My First RepRap Experience
Posted by Egar
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My First RepRap Experience January 20, 2014 12:41AM |
Hello dear forum!
My name is Egar Almeida, I'm a video-game designer from Argentina who, as a kid, always dreamed of being an inventor and is extremely grateful to be living is this wonderful era of open-source everything.
The reason for this long post is to share my first experience with a RepRap, celebrating that 30 seconds ago I finished my first print with the desired specs (that is, a print that’s not “what I got”, but what I wanted to get).
First of all, guys, thank you. To all the developers who made and make this project possible, a big giant thank you. Now, to the point!
The printer is a Prusa i3. I got the parts from different providers and it wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t cheap because I wanted to get every part before christmas since I was in New York for the holidays and I needed to get everything before I returned to Argentina.
Quick summary of the parts that had details worth mentioning:
Print issues I encountered and how I fixed them:
Links that helped me:
So, I think that’s all! I hope this helps solve these issues to other users that may have them.
Cheers,
Egar
My name is Egar Almeida, I'm a video-game designer from Argentina who, as a kid, always dreamed of being an inventor and is extremely grateful to be living is this wonderful era of open-source everything.
The reason for this long post is to share my first experience with a RepRap, celebrating that 30 seconds ago I finished my first print with the desired specs (that is, a print that’s not “what I got”, but what I wanted to get).
First of all, guys, thank you. To all the developers who made and make this project possible, a big giant thank you. Now, to the point!
The printer is a Prusa i3. I got the parts from different providers and it wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t cheap because I wanted to get every part before christmas since I was in New York for the holidays and I needed to get everything before I returned to Argentina.
Quick summary of the parts that had details worth mentioning:
- Printed parts: Norcalreprap.com. Horrible. Some warping, water drop-shaped holes (not round), very bad diameters in all other holes, bent parts, etc. And this felt bad, because I hadn’t even seen a 3D print in person before, so this was my first experience. I thought that was the best quality a printer could get!
- Electronics: Saintsmart kit including steppers, endstops, ramps 1.4, arduino, hotbed mk2b, LCD, a4988 drivers, cooler and cables. The quality is poor, but not horrible. One of the drivers doesn’t seem to be working, probably because of poor soldering job. But, so far, the worst part was the packaging. It was so terribly packed that the resettable fuses on the ramps got crushed against the connectors and broke. Had to order a replacement and re-solder. Amazon discounted a 20% off the price for this.
- Frame and print bed: There is a guy in Cordoba, Argentina, who makes steel-frames at a very good price, beating the opportunists that are plague in my country who insist on trying to sell laser-cut frames on other materiales at ridiculous prices. The frame is great, makes the Prusa very sturdy. Same with the print bed. However, I might replace the bed for an aluminum one because I think the steel makes it too heavy, which might have caused the last problem I encountered (Y axis skipping steps).
Print issues I encountered and how I fixed them:
- Motors were moving weirdly, just for a couple of steps and then would stop and get all musical, even though I had used the values from the calculator. Weird, huh? I asked this question on the IRC, but I just don’t know how to irc anymore. Anyway, the problem was that I forgot to put the jumpers for 1/16 microstepping. I didn’t even know I had to. Of course, without this, any setting was 16 times too high!
- After fixing that problem I made my first print. It was a heart for my girlfriend. Why is this important? Well, because I’m sharing results here: She loved it, and this probably made up for all the hours I spent with the printer
The heart didn’t look perfect, but it looked better than I expected for a first print. The only problem, actually, was that the last layers did not print correctly. - I calibrated and calibrated. Placed a sheet of paper over the glass of the print bed, and attached a little flat-metal thingy to the extruder. Made marks, made adjustments to the steps. I repeated.
- After calibration I had a new problem. As I mentioned before, I got skipped steps on the Y-axis. At the beginning, the only way to avoid this was reducing the speed. I got really good prints, but at 26mm/min. So slow it was depressing. Adjusted the current of the motors, swapped drivers, fan-cooled the board, tightened the belt, adjusted acceleration… eventually, I decided to crank-up the current of the driver and voila, no more skipped steps. This got me my first print as desired. I still need to check if the driver can handle this current with just a fan, but the problem might be due to the weight of the print-bed, right?
