Third Projection

This is a work in progress but as the blog is being written at the same time as I am working (for a change), I thought I might as well publish it to make it a live update of sorts. So do pop back in the future to see when I finally give up and set the lot on fire. Intro and vast procrastination The cooling fan is one of the loudest parts of the Copymaster3D 300. Let's see if we can make that not the case anymore. Although we are in the aim of quietening down this printer this will also be straying into parts cooling too so this will probably get even more wordy and rambling than usual. Strap in. The parts cooling fan also cools the cold end of the extruder. It is hidden inside the printer head chassis with a flow diverter between it and the heatsink. This allows some air flow to the cold end heatsink and the other half to be sent down a duct in the general direction of the part. The exhaust from the cold end cooling can escape via the printing head or a vent at the top o...

In the ongoing quest to stop my printer keeping me up all night, which as I am printing 24hrs a day would be quite nice; I have pushed the boat out and have actually spent some money to quieten it down. Before I get into it though I downloaded a noise level app for my phone and stuck it a hand span away from the printer which spat out the following results: Stock Background 19db Standby hot end fan off 42db  Standby hot end fan 125 42db  Standby hot end fan 180 42db Standby 46db Home x 47db Home y 52db Home z 47.5db Centre 47db average 63db peak All sounds were recorded with the average of a minute running for fans or the duration on a movement being taken. Peaks like hitting stops or the tone of me selecting a motion can then can be somewhat discounted. This isn't very scientific if you hadn't guessed. As you can see, the fans make up the bulk of the noise with the Y axis being the loudest stepper motor. Z actually came up as 47 but was flicking...

Intro "Wooooooooooooooosh, Buzzzzz, wizzzzz and some wir"  shouted the Copymaster 3D, all day, every day. What starts off as a kind of neat load of robot noise reminiscent of Short circuit, soon becomes an annoyance. In fact; if you share  a room with it, it is verging on an uncomfortable noise levels. Every video I see of a Prusa i3 working away silently makes me more and more envious (not to mention the print quality!). I needed to quieten down my printer but I also needed to improve cooling which I will try to keep separate but you just know it is going to have some cross over here. Quieter without spending any money Slow your mother f*****g road! Slowing this thing makes quite a big difference to sound and print quality. As standard, this printer was printing far too fast for itself. This may have been an error in my setup however as I was using multiple conflicting sources.  I was getting bad ghosting in the X and Y directions so I slowed the thing dow...

Intro Ghosts were plaguing my builds and needed scaring off. I started this a while ago but never got round to publishing this as I was never quite done. I will update this one if I make any further progress. Let's just get down to how I cleared out my spooky pest problem. Tightening things up Desk The desk the printer was on, made for a wobbly base so this was the first thing I changed. I will look to make a proper stand and enclosure for it in the future but for now this far sturdier chest of drawers in the spare room will do nicely. I added some kitchen work surface to add a bit of dampening and to allow the printer to be oriented forwards. This looks better but as the drawers are more stable in the X axis now, the heavier y axis (glass bed is not helpeing this) does get things rocking a bit with faster movements. Belts The belts on my printer weren't as tight as they could be so I loosened the x and y pulleys, held them in a tighter position and tighten...

Please maintain a minimum of 2 metres spacing whilst reading this blog entry. The use of PPE is not mandatory, but it is compulsory.  If you are reading about this in the future you have probably already figured out that this is a COVID19 based blog entry and already suffered all of the associated flash backs, checked the bread bin and counted all of the loo rolls again. Still 42, you are okay. I have decided to join thousands of others lucky enough to own a 3D printer in producing frames for face shields to help protect key workers. The UK has done a pretty crap job of supplying key workers with PPE (in fairness not many countries did) and very early on this was recognised as a huge issue that the 3D printing community stepped in to help fill the gap. If this is all somehow news to you then you can join in on the help by printing your own Prusa face shield frames . You can then either get the rest of the ingredients and make your own face shields or joining a group such...