Some 3D printing advice to start this section

dryer was cheap ($50) and it looked to me like it might help with keeping the filament on the spool as a bonus. other stuff was under $30 so nothing major

i have had the printer for a little bit had a chance to print some simple stuff and something a little difficult. my takeaway is getting the first layer right first is where you need to sort the temperature for the bed and hot end out first, for me the range of temp on the filament was between 190 and 230C for the PLA i'm starting with. i ended up at 220C and have had zero issues there. the bed temperature i still have set at 60C since i have had no issues on that end.

the one thing that gave me a little bit of trouble was bridging longer gaps but was able to get around it simply by changing the orientation of the part on the bed. So all and all i have had little trouble with this machine. i leveled the bed with a piece of paper after putting it together and have not touched it since.

neat little machines i should have got one a long time ago

3D printers seem to be the tool you didn't know you needed until after you have owned on.

machinedude  it's been 2 years later how has the machine held up?

my1987toyota wrote:

3D printers seem to be the tool you didn't know you needed until after you have owned on.

I bought one as i needed a case for some electronics i built for a friend, needed it quick so had no time to build one, then i bought 11 more as i kept finding them with wrong prices on a local online store, like 3 to 4 times lower than in china!!! Gave some to friends (free), dismantled some and sold some, then built 5 more Voron 2.4R2's for me and 6 Voron Legacy's for some friends.

tommylight  have you built a Voron Trident? I am curious on how the Trident and the 2.4 compare as far as performance.

Trident is easier to build and tune, it moves the bed up/down, while 2.4 moves the whole gantry up/down.
As for quality, might be a bit lower due to screw induced wobbling, but i would not worry about it, it is minuscule difference.
As for speed, Trident can be faster if tuned correctly, again not much difference and it will be limited by the hot end anyway, not by the machine.
Go for it !

thanks for the info tommylight. Right now I am in the information gathering stage that way if the US government wants to
get belligerent with tariffs I have a means of dealing with it.

it's been a good little tool for odds and ends. i have mostly used it for guards and covers. i had a thought about thread inserts and have seen the brass ones you heat and press into your parts but thought you might be able to infill around your holes and run a tap into it then use a Heli coil insert. the cheap one's work just as good as the Heli coil brand. i thought it might be a little more cost effective than the ones you press in with heat.

i might try this out on a housing for the THCAD so I can mount it to the plasma cutter when i get that far

  Usually when I 3D print stuff I will make a pocket for a nut to either be pressed in or slid in place. That way if I have
to scrap the part I can recover the metal nut back out of it. I do understand though that their are times when that
simply isn't possible.