D1PP1N - I've been toying with buying a laser engraver to make custom leather key chains. How is yours holding up? The K40 types seem to get good reviews. I'm mostly worried about speed. How long would it take to do 2 lines of text on a 1 x 3 inch piece of leather?
I still have yet to fire it and Ive spent about $800 extra trying to "upgrade it" new adjustable height bed i need to diy, a rotary, new control board, new duct fan, air assist pump, new lenses and mirrors, water cooler. Im going to end up just making my own mechanical system for it. I feel its better to buy the K40D ($800) over the k40 but ultimately if i had to do this over again I would I would splurge for the 50watt models with the ruida dsp controller. Then you can do very detailed engravings as well. Its been a year and its so much work to do on this i still havent got it working.
I need to cut out the bottom and make a riser so the adjustable bed will fit and work with the rotary for the correct focal length.
I finally got my quiet mainboard for my Monoprice Mini Delta and installed it this weekend. I'm totally blown away by the quality of the prints, it makes my CR-10 look like its garbage. Small build volume though (110 round by 120mm height), and crazy loud cooling fan at its base. I'm printing a stand for it that will replace the loud cooling fan with a silent noctua 120mm fan and I'll see how loud that is. The printing itself is virtual silent with occasional bearing sounds from the X/Y/Z rigging.
Overall, quite a printer at 159$ But it does get a bit pricier with the quiet mainboard (70$ at gigdigit.com). The only obvious flaw is an underpowered DC supply, but its 12V, so easy to fix that. As is the printer struggles to maintain a 60C bed temp, which is perfect for PLA.
= Howard Stark: "This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out."
I finally got my quiet mainboard for my Monoprice Mini Delta and installed it this weekend. I'm totally blown away by the quality of the prints, it makes my CR-10 look like its garbage.
In what sense Jason? The CR-10 is supposed to be large volume printer. Is it the speed or the accuracy or smaller / more dense lines?
There are so many variables with 3d printers. The slicer settings alone could make or break nice prints. Nozzle diameter is a cool thing to mess with for detail (long print time and small objects) vs print speed (print large low quality prints fast). Picked up a new printer but i havent got to use it yet.
Ani the print quality is far superior. As Mike says though, a lot goes into that. But this is out of the box settings, community cura slicer profile, so I didn't even try and mess with anything yet. I used Benchy to compare the print of both printers with similar 200 micron layers and print speed. I think the mini delta design is just perhaps a little better. It has a far more rigid frame, for instance.
= Howard Stark: "This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out."
A Facebook friend recommended it to me. Was reasonably price. Lots of manual assembly but it has linear rails on all 3 axis and the bed is like a 1/4" thick so it shouldnt bend when removing product.
Finally came yesterday, and except for a fiasco with a failed first print because the dual Z axis wasn't properly calibrated at the factory, running great.
I can't comment on the print quality but this test benchy looks better than any I've done before, but I also switched to Simplify3d, so that might be the cause.
= Howard Stark: "This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out."
So I think I might start a new thread in the coming weeks, but I'm starting to slightly understand this stuff and the delta printers are... so complicated (in a fun way). For instance, computer control processing power is an issue. I ran a model so fast on my larger delta that at the speed the 8 bit controller crashed and stopped right in the middle of the print. I deep dived into the configuration of the marlin firmware on my arm 32-bit controller for the smaller delta and changed settings that massively improved print quality (lowering tax on the processor). This is interesting!
= Howard Stark: "This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out."
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I need to cut out the bottom and make a riser so the adjustable bed will fit and work with the rotary for the correct focal length.