we talked about 3d printing every now
and again in fact
we've had some great conversations which
i've posted at cat5 dot tv
3d printing and on that page
we are starting our series on 3d
printing as you can see
we've gone and gotten one yeah it's a
very nice one hmm
i've settled on the ender 3v2 for a
couple of reasons first of all
i'm brand new to 3d printing jeff
it's interesting that this is the one
you've purchased i have it sitting in my
amazon wishlist
for christmas oh yes yes and i just said
to jen today i'm like
i really want to get a 3d printer for me
and the boys
and this happens to be the one that's on
my list well there you go so you get to
see it kind of firsthand
yeah and and some of the reasons why i
chose this printer jeff is
the fact that it's kind of the it's it's
out of the box
ready to print yes as far as like
it's it's easy to use it does a good
print job and it's really really
affordable
yeah so there was a few i saw that's
like oh it needs four hours assembly
time i'm like that's ridiculous
hey assembly time i didn't take four
hours but yeah it does come partially
assembled but there's a fair bit of
setup that has to go into it yeah
we're going to look at that today i'm
going to show you how it
went for me to assemble it again though
being
completely new to 3d printing here it is
it's like
q4 2020 and robbie the tech guy
has never done 3d printing before but
you're more of like a programming tech
guy sure yeah but
to be fair jeff like i've had my eye on
3d printing for a long time yes
um kind of covered it on the show for
you sure yeah we have
uh we've we've been talking about it
since the poyo 3d
like this is going way way back when
consumer printers were like
two or three thousand dollars and they
were just coming to market
and then we've like we've had people on
the show to talk about 3d printing and
how it's going to change the world
yeah there was that book here we are
you know 2020 finally getting into it to
my credit though
i now here in our our hometown of barrie
ontario
hometown our city um our libraries have
maker spaces
yes they do so early this year
i was actually email corresponding with
their makerspace
people okay and talking about okay well
i want to get into 3d printing how do i
get started
and we were setting up for me to come in
to their
uh makerspace to start 3d printing for
the very
well and that's what happened so they
had to shut down their maker space
as i was already kind of learning so
they they taught me that okay well you
need to have these
stl models and so that's how i learned
about things like thingiverse and
sites like sites like that where people
share their designs
um but because they closed down i
couldn't actually print anything
yeah but i didn't stop there i kept
trying to learn how to do 3d printing to
see because i wanted to see
is is it something that's going to be
practical so i started doing designs
on my computer before i even had
a printer even selected a printer so um
i think that was a really good way for
me to do it because it gave me a chance
to learn some of the ins and outs of how
to do it
these hooks yes that was the reason you
wanted to get into this right yeah we're
going to talk about that
well not the reason i wanted to get into
3d printing but right and we'll talk
about it
after i show you how how i've assembled
this um but the hooks
that i'm going to show you are a big
part of
you know one of the ideas that i had so
simple too
there's a dalek there there's a dialogue
yeah of all the things to
print of course it's like you've got to
you know i've only printed three things
and the dalek is one of them
and priorities and a little kitten yes
so i'm learning um and you're going to
be able to learn along with me so i'm
taking the approach
i'm not trying to be that you know
there are a lot of gurus 3d printing
gurus who have been doing this for years
and they know what they're doing and
they're on youtube and there are some
great channels
filament friday has been a wonderful
channel for me to learn on
i'm actually running a film and friday
firmware on the under 3
v2 right now um there's a lot of
there are a lot of gurus out there and
i'm not one of them right
so my approach is a little bit different
with the show in the and with this
series
in that you're going to get the chance
to learn along with me
why am i doing the things that i'm doing
what have i learned
how have i messed up yeah and what am i
learning as i go so it's a good
opportunity for you to
kind of see how 3d printing works and
learn the things that i learn as i learn
them
i think it's going to be a lot of fun i
know it's going to be a lot of fun we're
already
absolutely having a blast at home with
the 3d printer i'm looking forward to it
so let's say we get a look at oh and i
said you know some of the reasons that i
chose this printer over some of the
other options the ender 3
from creality of course is a very famous
consumer printer because it's cheap as
far as affordability goes
