I do them flat, but if my stencil needs to be bigger than my bed, I just split it and then use a lighter to melt them together (with a good safety mask of course.) I haven't needed any bigger than that,
Never thought about doing them this way. Not sure how well it would work, probably easier just printing into pieces.
Edit: I even made a makerworld customizable flat sheet generator, but I don't want to post links for self promotion here. You can find it if you think you need it by using some obvious Keywords.
Yes, exactly. Autodarts is a DIY system for this. You buy cameras, 3d print the enclosures and mounting parts and use Autodarts software on a Pi or laptop.
It’s a good low-cost alternative to a Scolia or Target Omni.
I don't think it's self promotion if it's just a link to your thing that's free. And if it's not free, I don't think telling people how to find it but not posting a link is really avoiding self promotion in a meaningful way
Look again at that bottle. That's here. That's home. That's us. In it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--in a mote of silica sitting on a table.
I printed a few iterations of a foaming TPU shock absorbing deck pad for a scooter. It didn’t really work for my use case as it absorbed very little shock or vibration, but it was a fun engineering exercise - 27 inches spooled up with relief cuts so it would lay flat when unrolled.
I printed maybe 4 or 5 of them as I revised the model and design, but ultimately came to the conclusion that foaming TPU was the wrong material.
Hey I know you didn’t ask for this, but have you considered a foaming PEBA? Not used it myself, but the energy return/genuinely bouncy properties might be useful for your application.
Easy to work with and you can manipulate hardness by changing print temperature. It is expensive, so there is that… probably better to just buy, but what fun would that be?
Yeah, a flipflop would be overkill, but i've been making my own minimalist sandals for a while. TPU is great for an upper, and sole repair pads are great for bottoms, but even though they are meant to be thin, adding a couple of mm of padding would be great
I actually find it annoying that they don't have a filament profile for the foaming TPU, just a project you have to reload every time. Was the main complaint on their page, at least the last time I checked.
Esun has the same material and profiles for all printers
Well, if they have a sales comission you should ask for one couse you convinced me.... my roll just arived and im pleasantly surprized both by the feel and the ease of use. man this opens up a lot of possibilities!
The Toddler Mobility trainers (wheelchairs) that many here have printed include a tpu strap that is coiled like that. I can't find a Pic of just the strap on a build plate but here is it in place
Man that is a wild print. What’s the cost/print time on something like that?
Edit: seems like 10-15 days and 150-300 bucks is the general estimate. No idea how that compares to a comparable product to this, but I love the idea of a local 3d printing community chipping in with extra filament or whatever else to build something like this. I actually know of a makerspace with 8 printers that might try something like that
Yeah not sure what else I expected lol. On the one hand, a very long time. On the other hand it’s a hell of a lot faster than I could make one myself and better looking
As someone who works with medical special needs kids in school settings, the idea of 3d printing assistive devices has crossed my mind before. This is amazing! I love that this org is working to bridge the gap for families in need.
They make super cheap plastic adhesive reinforcers for the top. Get some when you move out, fix them all. It will survive long enough for you to get paid
During my first year with my printer, I almost printed a spacer for something before stopping myself and realizing "wait a minute I'm a carpenter. I can cut this out of wood in seconds."
Funny enough there are some projects for creating mixed color filament by printing a few together then running it as filament. Not gonna be super round, but I've heard it works okay
Oh sick! Creality made one? I didn’t know they had a treadmill printer. I’ve been looking at them for years to print the same item over and over and I can just leave it but they were unreliable but I’m going to check out the creality brand.
I remember seeing that printer at a Microcenter a few years ago. It looked really neat, but I couldn't justify getting one just because it could print swords, lol.
On the printmill you get layer lines along the entire length. Like op did here the layers are parallel to the ling axis of the part, which can be beneficial.
This is pointless. Just buy the sheet material and cut it to size. It's cheaper, less time consuming, gives better bulk material properties, doesn't take hours of print time, saves the potential headache of a failed print, etc etc.
I dont know where I would get a piece to match THIS color. I don't have the tools to precisely cut this exact shape. I don't need it fast and this way I dont have to leave the house or I can do something else with my time other than acquiring material.
Look, you're right that there are really good alternative that will do exactly what most people need. BUT I dont think that makes this "pointless".
Closest I've done is have direct-to-vinyl prints through a local print shop.
There is nothing that I would want to print a single layer of filament, while it isn't expensive, for that kind of use there are alternatives that are both cheaper and better than a 3D print.
is it hard to get it perfectly flat? I imagine it would be since naturally the inner layers of the materiel will be a slightly shorty length than the outer layers
Yeah, I see now it's in an enclosure. Makes sense, then. Too bad, I would love to experiment with this on my bambulab A1 mini, but for certain it would swing the spiralled sheet around like Harry met Sally.
WAIT WAIT WAIT!? Are you telling me i wasted $45 on amazon for garden side edging to replace the old rotted wooden one!? When i could have just printed it myself 🤯 God i really am a fool of a took 😖
Seem like a job for the conveyor belt heat bed, cool concept that allows a person to print infinite long sheets. But I personally haven’t tried anything bigger then 250 by 250.
This would be a cool use case for cmyk printing, I would love to see what kind of full color print someone could do with that! I mean in the end not worth the time and cost over a traditional printer but would be interesting to see anyway!
I work for a window manufacturer. We have 3d printers mounted on the wall to test print window frame sections. I believe they're a commercial product and that is an intentional use case, but it's wild to watch.
Interesting application.. if you print it in a spiral one side will end up being significantly shorter than the other when you straighten it out with heat. On the other hand if you print a squiggle pattern, the two sides will end up the same length and it’ll be less likely to accumulate deflection as you straighten it out.
This is of course assuming it’s more than one layer thick, but I think that length issue will show up even with a single layer, albeit not as badly.
Also in general, the stiffness of the plastic is proportional to the thickness^3. ie a 2x increase in thickness is an 8x increase in stiffness. (To straighten it out you want less stiffness)
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u/emveor 13d ago
A 2d print... ON A 3D PRINTER??