Hi Guys, I just started using PLA OOoooo man is this stuff awesome!! Amost no warping, so cool. The other day I went to bed having just started printing a Tiki Guy and in the morning I woke up to this! It finished at 5:54am. I discovered another cool benefit of using the mags. When I had started the Tiki Guy I acquired a small leak at my nozzle. It dropped a fairly big blob on the top surface. I just so happen to look over at it as the nozzle hit this hardened blob. I actually saw one of the magnetic ball joints pop out of the socket what looked like 1/8” and snap right back in place. It did not lose a step!! I paused the printer to tighten up the nozzle and resumed. One other thing I noticed about PLA a least the translucent blue that John sent me. It makes my printer look like an old steam engine. There must be a lot of moisture in the material because it extrudes with puffs of steam coming out of the nozzle and a million micro air bubbles in the model. I also got some PLA from MakerBot but it did not have any moisture at all from what I could see. Is this common with the translucent material?
Thanks for the help Guys!
Happy printing!
Werner
bbrvvvvv wrote:Hi Guys, I just started using PLA OOoooo man is this stuff awesome!! Amost no warping, so cool. The other day I went to bed having just started printing a Tiki Guy and in the morning I woke up to this! It finished at 5:54am. I discovered another cool benefit of using the mags. When I had started the Tiki Guy I acquired a small leak at my nozzle. It dropped a fairly big blob on the top surface. I just so happen to look over at it as the nozzle hit this hardened blob. I actually saw one of the magnetic ball joints pop out of the socket what looked like 1/8” and snap right back in place. It did not lose a step!! I paused the printer to tighten up the nozzle and resumed. One other thing I noticed about PLA a least the translucent blue that John sent me. It makes my printer look like an old steam engine. There must be a lot of moisture in the material because it extrudes with puffs of steam coming out of the nozzle and a million micro air bubbles in the model. I also got some PLA from MakerBot but it did not have any moisture at all from what I could see. Is this common with the translucent material?
Thanks for the help Guys!
Happy printing!
Werner
Hey Werner,
Glad to see you trying the pla. Moisture is bad. I am lucky I live in a dry climate and don't have to deal with that. If you live in a humid climate you should store you pla in a vacuum sealed bag with dessicant inside.
That translucent blue is one of my fav colors, especially in sunlight, it almost glows. But I live in the same climate which is very dry, but even so I get the odd pop now and then, has not affected my print quality however.
"Now you see why evil will always triumph! Because good is dumb." - Spaceballs
FWIW I was not impressed with the 4 rolls of SeeMeCNC PLA I bought, the tolerances were awful, I might just have gotten unlucky but the variance over even a meter of filament was >+/- 0.1mm.
By comparison I checked my remaining Ultimachine filament and over 3 or 4M that was +/- 0.01mm, Ultimachine are now back to being the only vendor I'll buy filament from.
Thanks for the replies Guys!! I live in So Cal it’s pretty dry here as well? How do you Guys store your reels? I was thinking about getting a cooler to put all my plastic in. That way I could put a container of desiccant inside to help keep things dry. Flateric I agree the blue is very cool looking! One thing I noticed is that keep the PLA models cool is important. You can see in my Tiki Guy the few dark bands of plastic is where the layers got to hot and actually change the properties of the plastic in color. Brandin do you have the fans on your end effect on full when you are printing PLA? Poly, I hate to say it but my rolls of PLA where very dirty / dusty. They did come with come plastic rapped around the reel but in no way sealed up. It looked as though they had been sitting on a shelf for a while unwrapped in order to get so dusty? I have only had them a couple of weeks stored in a clean dry filing cabinet.
Thanks again for the help!
Happy printing!
Werner
bbrvvvvv wrote:Thanks for the replies Guys!! I live in So Cal it’s pretty dry here as well? How do you Guys store your reels? I was thinking about getting a cooler to put all my plastic in. That way I could put a container of desiccant inside to help keep things dry. Flateric I agree the blue is very cool looking! One thing I noticed is that keep the PLA models cool is important. You can see in my Tiki Guy the few dark bands of plastic is where the layers got to hot and actually change the properties of the plastic in color. Brandin do you have the fans on your end effect on full when you are printing PLA? Poly, I hate to say it but my rolls of PLA where very dirty / dusty. They did come with come plastic rapped around the reel but in no way sealed up. It looked as though they had been sitting on a shelf for a while unwrapped in order to get so dusty? I have only had them a couple of weeks stored in a clean dry filing cabinet.
Thanks again for the help!
Happy printing!
Werner
Get a used foodsaver and use rice as desiccant, works like a charm.
Purple = sarcasm
Please do a board search before posting your question, many have been answered with very time consuming detail already.
Foshon said:
"Get a used foodsaver and use rice as desiccant, works like a charm."
This is a serious question, although perhaps a dumb one, would I use the least expensive
rice I can find? What other materials would work as a desiccant? I looked into buying the
packets sold for that purpose but they can be so expensive! Does ABS also require the
desiccant treatment?
“ Do Not Regret Growing Older. It is a Privilege Denied to Many. ”
You could always find silica gel desiccant. I hear crytal kitty litteris the same stuff and is cheap enough to try. I'm going to get a big bag of this stuff this weekend to try with my ABS.