it works with tons of different types of
filament for our series we're going to
be using pla
it's a very good entry level filament
it's known to be
easy to print and it does a reasonably
good print job
but it's it's pretty universally like i
can just swap that out
with a different spool and start
printing and it's really really easy
but creality introduced the v2 this year
and of the ender three and it kind of
comes with
a lot of the upgrades that people were
having to
create for themselves okay so you get
a lot of the stuff out of the box that
otherwise um wouldn't have been an
option with an
an older gen of of the ender 3. so
there's there's a lot of reasons to
choose this printer i'm not saying this
is the best printer by any stretch
right but as far as the economics of it
go it's really
affordable and it does a great print job
and as far as
out of the box experience goes you can
see i've already been printing stuff
and i'm just getting started yeah so
very clean prints
like that's one of the things with some
of the printers is you know you you read
reviews you look at the
the close-up photos and it's like wow
it's not really a
smooth looking print it's kind of clunky
these are really clean thanks jeff i'm a
noob
well done yeah all right so let's take a
look at how
i went about assembling the ender 3
let's do that together
[Music]
the ender 3v2 comes partially assembled
the base
is assembled but we are going to need
the instruction manual
because we need to make sure that
everything goes together correctly there
is some
assembly required you should be able to
do this
reasonably easily especially if you
follow along
what's in the manual what you're going
to see here today
[Music]
let's start looking at the components
we've got the extruder kit here
this is what the filament is going to
it's the hot end of the printer so this
what the filament is going to come
out of it's going to melt it and move
around on
all the axes then we've got the uh
the screen here which is an upgraded
screen from the previous iterations of
the ender 3.
it is color but it's not touch just like
previous versions
it uses the dial wheel here we have the
xe
axis kit which has the xe motors
x being left and right e of course being
the extruder
which is basically pushing the filament
into the
hot end we'll set that aside and here's
the material rack and the spool holder
this is where you're actually going to
put your spools of filament
and we've got some aluminum extrusions
uh for parts of the frame that we're
gonna put together
so this portion of the ender 3v2 is
already assembled this has got the
heated printing platform uh quite often
you hear this called the bed
and it's all part of the machine base
it's all put together already for us and
it looks like one of my
leveling knobs has come off in shipping
we'll fix that in a moment
but the machine base and power supply
are already assembled
that has the y-axis tensioner and the
motor
for the y-axis power cables there
uh what else have we got here we've got
more extrusions
for the frame these look like the z-axis
which is your up and down
part of the frame and just watch that
z-axis rod that's
packaged inside you don't want that to
fall out
so you can see that's a threaded rod
it's got some grease on it so
watch that's why it's got that sleeve
but we're going to set everything aside
here and get started so here's the
z-axis motor
uh it has the rod coupling for that rod
uh
so we'll assemble that in a moment
on to the final stuff we've got some
sample filament the belts
extrusion nozzles things like that
and the belt tensioner for the z-axis
a couple screws
then we've got the z-axis passive block
that's the wheels that are going to go
up and down on the right-hand side
and it came with a scraper which is
great for removing prints from the bed
or slashing the eyes of your enemies and
we've got a couple of tools here and
screws and such for the assembly itself
and there's also some side cutters
included in there as well a little bonus
so first things first i'm going to
replace that bed leveling knob that
came off during shipping
[Music]
ah there it is so should just go right
on there
[Music]
our first 3d printer repair right there
just tighten these up so they don't come
off and just note
as i'm moving things around here that
glass bed
is held onto the heating platform
by a couple of clips just make sure
those clips are snug before you start
moving it around like i am here because
you don't want that to fall off
it shouldn't but just keep in mind
there's the extruder with the
hot end of our 3d printer
[Music]
and back to the book jeff will be so
proud of me
to see me reading the manual
[Music]
i'm just going to kind of lay everything
out here we've got the z-axis switch
came with an sd card and card reader
like a usb reader
just lay everything out so that it's
easy access as i'm going through the
manual and figuring out how to set
everything up
and there's the side cutters that
