x-idler and x-motor problem

Hello Mendel90 Users,

I,m new to the fourum, I am a Mendel90 owner and I really love the kit that Chris and Mary supplied. I've been using it for about 2 months and its going well, I've done about 70 hours on it with mostly successful prints.
I've now come to a dead end with this one! Im trying to print out RED X-IDLER and X-MOTOR parts but in Slic3r it does not print the nut traps and treats them as a solid. Im using Slic3r as i find Skineforge way too complex. I have no experience in it so thats why i haven't used it. Has any one else tried to print this part out?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks B8TFK

It's a known fault with Slic3r, caused by a bug in OpenSCAD creating internal cavities with surface normals pointing the wrong way. Skeinforge copes better, but the bug is in OpenSCAD. It's in Chris' latest blog post.

Thanks for the reply and pointing me into the right direction. I suppose its now time to look into skineforge to slice the part. Hope i can get the hang of skineforge.

Good luck with that. Let me know how it goes!

I think I'm going to try modifying the OpenSCAD files rather than learn Skeinforge. I have 20+ years of experience in IT with a strong developer background but Skeinforge still scares the bejeebus out of me...

I have given up on skineforge! what a pig!

I would love to see a picture of your machine with red parts. It would look awesome. I'd like colored parts for mine but would not be eager to rebuild it just to have color LOL ..

b8tfk Wrote:
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> I have given up on skineforge! what a pig!

That is a shame. Nophead's PLA0.2 and PLA0.3 profiles for Skeinforge give superb prints if your Z-Home and bed levelling are accurate.

I compared prints from Skeinforge and Slic3r (using a profile matching PLA0.2 as closely as I could get) and the slic3r generated print was very inferior on quality and dimension.

That is not to say that Slic3r is not able to create good prints but Nophead's Skeinforge profiles are excellent.

Regards,
Neil Darlow

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I try to write with consideration for all nationalities. Please let me know if something is unclear.
Printing with Mendel90 from fedora 25 using Cura, FreeCAD, MeshLab, OpenSCAD, Skeinforge and Slic3r tools.

Dimensions have always been the achilles heel for Slic3r, yet the author doesn't seem to be in any hurry to fix it.

I keep meaning to get SF working but every time I launch it I throw up a little in my mouth...

One of these days...

I have used skineforge with nopeheads PLA0.3 setting and i can never get it to start properly, it tends to drag up the first layer that it prints. With slic3r and no adjustments to the printer it prints fine?? With Slic3r it seems to shrink the part by a mill or so. Don't understand why??

It just a pain and I'm stuck at the moment and don't know what to do!!

I agree with Neil, you can't beat the quality output from SF with nopheads settings. The maths and core are obviously well polished and I imagine thats were the efforts of the developers has been focused.

But I also agree with b8tfk in that SF's interface is truly horrible, the first thing I thought when using it was to redesign it and build it in Java or some other open tool chain. Something that has cross-platform portability and a nicer GUI setup. I'm actually quite an advanced Python / Java / C++ developer as well as an instructor in 3D CAD for my company so I might take a look at maybe re-working the SF interface. I doubt I'll tackle the processes behind the curtains (yet) but certainly tidy up what the user see's and make it more intuitive.

I'll drop in on SF's webpage in a moment and take a look to see how approachable the DEV's are to this kind of fork