3D Printing, Innit

All right. Hello. Oh, you can hear me now, righty. I got a little bit of range issues with stuff on the uh on the HDMI, but hey. Uh so 3D printing, it's uh was originally put in for one of the random talks, one things like that. So, it's not really security related. It's ranty. It's the stuff that you do when you're bored, when you're looking at tech, when you're doing that kind of stuff. So, uh, who am I? I'm, uh, Ben Doerty. I I I do security. More important, uh, techn for 10 plus years. It's what my family calls me. I am the guy that's wandering around with the wheelbarrow full of random kit the back of units and scavenging stuff.

I have made all kinds of stuff. Judic domes, all kinds of stuff. Uh, on with a printer for the past seven years. Printers are freaking excellent. uh rapid prototyping the accessibility to that has has made people who have especially neurosicy product but people who like a bit of project like a bit of design it's made it accessible if you don't have a 3D printer buy one you can pick up like I think that's about two 300 quid on a kit there uh and Kraken they're cracking uh holder of many printer related scars I did say I wanted to show off one but it looks like it's fad so it's it's good they fade in 5 years woo uh and maybe

ever so slightly be involved in this. Uh is it just down so slightly that's going to cause issued alignment. Uh so what's about this talk? It's a rant. Sorry, I'll try not to do that. It's around 30 30 minutes of essentially now 20 minutes because the uh the time down. Uh as one of you learn from my fails months. I'm a very learn from my fails person. That's how I learn. I need to fail. I need to fail hard and I need to learn from it. Uh prototype print 3D print rocks 3D design. Don't get scared. If you know how to draw something out, you know how to design three. Not going to go into 3D

design course, but hey, of course this talk uh real talk. Sorry about no security contends are hotter. Printers don't care if your squishy bits in the way of it and you told it to do something. It just moves. Stepper motors are surprisingly strong. Uh yeah, your printer doesn't hear you scream. Your partner might and give you a call at 2 in the morning and say, "Why I'm hearing screaming come from outside? Do I need to call ambulance?" But your printer doesn't give a crap. Uh do you want to tap for me? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Right. So, uh I said this this talks very much history of what I've 3D printers, that kind of stuff. you'll

hopefully learn some things. But yeah, we'll start from the beginning. Where'd it all come from? What I renamed Frankie uh was originally the those of you that are slightly geeky all realize that that board is a Trunkxy XY 100. It's not 8bit board. 3D printers nowadays are 32-bit. Uh that was slow. When I first got it, it didn't have a heated bed. That was a nightmare. For people that know 3D print, you need to get the bed hot so it sticks to things. If you're on a cold bed with glass and don't slather the thing in pretty stick, it just does work. Uh that was my first project. Dave, give us it. Dave, people might

know DZ uh involved in all the Bides events. Uh but I was coming back from Bside London and he goes, "Stop at my house. I've got a toy to give you." Give us it makes it to my makes it to my house and within a week I've ordered a hot bed for it. Got a hot bed. That's a Christmas decoration print out there actually. Uh, and it ended up quite modified realist little Raspberry Pi. Mention that in a little bit. Sorry. No, that's control board had a a control board on it. I upgraded from the 32 from the 8 bit to 32 bit. Uh, and through Raspberry Pi on it as well. Who's the next one?

Yeah. Sorry, I'm shooting through things cuz I'm trying to be a bit quick and catch. So, what what did I do after I had the first toy? I had the first Le one. Uh, it came Christmas. So, it's bought a printer. People may recognize that as what 6 years old uh Ender 3 V2 Pro off the top of my head. Uh that printer you will see again, but it will not look like that. Uh various stuff I used printer for. Uh those of you that have been to the Battlebots thing, that was the year two arena. That one toured around the UK in Ireland for a bit. But yeah, 3D print hiding in the back with

the other with with the Frankie sitting there. That used to be my geodessic dome setup. Uh was great for my printer. It's uh quite important with 3D printing. You can approach it from one of kind of three different two different ways mainly. You either want something that does a tool. You want a tool that does a job that goes off the prints. Bang. You send stuff to it, bang done, send it, bang done. That's what the the the more clos that's what those that's what the Bambi Labs are great for. Perfect printer for that. I don't just want a tool that does something. I want something that breaks. That was my printer. It now lives with

