{"id":331,"date":"2012-09-23T17:36:58","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T21:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/?p=331"},"modified":"2012-09-23T17:37:22","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T21:37:22","slug":"331","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/2012\/09\/23\/331\/","title":{"rendered":"3D printers – the journey begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

My latest toy is a 3D printer.\u00a0 Basically it prints 3D objects using plastic extruded through a hot nozzle.\u00a0 They’ve been around for years, but have cost tens of thousands of dollars.\u00a0 In recent years, however, a variant has emerged that is orders of magnitude cheaper, making it affordable by mere mortals.\u00a0 Very much like the early days of desktop computers!<\/p>\n

So anyways, after doing a lot of reading and even more lusting-after, I finally bought one!\u00a0 It’s made by a local company called Eckertech (http:\/\/www. eckertech.com).\u00a0 Although tempted to buy the kit version and save some money, good sense triumphed and I bought the assembled version.\u00a0 It really is a well put-together unit, and came with a figurine printed as a final test, 1-lb of plastic filament, and a few other useful bits and pieces.\u00a0 Here’s what the Eckerbot looked like out of the box :<\/p>\n

\"Eckerbot<\/a>

Eckerbot taken out of the shipping box. It’s well packed!<\/p><\/div>\n

After carefully unpacking :<\/p>\n

\"Eckerbot<\/a>

Unpacked and ready to go.<\/p><\/div>\n

I installed the required software (Repetier) and … and … nothing worked.\u00a0 ACK!\u00a0 ACK!\u00a0 Long story short, it didn’t work under Linux (my o\/s of choice) but worked fine under Windows XP (my secondary o\/s).\u00a0 Ok, so with the printer talking to the software I printed a simply test object (a cube) and got :<\/p>\n

\"first<\/a>

first attempt at printing<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not too impressive, is it?\u00a0 In fact, it is crap.\u00a0 The printer came with no instructions of any sort , so I glared at it, read some more stuff on the Internet and realized that the extruder head was too high off the bed.\u00a0 Well, that didn’t make any sense.\u00a0 After a couple days of emails with the manufacturer, we determined that the home-switch for the Z-axis (vertical up\/down) was too high.\u00a0 It probably got bumped while I was unwrapping everything.\u00a0 Pretty obvious after the fact, but tough to diagnose for someone unfamiliar with such things.\u00a0 So then I had to move the switch … which was set too low, and the head drove itself off the shaft.\u00a0 ACK!\u00a0 Long story short, I have become pretty good and re-aligning everything!\u00a0 And have managed to get some stuff printed off :<\/p>\n

\"Early<\/a>

Early printing attempts.<\/p><\/div>\n

AAs you can see, some attempts were more successful than others!\u00a0 But each failure is a step along the path of learning.<\/p>\n

The journey begins.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest toy is a 3D printer.\u00a0 Basically it prints 3D objects using plastic extruded through a hot nozzle.\u00a0 They’ve been around for years, but have cost tens of thousands of dollars.\u00a0 In recent years, however, a variant has emerged … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greiner.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}