they've included for you that's great
for
trimming pieces of your
3d prints especially if you have any
platforming
you're going to need those now it is a
bit of a process to work your way
through the instruction manual and
assemble your ender 3v2 as i'm about to
do
so just follow along in your manual and
i'm going to speed things up
through the magic of television
[Music]
there we have it the ender 3v2 is fully
assembled and
ready to print when we come back after
this quick break we're going to talk
about my first
impressions as we print our very first
3d prints
on the creality ender 3v2
stick around
[Music]
welcome back you'll notice at the end of
the
fast motion video there this particular
cabling here was on the outside of the
top
uh extrusion so i had to just simply
remove two screws and put it inside
but you'll save a bit of time maybe if
you make a note of the
position of this it wasn't quite clear
in the manual and there were a couple of
things like that that
just weren't quite clear but easy enough
to figure out as long as you're patient
and take your time but i think now that
i've assembled it jeff
i could probably throw one of these
together in half the time
oh that's easily how long did it take
you to assemble this well
i mean i was shooting video and
everything so it's not really a fair
um equation right because you know i had
eight cameras around me and i'm setting
everything up and setting up my shots
and things but i'm good for camera
i got it uh about an hour and a half it
took me all together
so i think uh you could probably put
this together in about a half hour
realistically pretty decent yeah yeah so
the the first things that i've noted as
a brand new 3d printer guy
maker i've never 3d printed anything in
my life
the the first thing i did was i leveled
the bed and that's really really
important to use these dial wheels use a
piece of paper and i'm going to be
demonstrating how to do that there are
videos on youtube but we will make that
part of the series as well
leveling the bed is the first thing that
you need to do once it's level and
things look good
then you can start your 3d print so it
came with
an sd card as you noted there and um
the sd card has some g-code models on it
so okay my son liam wanted to print the
cat
it was just on on the screen we just saw
there's a cat so let's try that
man you guys have we do now yes
so um so he printed this and
as you mentioned jeff like it it came
out really
really great so this was our very very
first print yeah so this was just the g
code that was included on the sd card
and it came out
absolutely beautiful and he's thrilled
with that so that was our
very very first print on day one okay so
then day two came and nothing was
working
the bed wasn't so because i'm starting
to
i'm starting to play around with my own
designs um you mentioned these hooks
we're gonna look at those
but so the hooks were gonna be my second
print
okay i designed my own mask hooks
yes and these are these are meant to go
on
a half inch pipe so the cold water
pipe in our laundry room because we have
an unfinished laundry room
this clips onto the half inch pipe and
it gives
us a place to dry our reusable washable
masks
our face masks so it's just a neat
little
thing that i came up with but my wife
was was thinking like hey this is really
really high i can't quite reach it
so the next iteration was a little bit
longer and a little bit longer and i
went through a couple of iterations so
this was the
the first one was just this little tiny
guy yep right
and then the next one was a little bit
longer and then finally
the final print came out like this so
i simply i simply extended the uh the
length of it
and i designed this in a program called
tinkercad which is a
free it's a free website tinkercad.com
all the links of the tools that i'm
using throughout the course of the
series are at cat5 dot tv slash 3d
printing
uh but that's what i use to design this
so i basically just i laid it out in
tinkercad and
and that's what i came up with so and it
printed
great once i figured it out but day two
came
and nothing was working and i say that
because i was struggling to get the bed
to level because nothing was sticking to
the bed
and it's really really important what i
found is it's very important that the
first couple of layers are stuck to the
bed
because if they're not as the printer is
moving
up it's gonna it's gonna lose adhesion
and it's gonna move
the the print is going to move and then
it's not going to be printing the right
thing in the right spot and it's not
going to work out
was the bed heating up the bed was
heating up to 60 degrees celsius
everything was working there so i did
everything from
i gave it a quick wipe down with some
isopropyl alcohol
um i upgraded the firmware to one from
filament friday because it came with an
like the original firmware had some bugs
in it that he'd mentioned
and so i installed his firmware and it
still wasn't working for me yeah
