Tap & Die Storage

[Dr.Al]

In for a penny, in for a pound... I've decided to add two more drawers at the bottom for some of the smaller tap wrenches and die stocks. I also split the "Gauges" drawer in two so now it's Gauges & Spares. Finally I increased the clearance around the drawers from 0.5 mm to 1 mm. I'll probably stick some UHMW-PE tape on the bottom corners of the drawers to make them slide nicely and the extra clearance will give a bit of space for that and give me more confidence that the drawer unit print won't have been 5 wasted days!

The frame still (just) fits on the bed of the printer...

 

[Dr.Al]

The handle fits like a charm: a really good tight fit

 

[Dr.Al]

Some gratuitous in-progress shots:

First layer (sorry for the carp photo: it was dark when this was taken!):

Further into the same print (this is the drawer for tap handles / wrenches / whatever they're called):

Progress so far:

The debossed writing on the smaller drawers (M2, M2.5, M3) is pretty shabby and only just readable, but it should serve the purpose. Something went a bit wrong with the M4 one: one corner didn't stick down on the bed properly. It would still work (there's just a heavy chamfer on one bottom corner), but I think it would annoy me too much so I'm going to reprint it.

I was pondering again about the drawer unit frame and it occurred to me that if I'm changing the nozzle (to 0.25 mm) for the drawer labels (which I need to do due or the text will be unreadable on a couple of them) then I could also change the nozzle (to 0.6 mm) for the drawer unit. That will cut the print time from 5 days & 4 hours to 3 days & 22 hours, so that seems worthwhile. I've never changed the nozzle so that's going to be a new experience for me (gulp)!

 

[Dr.Al]

The rest of the drawers are now done:

Bit of a c*ck-up on the measurement front which you'll see if you look closely at the M4 drawer. I thought I'd measured the longest M4 tap, but clearly not . The really annoying thing is that the M4 drawer is the one that I printed twice after one corner didn't stick to the bed properly and I had a tiny chamfer on the bottom corner. I reprinted it because I knew it would annoy me, but I didn't have the sense to check the taps fitted first

Never mind: the tap stays put & that's what matters. It doesn't slide around and if it annoys me a lot I can either cut out the plastic wall or grind the point off the back of the tap to make it a couple of millimetres shorter. I'll probably just live with it.

I've just changed my nozzle to a 0.6 mm one, which was a new experience and a lot more involved than I expected. I'd had a "spaghetti incident" early on in my 3D printer playing and I thought I'd managed to get it all off, but when I took the print fan off to change the nozzle, I found some more! That resulted in the extruder being dismantled rather a lot more than planned, but it all went smoothly and it's now printing a partial cross-section of the drawer unit:

I thought a 90 minute print to check the drawers fitted in the slots was a worthwhile exercise before starting a 91 hour print.

 

[Dr.Al]

The test print worked fine and everything fitted well so I'm going for it, but before I do it occurred to me that I can probably get away with a thicker layer height. I switched the profile from "0.2 mm QUALITY" to "0.3 mm QUALITY" and that dropped the printing time from 91 hours to 61 hours. That seems much better, so I just pressed go. Crossing my fingers now!

 

[Dr.Al]

It's been running all night and is starting to take shape (15 hours into the 61 hour print):

Unfortunately, there were some bed adhesion problems at the front left - in the exact same part of the bed as on the first print of the M4 drawer. I'm not sure what is causing this: I cleaned the bed with IPA immediately prior to printing this one and the rest of it has all stuck down perfectly. I also re-did the Z-axis first layer calibration before printing (which I had to do as I had changed nozzle).

I've decided to leave it going regardless. There's going to be a chamfer on that corner (and a very slight lift inside), but it's the bottom-right of the back of the unit so it's not going to be obvious. I might have to file or otherwise tweak the die stock drawer to make sure it goes all the way in, but otherwise I think it'll be okay. It's all printing level now, so apart from the chamfer it looks like it'll be okay overall.

