Official FT86Club 3D printing thread!

[Airbrush]

Hi... I am hunting high and low for the stl file for the bracket to retain our cruise control....
Any kind folk have it? can share?

[Spektyr]

There's one or two earlier in this thread. Is that not what you're looking for?

[Spektyr]

I did a classic 86 logo that's easy to print in color via layer height filament changes.

It's not really meant for any particular use (it's not bad as a coaster) - it's more a clean starting point for other projects where you'd want to use this kind of thing.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5268727

[Takumi788]

Just picked up the updated Creality 3D scanner. I have heard good things about its quality to price factor. Looking forward to making some custom parts.

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Takumi788

Just picked up the updated Creality 3D scanner. I have heard good things about its quality to price factor. Looking forward to making some custom parts.

Let us know how it works. I went to buy one and they are out of stock.

[Kim34]

I'm planning to add a 3D printer. Everyone suggest me Prusa. But I'm little bit confused on It will be small usage. Is it worthy to spent much on prusa? or any suggestion on other 3D printer?

[Spektyr]

Originally Posted by Kim34

I'm planning to add a 3D printer. Everyone suggest me Prusa. But I'm little bit confused on It will be small usage. Is it worthy to spent much on prusa? or any suggestion on other 3D printer?

Prusa is worth the money, if the money doesn't break the bank.

The thing is that Prusa (the company and the founder) has put years of work into designing and building a printer that "just works". Excellent calibration and print quality out of the box. It's not necessarily "better" than a cheaper printer that's been tweaked and modified and painstakingly calibrated, and you can still wring out a bit more perfection from a Prusa through additional mods and calibration.

The difference that you're paying for is that immediate high quality printing.

If your skills are much stronger in the digital realm, the Prusa makes it easy to take your 3D skills and make them into perfect printed reality. If your skills are more in the "tinkering with machines" realm you can certainly improve the Prusa's output but there's less to gain. You could get an Ender 3 Pro, for example, and improve it with any of literally hundreds of mods already published online and make it into a worthy competitor to the Prusa and save yourself a lot of money in the long run, at the expense of investing a lot of your personal time.

So think of it that way: you're spending several hundred dollars more to get a 3D printer that saves you hundreds of hours of tinkering to achieve print quality of a very high caliber.

[Spektyr]

Originally Posted by Takumi788

Just picked up the updated Creality 3D scanner. I have heard good things about its quality to price factor. Looking forward to making some custom parts.

Nice. I'll just be over here with my calipers and rulers trying to build stuff manually like a caveman.

[CedN]

I bought a prusa mk3s, its been so good(bought the kit) . Printing perfectly out of the box without any mods. And im lazy so I use mostly prusament or materials which already have premade profiles in prusa slicer. The slicer is made by prusa aswell, and it all ties together really well. Which is great, because i don't need to spend any time modding/adjusting the printer or endlessly tuning printer and material profiles. I wanted ot spend the time engineering parts instead And they do have a very useful 24/7 chat support which is nice, and for me its worth a bit extra that they arent Chinese

The prusa mini is pretty reasonably price, even though shipping on prusa stuff is a prettyer significant factor for you over sea guys.

[Yoshoobaroo]

I got a Prusa mini 18 months ago and it’s awesome. It has more than paid for itself in that time. Printing replacement parts for furniture and small appliances is a breeze.

My prints are mostly functional so I’m printing PETG with the 0.6mm nozzle. The printer is just fantastic, it just works.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by CedN

I bought a prusa mk3s, its been so good(bought the kit) . Printing perfectly out of the box without any mods. ...

I'll have to look at the prusa printers. What has kept me from jumping into 3D printing is just this. I don't want to become a 3d printer terchnical expert, I want to get into printing things.

My son has a Monoprice 3D printer we gave him a couple of years ago as a gift. He's done some great things with it, but he also has spent nearly as much time fiddling with the printer as actually printing things.