Tim and Lewis. I just It's boring. It's the most reliable printer I have. It's all that, but it's boring. Uh I I'm a modder. So, but whenever you're a print modder, you need two printers. I know it sounds stupid, but build yourself one. But once you you can't really have a a muddy play with one as your main one, because you'll always want to add something. You'll always want to do that. You'll early one with Frankie. I left cuz I used to print in my shed. I left the heater pointed 3D printer to keep it overnight and came back in the morning and realized yes that the the uh arm on the top that that has things that

raises up and when that hits where the heater is the PLA that's made out of. So yeah, so I I ended up with with an end. Uh it didn't stay that way for long. Flickity please. And then we get into slightly more techy things. Uh when I got that, it was about around about the same time that I found Clipper. Clipper is awesome. Uh not much use if you close source, but if you open source, essentially you install Clipper firmware onto your control board and it treats it like any dumb printer almost like a printer attached to your computer. It's a device that you tell it what to do. Uh all of the actual commands, the comp not the compound, the

uh the working out of the G-code, all of that side is done on the Raspberry Pi. So that does all your processing. Gives you a lot of other funky things like you can put cameras on it. Uh you can pay for if you want you can do some of the thing on you do auto detection. You can do remote access. You can start actually access them over the network. Every printer I own runs some version of clipper. I don't use a print right now but it was where I started. And uh the builders for like building the firmware is nice and easy. It isn't something that you need to get too daunted by pixel or build firmwares. Uh, and I I

prefer way over what's the kind of standard Marlin build where all of the processing straight on the controller. Uh, offload that process and just lets you enable a few more features to get cleaner, quicker prints. Uh, yeah. Yeah, click it. Focus for that. Cool. So, now we get into kind of the the toys, the playing. I had a few printers. What do I What do I start? Uh, so I decided I'm going to going to build my own 3D printer cuz why the hell not? Uh so started as a little bit of a muck around with 2020. Uh the frame for it in the end that there is a 3:1. So there's three tube bits going in kind

of like this one has four uh three tub bits going in. So three different colors into the one hot tent and that all squirts out same nozzle. Kind of worked. It was crap. It was utter crap. Uh, I'll mention a little bit about different types of dynamics for printers. Different types of ways work, but it was kind of basic cartesian. You've got an X, you've got a Y, you've got a Z. Yeah, two Zeds, but they were mapped to the same one. It was super super basic. It didn't really do that much, but it was plain. It was 20, 30 quid worth of 2020. A few bits off Amazon and bits that I left off of other

printers I took apart. Play with your pots. Find a way to do it. Muck around with this. That's one of the massive things that I love about 3D printing. You're not stuck with what you've got. You're not like, "Oh, my printer can't print TPU because not direct drive." Great. Print the adapter for it. Work out the thing for it. You can make it. It's a 3D printer. It's rapid prototyping. Next. Yes. And then we get a kind of the full mod. I said you'd see the N3 again, but you may not recognize it. That's what happened to that end three. Uh it's where I start getting to kind of actually playing with things territory. Uh that is what's called the switch wire

mod. Uh instead of having a separate X Y Z axis that's switched over to and I always get this wrong it's been I always get Z and Y confused will always happen. Uh that's a core X Y printer. I can't remember which ones are back and forth, but yeah. So so essentially you've got two steppers that live in the bottom. Uh and they both are wired all the way up, down, over, and essentially well in a kind of a shape. And they're both used. So you run one on its own and it'll diagonal. You run them both left, both right, one left, one right, and you get your full movement out of it. that's a lot lighter cuz

you're not having to put a stepper on the end. You're not having to put more weight at. And with 3D printers, when you're talking about speed, it's all about weight, how light you can get cuz you're slinging that thing backwards and forwards. If it's a load of weight on the hot end, then you've got the inertia of that moving. You've got to start accounting for things like that. You've got to start putting ADM axes and start worrying about a lot of the features that I'm not going to get into, but feel free to pick my brains later. Uh that was a essentially a boron. Uh so that's the the name of the hotend bit there. Uh it's D drive

had a pretty uh pretty decent hotend in for there's a lot of different options but that's that's essentially an open source kit. All bits you can pick up on the GitHub or you can pick up on that. Uh the kit itself with the linear rails which is the biggest upgrade you can do to a printer. Give it prop rails uh cost us I think was 100 100 quid and the printer itself was already there. Oh yeah. No trying to copy my keys, please. Security fail. Right. So, yeah. So, so, so yeah, the switch wire was what I decided to do one of them. And then my brain got bored and I wanted things. So, I decided I never had Delta printer as

