Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
My 3D printer has been stubborn at finishing prints since I was finishing up a Chess set for a kid spending his summer in the hospital. Just as it finishes up, it stops extruding material. Since then, I have tried a few times to print a combined filament guide and duster from Thingiverse [1]. It’s time to take another crack at it.
When last I lost patience with my printer, I left its corner adjustments fully tightened down. Needless to say, filament doesn’t stick the best when this happens. I also had a .gcode file loaded with a few changes: the part was in another spot in the bed because of visible wear on the bed, a little cap was omitted as I already have a couple good ones, there is a rectangular structure inspired by a purge block used by multi-filament printers because maybe it’s getting lazy toward the end of the job or something (good luck if nothing else). And as if that weren’t enough, I installed one of my defective filament guides and tied a microfiber to the filament using strings of filament from previous bed level tests.
One more thing –and this is probably the one that actually did it– the print head apart and gave the e-step motor as good of a cleaning as I could get with another microfiber cloth, the long end of an Allen wrench, and a bit of creativity. Once I was convinced I was well past the point of diminishing returns, I put the printer back together and it came out first try.
Weary of a lame sendoff to a project I’ve had multiple weeks ending in failure, I did a bit more background research on 3D printing:
Additive manufacturing caught popular attention in the early 2010’s. Advice shared among 3D printing hobbyists from this period should be followed with caution as widely spread advice, like oiling your filament for lubrication, may have come out as a bad idea in more recent years (for example: oil burning in extruder, making bed adhesion more difficult, and soaking into/destroying filaments). It is for this reason that I am using a dry sponge to dust my filament.
Takeaway
This part took way too long to fabricate. It is my hope that it will silently do its work in preventing so many jams in the long run. I may never know if it is actually of any use. I’d need to alternate between using two identical machines in the same room. That’s not likely to happen unless the one I have is already constantly busy, which would give less time for dust to settle on open spools of filament to begin with. I’m just glad the device is finally in place.
Final Question
What projects have you completed where you may never know how beneficial or useless they are in the end?
I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.
Work Cited
For my initial post, I was been unable to locate a link to the part I used.
[1] Sleven67, “Dust filter plus filament guide monoprice maker select plus,” Thingiverse.com, Oct. 23, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4632282. [Accessed Aug. 11, 2022].