and then i started thinking because you
know i'm i'm
the troubleshooter right yes so i've
tried everything every time i leveled
the bed
it still wasn't adhering to the bed so
then i started saying okay well what's
different between yesterday and today
and the one thing that i came up with is
our first day print
was from the g-code provided by creality
yeah creality my second print
second day print was a g-code that i
created
now understand so i've learned a couple
of things so i mentioned that i made
this in tinkercad i designed it in
tinkercad
but that gives you an stl file yes or an
obj or whatever so these are the file
extensions
so that stl file can't go to the printer
you need what's called a g-code which is
a file that tells it how to build the
layers okay so that's
i'm using a program called cura which is
also free
links again at cat5 dot tv slash 3d
printing
and with that software um it
creates the slice layers yes and it
spews out a file called a g-code file
and so the g-code for this was on the sd
card came with it the g
code for this is something that i made
in kira
okay so then i started thinking okay
well what's different so
i got researching i got looking into it
and then
finally after several hours of tinkering
jeff i
found out that g-code is actually a text
file
a script oh so i opened it
in my text editor yep and looked at it
and i started seeing that this is just a
script it's like code
yeah so then i looked at the code for
this one
and i looked at the code for mine and i
compared the difference
at the start of the file and found that
my g-code from cura
was telling the extruder to raise
two millimeters at the start of the
print and there was a comment that said
oh so that it doesn't scratch the print
bed
and it was raising a full two
millimeters so i started looking
so i started another print and i looked
down at the extruder and sure enough
at the beginning at the beginning of the
print i saw the extruder go up two
millimeters so it wasn't
quite down on the bed so it wasn't able
to adhere to the bed so i went in
i copied the header from this g-code and
pasted it over top the header
of my g-code and i printed out a good
10 15 of these hooks and it worked
perfectly
why the different header because you
didn't program that different start code
no it was just the default profile so it
would it had this
raise up two millimeters or whatever so
so having replaced it with this
header the start code from this one
everything printed just fine
so i was like oh so that was a
revelation for me to realize that
the g code is an editable script that
you can go in and you can modify and
then i'm thinking about all the
wonderful things that you can do with
that knowledge
yeah and it's wonderful so then i took
that g code the
the start part of the g code and i
pasted it into my profile in
cura to always use that as my start code
that's
replacing the one that came with it made
a couple of little mini modifications
based on the knowledge that i had
accumulated from
the research that i had done yep and uh
now i've got a start code that is
working like that just beautiful so
every prank comes out people would have
run into that issue and would have said
the machine's just not working
nobody was saying check the start code
on your g-code
everybody was saying okay make sure your
bed is level yeah i did that
10 times make sure that the bed is clean
yeah i did that
make sure you know that there's no
interesting yeah so all this stuff make
sure the bed temperature is good
uh the g code from cura was defaulting
to 50 degrees celsius
i noticed that this one was 60 degrees
celsius so i increased it
yeah and that was done through the
material
in cura again i'm going to show you how
to do all these things so don't worry
okay but that's what i learned so then
we started printing other things and
my other son zach said i really want a
dalek
yes and so we got onto thingiverse and
downloaded the stl file for a dalek
now that is not monochromatic that's
got two colors you're right so what we
actually did is we first printed
these parts okay okay so these little
guys
the extensions and these actually clip
into
the daleks so we printed it in two parts
very cool yeah you'll see that these are
all white
yes they are all printed jeff with that
sample spool
of filament i was able to sample i was
able to get this out of the sam
sample that they wow so i didn't even
have to tap into
my purchased filament so that is what we
came up with for
for zach as well so i was really really
impressed with that and he's very very
happy with that model
uh when i was removing the um the
supports for the uh the black parts
because they're so
tiny yes i kind of clipped a little bit
too far in places but we can reprint
those little parts
i was able to say you can reprint and we
start talking about how because there
are
attachments we could create other
attachments and yes play around with all
that
kind of stuff so speaking of wanting to
um basically adapt
