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3D Printers and Pinball

mwong168

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I made this post on another forum in summer of 2020 regarding my Ender 3 Pro 3D printer I purchased on a pretty good deal at Amazon and experience so far. Anyways, feel free to post up your 3D printer setups, tips and anything pinball or even non pinball related you have printed on it.

ender-3-pro_1_1200x1200.jpg


I'm relatively new to 3D printing and just bought my Ender 3 Pro this past July from amazon. I was advised by a friend who's had his Ender 3 Standard for the past year to watch this video before I unboxed and assembled mine.


Here are some of the upgrades I purchased along with my printer and sure there are others that will get posted here once this thread gets going.

I bought this kit because it comes with pretty much everything people eventually replace on their printer. The stock extruder is made of plastic and will eventually break from what I've been told and spring is not that great. The stock bowden tube will eventually give you problems and most replace with the Capricorn tube and never look back. Kit also comes with a set of yellow springs which appear to stiffer than the stock springs. From what I have read it is big improvement over stock and won't have to re-level the bed as often.

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All these can be purchased separately if you wish to go with a different aluminum extruder. In lots of youtube videos or posts I see lots of people have this red one here:

61pA8WUjPEL._SL1001_.jpg


I originally ordered the Creality glass bed but sent it back based on a recommendation from another RFD user to get the PEI Magnetic flexible heated bed instead. I received it few days ago but haven't had a chance to try a print on it yet. This is great if you have the standard model which doesn't have a magnetic bed with removable print surface like the pro.

412fKF7PfwL._SL1001_.jpg


Now in regards to where to order filaments, you can get from amazon for around $30-32 for a standard roll of PLA filament. I ended up buying from this local place called Waterbird.ca which appear to have a good variety of PLA+, ABS, PETG and TPU. Their pricing for a roll of PLA+ is $20.49 and I wanted to do a local pick up to save on shipping but owner said due to Covid he only ships. He did tell me there was a free shipping code if you spent over $75 so I ended up buying 4 rolls in various colors to start out.


In my next order I want to try the glow in the dark, silk and wood filament so I can try to print my very first groot :)

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Here is another video I found very useful which was how to manually level your print bed.


I asked my friend who I mentioned above about the BL-touch self leveling kit and he said he been printing for the past year and only needs to level his bed once per month. He prints a lot of stuff too and since getting his Ender 3 he also got a 3D resin printer too. So if anyone is on the fence about get a 3D printer be careful as it could be a slippery slope and next thing you know it you will be buying multiples like some of these people's setups... you've been warned!!

qif3fj41f6541.jpg


Here are some things I have printed as "upgrades" to my Ender 3 Pro.

Tool Holder

Filament Guide

Filament Roller Guide

Cable Chain Links

Top Carry Handle

Ribbon Clips

Adjustable Feet

Speed Knob (pick your poison)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3655988 <-- NSFW :)

PCB Cover with 2 Drawers

Bowden Tube Holder

Wyze Cam Mount

Raspberry Pi Case with Camera Slot

My wife still laughs at me saying "So honey you bought a 3d printer to print parts for your 3d printer???" I'm like relax I'll print your Keurig K-cup holder once I get my 3d printer dialed in and upgraded the way I want :)

Anyways, hope this thread will help and I look forward to meeting/discussing with others in regards to this awesome 3D printer. Enjoy!
 
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mwong168

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Here is a Tron topper I had my friend Adam (Vengeance) print for me before I got my Ender 3 Pro. It was a lot of work but I think it turned out pretty nice. Since Tron has such an amazing soundtrack I got EL wire with a sound reactive module.

 

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mwong168

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If you search the term "pinball" on Thingiverse you can see there is a lot of existing stuff you can possible print for your games such as replacement parts, mods, etc...

 
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pinballjah

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Nice to see this thread started. I had someone help with this idea for an Elvis topper. He has done a few for other games. I think the printing would take quite a bit of time and the actual cost is pretty high. If anyone can help with the printing, let me know. Thanks.

 

mwong168

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I recently printed these Squid game masks for my daughter and her friends for Halloween. The Guard masks took about 2.5 days each to print and Frontman mask was about 8.5-9 hours. I think I still have about 1/3 of a full roll of black PLA leftover. Not a big deal on how long a print takes as long as your printer is dialed in an leveled.

