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USA
Asked — Edited

Printing Jd

I had purchase a EZ-B developer kit about 1 year ago. I was able to build some basic robots and had a blast. I wanted to build something more solid, so my wife gave me 3D printer for fathers day. I have downloaded the STL for JD Humanoid and I have started to print some of the parts. I have a Da Vinci 3D a printer and am wondering how many cartridges it will take to print the hold robot?

I am using the XYZprinting PLA Filament Cartridge, 1.75 mm Diameter, 600g, Nature to print.


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Singapore
#1  
Looking at JD, I'm going to take a punt and say that you'd likely use less than a single cartridge, and certainly no more than 2, to print him.

A lot will depend on the orientation of pieces, and your choice of raft, supports, infill rate and layer thickness. Most slicer software will estimate the amount of material use as well as the time to print based upon your settings, so I'd recommend grabbing the .stl files, slicing each and adding the totals.

Depending on your bed size you'll likely want to import more than one of the smaller stl's at a time into the slicer software (for instance print both feet at once) and look at the combined material usage for those components for better estimation.


Disclaimer: I'm also new to 3D printing so everything I say may be (and probably is) wrong. But that's the great thing about our community here, there's a huge brains trust who can correct my mistakes:)
#2  
I have an XYZ Printer as well. My guess is a little more than 1 cartridge. I printed 1.5 heads, 1 main body, and several brackets with one ABS cartridge. I printed a couple of other things as well, so I didn't really track my usage.

I would start with small things, like brackets. I would also highly recommend 3rd party software Simplify3D, it has greatly improved my print quality. Don't forget to calibrate the bed as well, it also make a big difference but can be pain to adjust to tolerance.

I would recommend printing the items for a lever servo first to see how the quality prints and, especially the servo hub area of the print. And also the female slot of the servo cover. Test to see if you can slide a male ez-bit piece in and out of the slot without breaking it.
PRO
USA
#3  
I have the XYZ Junior 1.0 printer. It can only do PLA, but been a nice start into 3d printing. I too had to make a minor Z axis adjustment, and all was fine.
,Ive tried printing a few parts like the camera body halfs and one of new the JD Hip parts. Not too bad. The camera parts needed some trimming to be able to fit together. the hip part, not so lucky. the printers sd card indicated an error and started messing up the part when almost completed. Other parts did just fine.
Nice starter printer though. Have been printing so many little items, I have actually gone thru the entire first reel, and had the printer only a couple weeks now .:D
#4  
Thank you for the reply, I starting printing yesterday and it was an epic fail. I believe my bed is not calibrated correctly. The printer just made a mess. 1st time I did not put enough glue:) 2nd time I used enough glue, but was a worst mess.

I called support and spend over 1 hour on the phone, then finally the hung up on me. I did some research and think I can figure out how to do it myself.

I was doing some research last night did find quite a few people talking about the Simplify3D software. I plan to purchase the software today and try it again.

You are right, I will start with the smaller pieces and check the quality to make sure it will work at the end.
PRO
Synthiam
#5  
ugh, man... i feel your pain. If it helps at all, know that we have all gone through the heart ache of 3d printing. To make it worse, during the development of Revolution, ez-robot had a full-time staff member hired simply to monitor 3d printers while we printed samples before injection molding. It was not a pretty sight...

I will tell you that there is hope at the end of the tunnel. Over the next few months, you will learn to feel and understand the printer - almost like a Buddha you will become :). Once it "clicks", you just get it and can predict of a print will be successful right away.

I have a funny sheet of paper that used to be on my wall for my first 3d printer. It read... SUCCESSES/FAILS and i added checkmarks to each category. If you can guess, the FAILS category had a ridiculous number of checkmarks.
PRO
Synthiam
#6  
Oh - one more thing... Always print with RAFT

If you can, print with SUPPORTS as well

I generally don't print with supports because it takes a lot more effort to clean up the mess. But when you do, the prints usually turn out better.

No matter what you choose about SUPPORTS, always always always use RAFT.
#7  
XYZ has several videos on YouTube that will walk you through calibration of the bed. One thing that the videos did not hammer home for me, was you need to be very patient and it works better (for me anyway) to make one small adjustment at a time, then run the calibration again and keep repeating until you get the bed to a successful calibration set. Doing it as quickly as possible so the bed stay warm helps move the process along.

