Folger Prusa i3 Kit from ebay

So what's the consensus on the stock Folgers hotend that comes with the kit? PLA/ABS, Jams, print quality?

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madmike8
So what's the consensus on the stock Folgers hotend that comes with the kit? PLA/ABS, Jams, print quality?

My opinon it works ok. That being said i only use abs because, i have had no luck with pla the heat rise up to the coldend (even with fan on 100% all the time) causes it to skip on pla. That would be my biggest complaint. Also the tension on the filament is not adjustable wich could be part of my problem. But for me when i use abs it works pretty flawlessley.

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madmike8
So what's the consensus on the stock Folgers hotend that comes with the kit? PLA/ABS, Jams, print quality?

I have no problems with the stock extruder/hotend printing PLA or ABS (both work fine for me). You just have to learn to work with it and avoid the dreaded 'clicking'. Get your temps right, set the actual filament size in your slicer (don't just use 1.75... measure your roll!!). If you still have problems calibrate your extruder (axis_steps_per_unit for the extruder).

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TheLost

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madmike8
So what's the consensus on the stock Folgers hotend that comes with the kit? PLA/ABS, Jams, print quality?

I have no problems with the stock extruder/hotend printing PLA or ABS (both work fine for me). You just have to learn to work with it and avoid the dreaded 'clicking'. Get your temps right, set the actual filament size in your slicer (don't just use 1.75... measure your roll!!). If you still have problems calibrate your extruder (axis_steps_per_unit for the extruder).

Ive never herd of anybody using the exact mesurement of the specific role. Great advice ill give that a shot.

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madmike8
So what's the consensus on the stock Folgers hotend that comes with the kit? PLA/ABS, Jams, print quality?

Believe me, I tryed anything to make that rubbish thing works properly ! To be honnest, it works fine until you don't print extra large parts or too long prints, until you need to raise temperature too high for some filaments, until your fan gets lazy, until you overheat your stepper motor.

My opinion of Folger's extruder. First, nothing is adjustable and that's a problem when you buy 1.8mm or 1.62mm filament Seccond, there's no efficient cooling on the extruder. The 10mm fan is low speed and the heatsink is a secondary part fixed on the mounting block. When your heatblock gets warm, the heat diffuses first in the mounting block, then diffuses mostly on the motor (bigger) and a few diffuses by the heatsink. Poor engineering. Result : my extruder stepper motor is out of order, and the print quality was evolving from start of the print to the end, while the whole system gets too hot. I spent a lot of time trying to adjust temperatures (works fine with a 20mm cube, but not with bigger parts). I tryed to stay in front of the machine to reduce temperature slowly as the heatsink fails progressively to lower the temperature. Both with no succes. It allways started with an acceptable print to end by a jam. So I found another 40x40x10mm fan (from an old computer) and noticed it worked two times better than Folger's. That helped a lot, but was not enough. 2/3 of the printed parts was not acceptable to my eyes. Meanwhile the extruder's stepper stopped, impossible to turn the shaft even with plyers ! I found an old nema17 on a copy machine, same size than Folger's but much more powerfull. Some people said I used cheap filaments, or that my filaments was too wet. I bought new filaments with the same resutls.

So, a bit upset, I decided to stay in front of the machine until I'll be able to print parts of a new extruder, and home made a E3D V5 hotend. Make some pauses during long prints. It took some time, especialy to print large parts as you imagine. Since I mounted a geared extruder with my new hotend, thing became so easy. Whatever filament I used. I could lower or raise temperature with no jam or overheat at all. Pure happyness, at last !

Folger's extruder is the lower quality you can find. If it works fine for you, I'm glad for you. My advice : repace it as son as possible.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2015 02:18AM by Zavashier.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

I got my kit yesterday, I got the frame assembled last night and used blue locktight on all the screws. Everything snug and no cracks.

This morning I get up and there are cracks at every screw location, the only thing I can think of is that it shrank slightly as the garage got cold overnight.

My question is: should I try to repair while still assembled or should I take apart?
I'm afraid to cause more damage taking it apart.

I've read that Methylene Chloride will bond acrylic. I work in a lab where we use tons of it everyday.

Thanks for the advice


Addendum:

Some of the damage was to great to risk taking apart. Since I have access to all the chemicals I could want I decided to chemically bond all the acrylic parts together.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2015 08:33PM by Tardisrepair.

Leave it that way. If the part won't comes appart it's no big deal. If it break then glue it.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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Zavashier

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madmike8
So what's the consensus on the stock Folgers hotend that comes with the kit? PLA/ABS, Jams, print quality?

