I have never used a 3d printer. But have done a little research.
Be great if someone could confirm my intention is sane.
I have loads of Linux experience so my plans relate to open source all the way.
First off I am brassic(poor). So looking cheap all the way. My brother and I have a tiny narrowboat we are refitting. And plan to use the printer for stuff within the boat.
Due to this printing PA6 to go in the bilge is important. (Diesel and water bad for most other plastics)
As we are both vision impaired and old. The idea is most of the electrical mountings etc will be self designed and painted to make future access quick and easy with our rapidly worsening vision.
So my plan. I am looking at a elegoo Neptune 4 pro.
Because it is cheap but great value. Uses kipper. And seems easy to modify as I grow in use. Also supports temps needed for PA6 etc.
But I will need an enclosure to work with PA 6 and a dryer.
Dryer is cheap not an issue.
But I’m thinking of a tent enclosure. Some good well insulated ones on amazon for £50 with hose to vent out smells.
Will one of these tents be suitable for keeping temperature stable while printing PA6. And can anyone offer other advice for cheap solutions to make this easy.
On a related novice front.
Gue to the vision. One of the projects is to print mounting boards for din rail fuses etc. The idea being to mix colours.
Ie flat surface faces from and back in white. The the inner support fram in a bright colour. This will mean holes to support thumb screws etc for easy low vision future maintainance. IE easy to find the pre set screw holes.
This plan means I can swap colours when printing layers so should be easy without over (for me) briced multi head printer.
But can anyone share experience with doing this with nylon. IE how dose delays in printing the layers while swapping filament t effect the linking of those layers.
As I say complete novice o the actual doing this so any advice will be helpful.
Polyamide is a huge pain to work with. It absorbs water like hell, warps, needs high temperatures, and post-processing is hard.
Did you consider using PETG/ PCTG? They are also very strong, don’t absorb water nearly as much, are easy to print and are UV resistant.
Do you already have experience with CAD modeling? Most programs are Windows only, and the only “good” software I found is Onshape, which isn’t FOSS.
As for cad. I have lots of experience with blender. While it is not designed for true cad. It is very capable of the levels I need.
Also, FreeCAD has grown hugely since I last looked into it. So way more practical to use if I get into anything more complex.
PA6 nylon is the best for strength and chemical resistance. As some parts need to survive in bilge water for a decade or so. Diesel oil will rut them. Nylon plastics are best for this and heat resistance from hot engine. As parts will be used their as well.
Yeah I know it is one of the hardest to work with. Hence the tent and dryer comment.
Would be fantastic if someone with experience in it can tell me if the tent solution is good enough.
Worst comes to worst all have to build a frame enclosure, and it is only a few parts where nylon is required. So I can learn.
The fact that the neptune is able to print at the temps needed is one of the reasons I am considering it.
Make sure your parts are strong enough for the intended use-case. I don’t have any experience with that kind of material. I print PLA and PETG. But with functional prints, I had mixed results. It’s just plastics. And if your parts have fine details, they just break off when put under tension. Regular vibration leads to fatigue of material. And they also don’t handle high temperature or UV light very well. All of my parts that I had in the car during summer, warped. Your mileage may vary with PA6 but don’t expect fine details in plastics to be as durable as wood or metal brackets. For at home it’s mostly alright in my experience, for a boat… I don’t know.
And there’s the design part. I don’t know if it’s obvious to a beginner that CAD design needs some practice and lots of time. You can try designing some custom parts before buying a printer. See if you’re comfortavle doing that.
Nods nylon pA6 is much more heat resistant hence the choice.
But the main reason is the bilge will get engine oil and diesel in it. These destroy other plastics over time. Abs and nylon or peek etc are the only long term options.
Nylon is also stronger for mechanical parts IE small gears etc. While I can see me playing with that. It is not my main intent. Clips and specified mounting boards and frames is the main task.
Your plan seems sane to me. I think you’ve done all the research you need to do based on the OP. I hope it works out for you and your brother.
Just as an aside, TPU will hold up outside and in wet conditions very well. If you want it to be less flexible, then you need only to print your parts with more outer walls / maybe more infill. 95A hardness TPU isn’t too expensive nor soft. I wouldn’t recommend engine parts being made from it, but parts printed in TPU will float pretty easily. I’m sure on a boat that can be handy.
Def usefull info i did not know about. Nothing I had in mind parts wise. But may well allow me to thinkmof many more usefull adaptions now I know.
Thinks I’ll do a little researchninto TPU. I have time before I can afford the printer so am able to learn more.
