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[TheBoy]

Yup, I use Tinkercad and awful lot, mainly because it's web based, free, and not blocked by our work firewalls when I'm on this long tedious calls listening to knobjockeys who like the sound of their own voices and licking the piles of their bosses...

[TheBoy]

All looks cool, guess once you have it and learn its capabilities you find uses very easily.

You're limited by your imagination, and the limits of the machine and materials you are using.

For example, most FDM and resin printers create prints that are weak in the plane the layers are printed, as with force, you can separate the layers.  Sometimes you can reorient the model before printing to overcome, sometimes you have to redesign it with that in mind if you need the strength in that plane.  Sometimes, it just won't work.

[TheBoy]

It is fair to say Creality's latest and greatest is utter shite with TPU.

*sigh*

Do I get a cheap, small printer just for TPU?

[Viral_Jim]

It is fair to say Creality's latest and greatest is utter shite with TPU.

Is it the printer, or the slicing SW? If it would print ok on you old machine, maybe use that?

I'm shooting in the dark really as I've never used anything other than pla.

[TheBoy]

Its the printer rather than the slicer, and seems Creality have done some serious messing with slicer profiles to help, but none quite work.  Seems I'm not alone either!

Fortunately, taken inspiration from some extruder mods (which then preclude other materials without adjustment), I've printed some easily removed shims, and initial testing is looking promising, along with some profile tweaks.


The old printer  - K1 Max - had to go sadly, due to space issues at TB Towers.  It was great when I had both of them here, I really caught up with the backlog of stuff I had to print!

[Viral_Jim]

Its the printer rather than the slicer, and seems Creality have done some serious messing with slicer profiles to help, but none quite work.  Seems I'm not alone either!

Fortunately, taken inspiration from some extruder mods (which then preclude other materials without adjustment), I've printed some easily removed shims, and initial testing is looking promising, along with some profile tweaks.

Fair enough, I'm yet to find a use case for TPU (good job really, considering I also have a Creality machine)- do you use it for RC stuff?

[TheBoy]

I have lots of uses for TPU.  Yes, great for camera mounts that are going to hit walls and drops at 50mph, but also make good lids for boxes printed in PLA as they tend not to come off when upside down in backpack.  I get a feeling our suitcase labels are TPU as well, with our initials and phone number on.

I did buy a pack of 5 rolls from Amazon back during that strange 2 years when the chinky sniffle was rife, and 4 of the reels still have some left on, though I've got through many more rolls of black since.

Pretty certain the Ender series support it well, except the Ender v3 and v3 Plus (which are sort of CoreXY, turned on its side). Other Ender 3's officially do list as being compatible, including SE's and KE's, but there are so many variants, I can't keep up! Can't remember which one yours is?

[Viral_Jim]

Ender 3 v2 neo is mine. TBH I don't even know what difference it makes. I had it because they seemed common (so lots of online support) and the boxing day sale offer made it a cheap way into the hobby.

Do you have to keep tpuin a heated filament box or any of that nonsense?

[TheBoy]

Ender 3 v2 neo is mine. TBH I don't even know what difference it makes. I had it because they seemed common (so lots of online support) and the boxing day sale offer made it a cheap way into the hobby.

Do you have to keep tpuin a heated filament box or any of that nonsense?

Looks like a remote extruder, via a bowden tube?  If so, not really going to be that good with TPU, as that really needs a direct drive (extruder on the hot end).  Remote extruders were common for a while, as it reduced the weight of the moving parts.

If TPU is left out, it will absorb a lot of moisture, hence many run though a heat box for a few hours, and/or during printing.  I'm anal enough to take it off the printer as soon as the job finishes and get it in a vac-pack bag with desiccant, so rarely put mine in the heat box.  An oven does the same job, probably less efficiently as they need low heat for several hours.

[Viral_Jim]

Likewise, I bought an old 2 drawer finish cabinet, desiccant in the drawers and then the rolls in the bags they came in, little desiccant bags in there too. Never had an issue, but then again pla is pretty forgiving.

Looks like a remote extruder, via a bowden tube?  If so, not really going to be that good with TPU, as that really needs a direct drive (extruder on the hot end).  Remote extruders were common for a while, as it reduced the weight of the moving parts.

Yes, remote extruder and bowden tube - several upgrades in my case but I doubt they'd help. I can imagine something squashy like TPU compressing and going s shaped inside the bowden, with corespondingly negative effects on actual extrusion rate. TBH I can see me having more use for ABS once I get going on the kit car, but there in lies a different brand of ar$e ache I fear

[TheBoy]

You know when PLA has sucked in too much moisture, as it goes brittle.

