PCTG in its full, written form is hard to pronounce but it’s similarly to PETG and also a glycol modified Copolyester for better printability and material performance. It claims to be an alternative to PETG only with better impact strength, surface gloss, and for me, more importantly, almost perfect layer adhesion, and this is also why I was approached by so many to test this material. And this is exactly what I did! We’ll take a look at print quality, tensile strength, stiffness, impact resistance, and thermal resistance to find out if the claims hold true and if this material is something you should consider for your next project!
So recently, Albert from 247 printing posted a video on his sub 9 minutes 3DBenchy that he printed on his basically stock but input shaper tuned VORON 0. I thought that this was the opportunity to also just play around with the slicer and make a video for you on what I had to do to get below my 10 minutes mark. Turn's out, it's not that easy and at this moment I still didn't succeed because there is obviously more to reaching that goal besides some slicer trickery.
The 3D printing slicer IdeaMaker made by Raise3D recently implemented an innovative feature in their latest version 4.1.1 called texturing. Texturing allows you to wrap a greyscale image around your part basically, and depending on the grey value of the image, it will slightly morph the outer perimeters. You might have seen the videos from Angus over on Makers Muse and Joe from Breaks’n’Makes, where they used this feature to add a unique, visual touch to their part. Well, I’m usually not the figurines and decorative parts guy, so when I saw Raise3D implement that into their IdeaMaker slicer, I instead thought of my washing machine. Washing Machine? Yes, washing machine, or many other things that are made from sheet metal. To stiffen up the thin steel exterior for saving weight, manufacturers add specific bead patterns to their parts to dramatically increase the stiffness and strength. Take a look at this piece of paper. In its initial form, it’s barely able to support itself. By just adding some minor folds, it becomes by orders of magnitude stiffer and stronger.
This was the first Prusa I ever bought almost 5 years back, and that has probably done more than 10000 printing hours with hardly any problems during that time. Unfortunately, last fall, the first magic smoke escaped its electronics housing, and that was when the power connector of the heated bed melted. At that point, I was able to just replace it with a new one, but only a couple of weeks later, the machine greeted me again with a nasty smell and another bed heating error. After looking at the electronics, I realized that it was even worse than last time because both power input connectors melted right in their socket. Hence, the terminal blocks were not salvageable anymore. I could have de-soldered them, but I thought I save myself the hassle and put a new board in it because I need a reliable machine and not one where every bunch of weeks, something breaks. A new Rambo Mini with at least 5-year-old technology, which would have been the easiest option, would have cost me almost 100€, so I thought about alternatives.
I usually don’t post write-ups of live streams that I did because it doesn’t happen that often that I’m really impressed by a product right after unboxing it. This time it was a little different and even though for the moment, this won’t be a full review I wanted to post my impressions on this beginner 3D printer that I got during the stream and now, after using it for a bit. And c’mon this is probably still more useful than some of the so-called “reviews” that you find in other places. It still might be worth checking other opinions on the long-term reliability of this machine. So let’s go!
Over the last week, I’ve been putting the new DUET 3 Mini 5+ control board into my old Prusa Mk2.5, where the plugs of the control board burnt out. There will be a separate video on that experience coming very soon, so make sure to be subscribed for that and have selected the notification bell. My goal after this build was to get at least the same parts quality as with my newer Prusa MK3. The first parts were promising but on closer inspection I was able to see layer inconsistencies and first thought about backlash in the old z-axis leadscrew. After printing a simple cylinder it was even more obvious because there, a regular z-banding was clearly visible! On any other printer I would have said that this is the result of a wobbly z-axis but since I know the printing performance of this MK2, after probably 10000 hours of printing, very well, it was clear to me that this could not be the case right here.
This all started on a recent “The Meltzone Podcast” episode in which Tom and I somehow got on the topic of printing really fast…. Build a VORON he said, and this is what I did even though I never heard of VORON before and just can’t understand why! VORON is not a company that sells printers. VORON is an open-source project that started out as a one-person operation to build a no-compromise 3D printer that is quiet, clean and pretty and capable of operating for long amounts of time without constant tinkering. Over the year the engineering team, the community and also the number of VORON printers grew. They do have different size machines from the big and scalable VORON 2.4 to the mini VORON 0.
The bi-metal heat break is the next evolution of the regular heat breaks that we know from our 3D printers. Let me first tell you what makes this multi-material assembly unique; let’s benchmark the ones I bought for my Ender-3 with extrusion tests and test prints and finally compare the standard Bowden solution to the $15 knock-off and $30 genuine part. Let me know down in the comments if you’ve ever used one of these heat breaks and if you’d rather do this upgrade instead of changing the whole hotend!
Let me quickly tell you my thoughts on the VORON 0 Kit I recently bought from the FORMBOT Aliexpress store. This is not the full review, yet but since people constantly keep asking me about it, I thought it might be a good idea to summarize my experience so far.
The Snapmaker 2.0 is the second iteration of a modular motion system that can 3D print, laser engrave and cut as well as CNC route by changing the tool head and in it's biggest version comes at a premium price tag of 1800 bucks. Snapmaker reached out to me last fall and asked me if I wanted to take a look at their latest generation machine, which I almost declined! I just thought that such a modular system couldn't really work, because especially 3D printing and CNC routing have very different requirements in terms of movement and rigidity. A 3D printer should be light and fast, whereas a CNC router usually needs strong and very rigid axes. Well, I did some research and didn't find a lot of negative feedback about the machine, so I agreed to have them send me one over.
