These are a few notes on smoothieboard configuration for my Eustathios Printer. Keep in mind the date of this post as much of this will be out of date soon – things are changing quickly with the smoothie firmware and new improvements are added regularly. I may come back and update this as things change.
What is a 3D printer good for? I assume this is a question most 3D printer owners get asked repeatedly and I’ve never been quite sure how to respond. Somehow the media has convinced many people that 3D printers are only useful for making guns and useless plastic trinkets.
So here’s how 3D printing has made it’s way into one of my hobbies, summer backpacking in the High Sierra. This is a picture from my last trip, and it explains things in a way I can’t with words. There are about two dozen different designs and over 50 printed pieces of plastic/rubber. This is not a “walter the plastic boy” style made up shot, I’m a real person and these are the things I carry with me on summer backpacking trips.
Sometimes, you want to know the weight of an empty spool so you can calculate how much filament you have left on the spool. Here’s the weights of some of the spools I’ve used, along with the dimensions of the spools.
Recently printed a test hand to send to e-NABLE, a community of volunteers who make free prosthetics like the one below for those who need them.
Here’s some pictures from a test using a vibratory tumbler* filled with ceramic media. Some of the ceramic pieces were broken to make smaller pieces.
The original Ollie in dark grey PLA.
Stainless steel can work too, and creates a much brighter look, but it takes much longer. This one ran for a couple of days and the coating isn’t as even as the others I’ve tried. I also used larger/longer screws, which I don’t think worked as well as the 1.25″ deck screws.
You can also tumble coat in brass, as seen above, but there’s a few things you should know. Brass may contain lead, even it says “lead free” (at least in California). You probably shouldn’t be breathing in brass powder or using it to coat your children’s toys.
Here’s the process I used to get the results in the picture. I’m sure there are many ways to do this and I’m still trying different variations, but I’ll describe what has worked so far. I’d encourage experimenting, just be careful when working with alloys that contain lead.
What you need:
I’m still figuring this out, but I’m hoping to use this site to share my experiences with 3D printing and similar topics. This will mostly consist of pictures, techniques, comparisons, and any other info I think will be useful or interesting (both what works, and what doesn’t). No news, no meta-stories (stories about other peoples stories), and … Read more
