Make of Day; Safety Whistle

I had a request to make a loud safety whistle with my Printrbot simple with the Raspberry color PLA (I have had silver PLA for a week now and everyone just likes requesting this raspberry color PLA.)

I also did shoot some video of this print with my mobile phone, because  I wanted to see how it would do at bridging. The overall quality very good, however there a slight defect at the first bridge section. I notice the fan did not kick on high until after it did the first bridge section. If it did it would be prefect. Here a video (edited down) of the whistle printing.



The whistle works like a charm and is very loud. Print details: material PLA, Layer height 0.2mm, 100mm/ minute 15 minutes print time and $0.04 material cost.

Whistle Download at Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:9206 Design by madkite http://www.thingiverse.com/madkite/designs

Make of the day; Kitbash Fish

It one of those prints where  all the parts move. Its kind of useless to me cause it a toy. I just wanted to see if it did indeed move after printing. and well it does.

I printed it at 0.2mm layer height at 60mm/ minute. Printed with Raspberry PLA plastic. Printed on the printrbot simple (2014) Thingiverse Item : http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:241790 Designed by Quincy http://www.thingiverse.com/Quincy/designs

Why Open Source Matters with 3D Printers

When it comes to 3D printers many things can and do break and need replacing. If your printer is not open source then you either have to pay money to have it fix, or worst the printer was discounted and you have to just mod it to fixed it. Well that is why I picked a open source printer. I already had to print out replacement parts for the Printrbot Simple and having access to the cad file of parts comes in very handy.

Part #22 of the laser cut wood broke not once but twice. The first time Printrbot sent me one, because I could not print without it. The second time I had several 3D printed replacements waiting for that part to fail again.

The printed part actual seems to work better here as the area that broke with the wooden part was to thin. The plastic is much more strong and has not shown any signs of failing.

If your in the market for a 3D printer, consider Open Source for the reason of being able to fix it your self, and maybe even improve it, where it fails.

Many of the none open source printers cost more than the printrbot simple alone just to fix it, with something you could have printed out if it was open source.