I did print the BLF GT lens cap and it came out okay. This was printed at a .2mm layer height. If I choose to do .1mm it would have more detail in the letters but it would have taken significantly longer. This print took about 7 hours to do because of the slow speeds of my printer… Notice the artifacts/defects such as stray lines caused by extruder feedrate issues and bed leveling. I’m about to buy a much better printer (hopefully) and I’ll be able to print with higher resolution and better dimensional accuracy which is important for the right fit when printing something like a lens cap.
I’m seriously considering buying a new 3D printer. I would not mind printing things for people and I can 3D model to a small extent. As long as people are willing to pay for shipping and the small price it would cost in filament to print them. The only problem is that I travel quite often for work. I’ll be gone this whole month installing an A/V system in a federal courthouse.
I’m on the list to get one soon so I’m not able to try. With new advancements in printer filament I can print flexible rubber like lens caps that would probably be pretty nice. It’s called NinjaFlex filament.
The place I was looking at to get this made would use a nylon plastic, Has some flex to it while being strong and durable. As they describe it.
Example:
This was made same place, same material too, the battery door:
I just looked up ninja flex, if same thing seen here, it’s not something I would want. I know everyone is all over that soft lens cap, but it’s not for me, don’t want something squishy. My GT will be moved around vehicle to vehicle just by the shoulder strap I have for it:
cool idea.
i got 3d printer for new year’s, my wife got me one, cr10s. so far i have nothing but problems printing anything, layers separation, stringing…only 2 prints came out fine, both were samples on sd card that came with printer. at first i wanted to print entire light body, and a spitfire from 3d lab print, even bought the program, but now i think it would be a lot easier and faster to do it old school way. very disappointed, i spend 2 days adjusting it, fixing gcode, and still can’t print anything right. if it was not wife’s present, it’d be in a garbage by now.
Man…gotta jump on the forum and get the proper settings…takes a bit of tweaking, plus there are a few printable mods that make printing alot easier.
I would KILL for a large print volume CR10…but my Anet A8 does fine.
What slicer are you using…also…slow down the prints if things aren’t working.
What are you printing ABS or PLA?
Do you have a filament oiler/filter (trust me that goes a LONG way in helping prints)
What layer height do you print at…I find that on my Anet A8 if I slice by .4 layers such as .16/.2/2.4 the layers do better
Stringing, set your retraction speed higher, mine retracts at 40mm and 4.5mm might tweak those up to test
Oh and lube the rods…
It took me and my son over 2 weeks to tweaking and printing buckets of calibration cubes and calicats to finally dial it in.
Our Delta printer the Anycubic Kossel took us over a month of dialing in…those suckers take tweaking and then some!
Don’t give up man…those are some of the best printers out there
I’m out of town for a month starting today unfortunately. Maybe when I get back though. I’d like to try other materials and experiment with some settings and see if I can get it a little nicer.
thanks for the tips,
i use cura slicer, i used pla fillament, print speed was 20iirc, travel speed 150-200. layer 0.1. but i played with settings quite a lot.
however yesterday i may have found a reason , at least for layer separation, one wheel on extruder was loose, the print head had some serious play. that would explain why first 2 prints came out fine.
stringing however i have to play with retract distance and travel speed. i wasted all filament, i got to order more and try again.
if it took you 2 weeks to adjust yours, i may just get mine work right, i only messed with it for 2 days.
cr10 has another problem the bed is caved in in the middle, from what i’ve learned from reading forums it is common. i can level corners, but middle i can not, looks like i will have to drill a hole under the bed, cut a thread and install another adjusmet knob for the middle.
also there is another issue, when it starts printing, it raises the head about half inch and starts extruding while it is still in the air, it lowers the head too slow. i found a line of code that does it, when i removed it slicer shows it starts print on the bed, not in the air, but i have to try it, once i get the filament, i’ll see for sure if it helps.
i do not think any filament you buy will be as strong or as temp resistant as plastic used in handguns.
iirc the toughest filament is carbon fiber, (there are also pla\abs with c\fibers) but it requires 300c temp, and you’d need stainless steel print tip.
my printer only goes up to 260c
