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This part attaches a Raspberry Pi in a slightly stupid case I have to an external hard disk. There wasn't really a way to print it without at least some kind of support material...except leaning back at a 45 degree angle. This printed entirely without supports.
How/why are you printing on a goddammn mirror?
Is that a thing? Is it normal? I never saw it before...
I built this printer around 11 years ago, it's a Folger 2020 i3, the company folded years ago. This is back before flexible PEI coated steel build plates were common; the bed assembly is a simple aluminum plate with a PCB heater suspended above it at the four corners by spring-loaded screws, and then the glass is binder clipped onto that. Glass was pretty much the meta for 3D printer build plates at the time because it's a perfectly flat material that's cheap and easy to source. The choice of a mirror over clear glass was mostly an aesthetic choice, though sometimes it can make it easier to manually level the bed, it makes it easier to see the gap between the nozzle and the bed.
This machine is pretty legacy by now and it's starting to show some signs of wear but it does still work.
Thanks for the patient reply. The history of printers is super intriguing.
Folger
I know, right?
Old geezers unite
I've got a Prusa Mk4S on its way; I won't be in the geezers club much longer.
I've got newer printers as well, but I just can't get rid of the old girl
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my old one...I think there may be an update in the future for the Prusa to the MMU, and I might keep my old Folger around for TPU parts and other things. Don't know where I'll put the old machine, is the main thing.
I know I'm not going to run the old one anymore, it's more hassle than it's worth, and it's slow. But I'd like to keep it.
It's kind of normal. Printing on a glass is normal, some people pick a mirror because it conducts heat slightly better.
No they don't, they pick mirrors because they're guaranteed to be flat at a low price.
Glass is guaranteed to be flat. The thicker the flatter, and mirrors tend to be thin.
Glass is absolutely not guaranteed to be flat or without defect. Some glasses are. Mirrors have to be or they don't work, they come precut in 300x300mm plates for cheap from IKEA. You're free to check absolutely any thread from the time to see what people's motivations were. Moving mass on a bedslinger would've been a bigger consideration.
It used to be normal to print on glass/mirror beds...it hasn't really been a thing on printers for some years now since spring steel PEI sheets became the standard even for the cheapest entry level printers. So my guess is this is either a fairly old printer or a homemade budget-printer.
It is in fact a fairly old, homemade budget printer.
There any good software that helps automatically select the best edge to use a print base that looks at minimizing supports as a key variable?
not that I'm aware of; I designed the part with this shenanigan in mind and used PrusaSlicer.
There is a plugin in the cura market place that tries to do this. Not sure how good it is