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.
In my previous post, I replaced the electronics of my several-year-old lunar clock design with modern parts. In this post, I’ve replaced the laser cut parts with 3D printed parts, with particular attention to the clip that holds the photo interrupter in place.
Continue reading Lunar Clock: Designing a 3D Printed ClipIn my previous post, I finished the Web Service that the ESP8266 uses to upload well tank temperatures (and eventually a depth estimate) to a cloud database. In this post, I turn to the mechanical design of the case for the RJ45 jacks for the 1-wire interface.
Continue reading Well Depth Sensing: Mechanical DesignNOTE: Go to the updated post Making a 3D Printed Name Badge, Version 2. The tools have improved and changed in the years since I’ve written this original post.
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.
Continue reading Making a 3D Printed Name BadgeI’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
I’ve been having trouble gluing PLA parts together reliably., so I decided to do a brief experiment.
“Do I have enough filament to print this one thing?” That’s the question on my mind whenever I’m nearing the end of a reel of filament. I can’t stand wasting a few meters of filament by underestimating what’s left, and I don’t want to unwind a few meters of filament just to measure it and wind it back on the reel.
If you’ve done much 3d printing, you’ve probably noticed occasional bubbles in your print. Many 3d filaments absorb water from the air, causing the plastic to bubble as it extrudes from the hot end of the printer.