that thing at the end. The Apple I did want to bring one of those. Sorry. Damn. Didn't swear. Damn. My kids aren't to this talk. It's great. Uh, I'd never tried a delta printer. Totally different design. Totally different dynamic. Doesn't run on your base. Well, everything runs on XY Z for coordinates, but doesn't run on your You have something move it that way. Have something move it that way. You've got three uh I should have brought one. It's very easy to see. But essentially, you've got three pillars and in each of the pillars is a belt step at a rund down and there's a fixed arm that goes towards the hot end. So by changing the

heights of different ones, you can give that end full movement. Yay. >> Nah, they're for they're for

>> I didn't say that out loud, so it doesn't count though. I don't have to pay for that. So yeah, uh it's it's I started playing essentially every printer here, apart from the the shop with all them in. Yes, my dome is a mess. Every printer here was less than 50 quid. It was pick it up at face m place. Pick up something like that. Just play, learn how they work, learn the dynamics of them and mod them. Uh the CR CR10 that's there, the big bed one. That one you'll see again as a mod. That one there, the uh end of five which is there and there in my car on its way back home. Uh they

ended up as what I'll show you in a minute. the Zero uh from a very kind of basic printer that I'm picking up like 50 60 quid and a little bit of printed parts, a little bit manual work, you can make it into essentially a high-end printer. Uh things like the ZeroG, things like the E3MG, which we'll mention again in this uh mods that you can do to really what is entry- level printers to make them high-end, to make them kind of pretty cool. Uh yeah, still good for time. Cool. Uh so yeah, buying racks. Uh my favorite rack was the Makeaker Replicator. It was a very very very early. You can see how old it just

looked. I I cleaned it up a little bit before I gave it to Louis, but it was very very early dual hotend printer. I mean, when that was was new, it was too close to SC. When that was new, it was like 6700 quid. Uh ripped everything out of it. Used it as a frame. Great little printer. Still still working and run away in Louiswis's house now. Uh yeah, buying Rex. I encourage people to buy Rex and around with them if you've got a little bit money to play with and you've got the space for it for 50 quid. I mean, I checked on Facebook Marketplace this morning. There was an Ender 3 like the first one that I

mentioned going for 25 quid. It's almost as cheap as the filament that go into it. Get it, muck around with it, play with it. 3D print is super accessible. All right, next please. Cool. So, yeah. Uh, and then I thought I wanted a belt printer. So, some of you that may have uh been around Twitter a little bit uh during the 20 early 2020s before it got Uh damn it, there's another file. Uh before it got not very good, uh will remember Naomi Woo uh she was involved in the design of this printer. Basically, it's an infinite. So you're printing instead of happening on a normal 3D printer where you print on the top and either the head goes

backwards and forwards or or some form of movement like that. You've got a nice conveyor belt on the bottom. So all of your prints and I can there's some in the battlebots have weird lines on them at a 40° uh 45° angle. Look a bit weird on the prints. Yeah, you can just set it away going. Uh that is starting printing one of the battle box. Uh that's how annoying the bed is to level on it. Uh if it doesn't get adhesion, it just keeps printing. And because it's not got adhesion, it just fans out. You get some really really weird fails on it. Not much spaghetti fails, but some really really weird ones. It was like I think it was

about 250 on clearance from uh from Creity and I always wanted one. So I got one. It was a cool toy. Uh, I have never once printed anything bigger than the other printers that I have. Uh, my little wants me to print sword. Unfortunately, it's now in a location where I can't print a fulls size sword. So, a little bit of a pointless one, but really fun project. Not quite finished overall. Uh, but yeah, comes comes nicely flat packed. It was a cool toy. Cool toy. Yeah, it's it's fun toys to play with. very much on my my 3D print is on my vent that my stuff I do when board next that one it's really good it's really quick it's

really stable and it really works if you want a tool to do a job they're perfect for it if you want a fun project they're boring is holy hell. They're boring. Great printer, but just nothing to do. So, that I had for a little while. Was my stable printer for a little while, but end up with Lewis. Uh, it's a fun little That quality photo is utter. Yeah, I never liked it and I took photos of I go, "Oh, yeah. Here's my It's a tool. It's a tool." But yeah, this to show you how quick things are printed. during a talk that should have printed off a little Cali cube, a little calibration cube for 20 odd print. Uh

yeah, it's close source. They're quick. They do the job. They're open up the accessibility of it. If you have I mean my kids want one that says that slightly different one, but my kids are getting a Bamboo Labs one cuz I don't want to have to fix it all the time. Uh if you want a one for for a tool for a Oh yeah, I like modeling. I like this. I like that. I want it to just work. Bamboo Labs are great. Other than that, boring. Next, please. Cool. Main sale. We're getting into proper for now. So, yeah, main sale. Uh, it's I mentioned earlier, OcaPrint. Uh, this is essentially the newer, better, all of that. You can still use an