This is what the first M4 print looked like: I think the effect is going to be similar on the drawer unit:

 

[AndersK]

You might have oil residues in that spot and IPA won't deal with that great. A light acetone wipe could help. It also help to revive pei. (Only if it's the smooth pei sheet, not for the textured)

 

[Dr.Al]

You might have oil residues in that spot and IPA won't deal with that great. A light acetone wipe could help. It also help to revive pei. (Only if it's the smooth pei sheet, not for the textured)

It's the satin sheet. It seems to work beautifully and with minimal effort with PETG most of the time (apart from in that one spot). The manual for it says:

It also says this:

So I'll try washing-up liquid once this print has finished (on Sunday, assuming the filament runs out at a civilised time and I'm around to swap it; otherwise possibly Monday)

 

[ajlelectronics]

So I'll try washing-up liquid once this print has finished (on Sunday, assuming the filament runs out at a civilised time and I'm around to swap it; otherwise possibly Monday)

My glass plate would never stick, despite Acetone etc. I went for 3DLAC in the end. Then when I had cleaned off the mess left behind after a few prints, It started to attach so well that I had to freeze it to release. The difference was that I had cleaned the plate with a nailbrush and washing up liquid, rinsed hot and left to air dry. Now it adheres really well without the 3DLAC.

It was a litle later that I found out why the Acetone didn't work... I was using clean dishcloths that had been through the wash, 'er indoors insisting on using fabric softener, despite my trying to educate her after I did my research. It was leaving a greasy film on the plate that the Acetone was fetching off the cloth. That is how fabric softener works of course, by leaving a film on the cloth.

 

[AndersK]

It's the satin

Then acetone is not an option.

Another trick with the textured sheet that might be applicable on the satin is to apply a little bit of pva glue and then rub it in with IPA. Works better than smoothing it with water.

 

[Dr.Al]

My glass plate would never stick, despite Acetone etc. I went for 3DLAC in the end. Then when I had cleaned off the mess left behind after a few prints, It started to attach so well that I had to freeze it to release. The difference was that I had cleaned the plate with a nailbrush and washing up liquid, rinsed hot and left to air dry. Now it adheres really well without the 3DLAC.

It was a litle later that I found out why the Acetone didn't work... I was using clean dishcloths that had been through the wash, 'er indoors insisting on using fabric softener, despite my trying to educate her after I did my research. It was leaving a greasy film on the plate that the Acetone was fetching off the cloth. That is how fabric softener works of course, by leaving a film on the cloth.

I think the risk with acetone on the prusa satin plate is it takes the "satin" coating off the plate. For most of the prints I've done with PETG on the satin sheet (which equates to most of the prints I've done with the printer!), I've done almost nothing with it. I print directly onto the plate, then when it's cooled down a bit, I lift the plate off the bed magnets and the part pops off. For bigger parts, I don't even take the plate off: the parts pop off when the bed cools down. I then I put the plate back (assuming I took it off) and get on with the next print. Every now and again it gets a wipe with IPA.

That's worked for most of what I've done, but obviously I've had problems in that one corner on two prints (but not on the other 9 prints of drawers that were also over that part of the bed).

Interestingly, I've just noticed that the bed itself has lifted a bit (1 millimetre or two) on this print, so there's obviously a little bit of distortion. If you look closely at the image above (first one in this post), the very front edge of the steel sheet isn't touching the heated bed. Hopefully it isn't too much of a problem: the print is sticking to the steel sheet and most of the bed is down, so it's clearly not stopping the print. I guess it might mean the back edge of the drawer unit isn't quite square.

 

[Dr.Al]

The filament ran out over night but the filament sensor did its job, so when I came down this morning I was greeted with this message:

I pressed the knob as instructed, it heated the nozzle back up (I believe it keeps the bed warm, just lets the nozzle cool if you're not around to change the filament). Once it was up to temperature, it unloaded the last 75 mm of filament (along with the remains of a bit of a label that was stuck on the inside end of the filament: thankfully most of the label had got pulled off on the way into the hole and what was left hadn't made it to the extruder nozzle). I then loaded in the new filament and it got going again. I'm impressed.

Judging by the remaining time, it probably finished about an hour and a half before I woke up, so it was running for most of the night, which is good.

Here it is now:

Should be finished by about 9.30 tomorrow morning.

