B002, B004, etc. So here’s what I did.

I have a folder with all the GCODE files in it, which I will copy to the SD card once they’re ready. I sort them in the Finder in reverse alphabetical order, then select them all and drop them into a terminal where I’ve typed the word touch

The touch command sets the last modified time to right now, and with the list of files in reverse order for the command it means the A files will be “newer” than the B files, which will be newer than the C files, etc.

So once we run the touch command all the dates will change, and you can sort the files by last modified and it will also sort them alphabetically due to the file dates.

So that’s what works for me. It allows me to walk up to the printer and easily scroll through the list in alphabetical order. Now, if I change one file and add a new version it will screw this up, so you have to repeat the process. As I mentioned though, these are production files, so once they are good to run they probably won’t change. If they do, I just do the fix again.

And yes, I know you can manage all prints from a computer, a mobile device, and even some control pads, but at some point I will hand off the printing to someone else, and having really clear instructions about what buttons to press and what files to choose should make things very simple.

Note! If you do this on macOS don’t forget to run dot_clean to remove all the dot underscore files.

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Printmaking Registration Pins

Here are my pins and tabs used for registration of multi-color relief prints. They are heavily inspired by the Ternes Burton system, and I’ve found a similar design on Thingiverse but as usual, these are mine.

Print at least two pins and then as many tabs as you need to do a print run.

When printed the tabs should fit tight into the pins. This is by design. Depending on your printer the tolerance may or may not make a good fit. I print the tabs and then if they are too tight I just give them a very small swipe inside the hole with an X-ACTO blade.

Once shaved down the tab should fit the pins slightly tightly but not too tightly, and not too loosely obviously. Welcome to 3D Printing!

If you need a quick tutorial on how to use these check out How to get perfect registration with Ternes Burton pins.

With my latest batch of handmade paper the blue painters tape I use tends to pull up a lot of the paper when removing it, but the typical printmaking paper you can buy (this is some Strathmore paper) holds up just fine.

You can get the STL and .scad files from Printables.com – Printmaking Registration Pins. Note: These are very thin prints! I printed mine at 0.1 layer height. But hey, print them if you need them!

Note: This post contains an Affiliate Link. Read More.

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Pen Holder Assembly Jig

I designed a Pen Holder for Brown Dog Gadgets Rover project. When we were prototyping it was easy to make one. I would just 3D print the part and then carefully hold a 3mm hex nut in place with some small forceps and tighten the 3mm bolt until it drew the nut up into the hex-shaped cavity…

When it was decided we needed to print and assemble a lot of them I had to find a better/faster way to do it. Obviously the answer was a jig. So here’s what I came up with.

The jig is basically a little stand with an arm going straight out at 90 degrees. This is the sort of thing where it’s silly to print it all in one piece and mess around with supports when a single screw will do the job.

With the jig assembled we are ready to put together a Pen Holder. You also need a 3mm bolt, and a 3mm hex nut…

You place the hex nut into the hex-shaped pocket on the arm of the jig…

And then you slide the Pen Holder into the base all the way. It will be aligned wit the hex nut and ready for the next step…

Add the screw and turn it a bit with your fingers to get it started…

Then grab a screwdriver and start screwing around… and around…

The hex nut will lift up and insert into the hex-shaped cavity on the Pen Holder…

You then lift the Pen Holder (which now has a screw sticking into the hole in the center) straight up and pull it out of the jig. So far it’s the best solution we’ve come up with for quickly (and easily) assembling these Pen Holders.

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How I 3D Print Printing Plates

This is a follow-up post to 3D Printed Printing Plates which covers my method of creating 3D Print Printing Plates using Inkscape and OpenSCAD.

If you just care about the specs, here they are. I create a 3D model that is 3mm tall, then 3D print it using plain PLA filament. I turn on the ironing feature set to Topmost surface only. When the print is done I sand it with some 800 grit sandpaper to make the surface a bit more smooth and remove any weirdness caused ironing.

Why make the plates 3mm tall? That works perfectly with my Provisional Press. If the plate needs a Base I make that 1mm thick, and the Art sits on the Base with the bottoms aligned. This means The bottom 1 millimeter is the Base, and the top 2 millimeters are the Art part of the plate that is the raised surface the ink will be rolled onto.

Here’s our example. It’s cat. The Art is black and the Base is gold. We’ve got the two parts on different layers though as long as they are two separate paths it doesn’t matter too much.

We hide the Base and then Save a Copy with just the Art layer visible. We’ll name the file Cat Art.svg

Now we’ll hide the Art and make the Base visible. Once again we Save a Copy. We’ll name this file Cat Base.svg

Next we need an OpenSCAD file to combine the two SVG files into a 3D model. (Grab the Cat.scad code if needed.) There’s one very important line in there. Line 10 contains offset(delta=0.001) This line fixes weird issues with SVG files.

If you’ve ever seen a Manifold conversion failed: NotManifold error when importing an SVG into OpenSCAD you probably know what a pain they are to debug. Anyway that offset thing prevents those errors.

Oh, the other handy bit is in Line 3 mirror([1,0,0]) this flips the model on the X axis so it is reversed and ready for printing.

Fun story, one of my old coworkers once etched a plate on the laser cutter which took over an hour. When it was done they realized they forgot to flip it!

Once you’ve got your two files (Art and Base) and your OpenSCAD file to combine them, you can output an STL file. Once you have your 3D model in the form of an STL you can slice it and print it. (Don’t forget to turn on ironing!)

Now you’ve got a plate and you’re ready to print… Good Luck!