Hello all,
I am new here and wanted to introduce myself and ask some questions.
My name is Scot and I built a wood frame Prusa about 10 years ago. I struggled to find metric parts( I live in USA ), and did not really have the money needed to do a good job. I did succeed in making a printer and even printed another one for a Linux User Group.
I became disappointed with print quality and I struggled with making my hotends with wire and kapton tape( they only last for a while ). Before I put it away for the time, I bought an E3D hotend and printed a wedge to hold it on to the Wade Extruder.
That is how it has been since then. I would really like to get back into it, so I have been printing and buying some parts( metric is easier to find ).
I have been searching for what has happened in the past few years to see what I should upgrade to. I really am not impressed. Yes, it is faster and prettier and cooler and runs on new hardware with cool extrusion and in reality it has improved.
I am more interested in the concepts of keeping it simple. Do one thing. Less is more.
So my questions,
I was looking at RAMPS with a due, but it seems that the development happened and disappeared. I cannot seem to find any shields for anything other than the Mega(RAMPS). It seems like a few were made, but the move has been to integration on one board. This is where I like the shield thing, it still works, seems Ramps is still the same as when I got it years ago. Though it is not a kit anymore.
So is there anything in that direction to look at?
I have a wood frame prusa, but it is not sturdy or stable. My printer needs to be leveled before every print, not that hard, but still the heat changes it.
So is there just a consensus to move to extruded aluminum?
Finally, maybe, the extruder. I have a greg wade. It did not work well. If I would have built is with the correct parts and not hobbled it together with both metric and sae parts, it would probably worked better. I am printing the parts for a bondtech prusa extruder. The dual gears seem like a great idea.
So is this the way forward?
Oh, I noticed the EVA standard for print heads from Ratrig. Seems like a great idea to have a standard, it just does not work with the prusa. Is there something for a prusa?
I know this is kinda general, but I have been looking for a few weeks and don't know what I want to do. I hope to be a little more successful and see where that takes me. It seems like not a lot has changed in 10 years, other than the commercial aspects.
Thanks,
Scot
