Be Excellent To Each Other

Probably going to be a totally self-indulgent thread this unless GazChap will contribute when his Tiko printer arrives. Anyway I bought one of these fantastic machines in a black Friday sale for £150.

So far I've been making an expanding menagerie of creatures for our daughter:



Including this ace pangolin that I finished last night:







I also made this RC plane. It's almost ready to fly just a bit of wiring to do really:



Starting on another plane once some more filament arrives. A big old Stearman biplane.

Also made some little bracket things to hang guitars and ukuleles up on the wall:



Loads of other little bits and pieces too.

Anyway yeah, what a brilliant toy this is. Wasn't really sure what to expect when I ordered it just on a whim but it's been loads of fun, I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually and it'll just get used every now and then but I've had my money's worth already really.

They're ace. How sturdy are they? Especially the toys. Do they stand up to being played with?

Yeah, they're really sturdy. Some of the limbs might come off but they're mostly printed separately and just clip on, except for the elephant which is a one-piece print.

Initial conversations have been had with Mrs Z.

Awaiting price drop but considering a Gearbest kit version.

I'd love to get a 3d printer, but FUNDS DISSALLOW

Honestly it'll pay for itself in no time. No more buying expensive gifts for the kids, they can just have small plastic facsimiles of the things they want, iPads or whatever.

*prints Megablox*

That looks really cool.

Do you download the designs, or make them yourself? If downloaded - can you customise them?

Can I print Goro?

Ha, excellent

You can customise them to the extent that you decide how the printer will print the shapes and at what size. Of course there's nothing to stop me making my own designs except the total lack of any artistic skills, the ability to make anything except an oblong shape in a CAD program and more spare time. I do intend to get round to it, though.

Are you doing any "post-print" processing, like sanding or anything?

Where I've used a brim to help hold the parts down that all needs trimming off but mostly just picking or shaving stray bits of plastic off with a scalpel knife. A little bit of sanding here and there then I'v just been flashing over some bits with a flame to remove any little tiny tufts of plastic that are left.

If i give you cash monies, could you print me some tokens about the size of a penny with the number 2 on them in one color, and some with number 3?

If you send me a pound I can do you about fifty of the first one.

I wouldn't ask you for any money but like I said I've not actually designed anything as yet. Just not got round to learning a CAD program. Although that does sound like a pretty easy thing to do. What's it for?

Crossing the River Styx

Seems that lots and lots, and lots and lots, and lots and lots and lots of people are having problems with their Tiko printer, so I'm considering getting a refund before they ship mine.

Which printer did you get again, markg?

Netrunner tokens. Lots of this cost, or pay, 2 or 3 and you only get 1s and 5s in the box.

Actually, i could use tiddlywinks and a marker pen.

Get to Hobbycraft and buy a toy treasure chest, then get yourself a Mimi to paint it all up and you can have somewhere to store them as well.

Right, Mrs Z is on one with getting the bedroom painted and ordering new carpet and bed.

Now is the time for me to strike.

Mark, what's the best 3D printer I can buy at the moment that won't break the bank? One of your Maylans (even though they're £250 atm) or something else?

From what I've seen I honestly don't reckon you'd do much better even at £250 unless you went with a kit but then it seems like you're into a world of faff and people seem to end up upgrading various parts on most of them anyway. The total cost of modifications I've done to mine has been about a fiver and now it's good enough.

If you fancy doing some of those planes though definitely get something that's based on the Prusa i3 design, that's what he uses and it's what the files are set up for.

Can you run windows inside your Mac somehow?

Yeah I can make it dual bootable, or use my MacBook that already is (I think).

Didn't that that was necessary though after seeing spec mention Mac on a few Prusa clones?

It's not, it's only necessary if you want me to give you a heavily discounted copy of Simplify 3D. Unless you can track down a heavily discounted copy of the Mac version.

Slicer software is really important to get the best out of the printer, it's the thing that creates all the gcodes (instructions that the printer reads) and all the free ones aren't nearly as good.

Ah, reet-o.

Struggling to find anything in the UK that isn't a kit for less than £320

Yeah, they do seem to have all gone up a bit. They were definitely less than that before Christmas.

Tevo Tarantula kits are $199 from Germany ($214 with Auto bed levelling) £169.

Free delivery and 2 rolls of filament.

https://www.3dprintersbay.com/tevo-slim ... er-diy-kit

Looking at how people are finding the build now...

Just check you get at least 200x200x180 build area.

They're 200x200x200 or bigger.

I love the P38.

I'm now the process of eBaying some stuff (and crossing fingers that my painting sells) to get the £170 to get that Tarantula kit, if anything else pops up in the meantime then sweet.

Should be popping round yours, Mark in a few weeks with a bag of bits and a couple of Shickers.

You'll be leaving with just the bag of bits. Honestly though I've not really looked, I assume it can't be all that hard to build them but I can't imagine it's something you'll do in an evening. It took me that long to build mine and that was already built.

Can it print Star Points?

I'll be printing someone a damn good thrashing!

Yeah, I'm envisioning a build like an RC car, lots of chunks to build that join together at the end. A few nights worth of toil. It'll be part of the fun! /

Leaving this here for reference.

http://tevoprinters.wikidot.com/tarantula-assembly

"no wobble on the Z-rod, visible or otherwise"

I'm not going anywhere near your Z-rod, wobbly or otherwise.

Y, is it the axis of evil, or remind you of an x?

First job will be to create Z-Rod stiffeners.

Kit all printed out for the next plane:



Including 3D printed sprung undercarriage and rubber tyres!

More pics:

https://goo.gl/photos/nkMr6hR8dirEQnxq7

That's awesome. How long did all that take to print?

Cheaper than buying all those parts I hope?

I suspect not in the short term when you include the cost of the printer.

It might not take too many projects to break even, though.

And it's more fun!

Yeah, it probably took maybe 100 hours to print them all out and perhaps a good few hours in total of actual effort in setting the prints up, although if I wanted to do it again I've got the printer settings files for each print all saved so there would be hardly any effort at all.

The filament I used was £19 for a 1 kilogram reel so I bought a roll of white and one of green but used about 1.2KG in total, plus $30 for the files. So it is much cheaper than buying a plane of a similar size/detail and it is fairly unique in some respects. Obviously cheaper again if I write this one off and need to replace it since the cost of the files can be subtracted. I know of someone who bought the files and then sent them to a 3D printers for a quote and they came back with $400.

But as TheVision says the money's not really the point at all, I've learned a lot and found it enjoyable to do in much the same way that people generally take up carpentry as a hobby mostly because they gain satisfaction from doing it rather than just wanting cheaper furniture.

I am disappointed Z has not printed a flesh light

How do you know he hasn't?

He would have posted pics of it...

I have submitted a refund request for my Tiko.