Easy Question

Hi Experts,

So I am sitting watching my first test piece (40mm cube) running and it looks to me like the Z axis may be running too slow... or the extruder is running too fast.... or something else.

The first few layers go ok , everything looks great. Then it looks like the head is dragging through the previous layers and if I leave the job running then eventually it is almost completely submerged.

Are there some settings I have missed out on or do I just need to experiment for longer? Any ideas would be gratefully received.

Mendel, RAMPS 1.3, RepSnapper.

thanks
RB

Sounds like you E steps could be out for the Z axis

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

told you it was an easy question!! thanks!!

for some reason the firmware Z steps per unit was 384 , upping this to 2560 and changing the extruder speed seems to have done the trick.

I'm sure there will be a ton of fine tuning to come to get things accurate but at least the Z axis is moving now :-)

This is how I calculated mine for Gen6

Firstly download the latest Gen6 firmware and the Arduino with Sanguino from here [www.mendelfactory.com]
Make sure you get the correct firmware for your Mendel to correspond with the opto’s that you have.
Extract the Arduino and the Gen6 Zip files to a folder on your computer. Open Arduino click on Tools, go to board and select Sanguino.
Next go to Tools, Serial port and select the Com port for your Mendel
Now the fun part Click file, Open and find the FiveD_GCode_Interpreter.pde file. A new window will open
In the new window over at the top right is an arrow click it and select configuration. Scroll down until you get to a line of code that says
#define E0_STEPS_PER_MM 20.2 //Miocrostepping! Edited 20100715 @ EJE. 2.0
It is the 20.2 number we need to change.
Start Repsnapper, connect to your printer and heat up the nozzle to somewhere around 180-190C. While it is heating up get a ruler and a marker pen, measure from the top of the extruder block and make a mark on the filament at 150mm.
In Repsnapper in the Print tab where you set the temperature, set the speed slider to something slow like 75-100 and set the length to 100. To get the correct numbers use the arrow keys on your keyboard.
Click the extrude button and once it has stopped extruding measure to your mark. Mine moved 3mm so to calculate the right setting you need to do
100/3 which will give you 33.33 we went for a more conservative figure of 25
Now do 20.2*25 which should give you 505
Change the fire in Arduino to 505 save the change then go file, upload to I/O board. Arduino will say uploading, wait for it to say done.
Now run the test again making a new mark at 150mm up the filament, I ran it twice once at speed 100 and then at speed 75. I now had achieved a movement of 66mm so still some tweaking needed so do
505*100/66 which gave me 765
Change the number to this in Arduino and upload again to your I/O board,
Test again I was now getting 98mm of extrusion so did one more calculation of 765*100/98 to get 780.6 which I set in Arduino uploaded and ran the test twice more. I was now getting a perfect 100mm of extrusion.

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand