Hi everyone,
just a quick note to let you know we have a brand new Intro to 3D printing class that just went live on Neon. In this class you’ll get a chance to use our brand new Prusa Mk3 printers, and will leave with the knowledge needed to create some awesome 3D prints on your own. You can check out the class on the 16th of April right here, but if that date doesn’t work they’ll be running every two weeks from there! Hope you can make it!
I have not taken the classes at ASMBLY but I’m not new to 3-D printing. I was trained at TechShop on Makerbots and printerbots, I have used my son’s printerbot and I’m rebuilding an Anet A6 as well as building a Delta printer with my son from scratch. And I have the need to print in a higher temperature, stronger product such as nylon. I currently don’t have the capacity to print With nylon and have not done it before. I’m familiar with Cura and configuring Marlin.
What I’m looking for some higher level assistance with printing nylon and authorization/access to the 3-D printers at assembly. I don’t know if this would best be handled with a walk-through or an advanced class. What do you think?
Ah, excellent question! We are very often running in to this kind of question and haven’t 100% found a concrete answer. @Devmani is going to be leading these classes, so hopefully he has some idea for how to help!
@Fmartin There are discussions about how to serve best members that have experience with 3d Printers but are new to our space. I’m leaning towards having members submit a sample for review and then take a brief class on our workflow. You mentioned printing with nylon; what is your timeframe with that?
Fairly soon. I have some nylon filament. but no longer have a printer in service as I am building parts for a new one. I had a Holder for the hot end/extruder. It had a fan failure and melted a piece of it. It was made of PLA and was supposed to be temporary until I can get a tougher, higher temperature material. As Elon Musk would say, I was trying to build the machine to build the machine. Once this was rebuilt, it was meant to help build parts for the delta printer. I have been a member of ASMBLY/Hackerspace for years with a few years off in between. I’ve recently been concentrating my efforts in the woodworking and metal shops and the big red laser before it went down. I also need to take the course on the new bigger lasers like Tarkin. I’m good to go on the CNC, metal lathe, and manual Mill, but I’ve been waiting almost 2 years for a course on the Tormach. I’ve taught a class on making cutting boards when we were hackerspace and wanted to teach a course on aluminum anodizing. And also talked about teaching some electronics basics such as Arduino projects. I I’ve tried to follow the rules and I’ve taken intro classes and things that I was already familiar with. My biggest problem is time as I work full-time out of town. I can always learn something new. If the fastest way is for me to take the intro course on the 16th, I will do it (If there’s still space).
@Fmartin Classes for experienced people is always kind of a thorny issue. Practically every place I have ever had access to equipment always winds up at “Yes, you have to take the class regardless of experience.”
From the point of view of the teachers/certifiers/stewards, you take up some slot of their time. As most people are volunteers, they really should get a little compensation for their time.
From the point of view of learning, almost every piece of equipment has “local quirks” that a class normally at least touches on. Generally, this is stuff like running Octoprint, how to not fire the Sawstop, to only use the nylon nailer on the wood CNC, etc.
Finally, there is the safety/insurance/liability aspect. By sending everybody through a class, the space winds up with a document that says “Yes, you were told about the dangers and how to minimize them.” I have had to sit through the “Acids are bad, mmmkay?” safety class FAR too often in my life.
And, to be fair, the classes here are really reasonable. By comparison, at a different hackerspace, the sequence for 3D printing is 4 3-hour classes at $500 and the Haas CNC training was 6 3-hour classes for $1000.
Randall was very accommodating. He gave me a great one on one class at a reasonable price within an hour of my request. Unbelievable! I agree that the instructor should be compensated and I have done many classes that I was already experience in for that reason. My bigger concern is that most of our classes are for beginners and may not address the issues that I needed addressed. He was right on point regarding the need for a filament dryer and more controlled temperature surroundings for nylon filament. I was able to produce a temporary part to allow me to produce what I need To get my own printer back in service. I will be constructing a temperature control enclosure and filament dryer and produce the parts I need at home as I don’t believe our set up currently has adequate temperature control surrounding the printers when using some specialty filaments. I would be willing to help upgrade our set up to help with these issues.
We are in the very early planning stages of building a new enclosure for the new printers later this year. I would love to hear your thoughts about some ideas and integrations for the said enclosure. Eric also mentioned we should maybe build some dividers for the existing enclosure to make chambers between each printer.
I agree with the dividers. I already was thinking that. Also it’s nice to have the room but it increases the build volume that has to be heated. I would love to kick around some ideas. I’m coming back to Austin today. Probably gonna rest a little bit. On another topic, I was looking for another raspberry pi zero 2 w or wh. Adafruit Has them listed for $14 but they’ve been sold out forever. Spark fun is sold out. I’ve tried Mouser, Digi key, Jameco, eBay, Banggood, AliExpress. There are a few on Amazon for $80 or more. The pi 3s and 4s are outrageously expensive and unavailable. I found some banana pi’s and orange pi’s for around $39. I’m just going to use them to set up octoprint. My alternative was to use an old android phone. Does anybody have experience with the banana pis?
@Fmartin I have a pi 3 w/ camera that just sitting in a storage box here. What are you gonna use it for? I might consider donating it. And maybe volunteer to help too if it’s something interesting. 
@bwatt P.S. At home I have a Prusa MK3S with another pi 3 running octoprint to control it.
To my eye, the Banana Pi and Orange Pi look just fine as long as you don’t need to use the expansion headers. For Octoprint, that should be okay.
If you need to use the expansion headers, all bets are off. You’d need to ask on specific forums as to whether someone ported the software to whichever model you are using.
I was going to use them to set up octopprint. I did order three of the banana pi’s and three cameras to set up Octoprint on home printers. I did have a beagle bone black at home but I thought it was overkill. Hang onto your pi for now. Maybe we could use it for something at the ASMBLY space. I’m always up for a new project. My current thoughts are a temperature and humidity controlled element storage/dispensing box and a temperature control unit for each printer. I would like to have control through Marlin At each printer. This could be a simple as using a Thermistor/thermocouple and an unused pin to drive a MOSFET to drive a heat source/hotbed. We could also have a humidity sensor and a source of warmed or dried air/nitrogen/co2 with a small hole to dispense filament while actively being dried. It would only have to provide enough dried air to provide positive pressure during printing period. after printing the filament could be retracted into the container and a cap placed over the hole. It would only be necessarily for hygroscopic filaments, but could be used with all filament. It’s possible a single dryer box could be used for all printers. Those are just thought off the top of my head. I will probably make a prototype at home. I would want to get @Devmani, @EricP @wynd and @buzmeg in the brainstorming As well as anyone else who is interested. I have a board with eight solid state relays with logic level triggers which I’m willing to donate. It might be simpler to have Single board MOSFETs with heat sinks Which could be driven individually by each printer In isolation.
I originally was going to use an Arduino or a particle photon for the project. I had been a beta tester for the spark I/o core which was the predecessor of the photon to make an Internet controllable LED bar for a fish tank. It also seems to be affected by the chip shortage. Arduinos seem readily available.
@buzmeg - Agreed that the GPIO pens are a pain in the butt. I’m not going to need them for my project, but if someone does there is a project Talbot make this problem better it is a Pi4j project. (I assume the stands for pi for Java but it reminds me of neo4j - an awesome concept)
OK, I’ll “Hang onto [my] pi for now.”
