First Prints……

I present to you, my first Ever 3D print

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1680918

Yes, it’s a Sinclair Spectrum 48k!

Not my first, but my first favourite home computer (First one was a Commodore VIC20, but that’s a conversation for another time)

Yes, there’s issues – Scaling to something reasonably sized being one of them 😉

But, it’s mine!….and, i’ve now lost it, D’oh!

 

Now for something more ambitious –

The right hand idler wheel on the X axis gantry does look to lean a little to the left – causing some flex on the belt when moving

The photo below has been taken to exaggerate the leaned effect – but it’s clear that the whole thing’s leaning a little to the left –

Enter some nice bloke on Thingverse…….(and facebook!)

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2894956

….

and, Here’s my first ever, complex 3D print!………

yeah, err, Oops!

Back to the drawing board!………

significant apparent under-extrusion on that right hand side – need to dig further

I can understand why people really get annoyed with 3D printing, it’s clearly NOT ‘out of the box’ ready just yet…………

Being truthful, I didn’t expect this print to even come out as good as this!, a lot of googling, research had suggested that trying something like this on a machine heavier than my child, that’s fairly fragile and has been shipped across the planet was, well, a little optimistic.

The print told me some key things though

• My printer is seriously out of calibration

 

• First thing I did was to dismantle the bed and replace the V Slot wheels (which had now arrived after buying them – See link – Vslot Wheels
• Second thing was to tighten every nut, bolt, screw and visually inspect them – one of the carriages standoffs wouldn’t tighten fully – removed it and discovered some swarf / metal inside – removed that and now the X axis moves perfectly
• Third – Re-level the Z Gantry – using a block rather than visual
• Fourth – physcally level the bed by measuring from the Y axis rails to the bed using a digital caliper
• Fifth – Parallel up / square the frame – the top was 1.5mm ‘out’ and wider than the bottom!
• Sixth – Home X,Y,Z
• Seventh – Set retraction to 0.6mm (default is much higher, more like a Bowden number!)

Now, my second ever complex print…..

 

………..Still some issues (cooling leading to sagging on the circular windows for one!)

….Much better………..

 

In between these prints, I knocked up some basic Alphabet letters for my kids initials, being simple, those few prints came out OK