Category: 3d Printing

Replacement Part

Jesse sent me a broken part that I was able to measure and 3d print a replacement part. It’s a little lock for the screen door.

Fusion 360 starts with an overall sketch.

The sketch is extruded with overlapping parts either joined or cut with boolean operations.

The first time I printed, I forgot to turn up the heat. PLA material usually prints 205C-215C. If I crank up the heat on the first layer to 265C it sticks better and doesn’t slip off the plate when printing.

Also when using the slicer, there’s a brim option to add a little more geometry on the first layer so it sticks better.

Here you can see it’s printing thicker and hasn’t slipped yet.

The broken part (left) and 3d printed version (right).

I printed one other version with the notch shorter in case longer doesn’t fit. That’s the part that broke so I have to guess how long it might be.

Cold Pulls

I finally have good prints happening again.

I picked up cleaning filament and printed about a foot of that. After some cold pulls with the cleaning filament, I’m doing cold pulls after every print.

I found I can still get a garbage print with PETG if I print a test batarang and immediately print something else without doing a cold pull.

This last print is looking perfect. (11 hours into a 33 hour print)