Believe me, I tryed anything to make that rubbish thing works properly ! To be honnest, it works fine until you don't print extra large parts or too long prints, until you need to raise temperature too high for some filaments, until your fan gets lazy, until you overheat your stepper motor.

My opinion of Folger's extruder. First, nothing is adjustable and that's a problem when you buy 1.8mm or 1.62mm filament Seccond, there's no efficient cooling on the extruder. The 10mm fan is low speed and the heatsink is a secondary part fixed on the mounting block. When your heatblock gets warm, the heat diffuses first in the mounting block, then diffuses mostly on the motor (bigger) and a few diffuses by the heatsink. Poor engineering. Result : my extruder stepper motor is out of order, and the print quality was evolving from start of the print to the end, while the whole system gets too hot. I spent a lot of time trying to adjust temperatures (works fine with a 20mm cube, but not with bigger parts). I tryed to stay in front of the machine to reduce temperature slowly as the heatsink fails progressively to lower the temperature. Both with no succes. It allways started with an acceptable print to end by a jam. So I found another 40x40x10mm fan (from an old computer) and noticed it worked two times better than Folger's. That helped a lot, but was not enough. 2/3 of the printed parts was not acceptable to my eyes. Meanwhile the extruder's stepper stopped, impossible to turn the shaft even with plyers ! I found an old nema17 on a copy machine, same size than Folger's but much more powerfull. Some people said I used cheap filaments, or that my filaments was too wet. I bought new filaments with the same resutls.

So, a bit upset, I decided to stay in front of the machine until I'll be able to print parts of a new extruder, and home made a E3D V5 hotend. Make some pauses during long prints. It took some time, especialy to print large parts as you imagine. Since I mounted a geared extruder with my new hotend, thing became so easy. Whatever filament I used. I could lower or raise temperature with no jam or overheat at all. Pure happyness, at last !

Folger's extruder is the lower quality you can find. If it works fine for you, I'm glad for you. My advice : repace it as son as possible.

I've printed 16 hour prints at .1mm heights, getting great results. The key is cooling it, the fan MUST be on all the time for the hot end. I even tried a 5 hour print at .05mm, came out beautiful.

As for stalling; make sure you aren't over-amping your pololu and stepper.

As for filament, if you buy GOOD filament, the deviation from 1.75mm isn't so pronounced.

End result: The hot end works just fine if you have good filament and know how to set up your machine in your slicer.

As I can read, you say Folger's extruder works well, and silly users don't know how to make it work properly. I wish that would be as simple dear. I'm an engineer and I know how to setup a pololu, and control the output through my oscilloscope if needed. I don't buy cheap filaments. When I used the Folger's extruder, it was a filament around $45 per kg, and measured 1.72 to 1.68mm through... I own trustable precision measuring tools. With my new system, I'm able to have great results with any filament. First time, any time. All the issues disapears immediately when I upgraded the system, with the same slicing options, same cartridge, same thermistor, same bearing, same motor (until it failed definitely) and the same gear.

Believe me or not, but there's many reasons why the Folger's extruder is cheap, each reason is a door open to get extruding issues :
- plastic shaft for the vgroove bearing
- no adjustable pressure to drive the filament on the 38 teeth gear
- low torque stepper motor
- low efficiency fan
- heatsink behind the mounting block : the heat diffuses mostly to the motor (the largest mass avalable) : to me it's the most important factor
- heatsink dimensions is too small to maintain the mounting block and the heatbreak as cold as needed.

IMHO, Folger can provide a better extruder at reasonable price. No big deal.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

i printed a 20mm calibration cube on mine today. All sides came in at 19.96 - 20.05 mm. my Hot end is loose and spins/wiggles a little when i touch it. Last night i took it apart to get my filament out (change color and it wouldn't feed) i tried to tighten the hot end, but it just kept spinning, so i left it. As i watch it print i don't see it wiggle at all, even when at max axis and the cords put a little tension on it. So i'm happy for now.

Next is getting finer prints. Maybe new hot end and smaller.

I've attempted extruding PLA with the Folgertech extruder and it's next to impossible. I even swapped out to a larger torque motor and tried using an upgraded extruder design. I'm wondering if I can salvage the hotend and redesign the extruder body. I was also considering boring the hotend to 0.5 mm? Is cooling the largest reason for the jamming?

[www.thingiverse.com] i made this one it works so much better makes pla printing on folger possible.

Gotta give credit to mindrelm its a good simple design that works great

That's actually the one I tried. It helped initially, but it seems the issue is in the hot end of mine. I suspect cooling issue since I can always feed the first couple mm from a cold start smoothly and then it skips like no other.