Let me download those STL files for that Elvis topper and I will give you an idea of how long and how much filament it will take.
 

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Chris Bardon

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Cool thread. I've been printing since the beginning of the year. I finally got my Snapmaker 2.0 A350 in January after a really long preorder delay. It's neat because it's a 3 in 1 (3dp, laser, CNC), but I've probably used the 3d printing the most. I started out with the obligatory "hook for something" to have controller storage for my office:

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I've also made a bunch of boardgame stuff. These are character tuck boxes for Gloomhaven:

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This was my first "big" print. I wanted to do something with gears, and I found this on Thingiverse. All the planets orbit at the right speeds when you turn the dial at the bottom. Probably about 2 weeks of printing off and on. It taught me that printing gears on rafts is a good idea:20210228_131207.jpg
 

Chris Bardon

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Next big print was a request from my son. He's obsessed with Zelda, so I offered to make him something for his room. I thought he'd want the master sword that I found on thingiverse, but no, he wanted a Fierce Deity Sword, which is much more complicated. There were no good models online, but fortunately my wife is very good at solidworks, so she created the model, and I printed and finished it. Here's a WIP shot:

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The individual parts are held together with pegs, and gaps are filled in with wood filler. After a whole lot of filling, sanding, and painting, it turned out like this:

20210329_085135.jpg

I used the laser engraver on the plaque, and the mask I just printed and painted. Turned out pretty well, and the thing is about 4 ft long, so a nice room decoration. Probably not great in a fight though.
 
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Chris Bardon

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A couple other projects. Someone was asking about this one in the other thread. That's a PLA print with no post-processing. It's actually 3 pieces though. The base + "pinball" is one piece (with a color change at layer), the "Stern" is one piece (with a black layer at the bottom to keep the alignment), and the ball is one piece printed in silk silver. Really, this was a test to try out making the model in Fusion360 from a png trace, and to test out the new functionality to color change that got added to the SM firmware:

20210513_211648.jpg

This one I made with the laser/CNC (CNC the outline, laser the pattern). Bought the light base on Amazon. Looks like you could do something similar to the laseriffic toppers, but only 320x320 mm at a time:

20210524_080812.jpg
 

Chris Bardon

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Last ones for today, but since Mike mentioned masks, I printed this for my daughter's halloween costume. She wanted to go as Thor, and she liked the Ragnarok helmet, so we made this:

20211004_143830.jpg

Fortunately, I could do it in 3 pieces instead of the 16 or so the original uploader used, but it was pretty much the full extent of the build plate:

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Main helmet was 175 hours straight of print time :)

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I saw this design while I was looking for a matching Loki helmet, and thought it would make a better game room clock than the old one I had:

20211019_205631.jpg
 

roar

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That Thor Helmet and clock are amazing @Chris Bardon! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the post @mwong168. I bought the same printer as you on your recommendation and still haven't done a print on it yet... too many other projects literally sitting in front of the printer! I've got to get going on it at some point.
 

Corrie

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A couple other projects. Someone was asking about this one in the other thread. That's a PLA print with no post-processing. It's actually 3 pieces though. The base + "pinball" is one piece (with a color change at layer), the "Stern" is one piece (with a black layer at the bottom to keep the alignment), and the ball is one piece printed in silk silver. Really, this was a test to try out making the model in Fusion360 from a png trace, and to test out the new functionality to color change that got added to the SM firmware:

View attachment 20746

This one I made with the laser/CNC (CNC the outline, laser the pattern). Bought the light base on Amazon. Looks like you could do something similar to the laseriffic toppers, but only 320x320 mm at a time:

View attachment 20747
Wow that looks great for being standard FDM printing. I'm a big fan of color change prints, here are my thingiverse designs where I've done a bunch of art using that technique.


I've got a Prusa i3 which is awesome but it's been a while since I've done any maintenance on it. I think I need to give it an overhaul, new nozzle, full cleaning and tighten belts etc. I'm really tempted to get an SLA printer but dealing with resin sounds like a huge pain
 

4eyes

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Dec 21, 2012
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Some mods for My Alien , Elvira and some Bally Williams logos
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Corrie

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Here's my latest design

 

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