Ocarint. You can still add all these things through an through an addin, but it's just infinitely better. Uh, Caillou popped up a couple of about a year ago, maybe a bit longer. You can just run it on your Pi and install everything you need to your Pi to do the control from it. It took all config out of it. It's made it simple. Uh you can do fun things like doing bed leveling and actually see what's up with the bed. So if your bed is terribly warped, you can actually see it. Or if you've got a bed where you've got alignment via little screws on the bottom, you can say exactly what you need, like when it gets proper messed

up. That's not even bad to be honest. Uh and you can do cameras on it. You multi cameras. Uh I did want to do some screenshot. That was weird. Cool. Uh, I did do some screenshots of mine, but I've got a mini print set up at home with uh five printers currently working, another two on the side, and they're all video up. I have a little screen that shows me all of my print while I'm sitting at work as things are going and it just makes me happy to just sit and watch it. Uh, but yeah, main sale really, really cool utility. If you have a printer that isn't closed source, I would definitely recommend Clipper main

sale. Raspberry Pi next to it. You've got a network printer. You've got something you can hit there. Done. Well, that that that was quicker than I thought. But yeah, calibration cube done. It's how quick printers can just look. Hit next. I'm going to have to speed up for these last couple of ones. Yeah. So, more rebuilds. I said you'd see the uh see the end five again. That's what it ended up as. Uh Core XY on the top. So, you've got the two large steppers at the back. No weight on gantry barely. uh a small stepper motor on the actual direct drive which that all very very slim that's crap photo but all very very slid out very uh this is

essentially my light print for hotend all skeletal frame I do have and I didn't get a new picture of it a new gantry on it now where even that bit of 2020 there is all skeletalized uh so it's super super light and that's how you get them quick that thing is an absolute beast uh there is some things that I want to do to it it's just got the 2Z on still there's a mod on the well when I fish it where it's got three so it can do all kinds of pretty bad leveling very cool uh but yeah we'll skip past that one cuz I know time uh the E3NG another thing you can do with

an end three uh this one I thought about it it's not got rails uh cuz rails are really really good it's on Ross this time but they're uh they're either 10 or 12 mil rods they're nice and rigid and that printer is fast as hell and plus it's got triple Z on the bottom with the mold running on a separate stepper. That means that before you start print, you do an alignment where it picks up the alignment from closest point to each of those and then levels it. So if one Z's slightly out, it just goes weak and bunks it. It's really you can make it really wonky and then just let it fix and it's nice to sit and watch. I have a

thing about watching technology work. I sense a few of us do. Yeah. Uh you skip to the next one. Sweet. Uh so yeah, next one. Uh this is what ended up with Monster. So this is uh essentially offscript ZG upgrade. So what was mentioned before with the Z? It's the same thing but just building it off script. The parts didn't fit. The frame wasn't the same. I had to bodgege up the frame. As soon as you start mocking around with one, you realize that it's it's Moano for big kids. That's it. It's it's just easy. It's all 2020 frame. It's all bull. It's all simple, all linear rails, all that kind of stuff. Uh, that one and I've not got it in this

talk cuz I didn't finish it. Uh, that one will up fourcolor printing with a nice open source fullcolor AMS, which is for those of you who don't know, this is an AMS. It's a bit that I do the multiolor printing. Uh, obviously that's a bamboo one, but yeah. Uh, I've got a nice open source one I'm working on that I didn't include in this tour cuz I'm an Egypt. And then the the the kind of my my most recent printer. decided to treat myself a little bit. Uh didn't go super high end. Didn't go to bamboo cuz but still close source. Uh uh weird thing about this printer. I got it and the bed would not align.

