He’s got enough money so he can afford to vote HOW he wants to because no matter HOW he votes, he’s pretty sure he can beat the game and still come out on top.

Enders are a fine kit from which you can build a working printer…

Jokes aside, they are the perfect machine for those people that want to tinker. Which is a very valid part of any hobby. Enjoy and carry on!

Clean sand does work. But what you probably want is granite resin for this project. It’s very popular with machine tool hobbyists and even expensive manufacturers like Hardinge.

Here is an explanation of how to use the stuff

Think of one and I’ve done it.

Yes, “bedslinging” is the proper way to build a milling machine for metals. Gantry designs exist for CNC woodworking, but are uncommon for metal.

Do not use 2 leadscrews per axis. You cannot time them well enough to prevent binding over long moves. If you are worried about moving the mass with the motors and leadscrews, buy bigger ones. The best way to drive the Y axis is with another stepper and leadscrew.

You can drive ballscrews with belts if you need to offset the motors. But your belts need to be as short as possible and as stiff as possible. Otherwise you will lose steps and make junk rather than functional parts. So no long light duty toothed belts like 3D printers use.

And when thinking about motion despite what your eyes tell you, it’s always the tool that moves and not the part.

Being poor doesn’t equal robberies and physical danger. I live in one the poorest rural areas of my state. We don’t need locks as a rule because we choose not to steal from or assault our neighbors. We understand we are in this together and we need to help each other to make it.

But you would not choose to live here because of the perceived lack of “big city” amenities. Cell service is spotty at best. Even electricity can be optional due to weather. It’s often dangerously cold. Heath care is an hour plus away. (I was just informed I need to switch an antibiotic I was prescribed just yesterday for another. I now get to make another 100 mile round trip to then nearest pharmacy to get it), Even groceries are an hour away. So we grow and forage a lot of our food. Jobs are few and poorly paid and require travel to get to. Our kids often need to leave the area and move 100s or even a 1000+ miles away to find work and higher education.

It ain’t about the money. it’s about the “want to”.

Imagine living somewhere that requires a locked door…

I have been adding those fins supports in CAD as I need and want them. This can automate the operation to a certain extent.

Scarring is mostly a matter of what you set your top z distance to vs support type chosen. Perhaps he left it too tight. And the amount of filament used by the supports can vary greatly from one model to the next. Tree supports often uses more material than you might think for example.

Supports are not a one size fits all.

Interesting. A screenshot of a random model

It has placed a supports correctly at the front of the view, but added an unnecessary support on the taper in the back. And is unwilling to place any support in the vertical slots. Still, it shows a good promise to be useful.

What I find interesting here is that’s a pretty small award. Barely as slap on the fingers. But it does throw the fear of god into other manufacturers.

There are filaments that do need to be dried before use or even dried as you use them. But they are higher end engineering filaments and they cost real money. You tend to need a real reason to buy them. Despite the fact that many consumer level printers have the ability to print them these days. $50 to $100+ a kilogram or less, is a real barrier to the wide use.

Still, years of experience has taught me that I need dry PETG as it tells me it needs to be dried, and TPU is always dried before use. But PLA is a waste of watts.

I did say it was a lazy design choice. And change gears a mostly made as solid gears. You very seldom see spoke designs. It has to do with casting/machine time costs. So, solid gears are what I think about with change gears. The gears are still cheap to print and they only took a good afternoon to print all 4 gears and the job is done. And the post is about the weird crappy finish I got with GeeeTech PETG. And the simple nozzle swap solving the problem. And at this point, I just want to burn up this spool to just get rid of it. I won’t buy this brand again.

Turned out the real design sticker was that I needed a 16mm keyed center hole to fit the banjo shafts. And while 16mm hole just barely fits on a mod 1 20T gear, the 4mm key needed does not. I ended up modeling the 20T and 80T gears as one piece and the single 20T gear needed to be designed with a solid 30mm round attached to it to have some place for the drive key to go.

The upside to doing it how I did things meant that yesterday I used those 3D printed gears as made to do the lathe job I needed to do, burnishing a section of shaft in my lathe. Sometimes you just gotta go for it and hope it works out. I might even reprint them with a better PETG brand like DeepLee or better yet, MatterHackers and make them with 4 or 5 perimeters and 6 top and bottom layers with 80% gyroid infill. I have both on hand. For the few times I might need a .0025" per rev feed, they might well last for years. If I find a #2 and #6 pair of used gear cutters for cheap, I might buy them and machine a set from steel. But even decent gear cutters are stupid expensive. And if I don’t have a customer to bill the expense out to, it’s probably not worth thinking about.

I seldom use a .40mm nozzle much anymore since I mostly do functional prints like these gears. I have found the .60mm nozzle is a good compromise for speed in printing, better strength, and good accuracy.

Interestingly enough, a .40mm will print nearly or as fast as a .60mm nozzle on Bambu printer in general. This because Bambu optimizes their slicer setting for the .40mm nozzle. What it does give up a bit is between layer strength. This is due to to the smaller contact area difference between layers. I can get the same strength with 2 perimeters using a .60mm that would take 3 perimeters with a .40mm nozzle.

Part lazy design choice and part running these gears for a few minutes at speed to observe real world function. Spoked FDM plastic gears probably would not run long enough at 500rpms and there is no soft start on a lathe. And since most of the strength with FDM printed items lies in the skin of the part, removing half the skin would reduce the rigidity.

Been there done that. Didn’t work. It did print the calibration print just fine. It just sucks when I try and print these gears.

I need to know if the gear train will fit on the banjo of the lathe first. I might run the plastic just to see how long PETG might last. If I want metal change gears, I will either spring for the 100+ dollars needed to buy the proper gears. Or I will spend $60 for the proper cutter and cut my own gears. But I need to be sure they will fit first.

Dryer didn’t do squat to make a difference. The filament was at a steady 14Rh for several days for both nozzles. The only change that made a difference that made a difference was the nozzle swap.

Purple “School Glue” is all you need. It’s cheap and if you work in an elementary school, free for the bending over and picking it up. I’ve got a life time supply from teaching for a mere 4 years.

Lubrication is kind of an issue. You want to oils over grease. And only a thin coating. You will find that lubricated rods and rails attract dust. A lot of dust with kids and pets. And that dust is VERY abrasive and will chew up the seals on you bearings unless you are constantly wiping and relubing. So, this is a time when less is more.

I use a SuperLube silicone grease to fill the bearings before assembling them onto the rods for my Mk3S. They have wiper seals that are meant to wipe the linear rods as they move and hold the grease in. I never oil those rods. The dust they attract will destroy those wiper seals in short order. I do, however wipe the rods with a dry paper towel before I print. In the 8 years I have owned the machine, I have replaced the bearings just once after about 4 years.

The little Bambu A1 Mini I have has open bearings on their linear rails and rods. Those require wiping clean and relubing with a special high tack oil on a scheduled basis. And yes, they are filthy when I clean them.

At this point, a dead Mitch McConnell is more effective at governing than Trump.