3d Printer Discussion

[Cmar]

I bought an Ender 3 years ago, and spent a decent chunk of money modding it - bed springs, ptfe tubing, etc. I could never really ever get it to work right - warping/bed adhesion, weird artifacting, etc. Spent a bunch of time and money chasing those issues, finally gave up on it a year or two ago.

I finally got the bug again, and decided to just go for it and picked up a Bambu P2S. I'm mostly wanting functional prints, so I decided to skip the AMS since I'll probably mostly be printing single color. I also picked up a filament dryer, I think I neglected that for far too long. Tossed in a year old roll of black Overture PLA leftover from my last attempt at getting the Ender working and let that sit overnight.

It's downright amazing how different this is from an Ender, and how much the tech has matured in the last couple of years. Ran a benchy off, I've got some stringing happening but I'm chalking that up to the filament, I've already got some new stuff on the way. Printed a couple print in place figurines, those are fun to play with, and I've currently got a flexible starfish printing off as something to maybe occupy the kiddo tomorrow while he's home sick.

It was amazing having a Benchy done in like 20 minutes, but my current table isn't stable enough at those crazy speeds for me to feel comfortable with it long term.

Now I just need to figure out modeling so I can try to make my own wireless charging plate for the truck and maybe a few other things.

I've got an Voxelab Aquila in my collection, which is basically an Ender 3 v2 clone. They don't make them any more. However I did 3 simple mods to mine that allowed it to turn out really respectable prints almost every time, albeit slowly compared to a K1 or Bamboo. I replaced the glass bed with a magnetic PEI plate, I replaced the plastic extruder with a metal one, and I changed the way that the Teflon bowden tube works. Originally it used to go all the way to the bottom of the hot end, and butt up against the back of the nozzle, simple, cheap, and nasty.
Well that works fine until the end gets soft from repeated heating and starts to deform, then molten plastic begins to creep back and causes filament jams and stuck retractions. The sticky retractions tug on the bowden tube and make it loose in the compression fitting in the top of the hot end heatsink, and pull the tube up a tiny bit, which just makes things worse. You can pull it out, snip off the end square, and re-insert, but in weeks to months you are back where you started. You can try Capricorn tube, works, but it just lasts a bit longer, then- same problem.
One solution is to swap in an all metal hot end, works, but is expensive and not really necessary if you mostly print PLA.

What I did was print up a small chamfered "washer" that just fits neatly into the top of the hotend heatsink where the compression fitting screws in. Then I cut a short piece of Capricorn tube off very carefully square that just fills up the space in the hot end and heat break + a tiny bit. You put the tube in the hot end, drop in the washer and screw the compression fitting back in to push it all down firmly.
You now have a Teflon lined hot end, if it leaks you can just unscrew the nozzle out and replace it, but now this happens far less frequently, because retractions pull on the liner, which is firmly held in place, not the clamp on the air line fitting at the top of the heatsink, and you don't have to keep shortening your bowden tube every few weeks.
I've had one in my Aquila for the better part of a year now and it's still holding up, and prints well. Even with a number of more than a day long prints in that time. The washer doesn't seem to interfere with feeding in new filament and I just printed it from PLA+. (it's at the cool end of the heatsink)

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[sirripo]

I've got an Voxelab Aquila in my collection, which is basically an Ender 3 v2 clone. They don't make them any more. However I did 3 simple mods to mine that allowed it to turn out really respectable prints almost every time, albeit slowly compared to a K1 or Bamboo. I replaced the glass bed with a magnetic PEI plate, I replaced the plastic extruder with a metal one, and I changed the way that the Teflon bowden tube works. Originally it used to go all the way to the bottom of the hot end, and butt up against the back of the nozzle, simple, cheap, and nasty.
Well that works fine until the end gets soft from repeated heating and starts to deform, then molten plastic begins to creep back and causes filament jams and stuck retractions. The sticky retractions tug on the bowden tube and make it loose in the compression fitting in the top of the hot end heatsink, and pull the tube up a tiny bit, which just makes things worse. You can pull it out, snip off the end square, and re-insert, but in weeks to months you are back where you started. You can try Capricorn tube, works, but it just lasts a bit longer, then- same problem.
One solution is to swap in an all metal hot end, works, but is expensive and not really necessary if you mostly print PLA.

What I did was print up a small chamfered "washer" that just fits neatly into the top of the hotend heatsink where the compression fitting screws in. Then I cut a short piece of Capricorn tube off very carefully square that just fills up the space in the hot end and heat break + a tiny bit. You put the tube in the hot end, drop in the washer and screw the compression fitting back in to push it all down firmly.
You now have a Teflon lined hot end, if it leaks you can just unscrew the nozzle out and replace it, but now this happens far less frequently, because retractions pull on the liner, which is firmly held in place, not the clamp on the air line fitting at the top of the heatsink, and you don't have to keep shortening your bowden tube every few weeks.
I've had one in my Aquila for the better part of a year now and it's still holding up, and prints well. Even with a number of more than a day long prints in that time. The washer doesn't seem to interfere with feeding in new filament and I just printed it from PLA+. (it's at the cool end of the heatsink)

I was never able to get enough successful prints to really run into issues with the bowden tube - I was actually using the Capricorn tubing, now that I look back at my purchase history. I had all metal extruder as well. I did try going to a PEI plate at one point, as most of the issues I was having was with adhesion and warping, even on smaller prints. Ultimately I think it had to do with the printer being in the basement and the ambient temps just cooling the prints too quickly. I did try an enclosure, and moving it next to the auxilliary heater, which didn't really help, and at that point it felt it was going to become a money pit to figure out why it wasn't working and i was tired of it. I had been hearing great things about the Bambu products from friends and online, and well, here we are. I haven't gotten much more print time out of it so far, but I did print up a couple of helmet different helmet hangers to test as a gift for some of my riding buddies.