My Replikeo Prusa i3 Rework Build

I'll try hairspray method tonight. I just noticed on Tech2C's video his HB is oriented differently from mine (about 90 degree turn). Meaning all wires are on the side instead of back. I think it's better way cause my wires keep getting caught in rear endstop. I just checked Reprap's instructions again, then they don't have a single picture that shows HB orientation
Also I think I found issue with placing Y motor in the back. My Y axes now doesn't move past 180mm mark forward, it hits end of the timing belt. I think longer threaded rods can help with the issue.. Anyone had a problem like this?

After using the binder clips to hold down the glass plate my print area is reduced. I'm getting a max of about 185 on the y-axis and 190 on the x axis. There's no way I'm going to get 200 x 200 out of this thing but I'm still having print quality issues with much smaller prints to worry about that at this point in the game. :/

Wires out the side of the HB sounds like a good idea! I've seen pictures where people put the wires on the opposite end from the endstop and then used those cool cable chains that I see on Thingiverse.

News from me: After some time, I switched back to Marlin, because Repetier don´t have good auto bed leveling. After some trials&errors with configuration, I am getting excellent results on glass with hairspray and auto bed levelling. I decided to not use carbon plate, because I couldn´t get it levelled, because it is not flat.

PLA reel arrived today and after some struggling I removed ABS and replaced it with PLA. I took off carbon fiber sheet and used hairspray on the bare glass (also turned hotplate 90 degrees CCW for better cable management).
I was finally able to do a successful print!!! .5mm think wall cube came out perfect, except for the oozing blob that got stuck to nozzle before it started to print. I'm so happy!
Here's quick video of it finishing print.

Damn fine for a first print! Congrats!

I'm still on Marlin and still having quality issues with my prints. :/

First off, everyone's comments here have been very helpful. I've found answers to a lot of questions that the instructions dont really bring up. I had put aside a few days to work on this thing, but then a bunch of stuff came up, and I haven't been at it as constantly as I had planned. I'm at the stage of just getting the belts set up and moving on to the heatbed tomorrow. I have a few quick specific questions remaining that I hope you can help with.

1- I've been using the guide here, plus the pictures on Replikeo.com as a guide. I got the plexiglass 6mm version, which came with 2 additional plexiglass pieces that fit into the back of the main z-axis frame and the top threaded rod in the back of the y-carriage slips through a notch on each piece and is secured with bolts. I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere here, so I was wondering if they're unique to the plexiglass model.

2- After looking at pictures and reading the directions, I ended up with the y motor on the back left. Reading here, flipped it over to the back right. Does this setup work, or do I need to move it to the front?

3- I only got one thermistor, and it mentions two in the instructions here. I'm guessing that the one is fine, but I'd like to make sure. Also, I have some silicon that I'm planning on fixing it into the center hole on the heat bed (along with the kapton tape for the wires), but it's not explained if it needs to stick up just a bit, needs to be flush with the top of the bed, or sunken just a bit. If anyone has some tips on this, or anything else about putting the bed together, that would be great. Luckily, my carbon plate and bed are perfectly level right now, but I can get some glass or try something else if its a problem.

Thanks!

1. Most of us have single plate iron/aluminium version and we don´t have these additional support plates.

2. Every combination will work (motor right/left, back/front) but you must set it right in config ( invert motor, set endstop to min etc.)

3.Other thermistor should be already mounted in hotend (white wires). I mounted my HB thermistor only with kapton on bottom of my HB, didn´t use silicon. Originally it should be touching glass that is on HB, but it is very hard to set it right and don´t lift glass/carbon plate in middle due bad mount of thermistor.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2014 08:25AM by Allnei.

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McCringleberry

1- I've been using the guide here, plus the pictures on Replikeo.com as a guide. I got the plexiglass 6mm version, which came with 2 additional plexiglass pieces that fit into the back of the main z-axis frame and the top threaded rod in the back of the y-carriage slips through a notch on each piece and is secured with bolts. I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere here, so I was wondering if they're unique to the plexiglass model.

The rear supports are a dirivative of Shane Graber's i3 frame. The are used for more flexible material like some of the plastics and melamine and wooden frames. It's a great low cost alternative to an aluminum plate.

Keep in mind that having Y motor in the rear might limit your Y range. In RepRap instructions they mention distance of 240mm from frame to front, I think that's for motor and endstop being in front. You might have to move it back more if you decide to keep motor in the back. In fact I'm going to give a try, as on mine I'm missing about 60 mm of movement.
Replikeo kit comes with only one thermistor for the heatbed. I think that's sufficient. I mounted mine roughly in the middle not not thru the hole touching glass. That's probably preferred way if you use glass, but bad idea for carbon fiber sheet as it can create a bump in the middle.

