What a printer.... hollow skull  

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Hi Luc

Very nice print. Did you get the supports removed OK? Do you have a photo after removing the supports?

I opened the STL in KISSlicer which recognised the errors and apparently fixed them OK.

I agree, it is a brilliant machine.

Peter

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Looks awesome! Was that printed with or without supports?

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Hi,

No supports needed as they are build in. You can easily remove them afterwards.
Also tried printing it in silver PLA but I had some issues for the first layer not sticking so I added rafts.
My wife took the skull to her office so can't provide a picture not on the printer bed.

I just bought Simplify 3D and the program corrected the errors automatically.
Will make a new print soon sliced by Simplify 3D and update on how it went.

Luc

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Hi,

No supports needed as they are build in. You can easily remove them afterwards.
Also tried printing it in silver PLA but I had some issues for the first layer not sticking so I added rafts.
My wife took the skull to her office so can't provide a picture not on the printer bed.

I just bought Simplify 3D and the program corrected the errors automatically.
Will make a new print soon sliced by Simplify 3D and update on how it went.

Luc

very nice, i'm half tempted to plunk down the cash for S3D, but i have had really good luck without it and using Slic3r 😛

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

After some successful prints I thought it was time to give the Prusa i3 Plus a challenge. Look at the result, I was blown away.
This is the first trial to print it, what do you think 🙂

Source: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:518748
When loaded in Slic3r the program crashed, to many errors when generating GCode.
Loaded the .stl file into Meshmixer ( http://www.123dapp.com/meshmixer ) and made a 'solid' than exported again as .stl and sliced it with Slic3r. Used the standard PLA Prusa defaults but with 0% 'fill' and scaled to 75%.
Slic3r still struggled to show the 3D view but file exported well in GCode.

Again I'm amazed to see the result at .2 mm resolution.

Thanks Prusa

I like the skull print but I am really interested in the camera holder, did you print this yourself?

Thanks,

Dennis

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

I'm interested in the camera holder as well. Can you provide a link to the STL? 🙂

I just printed this skull a couple days ago. I cut it with Cura and it was able to fill in the gaps automatically, but the original was a mess. I had to use a raft. Didn't think to clean it up with meshmixer. What do you think of simplify3D? Worth the money?

-Nate

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Hi Dennis,

The camera holder I build myself and is available here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1228521 .

Luc

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Hi Nate,

See link to camera holder in previous reply to Dennis. I printed an extra arm piece so now I can get the camera even closer to the model.
Overall I don't think Simplify3D is worth that much money. The nice things about it (what I found out so far) is the ability to have different settings for different object on the same print bed. Also handy is the possibility to edit the support in detail and the speed to generate Gcode.
On the support I have to say Slic3R does a very good job out of the box there where with Simplify3D the default support settings are not ideal. Something you can change and create a new profile with your personal preferences.
I'm using it now because I paid for it but I could have stayed with Simplify 3D for my hobby needs.

--- Luc

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Actually in S3D you can even use different settings for printing one object. You can print one thing with combined layer height, infill, speeds etc. (you can assign multiple processes for one thing and assign each process to certain part of print). This give you many new options in comparison with most other slicers.

IMHO supports are quite terrible in Slic3r and it cant often slice complex models with support, Simplify is much much better and you can put support manualy where you want (S3D is propably best in this area).

That being said, price of S3D is very high and free Slic3r/KISSlicer/Cura are fully sufficient for most cases. Personally I dont use Slic3r anymore, Simplify produces nicer and usually significantly faster prints (even with comparable speed settings, propably due to more effective slicing) for me. Another thing I like is grid infill.

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Actually in S3D you can even use different settings for printing one object. You can print one thing with combined layer height, infill, speeds etc. (you can assign multiple processes for one thing and assign each process to certain part of print). This give you many new options in comparison with most other slicers.

IMHO supports are quite terrible in Slic3r and it cant often slice complex models with support, Simplify is much much better and you can put support manualy where you want (S3D is propably best in this area).

That being said, price of S3D is very high and free Slic3r/KISSlicer/Cura are fully sufficient for most cases. Personally I dont use Slic3r anymore, Simplify produces nicer and usually significantly faster prints (even with comparable speed settings, propably due to more effective slicing) for me. Another thing I like is grid infill.

