My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
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My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
Unlike the reprap machines that are made one at a time from hardware store parts and often have months of lead time, these machines are factory produced and available for immediate shipment.
I ordered this machine directly from Afinia on Saturday and it arrived today.
The packaging is superbly done. It comes in a a tightly packed little box with custom molded polyfoam blocks to protect the machine and and keep it from moving during shipping.
The accessory pack fills the void in the box (lower left). On top is a printed manual and software installation CD.
The accessory pack contains a 700 gram (1.5 lb) spool of filament and two other boxes which contain the power supply, USB cable, power cord and assorted tools/accessories including allen wrenches, special socket wrench for nozzle removal, spool holder, 3 perforated FR4 boards with mounting screws and clips, and tools for removing support material: scraper, tweezers, nipper pliers, xacto knife and a pair of work gloves. In doing some spring cleaning I decided to turn one of my closets into a printing center.
I can close the bifold doors when printing which will help eliminate drafts and keep the printing area warmer.
It will also help keep the noise to a minimum hopefully. Hopefully this weekend I will have time to go through the setup procedure and make some test prints.
Until then real work must take precedence.
The Abby project awaits...
My Blog-> mfcreations3d.blogspot.com ... Easy Move Eyes™
My Shapeways Shop-> shapeways.com/shops/mf-creations
Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
I hope it works well for you. It will be nice to see your little Abby completed some day.
Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
This looks like fun!
Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
I remember when you first introduced these machines to me and you said you would never have enough money .
I am so glad To see that you have been able to get yourself one .
Now I cannot wait to see what you come up with .
Have fun with that learning curve and keep us posted .
JM
Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
Special thanks to YRUb8 for all the printing he did for me on Abby and giving me the inspiration to get my own printer.
As soon as I opened that box of parts I knew right then and there that I needed to get me one of these!
There's just nothing quite so cool as to be able to hold in your hand something that came from your head!
Here are the parts that YRUb8 printed on his Solidoodle printer... 1. Arm connectors and flanges. These will be epoxied to the 2" steel shoulder balls.
2. Shoulder cups. These will hold the magnets for the shoulder joints.
3. Flanges for connecting the 4" steel hemispheres to the pelvic unit.
4. Pelvic unit. YRUb8's printer was having some problems with this one, so it will be reprinted on the Afinia (hopefully).
5. Flange for connecting the pelvic unit to the doll body.
6. Leg cups and flanges. These will hold the magnets for the hip joints.
7. Snap in insert cover or as YRUb8 called it - the "pussy plug" lol.
Obin,
This indeed is going to be some fun!
I am a make love not war type of guy so I won't be making any gun parts for anybody.
Secondly, I promise I will not print another Yoda head.
Not one, not ever, lol.
jm6o8u,
I have some work coming in now so I thought this was a good time to pull the trigger and get one.
This printer is supposed to be easy to use right out of the box, so I'm hoping the learning curve won't be so bad.
We shall see how it does on the pelvic unit which should be a challenging print for this little machine.
My Blog-> mfcreations3d.blogspot.com ... Easy Move Eyes™
My Shapeways Shop-> shapeways.com/shops/mf-creations
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
Got my printing center set up and the Afinia calibrated and printed my first test piece!
I used the "pussy plug" as my first print to get a feel for it. The print quality is outstanding - layer lines are virtually invisible on the vertical surfaces and just barely noticeable elsewhere.
I just used the default settings (.2mm layer height, normal print speed). The print took about 1hr 45min to complete.
The piece is about 2-3/4" in diameter and about 1-1/8" tall. The closet printing center is working well. I can hardly hear the machine running with the door shut.
A couple of 10" x 48" melamine shelves from Home Depot laid on top of the file cabinets made for a great work top.
I also found a neat little battery powered task light at HD which I mounted to the wall and aimed at the printer bed.
The light has a magnetic mount so you can take the light off and use it like a flashlight... Next I will try some of the more challenging pieces for Abby.
My Blog-> mfcreations3d.blogspot.com ... Easy Move Eyes™
My Shapeways Shop-> shapeways.com/shops/mf-creations
- skybird100000
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
I read it takes rather long time to print (create) a piece. What happens if you have a power failure? You need redo it all? Can you re-use material by melting it ot bringing it to some place where they can recycle it?
And where do you get the data to make a print? You make it yourself? What kind of software is needed for that?
What is the biggest item you can make?
And I wish you lotsa fun with your printer
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
Hi Skybird,skybird100000 wrote:I read it takes rather long time to print (create) a piece. What happens if you have a power failure? You need redo it all? Can you re-use material by melting it ot bringing it to some place where they can recycle it?
