One of the last steps of assembling a Prusa i3 MK3 3d printer is to manually adjust the Z height. As I adjusted my printer’s Z height, I began to wonder what the Z height calibration looked like on my older printer, a Lulzbot Mini. At the same time, I became curious about what size that Lulzbot Mini can print. A simple test print answered both questions.
Continue reading Testing Your 3D Printer’s First Layer Height Calibration
I’ve been interested in the Tracery in Gothic Cathedrals – the delicate patterns in stone walls and windows – for years. In this post, I show you how to design of one type of Gothic ornament, using FreeCAD. You can follow along with the FreeCAD file on Cults3D, or you can use your favorite CAD application, such as Autodesk Fusion 360.
Now that I have a Prusa I3 MK3 3D printer, I’ve found many Prusa owners have added a little dial they magnetically stick onto their extruder motor’s shaft, to be able to see when that motor is extruding vs. retracting filament. It’s also a cool way to personalize your printer.
Continue reading Designing Your Own Extruder Motion Indicator
Having just spent 24 hours, spread over 4 days, assembling a Prusa I3 MK3 Kit, here are my notes to help you assemble your own kit.
I bought my Lulzbot Mini 3D printer almost 2 years ago, and I’ve loved it. While I’ve read others’ troubles trying to get their kit 3D printers working, or calibrated, or repaired, or trying to get their prints to stick, or not stick… my little Lulzbot Mini has been chugging reliably along, printing accurate objects every time.
Now, inevitably, I have to admit my printer is showing its age, and that it’s time to get my hands dirty with a little maintenance.
I often 3D print screw-top parts to replace broken or missing parts. For example, we recently installed media (blackout) shades for our skylights, so we can watch movies when the sun is out. Our family room ceiling is quite high, so the pole and hook designed to open and close the new shades is too short.
Continue reading Designing 3d printed threads to match existing parts
An idea’s been forming in the back of my head for a while: that it should be possible to estimate the amount of 3D filament left on a reel by simply weighing the reel with its filament, and subtracting the reel weight. Sounds simple, no?
Today I realized that it may be possible to modify a printer to give a live estimate of filament left on the currently-mounted reel, by “live weighing” the reel, and knowing the reel weight and filament density.
Recently I’ve had the pleasure of publishing Linda Needham’s most recent book through Kindle Direct Pubishing (eBook) and CreateSpace (paperback). Her book is the 20th century historical romance, “The Legend of Nimway Hall: 1940-Josie“.
In the process, I learned a lot about indie publishing (see this site’s Creating eBooks menu for my notes so far) and experimented with how to make a CreateSpace book cover (a professional created Linda’s book cover).
Continue reading Avoiding CreateSpace book cover size issues
Last month at the Portland OR 3D printing Meetup, someone suggested we should all make our own name badges so Shashi wouldn’t need to bring as many “Hello, My Name Is” paper tags to the Meetups. Game On!
In this post I explain how to make your own, two-color 3D Printed name badge just like mine.
I’ve found 3D printing to be perfect for creating replacement parts for the various things that break around the house. Recently I realized that I could make a replacement for the armoire door clip that had been bent beyond recognition over the years. This post details how I designed and tested the 3D printed replacement, including a checklist at the end of this post.
Continue reading Designing a 3D printed cabinet clip replacement
