New lab, recent prints

Hi everyone! Today I’m sharing my new dedicated 3D printing space, as well as a few recent prints I’ve made.

I had big plans going into my first summer break as a teacher, most of which went down the drain when I broke my distal fibula (ankle bone) right before the fourth of July playing flag football. However, when one door closes, another opens, and so I used my newfound down time to start a 3D printing lab.

Building the Lab

First, I consolidated my three printers from various locations around the house (bedroom, porch, dining room…) to a repurposed slot-car table in the basement. This is the perfect location, because the printers can run 24/7 without bothering everyone with the noise. Next, I furnished the lab with new tool drawers and a mini trash can. I also bought a big clear plastic table mat to go under everything. It’s normally used to keep dining tables clean and scratch-free, but I figured it would be the perfect work surface, since it’s very easy to clean the endless amounts of filament cuts and string that tend to pile up.

The three printers that are in the lab are: an Ender 3 Pro (about $250 at the time of purchase- cheap, but a very reliable workhorse printer), a Creality CR-6 SE ($400, has auto bed leveling, a glass bed, and prints very quietly- very refined compared to the Ender), and a Geeetech A20T ($440, can print up to three colors on a single part, has a massive build volume, but is very noisy and very finicky). I gravitate towards the Ender and CR-6 for simple single-color parts, whereas the A20T I use almost exclusively for multicolor prints. All three printers have been very busy with various projects for the past few weeks! I did purchase a resin printer a while back, but the safety and ventilation requirements meant that it was impractical to have in the house, so I ended up giving it to a student.

Future Additions

While I am mostly content with the state of the lab for now, there are a few additions that I would love to make at some point:

• A better way to hold and organize unloaded filament- maybe a rack or spool system- but right now, I have many rolls just lying around on the table.
• A display case to show off some of the nicer prints I’ve made, these are also just scattered around the area for now (friends or family reading this- GREAT holiday gift idea, wink wink).
• Filament dryers or dehumidifiers to keep filament from collecting moisture (if your filament absorbs too much moisture from the air, it can negatively affect print quality)
• Better cable management
• Some kind of camera/IOT(?) system to feed to my desktop so I can check on prints remotely without going downstairs. Totally unnecessary, but what is it to be human, if not to totally conquer one’s environment with completely over-the-top ways to save minuscule amounts of time and effort?

Goals

I have a few goals that drove me to buy so many printers and put together this lab space. First and foremost, 3D printing is very rewarding and a lot of fun, and I really enjoy printing new, interesting stuff as a hobby. I also like to hone my skills and come up with new ideas for my 3D printing classes at IHS. What better way to stay in touch with a fast-changing technical field than to constantly participate in it? Another big justification for my investment is that I am aiming to start a print shop at some point. My problem is that it isn’t obvious at all what I should actually print to sell. Etsy is completely flooded with all of the obvious parts that are easy to print, so simply going to Thingiverse and producing the most popular models is off the table. I wanted to sell custom relief maps (perhaps for a future blog post), but there are several technical limitations with software that make me hesitant to go public. I doubt your average shopper will understand, for example, why I can only print blue lakes that are on the same plane as each other. So, the quest to figure out what to sell continues. For now, though, I am definitely open to commissions, so hit me up!

Recent Prints

Here are some of the prints I’ve made over the past week. I was finally able to dial in some key settings on the A20T, so I have been having a lot of fun with printing in multiple colors.

I also got some blue silk filament from Hatchbox recently, and it is gorgeous! Take a look at the vases below. They were printed so thin that I was shocked that they actually held any water.

I want to get into printing more complex assemblies, so current projects on my radar include a water drop kinetic sculpture and a watch escapement mechanism demonstration.

Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for more print photos and lab updates!