Two comments on hot end jams:

1 - Proper cooling is essential - The ONLY place that filament is supposed to be hot enough to melt is in the heat block and nozzle. Any melting above that will cause jams. Having the heat sink in good contact with the cold end block and the fan on 100% all the time, and insulating the hot end to prevent radiated heat are the first steps in solving this problem.

2 - Proper assembly of the hot end is essential - The threaded tube should make a good solid contact with the nozzle inside the heated block. Having a gap (even a small one) between them will allow the filament to create a plug that is wider than its path of travel, jamming the hot end when it cools.


(...and please start a new thread so they aren't buried 1,100 posts deep )

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2015 10:15PM by MindRealm.

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-David

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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

When I switched filament I had jam problems. I cleared out the nozzle (Gas stove, metal pin, paper towel) and cleared out the tube leading to the hot end but was still having problems. What I ended up having to do was remove everything (tube/hotend/nozzle) and feed about 10mm of filament through. Then I slid on the PTFE tubing/tube portion, making sure the filament went all the way through. I then secured the lock screw, affixing the tube, snipped the PLA filament as close as I could, and installed the nozzle/hotend. I then recalibrated the Z axis and was good to go. I'm pretty sure the filament was getting stuck on the lip of the PTFE tubing in the tube portion. Been printing fine ever since.

These are a few of my prints using PLA. The dinosaur took MANY hours to print using supports. It was left printing overnight and never had any issues. I did not use a fan to cool down the prints, but it is recommended for better quality prints. Do calibrate your printer before printing parts. I've used Both PLA and ABS without issues with the extruder. Personally, I prefer PLA over ABS for a few reasons. It is stronger, smells better and it is quicker to print (hot bed takes longer to reach 90c-100c for ABS).

I cant seem to get my bed over 95c and it takes forever to get there. Others getting the same? any suggestions?

I tried printing off my first configuration cube last night. Everything had gone smooth until I clicked print for the first time. I had no problems with homing the printing in manual configuration. The x, y, and z axis all moved in the correct direction and made no funny noises. I used the sample filament Folger sent with the kit and had no problems extruding out a small bit manually. I placed a configuration cube and sliced it without any problems. The cube was centered in the 3D modeled print area and no errors came up during the slicing process. When I tried to print the cube, the printer went straight to the far opposite corner of the home position and started to stutter. If there are any other manufacturing engineers, I am sure you can imagine the sudden panic I had watching a cnc device move at a very rapid pace to somewhere other than intended. I have configured the printer settings exactly to the settings posted by Folger in the configuration manual. I'm at a lost on what the problem might be. I am assuming that somewhere there is a confusion on what the printer thinks and I what I think is the location of the origin. I am not overly familiar with the software portion yet. Is there a place to look at the g-code to see the commands its receiving?

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dbrewski
I tried printing off my first configuration cube last night. Everything had gone smooth until I clicked print for the first time. I had no problems with homing the printing in manual configuration. The x, y, and z axis all moved in the correct direction and made no funny noises. I used the sample filament Folger sent with the kit and had no problems extruding out a small bit manually. I placed a configuration cube and sliced it without any problems. The cube was centered in the 3D modeled print area and no errors came up during the slicing process. When I tried to print the cube, the printer went straight to the far opposite corner of the home position and started to stutter. If there are any other manufacturing engineers, I am sure you can imagine the sudden panic I had watching a cnc device move at a very rapid pace to somewhere other than intended. I have configured the printer settings exactly to the settings posted by Folger in the configuration manual. I'm at a lost on what the problem might be. I am assuming that somewhere there is a confusion on what the printer thinks and I what I think is the location of the origin. I am not overly familiar with the software portion yet. Is there a place to look at the g-code to see the commands its receiving?

In repiter go to printer settings then the print shape tab and change the bed left and bed front from 200 to 0. Its wrong in the manual many have had this same problem me included but this should fix it all.

I am thinking about getting this kit in the next couple months, is this a good kit for beginners? I don't mind the building of the printer. Has anyone tried using ninja flex or the bronze fill from colorfab? Also should I think about upgrading anything as soon as I get it?

Its a good kit, its excellent for the cheap price. Its biggest drawback is the weak motors they work well u just cant run them to fast becuse they are low torque steppers for the application if u push them to hard they will lose steps. Also i would recomend a new extruder assymbaly and hot end. I printed out a spring tension extruder that helped alot becuse the original wasent tight enogh and skipped alot. My next upgrade will be a better hotend. But i am making good qulity prints with my current setup i just have to keep it kinda slow.