our designs to our own needs so creating
attachments and things like that
the next thing that we wanted to do is
well he wanted to print in black
of course so i got a little spool 250
grams of black filament and
it's fine but it was affordable because
it's only 250 grams i didn't need a big
one kilogram thing but it doesn't fit on
the spool holder because the hole is too
small
oh no so i was like well what do i do
what do i do jeff
any suggestions you print a new school
holder
so i actually i went on and and i
started designing
based on some designs that i found on
thingiverse but i created this little
guy
so this is printed with the transparent
uh filament this is a new spool holder
specifically designed
to hold these little spools well so i
built i
made this spool holder specifically to
replace
that and it just screws on yep and
allows me to
to print using the 250 gram spools so
then i'm like
i can actually adapt my 3d printer
create
accessories and attachments yeah that i
i don't have to get on amazon and buy
new parts or
try to track down a smaller school you
print it yourself so how cool is that
that's awesome so overall my experience
so far has been great i'm learning
as i go and that's part of the fun uh my
kids have been so patient as i've been
learning
and that's that's been a good experience
for them i think as well
but the ender 3v2 has been i mean so far
so good it's a fantastic little printer
it's quiet it's got the quiet circuit
the
the the board itself is like
i don't know it's upgraded on the uh v2
and apparently is quieter than the older
versions we're going to be looking at
the actual
sound that it generates but you hear the
fans
there is the cooling system to keep
things cool yep um but
uh it's reasonably quiet like we could
have it running right here and it
wouldn't uh
it wouldn't probably even be picked up
on our microphones
yeah so that's kind of you know that's a
bit of a primer as to you know here i am
i'm brand new to 3d printing and i'm 3d
printing
i'm doing my own designs i'm using free
software
uh in my browser in i'm using cura which
is an actual installed application that
you can download and install
i did find tinkercad has one limitation
being a free
online service is that the
stl files have to be below
megabytes okay so are you limited on
size
yes now that's not a problem when
they're only like 200 kilobytes and
things like that but
as soon as i got into some more
sophisticated designs i was like oh wow
this is
this is 26 megabytes and i can't edit it
in
tinkercad so that will eventually lead
me to start looking at other things but
i think tinkercad is a really good
starting point
okay so cat5 dot tv slash 3d printing is
where you want to go to
follow along with this series learn from
my mistakes
and from my victories and i'm also
sharing
absolutely everything that i do through
github you'll see links there so
i've got the designs here on my uh what
is it called my
mini is it my mini maker or something
like that
i started using thingiverse but it's
really buggy yeah so
um you'll see the links there anyways
dot tv 3d printing i'm still learning
all the terms i'm still learning how
everything works
that's exciting i'm brand new to it but
i am sharing everything that i've
learned
and even that start code for for cura is
available on my github repository so
excellent that'll get you started as
well so
all the tips this uh you know as i
mentioned
earlier this is the one that's actually
sitting on my amazon
list yeah so uh if you could
do me a favor and just let my wife know
how amazing this is
yeah i'll just kind of let her know i'm
just going to start sending her all the
videos
yes hey check this out i hear jeff might
be interested in 3d printing
yeah it's totally amazing yeah and if
you follow along with the series jeff
you're going to have a real good head
start on me because
all those things that i've had to learn
the hard way you're going to be able to
do and even
so much as these designs are available
for you through my github
now maybe this doesn't fit into your
full review but i've got to ask
why clear filament as opposed to the
typical red white blue
you got to buy filament anyway so i
needed i needed filament to print the
small spool
yes because i didn't have a small spool
to print with the cheap filament right
the 250 gram filament
the reason that i got translucent
filament is because i'm going to be
making signage for category 5.
oh yeah okay the first
handful of layers so about a half an
inch are going to be translucent
light so that light is talking about
they're going to have leds inside
okay and then the top layer is going to
be black so
i thought hey i've got to buy filament
anyways i'm going to buy a roll of
the translucent filament because i'm
going to be using it anyways and it
looks really cool yeah it does look
really nice
yeah that's great don't forget we are on
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everyone have a wonderful week
[Music]
you