# A 3D Printing hobby thread!



## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

I've been tinkering with printers a lot in the last month or so (instead of building my extension while the weather is grim!) and thought I'd start a thread in the hobbies section to see if any other cyclechatters share this slightly addictive passtime 

I've been using 3D printers for prototyping for about 14 years but for a long time the cost of these machines was prohibitive; the main printer I use at work is a Stratasys Fortus 900mc and at the time it set us back several hundred thousand pounds  These days of course you can purchase DIY printers that do a similar thing (but much less reliably ) for a fraction of that cost so around 3 years ago I bought my first machine, an Anet A2...







This is actually a picture of it after the post-fire repairs but I won't go in to that minor mishap  This was a fun little printer but after a while I found I needed something with a bigger build envelope... As a result, I invested in a second printer, an Anet E10...






This was a little more expensive than the A2 and a little more robust. A larger bed and taller Z axis meant it could build bigger in all directions than the A2 and the pair of them did me fairly well until quite recently. Both of these printers are ideal for printing with PLA, a fairly strong plastic but not overly stable in warm conditions or in direct sunlight. It will creep and break down which doesnt make it particularly useful for the bicycle parts I found myself wanting to design and print more regularly.

In order to make space, I gave the A2 away to a friend as a project to rebuild with his young daughter. This left space for a new printer, but I couldn't decide between a new and improved FDM machine like the A2 and E10 which prints by melting and extruding plastic filament from a spool, or a relatively new MSLA resin printer which prints by curing layers of liquid photopolymer resin by shining UV light through an LCD mask. The obvious solution was to buy one of each  Unfortunately for the money I wanted to spend, I couldn't find an FDM machine that was capable of printing Nylon reliably so I had to buy a more basic machine and upgrade it which is what I've been up to in my spare time recently  I went for a Creality Ender 6 and bought some extra aluminium extrusions, fittings, insulation and heaters and built myself a fully heated enclosure for it. I also upgraded the extrusion components to allow them to operate reliably at a higher temperature and fitted some drag chains to protect the cables. Here it is midway through it's modification...






And here it is set up and running in the garage 






As you can see it's a slightly more serious bit of kit than the other two. With the additional enclosure heaters running I've got it up to 54 degrees inside whilst the garage itself was only 4 degrees. This means I can print Nylon parts without fear of them warping or cracking due to thermal shrinkage as they print, giving me stronger finished parts  Here's what it looks like with the lid open, pretty funky 






And so on to my new resin printer... Sadly I've been so busy playing with the Ender 6 that I haven't had a chance to test it yet  It's an Elegoo Saturn, and is currently looking forlorn sitting in the corner of my study...






It has a few advantages over the FDM machines; it can be much faster to print, and the finished parts are much higher resolution. The main disadvantage is that the standard resins are more expensive than plastic filament and the finished parts are more brittle. Unless of course you're spending significantly more on engineering grade resins but they can be as much as £100 per litre so you'd have to really want it 

Anyway, over to you... Anyone else find they're spending more hours than is probably healthy compiling firmware or levelling build surfaces?  I find most people I speak to that own these machines are using them to print figurines and art type projects which is a slightly different usecase to my own as they're often only interested in surface finish, whereas for me dimensional accuracy and strength are far more important. It would be great to see other peoples setups, theres always more to learn


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## Once a Wheeler (21 Feb 2021)

Fancy a go at this?
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/m...-whats-good-and-whats-bad.272239/post-6319219


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## welsh dragon (21 Feb 2021)

What have you made with your 3d printers?


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## RoubaixCube (21 Feb 2021)

Would you ever consider printing small things like Light mounts for CC members? 

For instance, Something like this...


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## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

welsh dragon said:


> What have you made with your 3d printers?



Hilariously, a large percentage of the parts I've printed have been upgrade components for the printers themselves so far  There are various other things though, such as a wallmount for a monitor stand I modified, quadlock adapters, brackets for bicycle lights etc. I'm currently putting the finishing touches to a chassis tub for my RC monster truck to hold the new motor controllers and LiPo battery in place more securely  It really is super handy when you're mechanically minded and have CAD knowledge - If I need something plastic I can generally design and print it myself 



RoubaixCube said:


> Would you ever consider printing small things like Light mounts for CC members?
> 
> For instance, Something like this...
> 
> View attachment 574945



I don't see why not, although I wouldn't be able to print the rubber band  The bracket part looks injection moulded, I'd need to change the design a little to suit 3d printing but it doesnt look too scary  The problem is always getting hold of the data - if it doesnt exist I'd need accurate measurements to work from to recreate it. If that's available I could certainly give it a shot


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## winjim (21 Feb 2021)

Our friend just got a 3D printer and made us this totally badass Totoro cookie cutter. He just says he wasn't prepared for how long it takes the thing to actually print anything. They're not quick, are they?


