Nevermore Is What You Get When Engineers Design Air Filters For 3D Printers

September 3, 2022 by Donald Papp 26 Comments

What happens when an air filter for 3D printers gets designed by engineers with a passion for function, a refusal to compromise, and a desire to do without bad smells or fumes? You get the Nevermore, a design for a recirculating active-carbon filtration system to deal with VOCs (volatile organic compounds) from 3D printing.

3D-printable parts and an easy-to-fill chamber for bulk-activated carbon make this recirculating air filter for VOCs a smart, space-saving design.

The Nevermore Micro (and larger Nevermore Max) were originally intended to complement the Voron 3D printer design, but are made such that they can be used with just about anything else. These filters use 3D-printable parts, and are designed to be easily filled (and refilled) using bulk-activated carbon instead of some kind of proprietary pre-packed filter like most commercial offerings. The Voron project is all about a printer without compromises, and the Nevermore comes from that same design ethos.

A Nevermore filter sits inside the build chamber, and works by recirculating air inside while passing it through the activated carbon. The idea is that by concentrating on dealing with the problem at the source inside a relatively small build chamber, one doesn’t need a lot of airflow. A small recirculating air filter can do the job efficiently, though for best results, the build chamber should be as sealed as possible.

One interesting caution is that it seems not all activated carbon is the same, and it is absolutely crucial to use only acid-free, steam-activated (not acid-washed) carbon in a recirculating filter like the Nevermore. There are horrifying photos of oxidized metal surfaces resulting from using acid-residue carbon, some of which took only minutes to occur. Thankfully, there are pointers to trusted sources for the known-good stuff.

It’s known that 3D printing results in chemical and particle emissions. These differ significantly depending on both material and type of printer, but it’s enough of an issue to warrant attention. One deals with particulates with something like a HEPA filter, but VOCs require a carbon filter. This is where the Nevermore comes in. Active carbon filters will wear out simply from exposure to the air, so if one is serious about cleaning VOCs when printing, it is definitely worth looking into bulk carbon with a design like the Nevermore.

Custom Printed Knobs In Just A Few Lines Of Code

August 30, 2022 by Tom Nardi 27 Comments

While not everyone is necessarily onboard for the CAD-via-code principle behind OpenSCAD, there’s no denying the software lends itself particularly well to parametric designs. Using a few choice variables, it’s possible to make a model in OpenSCAD that can be easily tweaked by other users — even if they have zero prior experience with CAD.

Take for example this parametric-knob-maker written by [aminGhafoory]. The code clocks in at less than 100 lines, but if you’re looking to spin up your own version, all you really need to pay attention to are the clearly labeled variables up at the top. Just plug in your desired diameter and height, fiddle around a bit with the values that get fed into the grip generating function, and hit F7 to export it to an STL ready for printing.

Now admittedly, all the knobs generated with this code will look more or less the same. But that’s the beauty of open source, should you want to print out some wild looking knobs, you can at least use this code as a basis to build on. With the core functionality in place, you just need to concern yourself with writing a new function to generate a grip texture more to your liking.

Of course, if you want to make your OpenSCAD designs even easier for others to modify, you’ll want to look into its impressive customizer capability which replaces manually edited variables with friendly sliders and text input boxes. Projects like the Ultimate Box Maker we looked at back in 2018 are an excellent example of how powerful OpenSCAD can be if you give your design the proper forethought.

Giant 3D Printer Aims To Produce Life-Sized Boat

August 29, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

As 3D printers become more ubiquitous, the number of custom designs and styles of printers has skyrocketed. From different printing materials and technologies to the movements of the printing head, we’ve seen all kinds of different takes on these tools. But one thing that has been largely limited to commercial and industrial use has been large print sizes — leaving consumer level prints to be split into several pieces to fit together later. Not so with this giant 3D printer from [Ivan], though.

The design goals for this build are to print an entire boat that [Ivan] can captain himself, and additionally an entire go kart chassis in a single piece. It’s part of a contest between him and another YouTuber and as far as we can tell he’s well on his way to completing the challenge. The printer will be able to churn through 4 kg of filament per day, and has a printable volume of 1000x1000x1420 millimeters, or just shy of 1.5 cubic meters.

