Reprap to the rescue: Fixed my daughter's favourite toy

Original Broken & Newly 3d printed lever

My oldest daughter's favorite toy is the Fisher Price Sink Set (1982). It's a toy that my wife used to play with when she was a toddler so it's quite old (no darling you're not old!) but still in good shape. Recently my daughter was upset because water stopped coming out when she pushed the lever. I opened up the set and noticed a broken lever that pushes a rubber pump.

 So let's fire up Sketchup and get the calipers ready and start drawing! Then generated an STL file (you need a plugin to generate STL files in Sketchup) and sent it to the Prusa I3 reprap.

I know one little person who will be very happy when she wakes up in the morning...

Let me know if you need the STL files. I printed in ABS with layer height @ 200µm and Slic3r Honeycomb infill @ 80% with a tiny bit of Brim (2mm)

Backup - Marlin Configuration.h & Slic3r Settings

I've spent days configuring and calibrating the printer to print with ABS and I'm very happy with the print quality. I have a spool with Blue PLA lying around that I want to try next. For that I'm going to install the Panelolu2 display and I need to make changes to my Marlin firmware. As I don't want to mess up anything i'm going to take a backup of my Marlin firmware and Slic3r configuration and share it here with you.

Marlin Configuration.h

for a Prusa i3 (without Panelolu2 upgrade)

Slic3er settings for ABS

I'm only listing the relevant settings that are not 'defaults' in Slic3r. To access all these settings you need to switch from Simple to Expert mode in your Slic3r preferences.

Print Settings

• Layers & Perimeters
• Layer Height: 2mm
• Perimeters: 3
• Speed
• Bridges: 30 mm/s

Filament Settings

• Diameter: 3mm
• Extrusion multiplier: 1
• Temperature:
• Extruder
• First Layer: 245°C
• Other Layers: 240°C
• Bed:
• First Layer: 110°C
• Other Layers: 100°C

That is all!

Dr Who - War Doctor - 3dhubs.com

My first print for 3dhubs.com arrived via my 3D-Hub. It's a Dr Who character, the War Doctor.
This was my first print with Support Material generated in Slic3r, it works way better as I expected. You have to remove the support material afterwards and it may leave some scars behind.

The War Doctor on Thingiverse: the Remixed version works fine, the original isn't printable due to lots of errors in the meshes.

A time lapse video of 3d printing the War Doctor including support material - Print time was 6,5 hours

A more complex calibration object...

Object STL: 5mm Calibration Cube Steps by MCroucher on Thingiverse
Material: 3mm ABS (Velleman from reprapuniverse.com)
Hotend: 245°C 1st layer, then 240°C
Heatbed: 115°C 1st layer, then 110°C
Heatbed adhesion: 3 layers of Fructis Bamboo Extract Hairspray, extra hold nr 6
Layer height: 0,2mm
Nozzle: 0,4mm
Gcode generated with Slic3r
Object printed with Pronterface

Issues

• the 10mm bridge is not that clean, the 5mm bridge is perfect though
• object is warping after some layers, need to find out why (more adhesion needed?, heatbed temp too high?, etc?)
• corners for short edges are more rounded off than corners for long edges (top 5 mm)

Good stuff

• Extrusion calibration is near perfect
• X, Y & Z-axis calibration is near perfect (calipers confirm!)

Maybe try PLA next?

First print

To test the mechanics, the electronics and my Marlin firmware configuration I decided to print my first STL file and see what happens...

• Material: ABS
• Hotend: 230°C
• Heatbed: off (still one problem here!)
• STL Slicer: Slic3r
• Pinter Controller: Pronterface
• Object: Calibration cube from Thingiverse

I now printed 3 callibration cubes that look good but make me aware that my stepper configuration (steps per mm) is not good yet.