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## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

Here's the wall mount bracket being printed:






Here's a little trinket (not really sure what it is!) that I downloaded and printed to help dial in my settings when I'd first assembled the printer... I hadn't quite got it right at this point, as is visible by the strings of plastic hanging between the pillars.






And here's one of the latest prints, a quadlock adapter for a friend. This is printed in ABS, I'm currently printing a couple of in Nylon which should be stronger but the finish is likely to be slightly worse - I was really pleased with the quality of this one  I designed it to fit in to his existing stem mount by removing the two screws that hold the existing garmin mount geometry plastic insert and replacing it with this part  The little tabs will be the weakest link so the extra strength of the Nylon will be a benefit here.






And this is what happens when you try and print with Nylon on the standard machine 






The maximum extrusion temperature is limited to 260 degrees which is hot enough to melt the filament, but not hot enough to allow it to fuse back together properly. This means you can peel the layers apart again by hand once it's finished printing and is extremely frustrating  I had to replace the entire extrusion tip and compile custom firmware to allow hotter temperatures, it now maxes out at 315 degrees but I'm getting good results at 275 currently


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## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

winjim said:


> Our friend just got a 3D printer and made us this totally badass Totoro cookie cutter. He just says he wasn't prepared for how long it takes the thing to actually print anything. They're not quick, are they?
> 
> View attachment 574957



They're not quick but some are quicker than others; one of my reasons for upgrading to the Ender 6 is it uses something called CoreXY kinematics. It's a bit complex to explain, but essentially where normal printers have a stepper motor for each axis, CoreXY machines have a stepper motor for the Z axis and two stepper motors controlling XY together in tandem. This essentially means you can double the movement speed in any given X/Y direction as you add the max speed of each stepper motor together. My old printers started missing steps and making awful noises at about 70-80mm/second whereas this one prints comfortably at 120mm/s. That said, a small print will still take a few hours and a big print could take a day or more


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## chopper1708 (21 Feb 2021)

Hi Jhn, I’m Marc and a fellow user called Cycleops put me onto you in light of your 3D printing talents  

I can’t seem to find a replacement seatpost clamp for my bike build that I’m currently doing. The frame is carbon andonly came with the BB as far as additional frame components go. I was a wondering, if you can help of course, whether it would be possible to print a seatpost clamp identical to the original cannondale one? I’ll attach a picture of the clamp in question..

cheers,
Marc


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## chopper1708 (21 Feb 2021)

This is my initial thread regarding the seatpost clamp (part no. KP095)

https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/2012-cannondale-synapse-seatpost-clamp-kp095.272347/


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## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

Hi Marc!

It's potentially possible, but with some caveats; the original part I presume is metal, so a part printed in plastic would have to be a fair bit bulkier to have a chance of working. I'd also need the dimensions of the seatpost and frame to have a chance of recreating something that fit properly.

Do you have the seatpost?


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## chopper1708 (21 Feb 2021)

Thank you for getting back to me, much appreciated! I don’t to hand but I can certainly organise dimensions etc no worries.

I do have a seat post that I’ve bought for it. But it’s not the same as what would have come with the bike originally as I bought the frame to start my own build. It’s the correct size though! The original clamp is oval in shape FYI.

What would the cost etc be roughly please jhn?


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## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

chopper1708 said:


> Thank you for getting back to me, much appreciated! I don’t to hand but I can certainly organise dimensions etc no worries.
> 
> I do have a seat post that I’ve bought for it. But it’s not the same as what would have come with the bike originally as I bought the frame to start my own build. It’s the correct size though! The original clamp is oval in shape FYI.
> 
> What would the cost etc be roughly please jhn?



Cost is very hard to estimate as most of it is in time spent rather than materials. In this case materials would be less than a few quid so I'd probably do it for nothing. However - I posted a link in your original thread to a shop in germany that seems to have the clamp in stock, so lets explore that avenue before I start any CAD work


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## JhnBssll (21 Feb 2021)

I just finished this quadlock adapter part for a friend. There's a second identical one printing currently as he has two identical mounts 





















Next job will be another printer upgrade part  Once that's done I should get on to my monster truck chassis tub


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## chopper1708 (22 Feb 2021)

JhnBssll said:


> Cost is very hard to estimate as most of it is in time spent rather than materials. In this case materials would be less than a few quid so I'd probably do it for nothing. However - I posted a link in your original thread to a shop in germany that seems to have the clamp in stock, so lets explore that avenue before I start any CAD work



Have you? Thanks Jhn, I’ll check it out now.

