5 3D Printing Tips the ELITES don't want you to know...

from 3D printing on circuit boards to a way of supporting holes that I stole from Cruiser research these are five 3D printing tips the elites don't want you to know about let's get started number one supporting holes using the prusa research bridging trick I was recently assembling the pressure enclosure I noticed that they did a really interesting thing to support holes that were printed in an orientation they would normally need support material now I've talked many many times in the past of how you can mitigate the need for support material such as using sacrificial bridging which works very well for example if you have a hex detail that needs to be supported because it won't Bridge across when it forms the hole for the bolt you can actually Bridge across it with sacrificial bridging that you bust through but the trick that prusa research does is actually even more ingenious what they're actually doing is a partial bridge that forms over the course of two or three layers and by doing this the bore is actually kept clean I think they've done this because busting through a sacrificial bridge is an extra step that may be confusing to a newcomer like you have to force the bolt through and bust the plastic but by doing these Bridges layer by layer and slowly forming up support for that hole they can leave it clear which means that it prints very very cleanly even though it's printed it in a non-optimal orientation since coming across this trick I've used it in many of my designs and it works really really well I've actually stretched the bridges really really far and they're still able to support the forming hole with no problem and you can use it to support all manner of different details without the need for support material number two print on G10 I have a whole video on how amazing this material is but if you've missed it you definitely want to check it out there are so many overpriced print services on the market that promise better bed adhesion better part release better durability blah blah blah but you can get all of these things if you pick up an inexpensive sheet of G10 or garalite this material is actually primarily used for circuit boards but it's also found its way into knife making which is how I picked up these very large colorful sheets and then simply heated them up to about 60 degrees Celsius for pla or about 100 degrees Celsius for abs or nylon and the prints work awesome I've been using the same sheet for over a year with no visible degradation and it costs a fraction of the price that you'd pay when inexpensive Pei surface and someone recently brought my attention to G11 which is an even higher temperature resistant material to G10 so it may last even longer than G10 but my experience my sheets are still going great at about 1.5 millimeter thickness so if you haven't heard about this material and you want to give it a go on your 3D printer for an upgrade of your bed check out the link in the description below number three you get awesome bed adhesion with just a little bit of glue stick and isopropyl alcohol I have never ever bought a purpose made specialized bed adhesive product all they do to get awesome bed adhesion is clean my print surface with isopropyl alcohol but methylated Spirits also works as well and then I will add a little bit of glue stick and then dissolve that with the isopropyl alcohol and create an incredibly thin film on that bed surface now yes you can print on a perfectly clean bed as well but this just gives you a tiny bit of extra insurance for those prints that may not stick so well for that first layer and it has worked awesome for me over the years so don't waste your money buying expensive bed adhesion products unless you're printing in specialized materials just get yourself a glue stick some isopropyl alcohol and a paper towel and you're good to go you can dry filaments in a cheap food dehydrator to restore them to Optimum printing quality yes some filaments actually do absorb moisture from the air it means they're hygroscopic this means that when you try to print with them the water that's been absorbed into them boils and bubbles out of the hot end and completely ruins your print so you need to dry filaments now some filaments need to be dried more than others what I have here is a roll of nylon this will absorb moisture from the air within hours and must be dried before Printing and to do that I use a cheap food dehydrator I chose one that was round so I could fit a spool of filament into it on its side and I got a large roller bearing that I modified to sit the spool on it with a hole in the side of the dehydrator and a PTFE tube running straight to my printer and to use it all I do is put this Spool in for a couple of hours maybe five hours or so and then while it's still heating run this spool into the 3D printer to complete the print I don't personally bother trying to keep dry boxes and seal these spools because I know I use them so rarely that balitan will come back to it the desiccants will be already waterlogged but if you do want to use desiccant and dry boxes or vacuum seal your spools well you can also dry the desiccant back out in the food dehydrator so why would you base your money buying filament dryers and all these fancy products when you can just buy a cheap food dehydrator or just pick one up secondhand on the internet and then use that to dry your spools that's all I've ever done and I always get fantastic results next up did you know that you can slice directly from Step files now in prusa slicer and its various forks and this is a pretty big deal because STL files are made up of tessellated triangles which means if you have a circular or cylindrical object and you export it as an STL or 3mf it'll convert it into triangles so there's no true curvature to that shape anymore it's little tiny facets and depending on your export quality those facets may show up in the print but if you keep it as a step file you can import the file into your slicer as it was originally designed with those curves and then then the slicer will convert it into a mesh and then slice it from there now as far as I'm aware no slicer slices directly from Step yet but it's already been stated for example in the bamboo Labs pressure slice of fork that by using a step file it will result in more Arc movements which means much nicer curves for your 3D print and for some prints it's really really obvious so if you're designing your own models in something like Fusion 360 or onshape or SolidWorks try exporting as a step and slicing that instead and see if it improves your results definitely share with me in the comments below what you find so those are five tips they don't want you to know about thanks for watching and I'll catch you later are they gone okay because there's one more thing I want to talk about and they can't know we're talking about it did you know that 3mf files are an archive which means that they're very light and they can include stuff like slicer settings and print orientation but if you right click a 3mf file with something like 7-Zip and open that archive you can get to see the different folders and with this archive open you can add things to it and it won't affect how the file opens but here's where it gets ridiculous you could put another 3D model into this archive and it will just open as the original model you could put a a text document you could put a video file in there and it just looks like a 3mf file because not many people realize that they're essentially zip files now I've only just started to play around with this because the way the 3mf format is being abused by different companies to be twisted so it only works with some programs but it won't open another program it's really annoying me and I think there's some vulnerability issues with the format in general but this is something that I've just found in testing that I think is a kind of a big deal because yeah you could have a file of reference as a maker coin but inside it's got something else I don't know I'm not telling you what to do with this information I just think it's kind of important that people know about it but there you go those are my top things that the elites don't want you to know because it costs them money they can't sell you products that you don't need and I think it's really important this information is in people's hands to empower your creativity through technology if that's really interesting maybe consider subscribing to Maker's Muse and I'll catch you very shortly catch you later guys bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 194,594

Keywords: 3d, printing

Id: 9-6tIkTrcwA

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 10 2023