Everytime i hear another person talking about S3D i move closer to buying it. but yea, the price is really steep @ 150$, i just wish they offered some sort of free trial. Just to see if its worth it.

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Actually in S3D you can even use different settings for printing one object. You can print one thing with combined layer height, infill, speeds etc. (you can assign multiple processes for one thing and assign each process to certain part of print). This give you many new options in comparison with most other slicers.

IMHO supports are quite terrible in Slic3r and it cant often slice complex models with support, Simplify is much much better and you can put support manualy where you want (S3D is propably best in this area).

That being said, price of S3D is very high and free Slic3r/KISSlicer/Cura are fully sufficient for most cases. Personally I dont use Slic3r anymore, Simplify produces nicer and usually significantly faster prints (even with comparable speed settings, propably due to more effective slicing) for me. Another thing I like is grid infill.

Everytime i hear another person talking about S3D i move closer to buying it. but yea, the price is really steep @ 150$, i just wish they offered some sort of free trial. Just to see if its worth it.

I don't see any value added with S3D, they seem greedy. I looked at a few other slicers and Cura by far is the best I have used and its free.

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Yes, Cura 15 is my fall-back, if all else fails. Doesn't produce the best quality prints, but it does work and is easy to set.

KISS is my slicer of choice and then, Craftware or Cura, depending on the model.

Peter

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

I don't see any value added with S3D, they seem greedy. I looked at a few other slicers and Cura by far is the best I have used and its free.

I don't see it as greedy, just a little expensive. There are plenty of free options available to slice with and I have used them all but I have paid for and use S3D the most followed by Slic3r.

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Here you have some example of added value . Now imagine you can use multiple processes even with single model and infill is only one of the many things you can adjust.

Try it in Cura or some other slicer :-).

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

The average hobbiest will not be getting to fancy with their printer. I bought mine for two reasons. The first reason I have to keep my wife happy so I am printing her a bunch of cool stuff she might be able to sell to her friends. And the other is purely industrial I am more concerned with holding tolerances. But aesthetically speaking, the print quality has been great so far using Cura. If I make enough money off my machine I might invest in better software but my intentions are to at least make a return of investment on this printer.

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Simplify3D is certainly worth the money for someone, who is printing for living. The software is high quality. It is polished, fast and reliable. It is surely pricey for a hobbyst, but the developers need to feed their families.

Path generation for FDM is a hard problem, which cannot really be performed optimally in a sense, that no better solution exists. Every slicer out there uses a different set of strategies. Until those strategies are unified in a single software, an experienced 3D printer operator will know the different slicers and pick the right one for a particular print. So it may be, that for some prints the Simplify3D will be better, for some the Slic3r, for some Cura will be the winner. But in general, Simplify3D will do a reasonable job quickly and reliably.

Regarding the Simplify3D profiles, Slic3r offers a similar feature, called Modifier Meshes. As usual, the Modifier Meshes of Slic3r are more powerful, but more difficult to use than the profiles of Simplify3D.

Vojtech

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

I tried to print this skull but printer makes a mistake and prints more layers on one side and after extruder comes back hits the over layered part and became a mess. Any idea?

I have S3D slicer btw

After some successful prints I thought it was time to give the Prusa i3 Plus a challenge. Look at the result, I was blown away.
This is the first trial to print it, what do you think 🙂

Source: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:518748
When loaded in Slic3r the program crashed, to many errors when generating GCode.
Loaded the .stl file into Meshmixer ( http://www.123dapp.com/meshmixer ) and made a 'solid' than exported again as .stl and sliced it with Slic3r. Used the standard PLA Prusa defaults but with 0% 'fill' and scaled to 75%.
Slic3r still struggled to show the 3D view but file exported well in GCode.

Again I'm amazed to see the result at .2 mm resolution.

Thanks Prusa

Re: What a printer.... hollow skull

Murathan

Sounds like maybe a slicing issue. The printer will only print what is generated by the slicer.

There are a couple of other possibilities. Ensure that the the perimeters are printed from the inside to outside, turn up fan and slow down the perimeters.

Peter