3D printing Widgets

I have spent this morning trying to edit the Spindel STL file without success.
Whenever I used "Shape from Mesh" I just got a message "Not Responding".
After watching several videos I eventually found a Forum which said that large mesh sizes can freeze this tool. The Spindel STL has 819708 faces.
I tried it on my simple Soft Jaw STL & it worked no problem.

Any suggestions?

I believe 3D parts are difficult to drill as they tend to melt & bind the drill.
 

The not responding could just be the OS has limited patience but the application had not actually crashed.  It might be that if you went off and had a cup of something that it would have worked through its maths and allow you to proceed.

Certainly if you do a high speed drilling then the melting will likely happen.  If you slow the drill down as much as possible the friction heat might not build up so much.  And perhaps start with a smaller bit and then work up.  Try it on one of your 40mm test cubes. Perhaps short fast or putting the bit in the freezer might be wild tries....
 

It is a thermoplastic!
Treat it like perspex - VERY slow rpm's and almost no pressure on the bit.
Drill a little amount, then bacl off, to let it cool  then drill a little bit - etc.

MagPi recently asked about importing STL files into FreeCAD. Although I think he has now worked this out he did ask for a link to a further description.

The link to the YouTube video (it was about generating ribs matching the shape of an imported STL defined wing).  At 1m 24s into the video is where I start the import and conversion process to get the STL into a form that can be acted on with other FreeCad defined objects.



The video discussing how to edit an STL (which I did for Tony) can be found at:



 

Reply to Eric
You'll have seen the part, even putting it in a proper vice it would be a problem holding it.
I would have to book into A&E before I tried holding it by hand.

Reply to JiS
I'll start it off now & come back at bedtime.

Just checked it after 4 hrs, still not responding.

Not responding?
I can only assume you have forgotten to click "OK" on something.
Been there done that!


 

No it was after I pressed OK that it started Not Responding

forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=83442

forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=48176
 

Four hours of not responding kind of says it choked on the beastie.  Certainly a whopping number of faces in it. There are tools for STL files that can simplify them or lower their resolution. That might be a way forward - at the cost of opening up potentially more complexity.  It's been a while but I used something called MeshMixer to do this. Free and runs on quite a few different operating systems.  There are various options to specify how much simplification you want.  I would suggest you save variants at different levels of simplification (overly course and the threads might not work). 

I downloaded Blender yesterday but when I ran it I realised it would take several days to get into it so I've abandoned the Spindel for now. The repaired one works, I can print another one if neccessary.

I tried to print the Sleeve with the elliptical holes yesterday & ran into a problem. As the printer tried to print over the top of the ellipses the X & the Y axes jumped nulls & started to print the next layer offset. It had happened once when I was printing one of the nose pieces. I'm not sure how it happened, its as if the toothed belt had jumped teeth or the stepper motor had come out of sync.
So I'm printing the Sleeve now without any cut-outs.

I got two sample rolls of filament with the Malyan printers, (remember I returned the first one after it threw a wobbler printing the Sleeve with rectangular cut-outs) and had had trouble getting them to load & then adhere to the table so I thought I would use them up making the sleeve.
I got the yellow to load & extrude but it refused to stick to the plate so I had to keep cancelling, clear the birds nest & restart.
I have bought some more Geetech filament from the same supplier as the first & loaded the yellow of that. After a couple of false starts it got the Brim down & is now well away over 10mm.
The sample is a darker colour so looks thicker but measures the same which wouldn't matter once it was extruded.

Sometimes 'jumps' happen if the prior line of filament had a defect that protruded into the next layer to be printed. The print head crashes into that blob and it does not completely recover and looses track of where it is.  I sometimes had that on the first layer when the bed temperature and filament temperature was a bit cool and thus when down roughly.  I found that if I bumped the temperature up by 1-2 degrees the print went more smoothly and I didn't get offsets happening. 

Suggestion - try tweaking the temps a bit upwards - might improve both 'stiction' as well as reduce blobs that catch the extruder.

And the belts might need a bit more tension - some brands publish a sound frequency range that the belt is supposed to make if you ping it. 

Stewart, from what I've read I have a feeling you haven't leveled the bed according to the instructions using a sheet of paper and pushing the bed into different directions, correct me if I'm wrong.
In an earlier post you mentioned fringes for position control. Moving the axis around using a stepper motor relies on the fact that there will be no stiff points or hard obstructions, if a step is lost for whatever reason the printer doesn't know and carries on issuing strings of pulses on the assumption that the bed is in the right place.
I always retract the filament and Z axis on layer change, l find I still have a usable part if the base pulls away from the bed a little. I find that .25mm layer and .4 wall thickness works for 99.9999% of all prints.

I checked the clearance when I first got the machine & also the pattern on the initial layer, it seemed OK & have checked it regularly since. Sometimes it needs adjusting & I check it near each of the four corners.
I am not confident in the stability of the adjusters, the screws are only a few threads into the nuts on the bed, I haven't been able to get any replacements locally. I also wonder about the repeatability of the Z-axis home switch.

I believe that the problem is getting the intial contact to get the material to stick. I have got the bed set to 60 & the initial layer to 205 with normal temperature at 200.
Once the printer has laid the initial brim & layer it usually continues smoothly after that. The two occasions when it didn't was when it was crossing a gap so there was probably a protrusion which upset it. It finished the sleeve this morning with no problems at all.

There is no provision for adjusting the belts, there is a spring tensioner hanging on the belt like a clothes peg.

I will look at the retraction but there doesn't seem to be a problem at layer changes.

Yes, I would be surprised if the switch repeated to within a few 10ths. I used to check the level at the start of every single print, I eventually fitted an Inductive sensor connected across the removed Z axis micro switch wires which solved my repeatability problem.