Okay, I’ll be back in touch ASAP


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## JhnBssll (4 Mar 2021)

I got my resin printer up and running around a week ago, I'm really impressed with it  I had to build a small heater unit to put inside the build enclosure in order to keep the resin at the required ~25C for optimum prints as it lives in the garage but all seems to work very well  Heres a closeup of the heater unit, with preset temperature at the bottom and current air temperature at the top, with the unit bolted to the top of the Z-screw assembly.







And here are some prints appearing like magic from the liquid resin...






This is one of the printed brackets after washing and UV curing, fitted to my bike...






And just to prove it works, here it is with my computer attached to it 





So both printers are up and running in their final position now  I'll have to move them both out when I insulate the wall behind them but that shouldn't be a problem.






I'm worried that once it's all insulated I might just move in to the garage full time  I think my wife might be hoping for that outcome


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## JhnBssll (13 Mar 2021)

I Received a Bontrager Ion front light this morning. It came with the now standard rubber band style mount but I fancied something a bit more integrated, so I did some CAD and reverse engineered it, as you do  I came up with this little doodah:






I decided to print this on the big FDM printer rather than the little resin one although realistically it would have been fine on either. Here it is about an hour later just coming to the end of the build...






And here it is with the bontrager clip inserted and fitted to my out-front stem mount 
















I'm now thinking of printing a combined GPS/light mount for the Bianchi in a similar style to fit the Metron 5D ACR bars 😊 These printers are jolly useful...


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## JhnBssll (15 Mar 2021)

I've made a mk2 version already  The differences aren't huge, it's just slightly more compact and the light sits closer to the computer 






I've also modelled a combined Karoo and Ion mount for the Bianchi as I had threatened to do yesterday 






I had to reverse engineer the Metron geometry so I'd be pleasantly surprised if it fits first time, but I've got one printing overnight so should be ready to try out at some point tomorrow 😊 I sure know how to have fun


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## JhnBssll (15 Mar 2021)

Well the initial print was pretty good - the reverse engineered geometry fit rather nicely, unfortunately I'd misjudged a couple of other key dimensions so it was too long  No matter, now I was confident with the design I tweaked it a bit and created version 2, a shorter, stiffer mount with slightly neater geometry 😊






I printed it during the day so it was ready for me to play with this evening  Here it is fresh out of the UV curing box...






And here it is mounted to the Bianchi...






Then the all important trial fits of the Karoo 2 and Ion... First the Ion...






And then both together, the real test 






Perfect  It looks pretty neat from up top too...






I'm still waiting on some black engineering resin but once it arrives I'll re-print it and swap them over. Until then I'll see how I get on with this one 😄

Next job will be to design one with a mount underneath for a powerbank for longer rides


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## JhnBssll (28 Jan 2022)

I decided to have a play with an F3 form mount to see if I could make it fit a Karoo 2 😄






The mounts are modular and adjustable meaning the can fit lots of stem types and computers:






I've done away with the two uppermost components on the left and designed a new part to replace them including the mounting geometry for the Karoo 2:






I've just set a print going on the resin printer - the time taken per print is proportional to the print height not the print volume so you can print multiples in the same time as printing one so I've got three on the go 






I'll report back when they're finished and cleaned up ready for assembly


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## MontyVeda (28 Jan 2022)

I'd love to have a play with 3D printing but when i mention this to people they inevitably ask, "_What would you print?_"

To which I cautiously reply, "_Erm... um... err..._"__

So I can't really justify the expense or learning curve.

A CNC cutter under which i could place a sheet of 8' x 4' plywood on the other hand...


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## JhnBssll (29 Jan 2022)

I know what you mean, I've used industrial printers at work for over a decade but there's still things to be learnt about the small hobby printers 😊

These prints came out pretty well - there are a few bits to tweak on the next batch but overall I'd call it a success


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## JhnBssll (29 Jan 2022)

The test fit went well but identified a few more tweaks needed so I printed an updated version this morning 















All looks good so I'll try it out in the morning 😊


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## ColinJ (29 Jan 2022)

Did you ever consider churning out Garmin and Wahoo mounts for your CycleChat pals?  I'm sure that you could have a nice little earner if you could do them at half the _buy-from-China-on-ebay_ rate!


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