6th Annual Scratch Made Light Contest - Flashy Mike's machined project

I like the LEGO-Arduino-Hybrid truck too!! :+1:

If he’d put headlights on it, he could make one of those for the contest. I would love to watch that build progress! :smiley:

Would this qualify?

Problems with my printer :rage:
The print bed is hold and led by 3 rubber wheels running horizontally in aluminium V-profiles. At least one of the wheels is wanderning on its bearing which causes bad prints. This particularly happens with this ABS prints that require a print bed temperature of at least 100°C, which also warms up the wheels. As I read in a german 3d print forum this might be a design flaw in the wheel construction. Don’t know if I can fix the wheel with some super glue since I have to disassemble and re-assemble the whole thing. Haven’t found a fast source for replacement wheels up to now.

Well, this fix appears too easy, I don’t dare to trust the outcome yet.
I disassembled the wheel. It actually contains 2 bearings which are separated by a ridge in the rubber wheel with a width of 0.8 mm - and an additional small washer between the bearings with a thickness of 1.0 mm. So pressing the bearings together with the washer in between with screw and nut there is still 0.2 mm left for the rubber wheel to move, which results in a pretty large height difference at the edges of the print bed :person_facepalming: . I consider this a design flaw!

I’m not very gifted with hand crafting skills but I followed many of CRX’s handmade builds :smiley: . So I was confident to solve this problem. Sanded the small washer down to a thickness of also 0.8 mm by hand and assembled all parts. And wouldn’t you believe it - the print bed mount looks very solid now. The next bigger component is currently printing.

The other wheels (9 in total) look good so far but I should fix them also later, I guess.

Glad I could help :smiley:
Hope it stays fixed, for the build at least :+1:

Great fix! As CRX said, I hope it stays fixed.

Print some new wheels whilst it’s working well…. :innocent:

I’m struggling with the prints. The outside of the lower casing - printed in ABS during about 10 hours - looks fine (the small 0.2 mm layer on top for better print bed adhesion is supposed to be sanded down). The inside is bad though. Wall separation everywhere, even the threads for the bottom plate ripped of partially. Not usable, I guess. :rage:
I’m expecting new PTG filament today, its supposed to provide better layer bonding. Haven’t used PETG yet, I hope i can handle it without too many problems, since contest time expires.
And I’m still waiting for LEDs, magnets and o-rings from China.


:frowning:
Especially sad to have that happen after having to wait 10 hours for the printing to complete. At least when I make an error cutting wood I know about it right away. I hope the new stuff works better.

So do I. Got it this afternoon, made some test prints, and printing of the lower housing with this new PETG is currently in progress. Looks good so far but at that stage the ABS print did also look good. Anyway, I redesigned the housing to print it faster (e. g. got rid of the knurling and made thinner walls) so it should be done after 5 hours at max.

I know it is a failure but the detail you put into the piece looks impressive. :beer:

Whatever you do, 3d printing is some weird black magic stuff.

How do you like petg? (Compared to pla?)

Success :laughing:
I know its not too beautiful but it works. Haven’t printed PETG before and I’m pretty impressed. Of course there was a lot of stringing but layer bonding is pretty tough. This component is only about 37 grams, flexible but strong. As you can see, I did a redesign of the housing. The lower housing is printed in 2 parts now. The outer one has been stripped down to achieve shorter printing times. I omitted the knurling - it did look pretty well but it increased printing time a lot and needs thicker walls, and my spare time is limited currently. I still have to finish the design of the inner part, printing this part will be less demanding since its usually hidden.

@thijsco19: The reason why I’ve chosen PETG over PLA is the higher heat tolerance and the stronger layer bonding.


Hooray!!! :+1:

Good to see you work around the problems you faced. :student: Well done

interesting build

Fails and wins printed so far. I’m not sure if I’ll finish this project in time since now I’m too busy with family activities until Monday.

An impressive number of pieces.

Can you share what software you use and how difficult was it to learn? And if you don’t mind me asking, is the use of 3D printing something you do at work or simply something you learned because you are interested? Thanks, I have been curious about 3D for some time, but learn better by doing than by reading.

I’m interested in 3d printing for years now and since it gets more and more affordable I bought my first cheap printer this summer. I tinkered with electronics and software all my life (privately and commercially) and this 3d printing actually offers many oportunities I was missing the past years - particularly since my hand crafting skills and my patience are somewhat underdeveloped. And I have 2 kids who are also interested in this and other technologies.

My first 3d designs I created with Tinkercad which is great for beginners. But soon I was missing advanced options which I found in Fusion360 (free for private use). Tinkercad is easy to learn, Fusion360 is not due to its unique user interface. I had a hard weekend with much cursing and swearing when starting with this software, although I’m a software engineer by myself.

Its pretty easy and encouraging to create and print the first simple designs, and if you learn rather by doing than by reading you should try it. For advanced designs and more beautiful prints you have to do lots of reseach though - but there are many sources of knowledge and many people eager to help, just as in BLF.

In addition to a design software you need a slicing software which prepares the designed object files for printing. It “simply” calculates the path the print head has to go. Currently I use Cura and Slic3er (no typo), they are good but not perfect, and for better results there are many tuning options. Both are free.