Productivity ridiculous

This is around ten hours of work.  I’m not 100% satisfied with the end results, but I can revisit her later once I get a bit more practice under my belt.

It’s just after Midnight now and I don’t want to keep the neighbours up with the printer, so I’ll be doing a quick print (0.175mm layer height – just around 4 hours) in the morning to see how it goes.  I expect the supports are going to be a huge pain in the bum to remove.

Modeled in Blender, sliced with Simplify 3D, to be printed on an MP Mini Select V2.

The plan for this blog is to eventually showcase the projects I’m working on.  From the rough sketch stage, to modelling in Blender, slicing and printing, as well as finishing and painting.  My focus is mostly going to be character models, because that’s what I like to do. I’d started out trying to reproduce various characters in the Final Fantasy VII style, got stuck on the cast of Resident Evil…

Hotend replacement with new fans

The MP Select Mini V2 comes with an E3D V5 clone hotend out of the box, so a V6 clone is a drop-in replacement. I didn’t like how much distance I’d lost, since the V6 is considerably shorter than the V5; the nozzle was nearly at the same level as the X/Z arm casing and was catching on the binder clips I’d been using to hold the glass bed in place.  I switched the bed to tape, and printed a new…

New side panel and bed re-wire

One of the first things you should do with a brand new MP Select Mini is rewiring the bed.  Out of the box, the wires that heat the bed run through the printer, and on the inside they tend to rub against moving parts.  Over time the wires will wear down and break, and you’ll be left with an unheated bed. Not wanting to drill any holes in my new printer I downloaded the parts for a replacement…

Starting with the MP Select Mini

I’ve always been interested in the idea of 3D printing, but for the longest time it’s remained a hobby just out of reach.  I have the basic modelling skills, but the printer itself has always been prohibitively expensive. Enter the Mini Select V2 from Monoprice.  I picked this up directly from Monoprice in November of last year, and it arrived the first week of December.  For an under $200…

Just a bit of blatant self promotion, this is a thing I’ve made.  It’s very rough in it’s current state, but I figured I’d put it up anyways.

Now, to make more.

Now that we’re all set up and have a good flow going I need a project to work on. People seem to love those 3D printed Final Fantasy 7 models, but those are everywhere, so I need something unique.

First off, we have Ralf, at 40mm.

Ralf is an “original character” of mine from high school.  He’s basically a knockoff Link, but also the game Knights had just come out on the Sega Saturn, so Ralf has a kind of jester hat.

So, out of the box the MP Select Mini has a problem with the hot bed wiring. The way it sits inside the printer, it rubs against things, and the zip ties pinch the cable. After a while, all MPSMs end up with a broken hot bed.

The solution is to route the wires outside of the machine, which might involve drilling, if I didn't have the ability to print a new side-plate myself.

This one came in two parts (the left side was part of an earlier project for better cooling, the right was a modified file from that project, for the cable routing), and the first piece I printed (the right side) obviously suffered some warping during the print, so I'll have to re-print it later.

Waiting on a braided sleeve coming from Amazon early next week, and I need to pick up another rubber grommet (was able to repurpose one of the ones I needed from the no longer used hole the wires used to go through), so I'll re-print it before then, since it'll have to come apart anyways.

Got one of these in the mail earlier this week.  Figured I’d document my adventures learning how to use the thing. It’s a Monoprice Select Mini 3D V2 printer, currently available directly from Monoprice, or on Amazon for “Oh my god I didn’t realize 3D printers came that cheap”. Stock out of the box, it’s not the perfect printer.  It’s got a lot of modifications that need to be made, some more urgent than others, which makes it the perfect printer *for me*.  I love to tinker, and modify my things, and with this I can print my own parts!

Out of the box, the three mods I want to make first are:

- Hotbed rewiring

- Filament feeder

- Hotend fan shroud

The rewiring is, apparently, important to do first thing.  Out of the box, the wiring beneath the printer rubs while in use, and the zip tie used to hold the wiring together can pinch and tear at the wires.  Odd that it hasn’t been fixed for the V2, but as this is the most common MP Select Mini mod, there are a lot of resources out there.

Filament Feeder is just a QoL thing, as is the fan shroud.

Mixed 1/2 ounce sweet almond oil, 3 drops tee tree oil.  All the grocery store had.  I’ve got some empty spice jars that I hadn’t put anything in yet, so it’s taking up a tiny bit of space in one of those. Doesn’t smell offensive.  Doesn’t smell too strongly at all right now.

Nothing exciting.  Ground pork instead of ground beef.

I've got some...  ingredients?