28th February 2018
In the last few years flexible filaments have become widely available to the 3D printing community. These filaments open up a huge number of design options, and present us with a completely new set of material properties to help us with our printing. Some uses…
17th November 2017
At the CBI annual conference Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn were telling us about the perils of Brexit and how they were the best thing for the UK economy, but a more interesting activity was happening at the back of the hall: a line of…
27th September 2017
At monkeypuzzle.co.uk we believe in visiting our 3D printing suppliers wherever they are – whether it’s Holland, Spain, Germany or China. A few days ago we met up with two filament suppliers in China and we had detailed discussions with the factory managers and…
18th July 2017
Ever since we got into 3d Printing we’ve been a bit frustrated by the tendency of filament to absorb humidity and go bad. Try leaving some PLA out for a few days and you’ll see what we mean: blobbing, stringing, and frequent jams will be…
15th May 2017
Some of the best uses for 3d printing are the simplest. My favourite sunglasses were gripping my head a little too tightly, giving me a headache. So I sanded off some material around the hinges, to make the arms open wider, but oops! I took…
14th April 2017
It’s very frustrating to set your 3d printer doing a big print, and return many hours later to find it jammed. Spot the line tangle We find that the most common cause of jams is a line tangle. This is where the filament is caught…
13th April 2017
3D printer shops are few and far between, which may be because most people buy their 3D printers online. Whilst you can go to a chain like Maplins most people prefer to speak to specialists, so that they can see the printer in action and…
4th April 2017
The nightmare started. I flushed the loo and nothing happened. Tried pumping the handle and still nothing. I opened up the cistern and found the lever between the handle and the tank had broken. It was ten at night so no way I could buy…
4th April 2017
We’ve read that popping PLA prints in the oven for 15 minutes at 100°C will make them stronger. This process is properly called “annealing”. But does it work for PLA? And how much extra strength does it give? We decided to find out. My intuition…