A Practical Use of a Smaller 3D Printer

Today I took a trip to Payson, Utah to meet the folks at Utah Trikes. It was a pleasant experience.

I met with Dylan who showed me two entry level Trikes, The KMX Tornado F8 amd the Sun Seeker Eco TAD SX. Both are entry level trikes and can be upgraded. They both have similar features abut there are differences.

The KMX Tornado F8 has a 20 inch rear wheel with 16 inch front wheels and 8 speeds. Its low to the ground however and I had trouble sitting in it and getting out. I also found the seat to be a tad too small for my liking, The KMX also was hard to turn because the handlebars are right there against my hips leaving little room to maneuver. Maybe the handlebars can be adjusted. I did not ask but for me the seat was a bummer. No pun intended. I did ride it around the block and it was wanting to weave back and forth. Very sensitive steering. Oh, and the KMX only has 8 gears.

The Sun Seeker ECO Tad SX at $899 has features not offered by the KMX. Firstly all three wheels are 20's, The handlebars are kind of chopper style with room for more traditional controls. I personally do not care for the twist shifter of either trike quite frankly. Another thing is the seat which is a more traditional mesh type with a padded bottom which I had no trouble getting my 285 pounds into. The Sun Seeker also has disk brakes on all three wheels. Both trikes have locking brakes. The Sun Seeker has only 7 gears.Handling was a little awkward but not as bad as the KMX and I could easily turn 90 degree turns on a sidewalk. Not so with the KMX. If I was lighter, down around the 210 pounds I should ought to be, I dont think the KMX would be an issue,

Neither trike has a derailleur pipe on the boom so you have to order a different boom or have the existing one modified. The reason I looked at these trikes is that has prices go for a trike they are at the low end of the price scale. The KMX being $999 and the Sun Seeker being $899.

So lets talk upgrades. DIY types.

I would prefer a 24 inch rear wheel and you can do this with the KMX but not the Sun Seeker.

Water Bottles. The Sun Seeker has mounts on the left and right handlebar. The KMX had none.

Computer or Phone mount. Many people place the computer on the derailleur post but it's not available, I think the lack of a derailleur post is dirty pool. Utah Trikes has a boom with post in the XL category to accommodate riders with longer legs but it costs $125. I can probably modify the existing boom for much less.

Lights. I like the fact seat of the Sun Seeker has horizontal bars across the back which is ideal for mounting a taillight. I did not see how you could do this on the KMX.

Now I am getting to the 3D Printing aspects. For any of these trikes I can 3D print what I want. I can mount my cell phone on the frame by making a mount, I have already deigned a taillight using a triangular flashlight from Harbor Freight which has a blinking red triangle of LEDs. For a flashlight mount I could make that too and attach it to the frame.

But what if we went further with a 3D printer? What if we build a trike from scratch and used a 3D printer to make interconnecting  frame components. I envision building a trike frame from lightweight thin walled aluminum round or square tubing which has been interconnected with 3d printed joints and then wrapped in carbon fiber. Virtually no welding. The only area that I am shy about is the angles of the steering tubes. Maybe have two short sections of the steering tubes built and connected with a 3D printed joint as well which is covered in layers of carbon fiber.

For the rear of the trike I think either a customer-built rear fork or using a back end from a girls mountain bike which can be cannibalized for parts such as the cassette, derailleur and front crank set.

Anyway those are my thoughts. A commercial trike with 3D printed lights and cell phone brackets or a carbon fiber trike with these parts and additional 3D printed parts you will never see because they are buried under layers of carbon fiber cloth.

Utah Trikes is located at 40 S. Main Street in Payson, Utah and they are a pleasant group of trike lovers who have been is business for 10 years.

Is a Trike for you? It is for me and these are the main reasons for wanting a trike as they apply to me:

1. Hands. My hands are destroyed from my Military service. The heel of my hands cannot take any pressure and scream in pain after only a few minutes on a mountain bike. The trike is easy to grip and no pain.

2. All-weather riding. You can ride a trike in almost all weather conditions except heavy snow. Try that on a two wheeled bike.The trike gives stability and stretches out the riding season. This is important because I have high blood pressure and ring actually lowers it.

I would immediately upgrade the Sun Seeker as follows:

1. Boom
2. Front derailleur
3. Front crankset
4. 8 speed Shimano Nexus or Sturmey Archer internal hub. Or maybe just an 8 speed hub.
5. Maybe upgrade the brakes because they seemed a little soft.
6. 3D printed tail light
7. 3D printed Cell Phone mount.
8. 3D printed flashlight mount.

Here are some photos of the Sun Seeker.

Thanks for reading.

A New PLA Filament from KHSW in Hangzhou China

PLA Tough by KHSW

I just completed testing of a new filament we recently got a sample of. It's called, PLA Tough by KHSW and is purported to be a replacement for ABS. This test is not scientific by any means but I thought I'd post the results of my test prints.

Our BoxBot PLA, on the machine I'm using BoxBot 3Dp150, usually prints at 210-215C and a flow rate of 100, using Cura 15.01.

My normal procedure for printing is via SD Card. I generate the G code using Cura or Slic3r. I tend to like the results I get from Slic3r over Cura but I've been using the latest Beta of Slic3r and all of a sudden it's not completing the gcode output so I went to Cura for the test.

First Attempt
My first attempt was at my normal settings which are pretty much Cura's default settings.

Layer Thickness: .12
Shell Thickness: .8
Print Temp: 210
Print Speed: 50
Flow Rate: 100

The results were non-existent because hardly any plastic was exiting the nozzle. So I adjusted my settings.

Second Attempt
I contacted KHSW and they suggested a higher temperature so I upped the temp to 220. Better but not good. My flow rate was reduced to 95.

Third Attempt
I upped the temperature to 230 and was getting better results but too the plastic was acting like it was not hot enough and there was too much of it. My flow rate was reduced to 90.

Fourth Attempt
The fourth and final attempt was much better. Temperature was 240 and the flow rate 80. I got a final print without having cancel mid-job. I think there are still some minor fine tuning I can do.

Overall Impressions
My impressions are that this is NOT a replacement for ABS. It's extremely brittle. I'm not sure what they have added to the PLA to make it so-called tough because it seems less tough than normal PLA. I have to be careful with fine details to not break the part. 

If the testing had worked out I think we would be carrying their PLA Tough but it just does not stand up to it's billing as an ABS replacement filament. The one thing it does have in common with ABS is the printing temperature.

A CAPBOT Failure from HANBOT

The failure is the CAPBOT from Wuhu Hanbot. It looked good on paper. Self-leveling for one thing. The print area is small but that makes the printer ideal for a home or classroom. Imagine 5th ot 6th graders learning about 3D Printing? The world is rapidly evolving and our children need to adapt to this ever changing world they are growing up in.

The Capbot is small. The build area is 150mm x 150mm x150mm. It does not have a heated build plate which should make it ideal for using PLA which is not known to the State of California to cause cancer. PLA is made from natural materials such as tapioca starch or similar stuff. It is essentially non-toxic.

The overall features of the CAPBOT are:

Uses PLA
Build Area 150x150x150 (mm)
Self Contained - a One Pound filament roll fits in the machine.
Non-Heated Build Plate
Enclosed on the sides
Uses Repetierhost as the Softwate.

The Downsides of the CAPBOT
The CAPBOT uses a specially modified version of Repetier. It will not work with any other package, or so says Hanbot. We had trouble getting the software to work. Hanbot took control of our computer several times and sent us several revisions. It turns out the software only works reliably in Chinese. It would not work at all in English.

Packaging.
The CAPBOT was not packaged well. The company is located near Shanghai yet they shipped it by truck to Shenzen and then by air from Hong Kong.

Our unit arrived with a red sticker stating it has been opened by DHL Security in the presence of t he shipper. When it finally arrived the box was beat up pretty bad. Opening the box was a real eye opener too. Everything was loose in the box. Prior to opening the box I noticed hour it sounded like something was loose in the box. I figured they must have packaged from loose odds and ends and that I was hearing them. They had to be in a box of their own right? Nope.

Oh my gosh! Everything was loose including the removable build plate. The build plate had blue tape on it as well. The Plexiglass door and windows were scarred and scratched up pretty bad on the inside and outside. They made no effort whatsoever to protect the insides of the printer.

The X axes was out of alignment and stuck on the left side of the Y axes. Hanbot asked us to remove the screws and lift off the top of the printer and that was harder than it should have been too. The top screws all came off easily enough and I got all but one side screw off but one of their screws was stripped out in the head. They are all metric hex screws and I had to drill off the head but I still could not get the top off the printer because the rest of the screw was in there preventing the top from lifting off. One of the Z axes corner pieces was in the way. I basically man handled the X axes to get it back into alignment and moving.

The Filament Roll Adapter
Let me start by saying that all of the plastic parts of the CAPBOT are 3D printed and some do not look to good. The part that the roll rests on is a 3D printed rod with a metal cap on the outside and two screw holes on the inside. These are made with ABS plastic and do not firmly attach the roll adapter to the printer. They use M3 bolts threaded into plastic. If there was an embedded metal nut in there they would work ok but the bolts do not tighten and so the roll of filament rubs on the top of the 3D plrinted cover of the motherboard. If the plexiglass is removed the filament roll falls out of the printer.

To fix this I drilled out the metal bracket and the holes in the plastic rod. Then I used two one inch drywall screws to firmly attach the rod. When I told my rep there was a problem in their design the response I got was the design tested ok when they prototyped the CAPBOT.