ABS is probably the hardest of the "normal" filaments to print, due to high shrinkage (so corners lift during printing) and high temps needed during printing.  Many open frame printers like yours will struggle to keep the bed hot enough, so you will likely have to rig up some kind of big box once you've started the print.

[Viral_Jim]

All 3D Printers aren't quite consumer ready, set and forget.  I don't think the Ender 3 is that bad - it's built to a budget, so you'll find that you upgrade parts anyway to improve it, right up until the point you get a CoreXY type printer, and start all over again

Well, I think today might be that day! 

Having run the ender 3 for almost exactly two years I'm getting the itch to upgrade. Something with a slightly bigger print volume would be handy (a lot of off the shelf stuff seems setup for Bambu' 255mm cubed). I also would like some ease of fettling - ie less faff when stripping a nozzle/print head down, and direct drive would be nice 🤣.

How are you getting on with the K2 TB? I don't think I'd want or need the max, unless it's a cheap upgrade.

[TheBoy]

K2 Plus with 3 CFS units is going well, now that I've overcome the TPU issues - I printed some PETG shims to reduce extruder pressure, which prevents jams (and without modifying anything, so no further adjustments when swapping to other filaments apart from sliding out the shim), and need to remember to remove the TPU from hotend once print is complete, although annoyingly it seems to cut the filament sometimes at the end, which makes it impossible to remove without removing the extruder.

The only other issue is on some tall prints, particularly when printing thin walls, I sometimes get weird banding effects every few mm - I think the printhead may be pulling on the print causing this, not sure there is a remedy or is anything else would fair better.

It's definitely an improvement on the K1 Max I had and have now given away. Not enough of an improvement to warrant an upgrade unless you need the K2 Plus's larger print area, just more refined.

Like all Creality, it's a pain to swap nozzles. Not so much that if a nozzle fails its hard work, but if you like to swap between different nozzle sizes, definitely a pain.

I looked at the Bambu X1 when I bought the K1 Max, but immediately discarded it because it seemed utterly reliant on Bambu's cloud service, even just to print wirelessly.  I try to avoid stuff reliant on cloud services, as it allows that company to suddenly charge you, or control when you can't use the printer any more, or stop it working if they go tits up.  Creality Cloud is a horrible mess as well, but not essential to wireless printing from the same LAN.  Though the smaller Bambu printers are more competitively priced, it could be worth a punt.


I will say, if using multicolour CFS units, they do need a lot of space above to open them.  Bambu's AMS looks the same, though never seen an AMS in the flesh.


I'll add, the K1/K2 can't really do anything else that your Ender can do.  Might be a little faster, and less hassle and easier for those problematic filaments.  So have a ponder what you want from it.  Do you need multicolour (as that has a number of pitfalls itself)? Do you need the extra speed? Or is it just an Ender with a larger print area?

[TheBoy]

And according to the ffluid interface, it's now done 6592.80 m of filament. Unclear if that's the incoming 1.75mm filament or the distance the head has moved when extruding at 0.4mm.  I'll do a test print and try to work it out

[Viral_Jim]

TBH it's not a *need* at all. I'm certain that with a new hot end fan (to cure an annoying buzz on startup that goes away after c1min) and some fettling the ender 3 would soldier on no issue, its definitely more of a want. So my *want* factors

- not fart-arsing around with a USB/micro SD card any more when I want to print (biggest want)
- filament enclosure so that I can be lazy during machine down time and not bother removing and storing reels of filament properly.
- enclosure to reduce noise - it shares swmbo's office and it's annoying enough to her that I don't print while she's working - which definitely slows production
- enclosure to stabilize temps - we don't heat that room at night so ambient temps can drop to mid-to-low teens this time of year which I wonder if could be affecting reliability
- direct drive and enclosure to allow me to confidently venture beyond pla. Not sure what for yet, but I'm sure ideas will present themselves, just like they did when I got the ender 3.
- better quality to allow me to print scale models - very low level want as I suspect the money spent to improve quality would more than buy a cheapish resin printer that would give vastly superior results.
- ability to 'hot swap' reels of filament when one runs out - an annoyance on larger prints as the pause and swap method on the ender 3 is seriously hot and miss and can easily wreck a print.
- multi filament printing - very very low level want. My son will think it's the coolest thing in the world for about 90s before carrying on with his day.

Like you I'd looked at Bambu and thought they embodied all the lock-ins I dislike about the apple ecosystem, with the added disadvantage they seemed expensive like for like compared to other brands.