I’m Shaun, a 4th year Computer Engineering student at UVic. I’ve recently gotten into 3D printing. I have a Robox printer from CEL and I’ve melted my way through a few spools of filament. I’ll be getting their dual material head in late spring to try out printing with two types of filament in the same model. I have modelling experience in Sketchup and SolidWorks, and I clean up STLs for printing in netFabb and MeshLab.
I’ve printed in PLA and ABS so far, and I am ordering some PET and HIPS filament to try out.
It sounds like you’ve had a lot of experience with 3D printing so far. I’ve only used ABS with my Da Vinci AiO, but I’m limited to which filament I use as it must be Da Vincis own. I’d definitely like to gain another printer to experiment with various filaments. Please tell me how the HIPS and PET filaments work out.
It DOES sound like you have had a fair amount of 3D Printing experience. I personally own a Lulzbot Mini, and I have gotten the chance to work with a Makerbot Replicator 2. Using my Lulzbot, I can tell you that HIPS is actually a great filament! However, I wouldn’t recommend buying the cheaper eSun filament. I wish you good luck in the world of 3D Printing. It is very very exciting!
Myself and my room mate have also recently gotten into 3D printing. I saw this opensource robotic telescope I wanted to build, but mech department would not allow me access to the school’s Ultimakers.
The more I read up on 3D printing, the more I just kept geeking out…So I ended up buying a barely used Ultimaker 2 Extended for a really good deal. Since, my room mate has decided to go half’s on the printer with me. We’ve going through a few rolls of filament. We’ve tried the Ultimaker brand, but honestly I’ve been blown away at how much better the ColorFabb filament has been. It’s like a night and day difference for us, and definitely worth the extra money based on the results.
I’m really starting to see excellent results after hours and hours of testing, and whatnot. Probably going to try some corkfill, and copper fill filament soon enough.
I thought this hub someone using the Ultimakers in the ELW lab! Those things are sexy, all lined up on the bench.
When I was in the researching phase I was really looking hard at getting a TAZ (and took a decent look at the Ultimaker as well). I ended up going for the Robox. The upside is that I am getting pretty nice results right out of the box. The downside is that I am limited to Cura as my slicer, and I don’t get direct access to it as the AutoMaker software for the printer has to postprocess the gcode to accommodate the needle valves that the Robox uses in the print head. That, and the build area has been smaller than I’d like (at least the z axis height) a couple times.
I swung towards the Robox because I wanted their dual material head and I liked the attention put into making quality prints. They took a little longer to get the hardware and software working together, but I should have a dual material head in the next month or two as the backorders are serviced. I’m really anxious to try dual colour, and dual material prints! Printing NinjaFlex (or other TPU filament) directly onto ABS sounds awesome - they apparently adhere nicely to each other. Having dedicated support material, etc, etc, etc.
If I get further into 3D printing, depending on the state of the art at the time, I might still get that TAZ for the build area!
How has your experience been with the Mini? I was looking at the TAZ when I was looking at my first printer. From the little bit that I talked to the people from Aleph Objects, they seemed like good people. I heard that the Mini has a few features that will only be showing up in the TAZ 6, like auto bed levelling.
I’m relatively inexperienced with 3D printing so far, but I like Cura for the most part. My only complaint is not having the ability to add manual supports. The slicer misses some areas with the automatic supports option, and also can go a bit overkill when adding the supports.
The dual extrusion would be really cool, and I’ve seen some pretty awesome results from it. I saw some guy make his own for his UM2, and he was printing off some incredible pieces.
I really do want to get into different materials, but I’m just focusing on PLA at the moment, and trying to master which speeds/settings to use for which types of prints. I’m finding the geometry seems to be key when deciding print speed, and I’m definitely getting a solid understanding of it. At some point, I’ll be picking up some ninjaflex myself, but I’m leaning more towards some of the speciality fills from ColorFabb. I really can’t say enough about their PLA, it truly has been awesome to work with thus far.
I have used PET from MakeSolid and Colorfabb bronzefil which worked beautifully on my Replicator 2. Will be experimenting with some carbon fibre , copolyester and Ninjaflex/Simple flex (soon as I find reliable source for colours I want).
Very interested to hear how your second head works out.
Good on ya’ taking the plunge to get your own, I got fed up with impediments to access too - turned out to be the best thing that could of happened and I am happy to share with mechanical engineering students.
I haven’t printed anything with corkfill as of yet, but just about to put another order in for filament so that’s on the list I’m itiching to pick up some bronze fill as well, but I think I’ll do a bit more research before taking the plunge with that one, it’s expensive
We were originally planning on helping out our fellow engineering students from all disciplines, but just haven’t had time to make up a flyer or anything at this point. We were planning on charging the same price as the Mech Dept from the filament usage plus a nominal fee based on length of print…If we can offset some of the costs, and help our fellow students see their prototypes become reality that would be awesome…As I’m sure your aware, having the right tools helps spur innovation, and unfortunately, this is a vision our school lacks at the moment apparently…
Plus my room-mate and I are geeking out hardcore… Starting to see some spectacular results, and it’s very encouraging
Have any suggestions for corkfill prints? I was thinking some sort of bust, or cartoony character lol…
Wish it wasn’t exam season, I really want to spend the time finishing this T-Rex print we’ve done
Here is a tudor box from Loubie at thingyverse in Colorfabb bronzefill and silver - the bronzfill polishes up really well using some fine steel wool - leaves a bit of a sheen.
No suggestion for corkfill yet, but will put some on my next filament order and we can compare notes:)
Hi Kate, That looks great! I downloaded that model a while ago, but have just been waiting for the right time to do it. Sounds like a deal! I’ll be ordering some filament shortly. Where do you order from? I’ve been ordering from voxal factory, because I love the colorfabb stuff, and it’s the cheapest around. If you guys ever order from them let me know, it’s significantly cheaper when purchasing multiple rolls due to the shipping cost reduction. Let me know if you want too, because I’m going to order 2-3 rolls within the next week. Talk soon
What day?? I’m just a little tight on time with finals and all to take the time and figure out what we’re gonna get. What constitutes a large order? Would voxel factory give a discount if it was large enough? I’m thinking about getting 4 rolls, but I need to spend some time figuring out exactly what we want.
Let me know what day your going to order, and I’ll try to figure it out before then. If I can’t no worries, maybe next batch! I know if I order about 3 or 4 rolls the shipping costs becomes reasonable.
We ended up just ordering 6 rolls on our as we never heard from you.
Let us know next time your planning on another order, or we can let you guys know. We’re just flying through material right now, so it probably won’t be long.
I’m kind of slack checking the browse talk forums… I really should do it more often.
Unfortunately, Voxel doesn’t seem to offer free shipping over a certain amount, at least we haven’t hit that point. That being said, I do know there prices are super cheap compared to a lot of colorfabb distributors. There’s guys from the states purchasing through them… It seems as soon as you hit about 3 rolls it works out to be about 50 bucks including shipping, which isn’t to bad.
I tried speaking to the guy in Sydney about colorfabb, but he tried saying price matching was $50, when Voxel is charging $39… I kindly explained that’s not how price matching works lol… It’s highly unfortunate, as he’s seriously missing out on sales, and honestly, I much rather support a local business. Oh well…
Not sure when we’ll be ordering next, but I’ll post in here again. Shouldn’t be too long. I’ll make sure to check back next time… Sorry about that.