I've already concluded that, if I were doing this again, I'd only print the drawers and I'd make the frame out of something like plywood. The plywood would have been quicker and probably cheaper too (this drawer unit frame is going to have used about 1800 g of PETG filament, which cost me £16 per kg, so about £29 for the frame alone). However, it's been really interesting exploring the printer a bit: this print fills the build volume of the printer (or will once it's finished anyway) and has been my first experience of a nozzle change (to 0.6 mm from 0.4 mm) and also my first experience of a mid-print filament change.

It's also been my first test of the cheap PETG filament: most of my previous prints have been either with Prusament (which I got at the same time as the printer) or the Hatchbox stuff I used for the drawers, which I get the impression is normally relatively expensive and hard to get in the UK but there was some cheaper stuff on amazon from a company called "Fire Sale Merchant" with limited stock for £22 a reel. The £16 per kg stuff seems fine though from what I can tell halfway through a print. I didn't even change the profile: just left it as "Prusament PETG".

 

[Dr.Al]

B****r.

I was just about to go out for a walk and thought I'd have a quick look in on the print before we went out.

Somehow the spool had fallen off the spool holder (I have no clue as to how that could have happened) and was down the back of the chest that the printer sits on. The filament was all tangled up and in a mess as you can see.

The printer display showed this, which gave me some hope:

I sorted out the mess of filament (cutting out the tangled bit) and told it to resume, but it had obviously lost stepper counts, so when it started printing again it was trying to put filament down over the drawer slots instead of over the drawer bases.

I'm now trying to decide what to do from:

1. Give up and make it out plywood or something like that. The main disadvantage of this is that the plywood is going to be a lot thicker than the plastic (given the thickness of plywood that I have) and hence the unit will be much bigger.
2. Slice the model up and print the front bit separately and then glue to the two halves together.
3. Slice the model up and print the front few millimetres, maybe in a different colour (mainly to hide the gyroid fill) and then print an open box (without the shelves) for the back (which will be quicker). Then cut off the back (somehow) and glue the three pieces together.
4. Start the print from scratch (I'm not going to do this one).

I suspect any glue joint is going to be quite weak given one face will be gyroid fill. I'm leaning towards option 1.

On a positive note, the drawers fit... Just a shame they stick out so far!

I'm going to go for that walk now and think about it all slowly.

 

[ajlelectronics]

B****r.

I was just about to go out for a walk and thought I'd have a quick look in on the print before we went out.

View attachment 327964

Somehow the spool had fallen off the spool holder (I have no clue as to how that could have happened) and was down the back of the chest that the printer sits on. The filament was all tangled up and in a mess as you can see.

The printer display showed this, which gave me some hope:

View attachment 327965

I sorted out the mess of filament (cutting out the tangled bit) and told it to resume, but it had obviously lost stepper counts, so when it started printing again it was trying to put filament down over the drawer slots instead of over the drawer bases.

I'm now trying to decide what to do from:

1. Give up and make it out plywood or something like that. The main disadvantage of this is that the plywood is going to be a lot thicker than the plastic (given the thickness of plywood that I have) and hence the unit will be much bigger.
2. Slice the model up and print the front bit separately and then glue to the two halves together.
3. Slice the model up and print the front few millimetres, maybe in a different colour (mainly to hide the gyroid fill) and then print an open box (without the shelves) for the back (which will be quicker). Then cut off the back (somehow) and glue the three pieces together.
4. Start the print from scratch (I'm not going to do this one).

I suspect any glue joint is going to be quite weak given one face will be gyroid fill. I'm leaning towards option 1.

On a positive note, the drawers fit... Just a shame they stick out so far!

View attachment 327967

I'm going to go for that walk now and think about it all slowly.

Given the amount of the box yet to print, I would go the artistic route and print a front section in a different or many different colours. You could plastic weld the two halves together perhaps, if you didn't feel that glue would be adequate. Possible some strengthening ribs between the drawers, across the join if there is room?

 

[daedalusminos]

That's a bummer! It is the risk with long prints, if it goes wrong you lose a lot of work - that's the benefit of breaking it down into smaller sections. My main problem is the very real risk of power cuts (though the MK3s can recover from these, the bed would lose heat and part is likely to become detached.

I clean my PEI sheets with 100% IPA from an aerosol - spray it directly on the sheet and then wipe off with a lint free cloth.

Regarding gluing together, epoxy may work if flooded in to the infill on each half (or make some keyways on the new half) then brought together.

