Low friction filament spool holder made in 3 minutes

Here is a short post on yet another low-tech but functional tool (the last one was a dry box).

Give a maker a 3D printer and every problem is solved by 3D printing... A few years ago I started to re-realize that many problems are solved much better without 3D printing. At some time it was funny to see everything being 3D printable, including pipes, but how slow and inefficient it can be.

So here is a recent counter-example: I had to use a small, cheap but functional 3D printer recently (a sub $350 Me Creator Mini, a pretty good choice as an entry-level printer in my opinion). But it runs on 1.75mm filament and it lacked a compact, reliable low friction spool holder (the default is attached to the back of the printer, far from the side due to the electronics, and which is made of PVC pipe: the filament often jumps off the spool, which quickly fails).

Tribed: a fully automatic bed leveling and tool height adjustment, with FSR and 3 Z screws

This post is the continuation of my preliminary analysis regarding bed tramming and automatic tool height adjustment. So far I never made the step to redo my bed, even though it was on my wish list for years. Now it is a reality :)

Early testing of the complete setup : starting with a properly calibrated bed,

corrupting it manually, and letting the system auto-calibrate it again.
A faster / realistic movement is here, since speed was not a concern above.

So why now? A few months ago, someone came and talked to me about his wish to design a new, open source, user-friendly printer for the prosumer market. Please check this as your opinion counts!

All in all, it was an excellent reason to realize my idea of a fully automatic bed leveling. And since the new printer will also be opensource, here is the work, design and my analysis. How nice: not only I was given the possibility, but I was asked to do so!

As said, this improvement is part of a longer effort towards a user-friendly printer, for more reliability and less manual tweaking. My Ultimaker itself may eventually be ditched one day. Huh. No, I am joking. Well.. unless the new one is really is obviously better... Damn, that's exactly what it is all about :/

Sensors and issues for automatic bed leveling and height adjustment

My printer eventually has a fully automatic and hardware bed leveling (aka tramming), and bed height (aka Z-offset). Yes, it now handles any tool height without any user action, in addition to a long-wished automatic leveling of the bed.
This is part of preliminary studies for a prosumer open-source printer, for which you are more than welcome to give your opinion! The entire bed structure was entirely revamped, as one important point in my former wish list.

Revised heated bed with automatic tramming and tool height compensation.

Since I wanted to document both the new bed but also why I wanted it this way, this first post addresses usual sensors and strategies used to deal with the bed calibration. The deal is to make a bed level and to start printing at a proper height, and there are many ways to do so, but not as conveniently as I wanted (which will be documented in a subsequent post). The second post will show more precisely what and how I did it.

3D printer survival kit: a comprehensive set of 3D printer tools and tips.

Survival kit: tools for the 3D printers

This post started as early as September 2013, and it eventually ends here, may 2015! At least, you can be sure I heavily made my opinion and I have feedback on the tools I list here.

All included, a nicely packed Ultimaker 100% ready for travel.

I keep nearly all my tools in a dedicated box, that matches well the bottom of my printer. You will read in this post about each of the tools, slightly sorted in different categories and even though some tools are used for multiple tasks.

I attached a note after each of the items, where 5/5 is a must in my opinion, and 0/5 a luxury or a useless tools. Of course there are no 0/5 in my box as I want only a (comfortable) survival kit in the end. Read more...

Home made filament drying box

How to make a simple dehydrator (drying box) with a solar vacuum tube

A short and probably overkill post for a passive and zero carbon footprint drying box (not counting the required one to make the tube).

I use a spare, high tech and powerful vacuum solar tube, but it is easy to make something with a copper or steel tube painted in black, around which you slide larger transparent plastic bottles. Such insulation is required to avoid the ambient air temperature from cooling your own heated air.

The second required item is a brand used low-tech cardboard box.

E3D v6 hot end: ideas and assembly tricks

Assembled E3D v6 with a few particularities

You may remember that I wrote broadly about hot ends in an another post, but this short new one is specifically about the sixth revision of the E3D family (E3Dv6).

This is probably the best hot end on the market right now (in my opinion -- and I did not check them all). It is not cheap, hence expensive as all the good quality hot ends. But this is a critical part where you cannot really lose money if you value your time...

However there are still some room for some improvements.