Another Hobby…

I have been interested in many different hobbies over the years. Ham Radio, Electronics, Guns, Guitars, Software Development, etc. The opportunity arose for me to get yet another hobby. Welcome 3D printing. I bought a Creality Ender 3 max Neo, and so far am uber impressed. With the last week of owning this thing I’ve been able to dive into some really cool projects. What I can tell, so far, is that I really need to start planning some of these larger projects out.

One print I want is a tavern for DND, and the print time on the fdm machine is probably around 7 days of full-time printing. I’ll make some updates around that project. These are the things I’ve done to learn the system, and tune the machine.

The Printer - Below is the printer inside of the soft-case I purchased from amazon. These cases are horrible by the way, the fiberglass rods that make the frame are ok, but the couplers are cheap as they come. I will give it to the seller at least that they are willing to replace and mail me 2 new connectors to replace the ones that broke. On the build plate is a gridfinity base plate for my toolbox organization project. This printer is the Creality Ender 3 Max Neo. So far it has required very little extra tuning/setup and has performed great. I have noticed that the bed needs levelling a lot, and ordered some new bed sprints and will try that to see if I can hold level longer. The only other ‘issue’ I’ve run into is 3 times I’ve had the nozzle just stop extruding. I heated the hotend, pushed filament through manually, relevelled the bed and got it to work again. After the third time of doing that I decided to try removing the filament from the run-out sensor. As of yet I haven’t had an issue with it again. I’ll post an update later as to progress there.

Gridfinity - Below is a shot of some of the base plates and the first bin (pliers holder). The gridfinity system is awesome. I have several months of projects in front of me if I only focused on gridfinity. Gridfinity Wiki is here, and I highly recommend it.

Ham Radio Print - Below is a power pole adapter for my yaesu ft-891. I converted all of my power distribution to anderson power poles a few years back, and this adapter plate will allow me to remove the stock power cable from the radio and have a simple plugin power pole connector.

Fun Harry Potter wand - I decided to print my daughter something fun and started with a Harry Potter replica wand. This thing is pretty great. The print quality was awesome in my opinion. I had a little bit of finish work to do on the plastic to get it to fit nicely. If you look in the second photo you’ll see a couple of gaps. I sanded down the pieces that join them together to sleeve in better and then filled a few gaps in the length with wood putty. I was able to prime and it looks pretty good. Once I have it painted I’ll post an update post.

I expect with as much fun as I’m having doing this that I’ll create a new blog section on the site very soon dedicated to printing. Oh! I also forgot that my resin printer is now on the way from fedex 😉 I may have created a monster!

73 for now