The Software
The Hanbot software is a heavily modified version of Repetier. We could not get it to work at all at first. The Hanbot rep said other customers were not having the problem we were having. Their software was installed on a Windows 7 machine and when we could not get that to connect to the CAPBOT we pulled out an old XP laptop of mine and tried it. Same issue. Would not connect. There was an issue with how it set up the USB COM port.

Hanbot finally fixed that problem then on to the next problem. I loaded the 20mm test box and told the software to print it. No dice. It turns  out the software was not slicing. They use a version of Slic3r abd had me download and copy it to the PC. Still would not work, During this time they took over control of the PC and found it would only slice if the user interface was in Chinese. A couple downloads later they told me to wait for an English-only version.

The English-only Repetier from Hanbot
I downloaded the English version they sent me the link to and opened it up. It was in Chinese even though the user interface had English as the selected option. I had to click on Chinese and back to English to get the software interface in English.

Rewind
While waiting for the English version of their software I used the Chinese interface to try and print the 20mm test box. It actually sort of printed but each layer peeled off and the fill looked like a screen such as you have in your windows of your house. It also started too deep in the blue tape as well. A couple times when I started to print the extruder would go somewhere inexplicable and just sit there making a racket until I turned off the machine.

You do not level the build plate as you would a normal printer. The printer is supposed to raise the build plate and touch the corners with the nozzle to find the "level" as the plate does not need to be actually level. In practice it does not work.

The printer touches the build plate right front corner, travels to the far left and backwards to the back left corner where it touches the plate. In my mind this is not accurate because it needs to touch at least three corners to find the angle of the plate.

There is also a setting to adjust the level in software. There is a setting at the bottom of the settings that defaults 1.5. If the nozzle is to far above the plate change this with a lower value. Too close to the plate enter a higher value.

I never was able to get a print.The CAPBOT was consistently backing out the filament instead of feeding it to the nozzle. It also does not consistently feed the nozzle either which tells me the nozzle is either damaged (I think it is) or the extruder is not getting a grip on the filament. I measured the diameter of the filament and it is within normal parameters.

The LAST time I tried to print the extruder traveled to the far right and tried to keep on going. Why? There is not a limiting switch on the far right, it's on the left. At this point I shut down the CAPBOT and emailed the rep that I hope they insured the machine with DHL because it was not working and it is too damaged. I explained I wanted our PayPal payment refunded. Other than an email wishes us a Merry Christmas I have not heard back from Hanbot.

I cannot attest to the quality of the other 3d printers available from Hanbot but if our experience with the CAPBOT is any indication I say do not purchase a 3D Printer from Hanbot.

My Final Observations
The CAPBOT has one hinge on the door. This is a design flaw that will eventually lead to the door failing because the hinge is plastic. They told me in the future they would upgrade to two hinges.

Did the shipping damage prevent t his from being a working machine? I honestly do not know. Maybe not. It is possible the other issues are just plain lousy design and amateurish coding.

They could have packaged the printer much better. The X axes should have been tied down and the extruder disconnected and enveloped in good packing matierial. The magnetized removable build plate should have been wrapped in styrofoam, taped and placed UNDER the CAPBOT. That would have prevented it from causing any damage. The plexiglass windows and door should have been shipped inside the carton in their own little box and with the protective plastic still attached. When I saw how badly scratched ours was I first thought that it must be the protective film but no.

When the tape is removed from the build plate it looks like a piece of metal from the scrap heap as well.

Three plastic parts should be injection molded and those are:

The motherboard cover
The protective cover around the extruder *
The rod that the filament rests on.

It's all about the overall customer experience. If I were manufacturing the CAPBOT I would want it to look good and work well. It does neither.  Below is my unedited unboxing video.

The printer does not have a CAPBOT label because we asked Hanbot to ship it that way.

Here is another video showing the extruder trying to go who knows where.

* The plastic cover around the extruder should also act as a fan shroud to cool the PLA while printing. I think all it really does at this point is provide protection to the cables.

Introducing Boxbot, A 3D Printer Store in Layton Utah

We are opening a 3D Printer Store in Layton, Utah soon. It's going to be a very small store featuring two or three 3D Printers plus good quality 1.75 mm ABS and PLA filament in various colors at affordable prices.

Our two printers are already selected and one is a PLA only printer with a build area of 150 mm x 150 mm x 150 mm. It is very compact and comes with everything you need to get started making your own 3D printed parts.

The other is similar to a Makerbot 2X with a heated build plate and an area of 225 mm x 145 mm x 150 mm. It works with 3rd party software such as Makerware, Printrun, etc. It's a dual extruder printer compatible with both ABS and PLA filaments including the new dissolvable filaments.  

The above filament image shows the many colors available for both PLA and ABS. At first we will only have six colors each for ABS and PLA. White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Green and Black. We'll also have a Wood filament as well.