Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today, I am getting back into 3D printing, but I doubt it\u2019s going to be pretty. Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My 3D printer is in used condition. The print bed is scratched and one of the two Z-axis rods got bent at around the same time. My filaments are old and brittle. I can\u2019t even use the slicer it came with anymore because it\u2019s both outdated and made exclusively for Windows. I\u2019d rather just start over with a standard one designed to be user-serviceable. But that\u2019s not an option at the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I should learn about what I already have and work from there. There\u2019s not much I can do about the scratch unless the original replacement pad shows up or unless I\u2019m willing to fill it in\/cover it up somehow. As much as I\u2019d like to replace the Z-axis rod, a suitable replacement proved elusive for reasons discussed above; besides, the tweak doesn\u2019t look that bad \u2013 the top of the rod only moves back and forth a little when the print print head is moving vertically and is down low. Alternate slicers exist. Long story short, I may as well give this printer one last chance before giving up on it completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have two PLA filaments I\u2019m considering today: my original, red one and an opaque white one I got later and hardly ever used. Red used to just work. White felt different from its day 1 and never printed nicely. After a couple years of absorbing moisture from the air, they\u2019re both as stiff as spaghetti. I even bent one piece of White until its middle piece snapped out from between the ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides causing stiffening, absorbed water evaporates when exposed to heat, causing problems such as the ones I experienced last time I tried printing. Water from within the filament forms steam, and it\u2019s the steam that causes mysterious jams that seemingly go away come time for diagnostics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A number of places have listed methods for drying out filament: bake it. Just be aware of the material\u2019s glass transition phase where it goes from resembling a wire to resembling a more squishy rubber. The whole spool will fuse and you\u2019re reclamation efforts will be for none. For PLA, that transition is somewhere around 140 degrees Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be safe, I elected to aim for 100-120 degrees F. My stove at home doesn\u2019t hold its temperature that low. We put a bowel of water in overnight with a rising loaf of bread and it tested way cooler than needed. We tried our old toaster oven and tested at 125 F \u2013 close, but as I only had one shot to fix what I have, I didn\u2019t want to risk it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specialized devices exist to dry out filaments. I was able to approximate one by modifying a food dehydrator operating at 125 F. My final design involved a rheostat from my father\u2019s soldering iron to adjust the otherwise fixed temperature, some Duplos (a Lego-like block aimed at younger ages we\u2019ve had laying around since I was little) to hold up the lid, and a tall, plastic film from my mother\u2019s cake supplies to extend the tray. Without a thermostat, I monitored the temperature myself with a digital cooking thermometer we got for my sister\u2019s bread making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both Red and White were dried overnight. White still felt stiff, so I left it in for several hours more. The temperature was difficult to keep constant. I left the contraption in a small room, and the room warms up and I have to turn the power down. If I had known how to easily, I would have built a thermostat capable of operating in those ranges. In retrospect, it would have been better to just leave it in the toaster oven on warm and not worry about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was able to get Vaultwarden running by forwarding the incoming traffic to the container\u2019s port 80 instead of 443. However, this is still sub-optimal. I have my ability to manage passwords between devices back, and that feels sooo good after months of downtime, but I\u2019ve been strongly encouraged to use a reverse proxy. This week, I looked into NGINX, and I believe that will be a focus some time in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The path to my improvised filament dehydrator was a little longer than going right there. My early approach was At first, I figured I\u2019d want to build something with a couple appliance bulbs like what the oven uses. The food dehydrator I eventually used as a base only has an on-off switch, so to lower its steady state temperature, I used some short Duplo stilts to raise a lower level to let ambient air in. I kept them for my production run, though if I have to run it again in the future, I\u2019ll leave the sides closed and turn the power down lower on the rheostat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What would you tell someone who is ready to know more about 3D printing than: use slicer, level bed, load filament, press start?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today, I am getting back into 3D printing, but I doubt it\u2019s going to be pretty. Let\u2019s get started! Inspection of Equipment and Materials My 3D printer is in used condition. The print bed is scratched and one of the two Z-axis rods got bent … <\/p>\n