The last day of 2020 is upon us! Phew, this was a very strange year. The Corona
virus has changed a lot of things for us. We are working from home a lot more
than before. That in itself it not so very important, but more importantly the
general feeling that people have about working from home has changed: Most
people now think working from home is totally OK and acceptable. This was not
the case before. People were of the opinion that work should be done at the
place of work itself. Maybe that is a positive point we got from a year that for
all intents and purposes can be seen as mostly a lost year.
I have some time off now from work and that has given me the time to finally do
some hobby activities. I therefore dusted off my 3D printer (a simple and cheap
Creality Ender 2) and tried to get ahead of some of the problems that I had with
it. My prints were hard to start and also were continuously warping at the left-
most edge. Afer experimentation (and scouring the Internet for knowledge) I
finally found that my heated bed was set at a far too low temperature. It was
running at 45 degrees Centigrade and that was simply too cold. The PLA would
set far too quickly, putting too much stress into the model. Now I have upped
the temperature to a whopping 70 degrees Centigrade, and my prints start better,
stick better to the borosilicate glass plate that I use and generally print
better as well. The warping, I learned, came from drafts in the house (when
someone came in through the door or something like that), so I put the whole
thing into a big cardbox box as a test, and voila! No warping!. So now I will
have to build myself a cabinet for the printer ;-)
I see a lot of people use IKEA Lack tables to build these enclosures, and I
think that is a neat (and cheap) idea that I will probably follow. If only I
could get my hands on some polycarbonate glass here and now, with all the stores
closed...
Well, we will see. I wish you all a very happy new year, and may 2021 be better
than 2020! (Not that that will take much ;-)
