If @BambuLab is watching this video - you seriously need to hire this person to do your instructional videos. This goes for any other manufacturer too - you are not going to find a more professional, accurate or clear instructor / filmmaker than this. It's the whole package too - set is perfect, lighting is spot on, audio is clear, script is rehearsed, edited to perfection! No, I am not Robert's mom 🤣

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

HAHA. I know you're not my mom, I just talked to her today. But thanks for the compliments, this was a rough video to make, it's a LOT of information to boil down. If @FLSUN is watching, hi, contact me, let's talk.

Saving this one to send to all the friends I told "THIS is the year to get a printer on Black Friday". Thanks for putting this one together!

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

Thanks! Yeah, this is for all the gifted 3d printers this year (and next?). There are going to be a lot of new people getting into 3d printing and they need somewhere to start ;-)

Great guide!

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

Thanks! Send it out to anyone you know that just got a 3d printer!

Thanks for this excellent video! I just bought the K1 for my son for Christmas. I have no idea what we are going to do with it but it looks like loads of fun and I’m trying to encourage him to get into design etc. I’m looking forward to the journey as it seems like a fun thing we can both do together :)

@RobertCowanDIY

5 ай бұрын

Awesome! Glad you found it useful and welcome to the hobby.

@officialWWM

5 ай бұрын

@@RobertCowanDIY thanks :)

Thanx a lot 👌🏼 Immediately subbed.

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

Nice! Tell your friends.

I play "blame game" every morning when I wake up :D

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

ha! are you always stuck at step 1?

@huntliba

6 ай бұрын

It's a damn witches circle :D

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

@@huntlibaha!

You know 3d printing has evolved when someone gifts their older dad one. In prior years that would be asking to experience death by a thousand support calls.

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

Ha, for sure. It's come a long way in the past few years. It's still not perfect, but it's a LOT more accessible than it used to be.

Great video!. Trouble shooting for beginners next?

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

I thought about it, but there are a LOT of videos covering troubleshooting. Modern printers do most things quite well. But no one really talks about what a benchy is or what a slicer is. So I figured I'd cover that first.

Do you have any advice for compound curves on a surface like a 1950's car? My printer has been pretty clean with prints, but I am mostly doing parts and they are square or regular curves. The compound curves seem to be throwing my printer and the lines look like it has a moire effect.

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

Do they have moiré effect when printed, or just on the screen in the slicer? When printed, that could be a LOT of things. You might want to check out the polygon count when you export files (sometimes it will create a lot of really small straight segments). You can also look into arc welder , which is a slicer plugin which will create smoother curves from models with this issue. It could also be a mechanical limitation of your printer (like ringing or VFA) OR it could be a limitation of the motion interpretation of the printer (older motherboard that can't handle more complex files) or even motor/mechanical resonance. Start in order that I mentioned them, that's also the order from easiest to hardest to solve ;-)

@crashkg

6 ай бұрын

Thanks so much for your reply. it could definitely be the polygon count because I got a warning when I brought it into Prusa slicer. It has over a million triangles. The printer is the MK4 so I think that wouldn't be an issue. I will try out Arc Welder. You are a wealth of info! @@RobertCowanDIY

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

@@crashkgAh yeah, that shouldn't be a problem. But arc welder can solve most of those issues. You might also want to try just speeding it up or slowing it down an arbitrary amount. Sometimes the travels can be right at the resonant frequency and adjusting the speed will change that. Best of luck and thanks!

I almost think the term ‘slicer’ while technically correct could be abstracted for beginners and just explained as the printer ‘driver’ which they may be familiar with for their regular paper printer. Further, it’d be nice for some OSes/web browsers to perhaps add ‘print…’ options for STL files which then launches the slicer directly to further simplify the process?

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

I thought about that, but a 'driver' implies it's specific. MANY slicers will work with many different printers. From the world of CNC, it's just a CAM software and not really specific to a printer, as it just generates gcode. I like the idea that it just converts a 3d model into instructions. Once you get your head around that, the process makes more sense. What is the printer doing versus what is the slicer doing?

Any Drain Bamage progress?