Links that helped me:
- https://sites.google.com/site/repraplogphase/calibration-of-your-reprap
- http://t00tiereprap.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/000-where-is-the-origin/
- http://buggerit.blogspot.com.ar/2011/09/hains-prusa-mendel-reprap-calibration.html
- http://mendelmax.com/RepRapCalculator.html
- http://reprap.org/wiki/Triffid_Hunter's_Calibration_Guide
- http://alf3dpi.blogspot.com.ar/2013/07/ramps-14-board.html
- http://www.abhilashnair.com/3d-printing/prusa-i3-troubleshooting/
So, I think that’s all! I hope this helps solve these issues to other users that may have them.
Cheers,
Egar
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Re: My First RepRap Experience January 20, 2014 02:51AM |
Nice that you got it working!
My first printer is a Prusa V1 which is unuseably broke right now and i don't think i can be arsed to fix it - too many mechanical design issues with it, i've got a makerfarm prusa i3 and makerbot underway for comparison.
I run the drivers with enough current that one of my steppers started to loose it's magnetism due to the heat build up - without even heatsinks on the drivers, some cheap chinese a4988 drivers. This is not the proper way to tune the drivers, but this is how i did it: Crank up until the stepper motors are running too hot to the touch, and done. (should still add heatsinks to both motors and drivers). With that setting i had enough torque for the V1 to start cracking under the forces (bad design, too little material).
The printed parts i got for that machine was supposed to be very high quality 2 years back, but they were crap. Looked nice sure, but all holes were too small, some holes too large, round edges were not round, lots of parts cracking, including wade's big & small gears, small gear cracked atleast because there was an error in infill and too low infill, printing mistake.
I suggest you start printing spare parts as soon as you can, if your printed parts were that bad quality, just to be sure, tho they might have the proper infill and therefore strength, but to be on the safe side.
The Y carriage: When you swap over aluminium make sure it's 5mm thick or so, i have 3mm thick and it's way too flexing, the plate itself but also the zip tie fastening to LM8UU bearings. This means it takes quite a bit of effort to get bed leveled as the plate lives so much, to the point effort i don't even bother to get it properly leveled, i just start printing and adjust as per the results, until it averages to "good enough". I'd much rather run a thick PLA printed one -> atleast with that one with heat insulation i don't need to worry about the plate being wobbly, and the bearings could be attached much better etc.
My first printer is a Prusa V1 which is unuseably broke right now and i don't think i can be arsed to fix it - too many mechanical design issues with it, i've got a makerfarm prusa i3 and makerbot underway for comparison.
I run the drivers with enough current that one of my steppers started to loose it's magnetism due to the heat build up - without even heatsinks on the drivers, some cheap chinese a4988 drivers. This is not the proper way to tune the drivers, but this is how i did it: Crank up until the stepper motors are running too hot to the touch, and done. (should still add heatsinks to both motors and drivers). With that setting i had enough torque for the V1 to start cracking under the forces (bad design, too little material).
The printed parts i got for that machine was supposed to be very high quality 2 years back, but they were crap. Looked nice sure, but all holes were too small, some holes too large, round edges were not round, lots of parts cracking, including wade's big & small gears, small gear cracked atleast because there was an error in infill and too low infill, printing mistake.
I suggest you start printing spare parts as soon as you can, if your printed parts were that bad quality, just to be sure, tho they might have the proper infill and therefore strength, but to be on the safe side.
The Y carriage: When you swap over aluminium make sure it's 5mm thick or so, i have 3mm thick and it's way too flexing, the plate itself but also the zip tie fastening to LM8UU bearings. This means it takes quite a bit of effort to get bed leveled as the plate lives so much, to the point effort i don't even bother to get it properly leveled, i just start printing and adjust as per the results, until it averages to "good enough". I'd much rather run a thick PLA printed one -> atleast with that one with heat insulation i don't need to worry about the plate being wobbly, and the bearings could be attached much better etc.
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