QC Chemist

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  • 16 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • If you have an enclosure, I would say try out ASA. Similar to ABS, I’ve found it makes some really nice parts that are tough and UV resistant. Great for things you want to leave outdoors. Otherwise TPU is useful stuff too, and no heated chamber required. I was using it this weekend to print up seals and grommets for a trailer I’m rewiring. It’s nice being able to print up some parts I need rather than making a drive to the hardware store and hoping they’ll have something I can use.



  • Is it the color shifting filament, or coextruded type? I’ve used coextruded red-yellow-blue that looks really great when the prints were done. The three blend as they melt, so you get a rainbow effect of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple that shifts as you turn the finished piece. Anyway, for a short length of filament like you have, try doing a standard test print like a benchy or any small figure. Even if you end up short of filament to finish, you’ll have an idea of how the filament will look if you end up buying a roll.



  • I find that being able to sketch up things I need in CAD and then print them is both cool and really useful. It’s the main reason I bought a printer in the first place. Thus far I’ve tried out FreeCAD, Solid Edge, and Blender. With any modeling package, you will have to dedicate time on a regular basis to really get used to them. FreeCAD is certainly nice for the fact it’s free, just as it implies. I used it to design a few parts that were functional. It works, has some useful workbenches and add-ons. My problems were the software having bugs that caused models to break when trying to make changes, and available training info was often outdated. Siemens offers a free version of Solid Edge to makers, which is really nice, even with some of the advanced features turned off. It’s a much more polished program with great training resources. You can only export designs as stl files, but that’s fine for 3d printing. Solid Edge will slice and print, but I always import files into Orca and go from there. Blender looks really amazing for modeling, but I admit I haven’t spent enough time learning it yet. You can use it to manipulate meshes, which is useful for customizing and fixing models. I’ve used it to Frankenstein together different models for custom prints I wanted. But yeah, while you don’t have to learn to use modeling software to do prints, it opens up so many options for you to be creative. I think it’s worth while.




  • I was really enjoying this game for a couple weeks, and plan to go back to it after it gets a few updates. Just started to get Ground Hog’s Day fatigue after a while. The same critters keep spawning in the same places, over and over again. Gets tedious after a while. Had the same problem playing Small Land. Love the exploring and all, but monotonous critter spawns. Hoping they’ll implement some randomness once they develop the game more.


  • I’m going to make the assumption that is PETG you are working with. I had cobwebs like that when I tried moving over from doing PLA. There were a few things I had to work out to get better prints.

    1. Slow down the print speed and work up once you get acceptable prints. Try 40 to 50mm/s to start.
    2. Increase filament retraction. Default I think is like 0.2mm, try 1.0mm instead.
    3. Increase the travel speed. I’ve used 350mm/s, which helps break strings, as someone else already suggested.
    4. Drop the extruder temperature. PETG gets more stringy as it gets hotter. Lower temp may help, and if you aren’t trying to print at warp speed, bonding should still be good. Do small test prints to see where your cutoff is. Also, if the cooling fan on that Sovol is a bit anemic then printing cooler lets each layer solidify before the next one gets added. Hopefully you get things worked out, good luck.