Print Complete Mendel Plate

I can't seem to find any information on settings/material to use in order to print a complete plate of parts without warping. I assume you would have to print the parts in PLA? Can someone help me with what is needed to print a full bed of parts.

Basically, I want to optimize my printer's productivity for printing parts. Thank you for any help you are willing to give!

It's likely you've already found the information you need. Calibration. Testing. Repeat. The tough part for me, anyway, was coming to accept that what I'd done thus far wasn't good enough. So my advice is to be exceptionally critical--overzealoulsy negative--about the quality of your prints. Go all Tiger Mother on them. They can be better. And don't forget, you're having fun.

It took me a while to get my printer to a place where it could finish a full plate successfully with ABS. A lot of things I wouldn't have suspected mattered turned out to matter a great deal. (Coincidental timing: [plus.google.com])

First off, if your prints are lifting from the bed, something is wrong and you need to fix it. It's hard to be too harsh on yourself (and others ) when it comes to bed leveling, bed cleaning, or your initial z-height. If you can't get a hard-core bed-leveling calibration print to work, you won't have a chance against warping. [www.thingiverse.com] Make it happen. This was by far the hardest part, especially with a PLA extruder block to start (it deforms during the print!) and plywood and springs as was suggested by the iteration 2 prusa wiki at the time I built.

A key calibration step I overlooked was my firmware's e-steps. I saw reasonably good easy prints, and assumed I was good for every print. (Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!) I was extruding just a bit too much plastic, and during perimeters and infill it wouldn't really matter. But the entropy I was introducing compounds exponentially. Come bridging time, I'd wind up with filament drooping into open space, or worse, piling up on the side of the bridge. These "side piles" became a place where the print head could catch the print and jar it loose from the bed. (Because the bed wasn't level or clean enough, you see. It never is.)

These plates also took long enough to print that it became probable that one of any number of low probability events would occur during. The USB cable would collect interference and the print would freeze (solution: shorter cable and ferrite choke); backwound filament would restrict feeding (solution, an additional set of ball-bearing rollers for a different spool size); overheated or underpowered pololus would lose steps (use a fan and/or adjust trimpots); wires to the bed thermistor would break from repeated y-axis movement (solution, don't be a lazy idiot and tape them down); extruder thermistor pops out of the nozzle and I melt the PEEK barrel; etc. While solving all these problems, I missed that software updates solved some others. Things just keep getting better.

I jumped quickly from "I printed a calibration cube that my wife says looks great!" to "I'm going to print a whole new printer!" I encourage that. But for me, there was a several month journey from one to the other, and failed prints that overflow a box that once held 12 beer bottles.

Good luck!

Thank you for the very comprehensive answer! So you say it is able to print a complete bed of ABS without layers peeling apart and you're able to get nice looking parts?

Could you possibly send a screenshot or something with some of your settings that allow this?

AJdoodler Wrote:
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> Could you possibly send a screenshot or something
> with some of your settings that allow this?

Yep, I've got my first plate of prints I wouldn't mind having sold to me, if I needed them. It was a lot of work to get there.

I've only got one printer, but I feel confident in the assertion that everyone's RepRap is different. So, my settings won't do you much good, and the other answers you seek are among these pages. If you're looking for an easy answer, know that I don't have such a thing for you.

But if you insist, the most important setting is the one in your head willing to accept something as "good enough." Switch that to "off."

Here are some less existential tips.

Clean your bed with alcohol and then acetone just before the print.
Level your bed.
Futz with your printing temperatures. I use Octave ABS, usually, and the temps I use vary greatly among colors. Green works well for me at 218, for instance, while Glow requires 237.
Calibrate your esteps.
Use your maximum layer height (roughly .8 times nozzle diameter). It will make the print proceed more quickly, which reduces likelihood of problems.
Read. Read. Read. Apply.

Thank you, I will try to implement some of these setting to start and see how it goes. I am having a difficult time leveling my solidoodle bed with only 3 screws for adjustment but that's a whole other problem.