And where do you get the data to make a print? You make it yourself? What kind of software is needed for that?
What is the biggest item you can make?
Yes these printers are very slow. They have to print the model one layer at a time and there are hundreds of layers to print!
But if you think about it, how long would it take and what would the material costs be to fabricate a part or sculpture by hand? And then how accurate would it be when you were done?
The nice thing about the printer is that you can do other things while the printer is working.
The Afinia's maximum print size is 140mm x 140mm x 135mm (5.5" x 5.5" x 5.3"). Larger pieces can be printed in sections and glued together.
At the high quality settings like the pussy plug print, this pelvis print will take about 9-1/2 hours. I could cut that down to about 5-1/2 hours by going to a .25mm layer height, but the layer lines will be more apparent and will require more hand finishing.
If you have frequent power outages you would probably need to address that with a backup generator or something.
The plastic is not that expensive ($35/2lb spool) so if you loose a print it's not going to be the end of the world. Just reset the machine and reprint.
As for the recycling, there are people working on that issue. Here is a machine called Filabot on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roc ... ment-maker
Not sure how good the filament from this machine would be but I'm sure as this technology progresses there will be improvements.
I used several pieces of software in designing Abby most of which are free.
I've been designing on the computer for over 20 years in the architectural field so this stuff kind of comes naturally to me.
Here is a list of the main programs I use:
Reconstructme (free console version) with X-box Kinect sensor for scanning the MS Barbie http://reconstructme.net/
Netfabb Studio basic (free version) for basic cleanup of the Kinect scans and final 3d print file prep http://www.netfabb.com/download.php
Meshlab (free) for combining the multiple Kinect scans into a final watertight mesh http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/
Meshmixer (free) for mesh refinement (smoothing) and free form sculpting/re-sculpting. Fun little program to download and play with. http://www.meshmixer.com/
Rhinocerous + Tsplines
This is my main design tool. Not free but fairly inexpensive compared to programs like 3dMax. Very intuitive and fairly easy to learn. http://www.rhino3d.com/
If you don't want to design things you can go here to find ready made models that you can download: http://www.thingiverse.com/
Thanks RK.rubherkitty wrote:Glad the printer is working well. You never know how it's going to do until you start making things. Have fun!
It looks like it did pretty well on the first print. The larger ones will be the proof of the pudding though.
My Blog-> mfcreations3d.blogspot.com ... Easy Move Eyes™
My Shapeways Shop-> shapeways.com/shops/mf-creations
- skybird100000
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
Yes these printers are very slow. They have to print the model one layer at a time and there are hundreds of layers to print!
But if you think about it, how long would it take and what would the material costs be to fabricate a part or sculpture by hand? And then how accurate would it be when you were done? The nice thing about the printer is that you can do other things while the printer is working.
I asked this for another reason. Imagine you print something and after 1h-2h or whatever time you notice the result is not what you expected.
It all starts with a picture I guess like Abby but that's the easy part I bet and reality might not be what you expected?
That sure will be a big help, I know I get bored fast just messing with PhotoshopI've been designing on the computer for over 20 years in the architectural field so this stuff kind of comes naturally to me.
I am sure curious about the results
PS: It will be nice the day we take a picture with a kind of 3d camera then print a mini copy.
Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
that is great could you use something like milk shape and get a model from the sims or something like that?
i not sure what file type the have to be in but if its an .obj milk shape could work
it could save a lot of modeling time
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Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
This was a challenging print. Printed great except for at the bottom.
I think I may try it again with more support material at the base.
Otherwise quite impressive print quality, especially at the top where it comes to a knife edge.
Fits the body perfectly...
Hi dollman,dollman2 wrote:hi MannequinFan
that is great could you use something like milk shape and get a model from the sims or something like that?
i not sure what file type the have to be in but if its an .obj milk shape could work
it could save a lot of modeling time
I'm not familiar with milkshape, does it save an .stl file format? If not you could use Meshlab or Meshmixer to convert the .obj to an .stl for printing.
The .stl file format is the standard format for 3d printers.
Usually game figures are very low polygon so you would need to re-mesh them to a much higher resolution before printing.
Meshmixer has a good tool for remeshing.
My Blog-> mfcreations3d.blogspot.com ... Easy Move Eyes™
My Shapeways Shop-> shapeways.com/shops/mf-creations
Re: My Afinia 3d printer has arrived!
cheers for that.
i checked the mesh in mesh lab and its almost block like
it looks reasonably smooth in milkshape. i kind of want to scan my face but i would probably break it
- rubherkitty
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