I sent the updated config manual (with the corrections for the bed front left) a while back, I don't know wht they're not posted, check my signature for the updated manuals.

Sorry about that!

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zarnold16
I am thinking about getting this kit in the next couple months, is this a good kit for beginners? I don't mind the building of the printer. Has anyone tried using ninja flex or the bronze fill from colorfab? Also should I think about upgrading anything as soon as I get it?

The stock extruder will probably have issues with ninjaflex due to the gap between the extruder drive and hot end. You would need a more closed extruder type setup that has no gap between the drive gear assembly and hot end feed tube.

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Making it better for Makers!
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try pressing the reset button on the ramps board with repitier host active your bed might show up i had the same issue.. pressed it restarted and it came back.. so every once and a while mine disapears to i hit reset and it comes back and works..

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Booda
Ran Marlins test code and bed heated up;

loaded up default marlin file and was able to get heated bed to come on....no motor controls.

Something definitely with the config.h I just cannot figure it out. Hopefully someone be able help out here.

repetier host - When i connect the heated bed status bar disappears completely.

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MakerFront

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zarnold16
I am thinking about getting this kit in the next couple months, is this a good kit for beginners? I don't mind the building of the printer. Has anyone tried using ninja flex or the bronze fill from colorfab? Also should I think about upgrading anything as soon as I get it?

The stock extruder will probably have issues with ninjaflex due to the gap between the extruder drive and hot end. You would need a more closed extruder type setup that has no gap between the drive gear assembly and hot end feed tube.

What is a good extruder that is compatible?

Hey all! So I'm still having waving problems in my prints (see [forums.reprap.org]) and pic:
wavy print pic

I've followed all the advice I've recieved to try and fix this, but nothing has had any affect .

I've tried:

• Replaced acrylic Y axis sled with an alluminium seld
• Cleaned out the hot end
• New hot end
• New fillament
• New stepper motor
• A whole new extruder assembly from Folger (stepper motor, hot-end, fan,etc)

I thought for sure the last one would have fixed the problem but the EXACT same output is happening: waves in the print for both axis (elimates x or y motors as it happens on the Y axis when the X motor isn't running, and vice-versa).

It's gotta be software right? I've calibrated the DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT setting for the extruder (currently 101). I'm printing ABS @ 225 extruder and 95 hotbed. The bed is absolutely perfectly level and am printing 0.2mm height. I have tried an initial height of both .3 and .2mm (no difference). I've even upped my vref thinking it wasn't enough.. no change.

It may be my imagination, but I could swear I hear a high pitched noise that pulses at the same rate the waves occur as it's printed.

The only upside to all of this is that now I have two extruders and, as soon as I get it printing right, I can setup for dual extrusion.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

The waves comes from a mecanical issue. What you have already changed could not help. Something's oscilating at regular intervals. Are your Z threaded rods straight ? Are your belts perfectly aligned ? Have you got some play somewhere ?

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

First time poster. Little background: Familiar with Makerbot Replicator 2 and Solidoodle Workbench. I design 3d files in SketchUp, and use Repetier-Host to print on the Workbench.

I was going through the beginnings of this thread looking for a fix to my problem. I finished building the Folger Tech Prusa i3 kit this weekend. It was fairly simple and fun for someone who was practically a beginner. I can home the axis' fine, however I can't get the motors to move in the opposite direction. The z motors make a high pitched squeal and I don't quite remember what the others do, printer is at home and I'm at work. I have not adjusted the v-ref pots on the ramps yet, so would that most likely be my problem? I haven't tensioned the belts either, that was a problem on our Workbench when we first received it, our y-axis would bind trying to move one way. Thanks for any info/tips!

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Zavashier
The waves comes from a mecanical issue. What you have already changed could not help. Something's oscilating at regular intervals. Are your Z threaded rods straight ? Are your belts perfectly aligned ? Have you got some play somewhere ?

I'm not convinced it is a belt issue. For it to the belts, both the x and y axis belts would have to both have the same problem AND have that oscillation synced together to make the waves. if you look at the picture, you'll notice the wave doesn't change frequency as it turns the corner. The print is of a calibration angle and each edge is aligned to an axis. This means that as it's printing in one direction, the other motor/belt is not moving. The only part that is constantly moving is the extruder motor. This also explains why the pattern wraps around corners perfectly.

Everything is nice and tight and the waves are in the skirt and first layer, so that rules out the z motor/rods. Im not ruling out mechanical problems, but belts are aligned, bolts are tight, bed is level. Any other ideas?