I changed to a different reel of ABS and found that HydraRaptor prints more accurately with it, not that the quality was bad before but now it is excellent. I think the fact that the previous stuff was oval must have affected the consistency of the feed rate. Pulleys come out very well so I have put a set on eBay for people that are struggling to print them accurately.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2010 08:30PM by nophead.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Nice! What size nozzle did you use for those?

I can no believe the quality of your parts... amazing... been doing this long?

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Wade,
It's a 0.4mm nozzle. I extrude at 0.375mm or 0.4375mm to give layer heights of 0.3 or 0.35mm as my z-axis has 0.05mm steps.

spacexula,
I have had several jumps in quality on HydraRaptor. The first was moving to a geared stepper, the second reversing the extruder, third realising 0.4 * 0.8 is not a multiple of 0.05, and fourth finding that oval filament gives some unevenness. I think ABS gives slightly better results than PLA.

My Mendel is not quite as good yet, but I tend to run it faster and with a 0.5mm nozzle. It also has lower gear ratio and longer melt zone. At some point I will do an exact comparison.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Quote
nophead
It's a 0.4mm nozzle. I extrude at 0.375mm or 0.4375mm to give layer heights of 0.3 or 0.35mm as my z-axis has 0.05mm steps.

Have you determined this to be the best compromise between speed and quality?

I know you have used both 0.3 and 0.5 nozzles as well.
I assume that with 0.3 it takes too long, and with 0.5 the quality isn't good enough.

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Well it all depends on what you are printing, i.e. what the minimum feature size is. For most of the Mendel parts 0.5mm is fine and things like vertex brackets could be done with a much bigger nozzle. Gears on the other hand benefit from a smaller nozzle to get the curve of the teeth accurate.

I don't have an easy way of changing nozzles at the moment. Even if they are separate parts that unscrew it is difficult to change them without causing leaks or damaging the heater or thermistor connections. Also z would need to be recalibrated.

I will probably end up with quick change extruders, but for the moment I have a different size on each machine, somewhat in proportion to my perception of the positional accuracy. So HydraRaptor has 0.4, Mendel 0.5 and Darwin 0.6 (not running yet though).

0.4mm is good a good compromise for general use so if you have a single machine I would recommend that. I can extrude 0.3mm - 0.4375mm ABS from a 0.4mm nozzle.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I may be interested in these pulleys, how much are they?

I think I may be loosing some steps on my Y axis and this design should prevent the shaft spinning inside my pulley. I'm not 100% sure what my issue is, I'm still testing.

I live in Illinois, how much is shipping?

PM sent.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Hi,

could you let me knopw how much for these shipped to australia.

Thanks

Peter

I would be interested in a set of these, how much would it be to ship to Wisconsin

Thanks,
Tom

Sorry, but I only sell Mendel full sets now.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]