While this video is just the first step of building the frame and the printer guides, we can’t wait to see the next steps in the process. It’s one of the largest 3D printers we’ve ever seen, at least outside of printers designed for building entire houses out of concrete.

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Objective Hotend Performance Measurement Is Hard

August 25, 2022 by Danie Conradie 9 Comments

Evaluating the performance of 3D printers and component upgrades is a more difficult than it may seem at first glance, and subjective observations can lead to incorrect conclusions. To objectively determine the maximum flow rates of different FDM 3D printer hotends, [MirageC] is developing a robust testing standard backed by more than just visual observations.

Defining the max flow rate threshold is not straightforward. A common method is to run a test print while slightly increasing the flow rate with each layer, and visually making a judgment on the last acceptable layer. It would be easy to miss errors, or unconsciously be inconsistent with observations over time. [MirageC] wanted to back up observations with measurements. To do this, he is measuring the true feed rate of the filament with an encoder wheel, and the backpressure of the filament on the extruder using a load cell. A Bowden tube helps to isolate the extruder from the vibration of the moving printhead.

After much testing, [MirageC] determined that the numerical threshold would be a specific deviation percentage between the desired and actual flow rate. At temperatures above 230°C, [MirageC] found that the last visually acceptable layer was consistently around 5.75% flow rate deviation for one specific PLA filament. It does not mean that 5.75% will be the magic number for all filaments and nozzle size, but it does provide a measurable parameter to back up visual observations.

In a world of questionable product reviews this dedication to objectivity is a breath of fresh air. If you are looking to upgrade your 3D printer’s hotend [MirageC]’s tests would be a good source of information.

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PET Bottles Diligently Turned Into Filament

August 25, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 21 Comments

While the price of 3D printers has come down quite a lot in the past few years, filament continues to be rather pricey especially for those doing a lot of printing. This has led to some people looking to alternatives for standard filament, including recycling various forms of plastic. We’ve seen plenty of builds using various materials, but none so far have had this level of quality control in the final project.

What sets this machine apart from others is that it’s built around an Arduino Nano and includes controls that allow the user to fine-tune a PID controller during the conversion of the recycled plastic into filament. Different plastic bottles have different material qualities, so once the machine is started it can be adjusted to ensure that the filament produced has the exact specifications for the printer. The PCB is available for download, and the only thing that needs to be done by hand besides feeding the machine to start it is to cut the plastic into strips for the starter spool. There is also a separate 3D printed tool available to make this task easy, though.

Not only could this project save printing costs, but it also keeps harmful plastics out of landfills and other environments. Recycling plastic tends to be quite difficult since producing new plastic is incredibly cheap, and the recycled material can’t be used as often as other materials such as aluminum. But there are still plenty of people out there trying to reuse as much of it as they can.

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Make Multi-Material Resin Prints With A Syringe (And A Bit Of Patience)

August 22, 2022 by Donald Papp 15 Comments

Resin printing is a fantastic way to create parts, but multi-material printing isn’t really a possibility with resin. That is, unless you use [Cameron Coward]’s method for creating multi-material resin prints.

[Cameron]’s idea relies on the fact that handling and curing UV resin can easily be done outside of the printer itself. First, one prints what we’ll call the primary object. This object has empty spaces representing the secondary object. Once the primary object is printed and finished, these voids are carefully filled with a different resin, then cured with UV light. The end result is a single multi-material object that is, effectively, made from two different resins.

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Better 3D Printing Via Chemistry?

August 21, 2022 by Al Williams 8 Comments

If you have problems getting a 3D print to stick to the bed, you might consider using glue to — hopefully temporarily — attach the print to the bed. In addition, some plastics glue together well if you use a solvent. [Stefan] asks the question: What if you use solvent to glue each layer of a 3D print to the previous layer? The answer is in the video below.

If you know [Stefan], he is always meticulous, so the first test was with normal ABS parts. Then he used a solvent to glue two broken parts together to show how a single layer does with bonding. Then he moved toward trying the solvent for each layer.

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