Its worth looking at fusion360 as well it's free for hobby use, I used to use Sketchup but since switching to Fusion I've not regretted it! It might take a bit longer to learn but there's plenty ofuseful tutorials on Youtube that'll get you going in no time at all.
OK, this venture has started very well for me - my first test print was less than a tenth of a mil from true and the only failures I've had were due to experimenting with different speeds and temperatures. The only real issue I've had was when I changed to the black filament that arrived today - for the life of me, I couldn't get it to feed into the hot part of the extruder. I had to remove the fan and heat sink to guide it in manually. Anyone have a fix for this? [edit] I'll take a look at Fusion 360, cheers. I made that collar on Wings 3D - by far the easiest I've seen for creating relatively simple shapes.
Perseverance! It's fiddly as hell on my extruder. I'm this close to ordering an E3D v6 clone on Amazon this evening, it's time I got this printer up and running again so I can finish my Tantillus build...
My current project: Realised I was running out of white filament, AmazonNow are delivering a replacement reel before 10pm tonight.
Airsoft double barrelled shotgun. It has some unusual angles and overhangs so uses lots of supports which have required some thinking about orientation. 4 hours from order to delivery, I love amazon. Just printing the second trigger as I type.
This design uses goblin shells which are expensive and difficult to get. They have a small refillable gas charge to expel 12 bbs in a single shot.
Right. Time to get this thing working again. I pulled the trigger on an E3Dv6 clone and a remote-mounted Bowden extruder: I also got some stronger bed-levelling springs - these things are damn tough to adjust... And of course, the first thing to do when you buy new parts is make the brackets/attachments/gubbins you need in order to actually use then! In this case, a new X-axis hotend carriage: Having the extruder motor mounted remotely and not carried on the X-axis will hopefully let me improve printing speed and accuracy. I will need to print a second X-axis bracket so I can mount an inductive sensor, but right now I'd rather prioritise getting the new hot-end installed and working. Neat. I'd used BB grenades before, but aside from that it was only ever gas pistols or AEGs.
I had a belt slip halfway through a five hour print this morning, so I pulled the plug to stop the machine. I switched it back on and selected Home All before removing the half finished work piece and clouted it with the extruder. Oh, and I got a piece of filament stuck in the extruder throat tube - I tried to pull it out but it snapped off inside the tube. Praise be to the cosmic microwave background radiation for Amazon Prime.
Did I ever tell you how much I hate manual bed levelling? Because I do. A lot. Going to have to disassemble the Y-carriage plate later to remove those new springs - they are just *too* tight to adjust easily.
The holes on my hot bed frame are threaded - the wing nuts only serve as lock nuts. Auto level sensors are £10-£15 shipped on Aliexpress - on my printer it just bolts onto the carriage and replaces the Z-axis limit switch on the mainboard.
I have an inductive sensor probe already . My metal x-axis carriage is slightly warped, meaning that the bracket I previously printed for the sensor is not quite vertical. This causes problems for the sensor since it isn't sitting 100% parallel to the print bed - on a number of occasions it failed to register and caused the nozzle to impact the bed. I need a new X-axis carriage anyway in order to support the E3D clone hotend I just got, so I can take care of two birds with one stone. That is, once I actually get it printing reliably: the new levelling springs I bought are far too damn tight to adjust easily, making bed levelling that much harder. All I need is a new damn x-axis carriage, is that too much to ask for?!!! Hopefully my replacement drone parts will arrive today, so when I get too frustrated with this damn printer I can get frustrated trying to recalibrate and reconfigure a flight controller!
New X-axis carriage/hot-end mount is coming along nicely: Printing a new blower right now; hope my printer can handle it, it's got lots of overhangs and bridges...
My Anet A8 (Prusa I3 clone) just arrived, all of £130 inc shipping from gearbest. Going to be interesting to see how well it prints for such a cheap printer, but I've heard a lot of good things about it.
I'm very happy with my A8. A few mods improved on the original design, but it's a good printer regardless.
