Nozzle Jam

Recently I purchased an iPad Mini and as you can imagine I immediately went to Thingiverse and Youmagine looking for stands.

Everything I found was either too huge or too flimsy in my opinion. I wanted something a bit beefier. I set out to Tinkercad and decided to design my own.

So far I've been super happy with the Printrbot Simple. Recently I purchased a 0.25mm nozzle from Jerrill.

He was doing a Black Friday sale so I jumped at the chance to save a few bucks and get a much desired upgrade. It has definitely slowed down the prints for sure, but it has also increased the resolution at which I can print small details.

My daughter had some Anne of Green Gables paper dolls. To stand them up there is a tab at the bottom that folds back to form a stand. As you can imagine this was pretty flimsy and was pretty useless after a while.

I decided to make some small plastic ones on the 3D printer. I came up with my Paper Doll Stand and put it up on Thingiverse.

**Upgrade! ** It's hard to tell from the picture, but I've upgraded (and sort of downgraded) the Simple. Printrbot released a couple of upgrades for the Simple.

The first being a string tensioner kit, which you can sort of see is at the back of the printer. The second upgrade was an Aluminum bed. The tensioner will keep my strings tight, while the bed will stay flatter, is less prone to warping over time, and offers the possibility of a heated bed upgrade if I ever get so cavalier.

There is a third secret upgrade. I bought a laser pointer to help me do X/Y/Z axis calibration. Much simpler than the marker way I had been doing it.

So I had some trouble printing a Companion Cube. If you look at the pictures below the "X" side of the cube is flatter than the "Y" side.

I re-calibrated the X and Y axes on the printer and re-homed the Z-axis. I was hoping that would address it. I started to print a Mr. Jaws to try out the new;y updated settings and disaster.

I came down to see Mr Jaws was all jacked and had a huge blob of plastic right in the middle of his face.

My wife graciously let me upgrade my Printrbot with the tower addition. This makes filament management easier.

Today's print I am attempting is a Lego Ring.

I'm going to attempt to print with OctoPrint. OctoPrint is a web application that you can use to control and monitor a 3D printer.

Today's lunchtime print is an iPhone Wall Plug Holder. This is my first try at doing something with support material and a raft layer.

Support material helps you print overhanging parts without them sagging or getting distorted. A raft layer is a layer of throwaway material that helps you separate your print from the bed.

Now that I've dialed the printer in, I've decided to move along to bigger things. I chose to try out Cute Octopus Says Hello. It is much larger than Mr. Jaws was.

The print took about an hour and taught me the value of making sure your filament is not tangled up before you hit the print button.