Just make sure you’ve got good gloves/respiration and ventilation if you go MEK, as far as I recall it’s not nearly as aggressive with petg like acetone and abs so going to take some time. The solvent method is by far the one I use the most often, I wet a rag or paper towel and take my time. I recall vapour smoothing being a thing too but that’s going to need setup and the like.
I can’t comment on the other ones unfortunately, but there are a ton of mods available for Vorons that are still coming out. They’re solid platforms and great if you’re someone who likes to tinker, imo they’re also super solid as “just print” device. I’ve got mine with canbus and built a filament changer, but there’s tool changer mods I’ve seen as well.
If you do go for a voron, I’d suggest a trident. I have a 2.4 but I recently built a fixed gantry printer like how the trident is setup, it’s a lot easier to work with.
Yeah there’s absolutely a rating to look for and N95 is part of that, stateside, you have niosh ratings, you’ll see these wrt industrial ppe, but there are ratings for use with CN and CS gas. My experience with them is the chemical cartridges usually have a p100 filter combined with them for particulate too. Organic Vapour & Acids are easy to get a hold of (Used these when i worked in O&G), I don’t know how well they’d work against teargas unfortunately.
I will 100% recommend north full face, a half mask is probably better than nothing but the full face gives you eye protection too. I didn’t personally like the 3m style masks, but it’s all down to personal preference, just make sure it fits correctly.
Swap nozzles? I’ve had issues in the past with partial clogs with petg in particular, at the least it’ll remove a variable from your troubleshooting. Also echo what others have suggested and check out your filament path, make sure there’s not somewhere else causing an issue. I feel like dusty filament could potentially contribute to clogs, if you’re concerned with that there’s designs out there for in line wipers that pass the filament through some soft sponge.
Do you have any resistance feeding the filament? I’ve had a few cases where either the filament kinda tangled due to slack and would still be able to feed but needed more force, bad enough it can actually wear the filament in the extruder and won’t advance anymore. Extra friction from tight tubing, small radius bends, cardboard spools etc. can do that too. Check your settings for the tension spring as well, too tight can totally cause issues that will look like this and make you chase ghosts.
I run a fan like this one on mine (9.9 cfm/0.277 m3/min), the ones that push more air get loud quick just as a heads up, this one I was also looking at, is 12.2 cfm/0.342 m3/min but is 39 vs 31.4 dB, I did a bunch of fan upgrades last year for both better performance and less fan noise, these will be noticeable. Don’t get heat blockages but do have some oozing I really need to get around to tuning.
The only times I’ve had that happen was when the sheet wasn’t clean enough (which yours definitely is if you’ve scrubbed it with dishsoap), bed temps too low or first layer being too close to the bed (though the textured sheet wants more squish)
The satin sheet is imo their best sheet, buildtak does some great surfaces in that size (pei sheet is great for even abs, their new surfaces are great too). I moved to using fr4/garolite sheets (I use this on my former mk3s, have a larger one for my voron too), not really found I needed adhesive for petg or pla on that.
Definitely cemented my thoughts about recommending a trident over a v2 though, I like the flying gantry (if only for the cool factor) but the fixed gantry and moving z of something like the trident is just far easier to work with imo.
For real, I already was calling it the mk3 of Theseus long before this, changed a lot of parts. Was trying to do somethings to pay homage to it though, colour choices for sure, big reason I wanted the middle frame from the original mk3s to be the front of the door, the mod I mostly used made it the front of the frame and I liked the look.
Have enough left over that I could mostly redo a bear mod mk3s, which I may totally do and give to my dad who’s been wanting to look at printing.
Mine live in my garage year round, I have a space heater for print days which has worked into into the -20c, lucky of I hit 5c ambient but enclosed printer helps. Have had no issues with the setup for years, it’s super dry in the winter so never had any issue with condensation, maybe a different story if I brought it in, but still idk if I’d be worried, you could use some dielectric grease if you’re really concerned but I personally think it’s overkill.
Cold enough things get brittle, but I wouldn’t be concerned for storage.
Bambu has what looks like a pinout in their troubleshooting docs. From your picture, that looks like a molex microfit connector to me so you could try making one if you’re comfortable doing so, good to have around imo regardless.
Other option there is to wait, confirm and document its pinout and then you have it if you ever need to repair that cable in the future.
PETG is supposed to be petrochemical tolerant AFAIK, it is far easier to print and isn’t as bad wrt Air Quality (Most filaments aren’t the best to be around, PLA and PETG are nicer relative to others, ABS is nasty, nylon is really nasty, lots of fine particles and stuff if I recall, I have recirc filters on my printers and they live outside of the house)
That said, with an enclosure, a proper surface and bone dry filament, I found it to be a really nice filament to work with if you prep for it. It does have more shrinkage than ABS, I redid a lot of my hotend in PA6, was very tight in some places and a bit of a hassle to reassemble the first time, otherwise I really like it. I have an in country vendor that I usually source from, but the Glass Fibre PA6 that polymaker makes is REALLY nice to work with, found it has substantially lower warping than standard PA6, there’s also low warp varieties you can look at.
I use a Nylon Surface from a company called BuildTak, I hate to recommend brands but seriously, their surfaces are crazy good for adhesion, maintenance is a quick wipe with alcohol and that’s it. They’re also replaceable, peel off the steel backer and reapply.
I’ve seen mention garolite sheets as a fantastic surface for nylon (I think the BuildTak surface I use is a garolite sheet with their adhesive treatment, when I replaced it last time it’s definitely some sort of fibreglass laminate so wouldn’t surprise me). They’re relatively inexpensive, a ~1.6 mm thick ~305x305mm sheet 1/16" 12"x12" is $14.50 usd on McMaster-Carr, but there’s definitely 3d printing specific sheets out there.
There’s the tried and true glue stick treatment, when I had a glass bed like a decade ago it was the only thing that consistently worked, I tried PA tape and masking tape, glue stick just works and makes it release easier, apply carefully and let it bake, if you’re not even it’ll lead to some ugly bottom surfaces, but I can live with that for functional items.
I found Nylon doesn’t like to be “squished” as much as other filaments, I have my klipper setup with a slightly higher offset on my nylon sheet because of that.
If you do go Nylon, use an Enclosure period. You need heat to help with warping and you ABSOLUTELY don’t want to be breathing it in, it doesn’t smell but gives off a lot of microparticles. As I said above, I have recirculating charcoal+hepa filters on my printers. I’d highly recommend you don’t print in your living space if at all possible. I ran my bed at 100c last time, 100-110c is pretty common, I’d give it a nice long heatsoak, I tend to do at least an hour for larger prints in materials that warp.
Venting the enclosure loses you heat but actually solid for voc and particle control, don’t need to worry about that if it’s not there to worry about. Ideally I’d vent mine outside but I rent and I don’t think the landlord would be fond of me knocking holes in the wall. Getting it out of the house and having recirc filters is the next best thing I can do.
Honestly, I don’t find nylon that fussy, like anything, prepare for it and you’re good. I recommend at least having a desiccant filled drybox though, they’re easy to print or make and silica gel is cheap and reusable.
I haven’t looked at Nix in detail but you got me interested for 3d printers in particular, already have my klipper config in git if an SD card fails on me, going to have to look at doing that for the os too.