@Trish I've ordered the 12V 40W heater cartridge you recommended (spool3d.ca/e3d-ceramic-cartridge-heater). I figure there's a chance I may get it before the end of the week and, if it holds out as long as the others, I should manage to finish a few small prints in time as gifts. Hopefully it doesn't get fried though!

@dugost and if it doesn't get fried, you are good with it. A 40W heater has... what did I say... something around 3 to 4 ohms?

@Greenonline Indeed a long thread, maybe an idea to do these in a separate room? @Trish

@Greenonline Please look into 3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/7676/… Iwas in the middle of writing an answer when the OP deleted the question, I think this is a valid question.

@0scar we have 2 votes to reopen... the question is good XD

@0scar Yeah, @Trish, that is a good point. I guess when I helped you with the Arduino compile issue (I forget exactly what it was now) that we should have done it in a separate room too. I'm not sure if I can move it now

@0scar Done

@Trish You could also invite or ping people into the room, like you did with me 11 messages previously. I think that an upside of putting these in separate rooms is that then it is self contained and won't get lost in a myriad of our random chat messages that fill this room.

@Trish We had been talking about the resistance between around 5 Ohms. When my new one arrives I'll likely separate the old cartridges from their wires to better test the resistance of all 3. I'm curious to know if they're actually fried or if I was doing a crappy job measuring them in such a finnicky spot.

@dugost 5 ohms is what you expect for a 30W heater cartridge on a 12V machine. a 40W heater cartridge is a little lower

e3D Heater Cartridges are documented to be around 4.8Ω for 12V & 30W, 3.6Ω for 12V & 40W, 19.2Ω for 24V 30W and 14.4Ω for 24V 40W.

You will see more a 4 Ohms reading on your 40W cartridge.

(or, 0.4 on the track, as there is a x10 factor)

@Trish Oh ok, that's great. Thanks for that. I'll do the measurements when the new heater arrives. :)

@dugost So, we found our error in step 2.2 of the guide to troubleshoot Thermal Runaway XD 3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/7616/8884

We have still no clue why your printer "ate" 3 cartridges in 3 months, but my best guess is something is amiss with the printer that makes them burn through or break the leads... have you been able to measure if both leads are ok?

eh, wait a sec, we might need a room XD

@dugost chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/87191/…

@Trish You may always nudge me if you need help, if I'm there it is not a problem to help out!

@0scar I lack knowledge on how the printer might have eaten the cartridges, but fact is it did... either bad lots of cartridges... or... wrong settings on the Firmware?!

but that belongs to the other room.

@Trish Thanks, I'll pop into the other room to discuss.

@Trish Is it only me, or does your winter hat make your avatar look a little bit like Cartman (from South Park), wearing a boat captain's outfit (i.e. a captain's hat)? Weird...

@Trish Yeah I asked the OP why he closed it in an other question he raised... I was in the middle of an answer when he closed it so I could not post it....

@Greenonline About this answer you undeleted earlier (about printing colours onto a object), I guess the author deleted it because it's blatantly wrong.

@0scar I hope you saved your draft

@DanHulme well, we have a newer printer gen by now.... might be worth a new answer

@Trish Yes in Notepad++ @ work laptop :)

@DanHulme At work we once had a print made where colors where embedded into the print (this was sintering of inkjet colored plaster or something, was a while back, can't remember exactly) Could thing is that the colors represented the stresses in the product under load.

Could it have been a polyjet printer? Someone posted an example of that on Reddit recently: reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/a6szai/…

I mean, I would say just print the part on a polyjet printer. You're not likely to have direct access to one as a home or small office user, but a lot of printing services offer them now

either that or UV unwrap the part, make a UV-mapped texture, and just print the texture onto a decal sheet. It'll be a bugger to apply accurately but it might be good enough

The question needs more detail really. Is it a repeating texture? Does the 300 dpi need to be absolute (i.e. the detail needs precise placement on the part) or relative (it's a high-detail pattern or text but it can afford to move around a bit)? But as an old question I don't think it'll be updated.

@DanHulme It might be wrong, inasmuch that it is not available now, however i'm not sure about blatantly as the poster states (in the added info from the comment) that they actually saw this technology somewhere. Either they are mistaken, or they actually saw it in a demo, prototype or something like that. I guess that a request for clarification would be in order. It was a year ago and so maybe the tech is more developed now. I dunno... :-{ mistaken

The question was a poor quality question, that is true, but if the answer was an accurate portrayal of a demoed technology, then it sounds interesting... or does it? What do you think? I'm not sure what to make of it.

Diesel is a reliable poster

@Greenonline It's interesting, but "I saw some R&D tech demoed" is not actually helpful for solving the OP's problem.