MakerFarm Prusa i3

I recently built this machine over the course of two nights, great bang for the buck i must say, initially i had warping problems due to the fan on the magma hotend, i also would not get the bed up to 110 degrees due to the same fan, so i decided to turn it off, and it worked like a charm, i now have about 10 hours printing time without it and have not had th hotend clogged up even once, i'm running it at 240 degrees and the bed at 120.

this is on ABS, im not shure im gonna try PLA yet, as i like the charactheristics of ABS.

anyone else have success running the magma without a fan?

There are designs out there for fan shrouds. They should allow you to "focus" the air flow just on the top of the hot end.

Well i doubt kinda a fan of 40mm will affect your Bed heater that much,
Maybe a decent room temprature and it would still work,

Here its aprox 15c and it still goes to 110, Its hard, But after a few min it does get up there.
(Also got a Makerfarm btw)


Well magma doesnt work with PLA, Well ive heard it does, with some hacking and tweaking.
Oh well i am happy its working for you that well ^^

Actually it does a whole lot of difference to the bed temperature and especially warping of abs parts, without a fan my bed goes to 120c within 10-12 minutes. with the fan it took about 15-20 minutes to reach 110c, if the room was cold i would never reach 110c at all, i just dont see the point running the fan when my hotend never clog up, i've heard many people struggling with clogging even with the fan on full blast.
maybe i just got lucky with mine.

It's also very possible that your brand of ABS is not quite the same as their brand of ABS. The other variable could be how fast you push matterial through the hotend.

I just got a Maker Farm running. I see no problem at all getting the heated bed up to temperature (as in 120C) very quickly. I'd guess it's doing it in under 10 minutes. That's with the stock fan on the Magma hot end and the fan almost touching the heated bed. With a good power supply, there's no problem with the fan at all.

If put temporary some insulation on the bed, it will reach much faster the wanted temperature. I also want to try to put some radiator insulation foil below the bed, i think this will speed it up even more. And save energy...

If you have to do tricks to get your bed to heat to 110 in less than 10 minutes, something is wrong. You should fix the problem rather than coming up with tricks. Either your power supply is in trouble, your bed is wrong, or there's a connection problem. If it's a power supply issue or a connection problem you could start a fire or melt your Ramps board. Neither one is a good thing to have happen.....

I cannot get my end-stop switches to work. I have wired them as indicated in the video and plugged them into the board as directed. However, the Y-axis will not stop when it hits the switch lever and the carriage overruns.

Are the end stop switches for the 8" different from the ones on the 6"?

According to the narrative of the video, the switches should be wired "Normally Closed", but the video shows them wired "Normally Open" (which seems correct to me) What is the stepper trying to do - always have current running through it, or only allowing current to flow when the switch is closed?

Until I get this sorted, I can't use my machine, and I've had it nearly 3 months without a single print

Old Man Emu

You should wire the switches Normally CLOSED,,, That's the way to avoid interference...

Do not forget to enable the pullups (should be already turned on in the "stock" makerfarm firmware)

Best Regards.

The full answer is that you can wire the switches either way and then change the firmware to match the way the switches are wired. On a normal setup, all of the end stop switches are wired the same way. X,Y, and Z are identical. If they are all wired the same way and only one does not work, that suggests:

1) A bum wire
2) A bad connector
3) A bad solder joint on the Ramps board
4) A bad switch

You can quickly check most of those by putting hooking your ohm meter to the connector on the end and seeing what the switch does when you poke it.

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back to trying to extend servo leads ....

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2013 07:45PM by uncle_bob.

Old man emu, I'm not sure if you got your end stop switch problem sorted out but I wanted to chime in with my experience. I just got my MakerFarm Prusa i3 8" and had the same end stop switch problem. What I found in my case was that I inadvertently mixed up the connections on the RAMPS board. I had X connected to where Z should've been and Y on X connection… The way I figured it out was I moved X in one direction using the 10-step position button in Pronterface and manually triggered each of the end stop switches until I found the correct one. After I found the correct switch, I changed the connection on the RAMPS board. I hope that makes sense.

I also want to say another thing about the MakerFarm Prusa i3 build...

Some people mentioned that the Y end stop bracket was too short and didn't make a proper connection. The kit I got recently came with TWO Y end stop mounting brackets. One of them is about 8.5mm longer than the original and allows the Y bed to stop in the right place. I think Colin is doing a great job listening to his customers and changing the design as quickly as possible. You can see the difference in the photo below.



Another thing I was worried about was the fumes and proper ventilation. I was originally going to put this in my home office, until I started reading about people getting headaches from the ABS fumes. I decided to put this in the garage and build a ventilation fan system. While looking for parts for this, I ended up buying a cheap bathroom fan from home depot ($13) and a 20' piece of 3" flexible duct to run out of the garage door vents. In total, the vent system cost me about $22. I did a hack job mounting it for now to see if it is effective enough to be a permanent solution before I build a more elaborate mount or enclosure. I have to say that I am very happy with this little bathroom fan. I can't smell any ABS fumes in the garage and there is only an extremely light scent when you get close to the printer.

I'd be happy to post a photo of my setup if anyone is interested.

Dave

The MakerFarm kit has changed a bit over the time it's been in production. The new Y end stop came into being after people started having issues with the old one.

ABS is not a single material (it's not like water). It's a mix of this and that. The amount of smell varies a *lot* between vendors. I do believe that some of it is offensive. I have yet to find any that creates an issue printing indoors. The cheap stuff seems to be more noticeable than the more expensive stuff (big surprise there ...)

9:20 pm Sydney time 12/9/13

I have just come inside from the workshop where I was fixing the endstop problem.

I contacted Colin and he directed me to the system schematic in the build notes. The problem was that I had connected the endstop plugs to the wrong sets of pins on the RAMPS board. A careful study of the schematic showed that the connectors have to join specific sets of pins. There are two sets of pins for each axis. If you put the connector on the wrong set, it don't work.

Also, the Troubleshooting section of the Build Notes has been extended to show how to check if the endstops are wired correctly.

When I connected the steppers to the board, I had the blue wire towards the top of the set of pins. This was back-to-front so I've changed them so the red wire is to the top, and everything moves in the correct direction.

My next problem is to make a secure join between the Z-axis stepper shafts and the threaded rods. Mine were winding off, so I used a cable tie to clamp the plastic tube to the shafts and rods. I have a physical interference problem with the left hand assembly. That is bi big problem. I'll probably use some fine safety wire.

Maybe I'll get printing this weekend - Christmas decorations and light permitting.

Old Man Emu

The plastic tube that they use between the motors and the Z rods is pretty standard hardware store stuff. I had one of the dogs eat my original part. It was less than a dollar to get a lifetime supply from the local Lowes...

If you print out a shroud, use the link in the makerfarm manual. You will need it on large prints.

Any pointers on how to modify the firmware to support the graphical 128x64 lcd kit?