Would not align. Persevered with it for a month. Wouldn't align. I took it apart. I did like undid screws. Put springs in. Created little shims, printed shims to put in it so the bed got aligned. And then I realized there was firmware update out for it. I'm a I'm a >> That's another I'm a Firmware update fixed. It's happened in my personal. It's Yeah. Nothing being said about that firmware you stuff, please. Yeah. Good time. Almost finished. Right. Problems. Uh, I would go into prompts, but I decided to just kind of talk to me about it. If you want to find out about 3D printing, about Oh, my printer's this. I'm having this issue. Give us a

shout. Talk to me about it. It's good. Uh, layer shifting on the end. So, if the back in the days of non uh core XY, if it was just an X and a Z, if your belts weren't tight enough, that's just the belt skipping. I get some real weird stuff. That was an absolute nightmare fix. Uh sometimes if the printer decides to just lose adhesion, then it just keeps well not sometimes it does. It just keeps squirting plastic and you end up with this massive plastic notch that you need to use a hot knife and knife over the over the stove and that to curve it off and you still break the hot end when you take it

out. Uh yeah, buy spare hot ends as far as you they're only cheap is uh depending on what you get. Buy spare hot end, use them and occasionally you just get stuff that you just got to get the drill out for. Uh no idea how I was going to get that out. I tried putting it in the oven. It didn't work. I just drill out. Uh but yeah, there's bed adhesion. There's all kinds of stuff. Maybe things to think about. Yeah. To the next word. I think they're in that one. I'm nearly wrapped QA now. Sweet. So yeah, uh just things to think that's level the As long as the bed's level, you'll get good adhesion most of

the time. Think about P sheets as well. If you're doing print on glass, PE is far easier to print onto. Uh and look at different types of sheets. That one is a cold sheet right now, which is excellent for printing TPU and a few other things, but you put it on a hot machine, it's terrible for it. Uh so really think about what you're doing. Use the right filament. I haven't really talked about filament much. I did mean to. I've kind of cut out with time. Uh use filament. You get all kinds of stuff. Come up and and see it. Uh we've got even uh like carbon fiber enriched PG, which is really good for durable

parts. There's probably ABS somewhere. There's TU, which is essentially you're printing flexible stuff, which is quite fun. Uh since we're getting to the end bit, I should get this. Yeah. and you start printing with flexible stuff, you can start printing slightly bigger things and start around with it. That is the entire Oh, can't put it there. The entire frame of it is able to take a bend is able to take a hit. The I can basically Yeah, just pull the screw out. I basically bend it all, smash it off things, and it just works. Uh there's different types of TPU you can get, but use the right one for the job. That's a slightly tough one. You can get

ones that if any of you have seen the tank racks or the battle bots, all of that's been printed out of this and different And then there's slightly more fun parts. So yeah, uh ABS and kind of stuff's great for masks. Gives you a lot of durability. You do get warping. You do get something like that, but do end up looking quite good. Feel free to play with it. Everything will be over in the box bit at the end. I know I've got a thingy off the top. Uh one I've learned from experience, keep your slicer profiles backed up. I've not really mentioned what slicer is cuz short version of the trunk. Uh but essentially the slicer is your software

that you use to convert this from a 3D file into your printer. It's bit of software that you put in your computer put your files in there and it converts it to go to your printer. Keep them updated. You will find yourself oh I'll make this tweak or I'll make this tweak. I'll make this tweak and then you rebuild your machine or you change thing and you've lost the profile and you need to spend month getting everything back running. keep them updated. Mod upgrade play. If you get a stock printer, start playing with it. Start doing bits to it. Even that they took it off. Even that bit had little rotating scone on it. Had little

bits. This is close, but there was little things could do. Uh things like what I did with the end of five, the end of three, that kind of stuff. You can do that. You make high-end printers from low-end parts basically. Uh, and as I said, the hot may be very, very hot. 2300° gets hot, makes burns, hurts hand. Careful. Uh, cool. The last one, and that's questions, right, I appreciate that I'd put out a few things I did want to talk about there, and I did slim the time down a bit, but questions off anyone or if I bored you enough that you never want to hear about 3D print again. Yes, finally take one. Pass them around.

Just Just fidget toy for everyone that decided to put their way through my book cuz all deserves something for putting up with me for so long. I know. I'm going uh I'm I'm about to get chased out by cat and she's she's she's dangerous and and has a thing. So, >> yes. So, uh you all for coming to my tour. Please grab a fidget boy on the way around. I should have probably had them out a little bit sooner. Uh, but yes, feel free to ask me about Ethn 3D printing and hope you've enjoyed it. Oh, thank you.