My new print - 0.2 layers. Pretty good, but have little layer shifting. I also have successful print with 0.1 layer height, but due to bad lighting, I can´t take photo right now


Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2014 03:07PM by Allnei.

Are you using the stock J-Head?

I also have some layer shifting. It's one of the print-quality issues I've been having.

Yes, stock J-Head. Shifting have two reasons:
- high power consumption device somewhere in house
- Printing from PC (I have some problem with printing from SD card with auto bed leveling)

Hi Alleni, have you fixed your problem with the hobbed bolt not gripping the filament reliably?
I'm having intermittent issues with the fillament not extruding for a few seconds even though the gears are spinning.

Yes, for me it was problem with bed levelling. My first layer was to thin and melted plastic couldn't go out, after some time it "semi-stuck" extrusion and force to push filament through was too big and hobbed bolt started chewing. Another problem can be low pressure from iddler wheel or tangled filament.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2014 09:07AM by Allnei.

I just wanted to post a correction/update to my last post. It seems that I would be missing 20mm of Y travel regardless which way I install Y motor, as at Y=0 it's pretty much at the end of timing belt anyway. I'm not sure how it's even possible to build Y axes and still have full 200mm travel distance. I can be achieved with slightly longer threaded rods and longer timing belt. For now I modified Y Max to 180mm in printer settings. Test prints were coming out pretty well, they stick very nicely to glass w/ hairspray and cubes coming out straight and even. There's tons of calibration needs to be done tho. I printed infill cube and it's not very solid. Walls can be pitched inside slightly if I press on it, seems like there's a gap between honeycomb pattern and walls.

Thanks for everyone's help so far. I've gotten a lot done in the limited time I've had lately. Here's a probably stupid question that hopefully someone could answer if you have fre time:

- Before I installed the y-axis belt, the bed his the endstop just fine. Now that I've got the belt on, the zip tied pars on the top of the belt get caught on the motor or the y-idler before the carriage gets to the ends. I've got about a inch of belt tied up on each end, with the y belt holder facing right (the side with two bearings), and the motor mounted to the back right, pointed left. Do I need to shorted the ends of the belt and put the zip ties closer together? I have the ends of the belt looped through the top of the clete and wrapping around and up again to tie of, which puts them in line with going into the motor or idler at the top. I left the belt a little loose and coult shorter the excess ends. I think that'll solve the problem, but it seems weird that the fixtures at both ends would eath the zip ties so easily.

Any advice is appreciated!

Quote
McCringleberry
Thanks for everyone's help so far. I've gotten a lot done in the limited time I've had lately. Here's a probably stupid question that hopefully someone could answer if you have fre time:

- Before I installed the y-axis belt, the bed his the endstop just fine. Now that I've got the belt on, the zip tied pars on the top of the belt get caught on the motor or the y-idler before the carriage gets to the ends. I've got about a inch of belt tied up on each end, with the y belt holder facing right (the side with two bearings), and the motor mounted to the back right, pointed left. Do I need to shorted the ends of the belt and put the zip ties closer together? I have the ends of the belt looped through the top of the clete and wrapping around and up again to tie of, which puts them in line with going into the motor or idler at the top. I left the belt a little loose and coult shorter the excess ends. I think that'll solve the problem, but it seems weird that the fixtures at both ends would eath the zip ties so easily.

Any advice is appreciated!

Can you take some pictures? About an inch of tie sounds about normal... But you can probably shorten it.

I've gotten my belts down to well under an inch excess on either side for just the same reason. I've seen some nice upgrades on Thingiverse that I'd like to make once my print quality is up like an x-axis with built-in tension adjustment and better belt attachment system on the y-axis. I've already printed and am using a better z-endstop mounting system and I'm considering a y-endstop mount that is more versatile and out of the way of the wires on the heatbed.

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gadget_greg
I've already printed and am using a better z-endstop mounting system and I'm considering a y-endstop mount that is more versatile and out of the way of the wires on the heatbed.

Can you please share?

The only issue I had was that I didn't have a long enough screw so I added a small dowel to the end of the 30mm screw I had. Also, since my print quality hasn't been as good as I'd like I had a little doctoring to do with a dremel. [www.thingiverse.com]


And THIS is probably my next print this evening... [www.thingiverse.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2014 05:10PM by gadget_greg.

Thanks Greg, this is awesome stuff!

Question to all that use this printer with Slicer. Can you share your Slicer settings?

You don't want my Slic3r settings, that's for sure!

I think part of my quality issue is that my spool of filament is just sitting on the table. I give it slack but 3mm PLA filament is pretty stiff and can easily bind up. Once I finish building my workshop (another day or two), I'll have a nice space to setup the printer where I can easily mount the filament overhead and eliminate THAT variable at least.

Has anyone else noticed the lateral play in the J-Head as it's mounted in the extruder? Front-to-back it's not bad because of the screws that lock it in place but there's a bit of movement side-to-side. I wouldn't doubt that that movement is impacting quality in the x-axis, especially during high-speed, abrupt changes in direction.

