Built my first Rostock, not quite working yet

Well this is my first post, so I should give a bit of intro. My hobby background is very low level DIY, building PC's, and partial to a bit of programming. Most of my problems came from shoddy DIY crimping, oh well ^^. It was challenging but far less demoralising if you try and build it in small steps.

I started building a Rostock from ebay parts, MDF, and good old hardware stores. Finally got the motors working (bad crimping ... sigh).

Anyway here are a few things that are not quite right with my build. This maybe due to me not taking the final step of activating the extruder motor and feeding it plastic, or rubbish electronics ... or bad crimping .

- Motors will not activate unless a tap a pot on the step motor driver.
(I have an Xbox power supply (correct version) wired with the 5v shorted - maybe I should put a button on it?)

- When I tell it to print it goes into a corner and and then simply rises.

- I can trip the power supply by putting hot bed and extruder on at the same time.
(Heating extruder on its own seems okay, it hates the hot bed . So maybe get to temp then turn off hotbed).


Have to say building it has been a blast. Can't get over a jumbled collection of wood, metal, motors, and electronics actually moves about without imploding.

I will be joining a local 3D printer group soon, probably before I feed any plastic into it .

Thanks for any help.

A heated bed with an Xbox power supply is really pushing the output capacity. There's a reason why some of the popular electronics controller boards have a dedicated 11 amp bus just to drive the bed.....

Thanks for the suggestion vreihen, Ill look into a power supply or preheat heat-bed before starting (perhaps a hot water bottle lol).

Worked out what is going wrong with the second problem, I gcoded a small 20mm cube as the test print where head stayed in the corner …. Tried the default model in Repetier (a much larger object). Bingo! My printer is printing off centre by quite a bit even though it is homed. I’ll change the offset values I guess.

Just need to sort the motors not being on at the start, but who knows maybe once it is all setup it will wake up .
I hope printing is as much fun as building/re-building ^^.

Here is a good crimping tool I just got from Amazon, only $23 and well worth more.

I'm not sure what you mean about the motors not being on at the start. After a G28 (home) command all the motors should be engaged. This should be the first command that is executed whenever you print. This can be put in your slicer's custom gcode settings.

Hope your build and calibration goes well...

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My printer: Raptosaur - Large Format Delta - [www.paulwanamaker.wordpress.com]
Can you answer questions about Calibration, Printing issues, Mechanics? Write it up and improve the Wiki!

For what it's worth... my builds all were lousy when crimping myself,

so finally I bought a bunch of pre crimped cables on eBay and soldered them onto the wires.
All's well since ;-)

Thomas

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)