 

[Dr.Al]

Given the amount of the box yet to print, I would go the artistic route and print a front section in a different or many different colours. You could plastic weld the two halves together perhaps, if you didn't feel that glue would be adequate. Possible some strengthening ribs between the drawers, across the join if there is room?

Artistic?!?! I don't think I can do artistic! Ribs would be a good idea if I could find a way to put them in.

That's a bummer! It is the risk with long prints, if it goes wrong you lose a lot of work - that's the benefit of breaking it down into smaller sections. My main problem is the very real risk of power cuts (though the MK3s can recover from these, the bed would lose heat and part is likely to become detached.

True. I've always assumed that feature was only really for fairly short power cuts. Interestingly, all the corners had a bit of lifting. Only one of them was enough that it's visible if you look at it side-on, so the others must have been only a fraction of a millimetre. It's obvious when you look at it from the back:

I suspect the problem is not just bed adhesion but partly due to the difference in temperature between the bed, the bit being printed and the layers in between those two. The base was about 3 mm thick, so when the top layer of the back was being printed there would be 0.5 mm or whatever near the bed that's close to 90°C, then a bit 3 mm up that's cooling down from 250°C and then a bit in the middle that's probably close to ambient (which overnight is about 13°C). That's got to cause some quite high forces over such a large area.

I clean my PEI sheets with 100% IPA from an aerosol - spray it directly on the sheet and then wipe off with a lint free cloth.

I've been using IPA soaked into a cloth and then wipe the surface. I've no idea the percentage of the IPA: it's a tin of "RS Isopropyl Alcohol" that I've had for about 15 years. It's got an RS order code on it, but the product that goes to looks completely different, so it has probably changed quite a bit since then. The datasheet of the new version says 99.7%.

Regarding gluing together, epoxy may work if flooded in to the infill on each half (or make some keyways on the new half) then brought together.

That's a good thought (although epoxy would be a nightmare if it squeezed out into the inner side).


I'm not feeling especially enthused by the idea of starting another 24+ hour print. I went for a walk around Rodborough Common which is conveniently close to B&Q, so I popped in and picked up a small sheet of 5 mm plywood. I'm going to have a little think about what a drawer unit would look like made out of that (or made out of 12 mm plywood for the outside and 5 mm shelves maybe). I think I can make the entire unit in a matter of a few hours, which is going to be much quicker than any printed options.

Before I do that I might print a couple of these though: I'd guess what happened with my mess is that the filament came off the reel in a funny direction, got tangled around the spool somehow and then lifted the spool enough that it could get dragged over the spool holder's end "lip". Hopefully a filament guide would help with that.

 

[daedalusminos]

I suspect the problem is not just bed adhesion but partly due to the difference in temperature between the bed

Certainly having the printer in an enclosure will help, but you can also minimise peeling from the bed by adding a chamfer to the edge adjacent to the bed. You can see this on the MK3s display box.

 

[Dr.Al]

Certainly having the printer in an enclosure will help, but you can also minimise peeling from the bed by adding a chamfer to the edge adjacent to the bed. You can see this on the MK3s display box.

That's really good to know, thank you!

 

[Dr.Al]

I've drawn up a design for a plywood unit, so I'm going to go and have a go at making that. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes compared to the 61 hours it was going to take to make the printed version!

In the meantime, I've fitted the 0.25 mm nozzle (my second nozzle change!), re-set the Z height and started printing the drawer labels:

 

[Dr.Al]

61 hours for a printed version, 2½ hours for a plywood version (not including glue drying time and any finishing like oiling if I do any):

Very much a "knocked together quickly" and functional construction rather than a "let's make it pretty" construction. I was lazy and cut the grooves for the shelves with the circular saw. They would have been more accurate in size with a router but I couldn't be bothered to get it out and didn't fancy the noise & dust involved. The bottom ridge of the cut-outs are square and at the same level on each side and that's what matters anyway. The uprights in the top two shelves are hardboard as it was the only thing I had that was thin enough (or close to thin enough - it took a few strokes with a Stanley #4 to get them down from 3.2 mm to 3 mm to fit the slot I'd cut). I'd designed it around 3 mm uprights and the drawer widths dictated that I stick to that.