When I first watched the videos it made it look like "Oh, I just start spinning knobs and via magic it will align correctly." And that's not how it works. Or I'm just not good at adjusting knobs, one or the other, lol ;)

Simplify3D will have a learning curve as well, their website has links to their you tube videos that show different features. My best advice for anyone is start slow. With each print I try to learn something that helps me improve my next print.

Oh and don't print if it's storming or if it might. Otherwise you'll have a very sad face when the power flickers and the printer resets.
PRO
USA
#8  
The bummer with the XYZ Junior is that it willl only use its own slicer software, cant use third party suff. Dont know if the other XYZ printers are like that though. I still like it. Just ordered more PLA today from them(again, can only use their pla sadly).
#9  
Thank you again for all the replies... Well after calling XYZ support twice and been "disconnected" as they where about to transferring me to "tech support" for the second time, hmmm.

I found a youtube video where they spoke about an Android application to help you calibrate the printer, did some research took a drive down to T-Mobile, purchase a pay as you go Android phone, purchase application from Amazon, and ..

6 hours, 28 minutes, 2 calls to customer support, 1 trip to t-mobile with a purchase android phone and the calibration application ... the printer is calibrated!

YAY Let the printing begin!

User-inserted image


Will purchase the recommended software tomorrow.

Thank you again, next step LETS PRINT!
#10  
Oh my goodness! Well, don't feel too bad, it took me 12 hours over two days to get mine calibrated with no app the first time. That 12 hours was mostly my fault as I did not understand what I was doing and tried to do it in a hurray and frustrated.

I've seen people resort to making their own tools to calibrate their beds, using calipers and dial indicators. A dial indicator is not a bad idea, I'm going to research that more my self in the future.
#11  
The problem with having fun is that live gets in the way... finally got some work off my back and I am able to play again. Purchase the software and am printing a small piece to see if it works. (Here is some background, move the printer from my living room to the upstairs office, it lost the calibration, re-calibrated much faster this time, hehehe; let the fun begin...)

Am like a little kid, I keep on pressing OK so that the light turns on and I can see how is going:)


printing P6 A-01 a small piece to make sure its working:)
#12  
So I printed a small piece and it looked really good. Then I decided to print something bigger. It took all night, and what came out just looked wrong.

The outside look good, the inside looked like spyder webs?
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#13  
@cfernandez Did you print that with or without supports? If you printed with the open side down you will need a crap load of support... From what I am seeing it looks like you printed with the open face down and without support...
#14  
And did you use the included DaVinci software or Simplify3D? It's a world of difference with Simplify3D, there are a lot more options for support. But more or less a part like that needs supports. If you get the Simplify3D software the video tutorials from their site are very helpful. I learned a lot from them.
PRO
USA
#15  
Which DaVinci printer are you using? I have the Jr. 1.0 and you only get to use their software with which is limited. That's the one downfall with it for me. I think that
their next model up, would allow you use something like Simplify 3D which I too have heard is really good.
I also like useing Tinkercad to view the EZb parts before printing.Am just starting to learn 123D now, should be fun.:D
#16  
I did not know that you could print it with the open side up. I will try that
#17  
yes, I purchase the Simplify3D and used it to print, I just did not know you could print the open side up and I will try with support.
#18  
You can print from any angle.... It's not carved in stone... You need to however, print in the orientation that provides the best results.... Sometimes this is trial and error... You need to use supports for overhangs and or steep angles... Start with "print supports" for angles greater than 30deg and work from there.... You may need to go up or down a little in order to get best results... This may vary depending on if you are using PLA or ABS...
#19  
Thank for your reply, I was able to finally get working. (I still think that there is something off with my printer and there is a weird burn on the bed. I reached out to amazon, and they are sending me a replacement. )

Check out the image of my 1st prints. I also think that my support settings are not right, I ended up throwing away allot of support in one piece was almost as much as the actual piece.


YAY!
User-inserted image



Here are my settings for support, and I am using PLA do they look right?


User-inserted image
#20  
That looks really good! There will be a lot of support material sometimes.
#21  
Cool, thank you am printing away:) and learning how to remove all the support carefully... (already broke a piece, hehehe)
#22  
Last question, now that I am printing all the parts and cleaning them up. Where can I purchase all the screws that I would need to hold everything together?

I have already purchase the DIY kit, so I have servos, camera and processor, and I am going to order the battery and charger today.
#23  
On the servo parts you reuse the servo screws. For the Jd back I used the long extra servo screws that came in a dev kit in the little bags. I might have used the same for the head or I might have stole them from an EZb base from the dev kit.
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