Now I don't mind fine tuning something, or knowing enough to understand it, but that ratio should be my choice, not a requirement.

[Yoshoobaroo]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Now I don't mind fine tuning something, or knowing enough to understand it, but that ratio should be my choice, not a requirement.

Sounds like a Prusa is perfect for you. You CAN fiddle with it, but it can also print straight out of the box with literally <5mins of calibration.

[Spektyr]

Originally Posted by CedN

I bought a prusa mk3s, its been so good(bought the kit) . Printing perfectly out of the box without any mods. And im lazy so I use mostly prusament or materials which already have premade profiles in prusa slicer. The slicer is made by prusa aswell, and it all ties together really well.

This is where the Prusa really shines. I'd point out that most PLA, PETG, whatever will print flawlessly on the Prusament filament settings in PrusaSlicer. If you get a little extra geeky and put a Raspberry Pi on it running Octoprint (get a RPi 3 or better, running off USB, the Zero technically works but it's underpowered) you can run the whole thing remotely from your computer. No back and forth with the SD card. Even better, you can manually add a +/- temp to the hot end and bed that stays set on the printer. I run a lot of PLA+ which likes just a bit more heat, so I just click in a few extra degrees and don't give any thought to it building the GCODE except the big differences like PLA/PETG/ABS.

One other thing - a bed levelling mod is gold. Either silcone or "beer can" works really well, though the silicone is a lot easier to install and maintain. Technically, it's not bed levelling as much as "truing" the bed to be perfectly flat. The printer will measure and compensate for the inevitable wave in the bed, but if you're printing parts that need to fit together precisely, you need that bed as perfectly flat as possible to get a perfect fit.

Originally Posted by Yoshoobaroo

I got a Prusa mini 18 months ago and it’s awesome. It has more than paid for itself in that time. Printing replacement parts for furniture and small appliances is a breeze.

My prints are mostly functional so I’m printing PETG with the 0.6mm nozzle. The printer is just fantastic, it just works.

Check out PLA+ or PLA Pro. It's actually better than PETG for some stuff, and easier to print. Much harder than either PLA or PETG, and nearly indestructible when printed at high (or even 100% infill). I've made some extremely load-bearing stuff that holds up really well. It doesn't have stellar heat resistance, and I wouldn't use it as a suspension part, but it's tough as hell.

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I'll have to look at the prusa printers. What has kept me from jumping into 3D printing is just this. I don't want to become a 3d printer terchnical expert, I want to get into printing things.

Prusa is perfect for that. The mini is a perfect intro to printing - it's not quite as "perfect" out of the box, but it'll do really impressive work right out of the box.

I had no experience with any aspect of 3D printing when I got my Mk3s. I was good with tools and tinkering with stuff, but I hadn't 3D modeled anything. It took a lot of teaching myself and bugging more experienced 3D printing people for little nuggets of advice, but I can ground-up fab just about anything I want now. (I have no skill on the artsy organic forms, but if it's a functional engineering part? Yup, I can do that.)

[Takumi788]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

Let us know how it works. I went to buy one and they are out of stock.

I am in awe of this tech. The fact that I can own a piece of equipment that does this for under 1k is just beyond me.

Saying that, I knew what I was getting into when buying a Creality product. I currently own a Creality CR10s 3D printer. There is next to no instructions and what is there is cryptic English. I made my way through the "instructions" and had a connection error. After playing with it for an hour I uninstalled the software and reinstalled it with the scanner plugged into the computer and everything worked. You also have to plug it into the computer before plugging it into the wall outlet. So somewhat hokey pokey.

My first scan is for a customer that wants a part to covert a Hayabusa gauge cluster to a NA Miata dash. So I scanned the back of it. This is a mesh between only TWO scans. Took less that 5 mins. For the complete lack of software knowledge and only 2 scans, I think this came out well.

Next project is a scan is of a Camaro fog light cover so I can print a brake duct for another customer.