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

I've moved it around the shop a few times? But not really, just waiting until I have an event I can register it. I might make some progress before the end of the year. All I have left to do is finish the drive (final parts and printed in TPU) and then test out if I need to do anything special for the radio. THEN, finish the outside (optional of course). For some competitions I might need an 'active weapon', but that can be a servo with a cardboard lifter arm or something.

One thing I thought I'd note while watching this (despite having 3d printed for half a decade now so I guess I'm just watching for watchings sake 😅) is the bit about abrasive filaments is like totally correct, but there is one unnoted (because the video can't fit everything) gotcha I've seen people getting got by way too much over the years: Fancy PLA filaments. Glow in the dark PLA filaments all tend to be really _really_ abrasive while few contain warnings for them. This is due to the powder they include that makes them glow. I think some are less abrasive than others, but none of them seem to talk about it much, so It's easy to see how people get hosed by this. The number of surprise blown out nozzles I've seen due to people thinking glow in the dark is just like any other filament is surprisingly not as small as you might think it is, and for beginners, realizing you have a blown out nozzle is just not one of the first things that they would think to check for when their prints start mysteriously looking way less good. Glow in the dark isnt the sort of "Its just one spool" abrasive either, that boy' ll blow your brass benchie hole before you're finished a spool. Sparkle PLA filaments are another type like that. They are way less abrasive AFAIK, and some brands (I believe Prusa and Bambu both are better in this regard), are less abrasive, and in Bambulabs case, advertise their filament to be compatible with 0.4mm (standard) sized nozzles. They don't do this for no reason, and in fact, Prusa states theirs is good for 0.6mm nozzles too. The reason, is that those little sparks aren't just colors, but actual fragments inside your filament. Depending on what they are made of and how big they are, sparkle filament can range from easy enough to print and not too abrasive all the way to glow in the dark levels of "Oh no, my prints have fallen and, my orifice is blown out!". Basically, look out for manufacturers saying what nozzle size their sparkle filament can go through, and if they don't state otherwise, assume you probably at least want something harder than brass. It doesn't have to be hardened, but you probably dont want brass (or nickel plated copper for that matter) if you're printing a lot of it, and you might, because it's very pretty. My favourites have been Prusament Galaxy Black (Looks wise, though its not all that accessible for me in Canada), and Bambulab Alpine Green Sparkle (13501). The former I think people generally think takes the lead for looks, the latter (they both have other colors), takes the lead for ease of printing (because 0.4 nozzle, and not particularly abrasive as they come). I should also note, for literally 99.9% of things that the majority of people print, functional or not, PLA is fine. You might want to feel fancy, but, we all know PLA is fine. At the bare minimum, you should probably just get into the habit of just assuming PLA is good enough until a use case proves otherwise (I would say this doesn't apply where safety is concerned, but generally just don't print anything that puts someone's safety on the line unless you are an engineer, and also have a means of scanning each printed part to ensure its as strong as you calculated it would be. It's not worth the risk). On the topic of filaments being bad, I have personally had exactly that cheap filament he talked about, where it just keeps breaking, or having print problems, and no amount of drying etc fixes it. Sometimes the filament is just bad. Your sanity is worth more than a spool of cheap (as in low quality rather than price) filament. Anyhow, this is a good guide, I just thought I'd leave this note so no one has their soft brass filament hole blown out by the mean glowing, colourful filaments (though _most_ good printers nowadays ship with a steel nozzle at minimum).

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

I thought I mentioned that, maybe I didn't include it in that take. But yeah, anything other than standard PLA (except for matte or silky) MIGHT have abrasives.

@darmichar73

6 ай бұрын

@@RobertCowanDIY at 4:04 you did.

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

@@darmichar73 Oh OK, I thought so! Thanks for the extra view ;-)

@bernardtarver

5 ай бұрын

The longest comment, ever.

@BeefIngot

5 ай бұрын

@@bernardtarverI do post long ones sometimes... a lot of the time. What can I say? I'm verbose😅

"...death by a thousand support calls". I like that but hopefully not.

@RobertCowanDIY

6 ай бұрын

ha! there are a few hurdles to get over, but like anything, you just need to learn the 'flow' and how the whole process works. enjoy it!