First print..!

Hi all,

Today finaly I had some time and the PLA had arrived yesterday, so I went back working on my RepRap Mendel.

After a first attempt the plastic wouldn't stick to the bed. So I lowered the distance between the nozzle and the bed, but still wouldn't stick to the bed at all times. What is the best distance anyway? I can not find it anywhere....
Than my collegue had the bright idea to use some double-sided tape, what we have in sheets of 1/3 A4 paper size. Immediately we had good result. The first layer sticked perfect to the bed.

See pictures below for the result:









Unfortunately, while printing, there seemed to be something wrong with the G-Code conversion. The part was printed hollow... But consired that it is a hollow part and this is a first print, I think that is not disapointing at all!

After some fine tuning and playing with the settings in the RepRap host software I started a second print. But the conversion from STL to G-Code is not good, as like the first time (it was hollow). There are some strange faults in it... Lines that shouldnt be there and stuff like that. Anybody a idea what is causing this?


Regards,

Guy

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2010 03:45PM by GT-B.

I don't use the host but I think it uses a different logical extruder for infill that you have to map to your physical extruder in order for it to work.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Yes the infill was not set right. The new print was good, only the nozzle was to low. But that's fixed now also.

I'm really surprisedby the strenghtness of the PLA when printed.

I print PLA on blue painters' tape. It works great!

I have tried that too yesterday. Easy to get the parts off, but with the double-sided tape it stucks much better, not warping and the 'shield' also gets build. What is the type that you use? Maybe I use the wrong type.

What is the best height to print? Must the nozzle head touch the (current layer)surface a little or not? Because when I let it print higher, it looks like it's get less accuarate.


Guy