You all have been super helpful. Got the Y-belt to less than and inch, both sides, and its going well. Best of luck on your prints! I'm on to wiring and software before this weekend, but I promise I read the past posts before I start firing off dumb questions. Once I'm good at this, I'll be sending out cases of beer to you all!

Allnei, it turns out the intermittent extrusion failure was caused by not enough pressure by the extruder idler. This was with the screws tightened as far as they would allow. To fix this problem I had to grind away 10mm length from each screw to allow the spring tension to be even greater. Thanks for your help.

gadget_greg, I remember reading on another forum topic you can wrap tape around the top of the J-Head until it fits snug in the extruder. I personally don't have this issue but I guess it comes down to the tolerance of the printed part you've received. You can always print another one

I've been reading several guides on calibrating Slic3r settings, and they all very different. I got best result with mostly default settings so far, sides resolution is amazing, no slanting or sagging anywhere, but big issues with infill. There's just too much horizontal space between fills, especially between walls and inside pattern. Bottom layer looks amazing, I think all layers on it get fused by the heatbed, but top most layer has too much visible gaps.
The reason I'm asking for Slic3r settings is not to blindly copy them, but rather see which parts differ from mine and then research why and adjust accordingly. I was really stuck with firmware settings, but Allnei's file helped me tremendously. I made some changes to it but basic stuff (i.e. polarity of the endstops) was there
I'm attaching images of two objects/parts I printed. One is 20mm filled cube, another one is part of Z-endstop mount. Mount came out pretty ugly, I think unusable, something with the fill as you can see. Oh that little missing spot on the bottom layer is from spot I missed with hairspray (I think)...
I'm also attaching zip of my Slic3r config screenshots (sorry about that, I couldn't export config file without Slic3r crashing every time).

I've been having the same trouble with infill as you, only worse! I've bumped my infill setting in Slic3r up to 0.8 from the default of 0.4 and It's been better but I'm still not happy with it. I haven't printed anything in a couple days since I've been working on getting my workshop built so I have somewhere nice to setup the printer, etc.

Looking at your setting versus mine, I have my layer height set to 0.4, I haven't gone lower yet but probably will soon.
My fill density is at 0.8 and I'm using the rectilinear fill rather than honeycomb.
I only do one loop but sometimes that's not enough to get the extrusion flowing, maybe I should set to 2 also.

I haven't looked into the details of many of the settings yet so I'm really just guessing/playing with settings for the most part.

I have noticed that some models leave BIG gaps in the infill (even on the bottom layer), and always in the same spot. I've looked at the path the head is supposed to take and it LOOKS good but then when it prints... it leaves a gap. :/

Thanks Greg! I tried changing just infill density, and it went weird on me. It's like Slic3r randomized all parameters! Started to print with different patterns, made horrible walls, etc.. There's a serious bug in either Slic3r or Repetier (or combination of). I'm going to try different software...

Bratan, it looks like that your layers are too thick. Print with 0.3 first layer and 0.2 other layers. Also make sure, that you have set correct nozzle diameter in Slic3r

Tech2C: For me, it wasn´t due bad pressure. I have some washer on iddler bolts so there is better pressure on iddler

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2014 08:07PM by Allnei.

I changed my settings to 0.3 first-layer and 0.2 other layers and at first I was pretty excited, it was coming out great! I walked away for a while and when I came back it had shifted but this time in the y-axis?!? I really have to hang my filament spool to eliminate that as a variable. :/

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Allnei
Bratan, it looks like that your layers are too thick. Print with 0.3 first layer and 0.2 other layers. Also make sure, that you have set correct nozzle diameter in Slic3r

Thanks Alllnei! I'll give it a try! I do have nozzle diameter set to 0.4mm in the Slic3r.
I found a guide online on calibrating i3, and first step was to measure extrusion lengh and adjust accordingly. I extruded 30mm and it actually used 35 mm of filament. So I changed extruder steps to match. Anyway now it's not working at all, instead of lines I'm getting dots Gotta revert to original setting,but I also might have issue with extruder part. I used only one screw with spring and filament pushed to the side and broke small piece of plastic that was guiding filament. It's probably not a big deal, but I wanted to ask, do you guys tighten extruder screws as tight as possible or it doesn't matter?

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gadget_greg
I changed my settings to 0.3 first-layer and 0.2 other layers and at first I was pretty excited, it was coming out great! I walked away for a while and when I came back it had shifted but this time in the y-axis?!? I really have to hang my filament spool to eliminate that as a variable. :/

Yeah print that Spool holder I plan to do that as soon as I'm able to start using printer Also make sure your printer is on a steady surface. I put mine on portable table and it was shaking like a dryer machine...