Folger Prusa i3 Kit from ebay

Hey all,

Mostly all I've been doing so far is playing with my i3. Then a friend from work asked if I could print him a part about 5" diameter, 2.5" high for a special personal project he is working on (if successful, I will add pictures to my public Google+ folder). I assembled a schematic in OpenSCad, printed a test model at 1:2.54 scale (a mistake actually, his numbers were all in inches, but 1 unit in OpenSCad was 0.1mm which I neglected to factor in). Ultimately, I was quite pleased with what I had created, and then, it happened...

I can get about a layer out of the printer before filament stops getting pushed through the cold end. From past experiences, the first thing I checked was my v-ref - all good. Then I cleaned my hot end thinking something might be gumming it up causing too much resistance. Nope. Finally, I took off one half of the cold end assembly and put everything back together to try and watch what it was doing. When I opened it, the side of the bearing on the pin wheel came off. Hmm. Then when I printed something you could see that while the gear on the stepper never stopped, the pin wheel did quite often. I'm not getting the constant backforce required to push the filament against the gear to drive it through - the gear just rubs against it. I have checked my filament to ensure it's size is good too, and there is no problem there.

Has anyone had this problem? How best can I fix it? I'm going to try and find a new pin wheel, but I'm wondering if that will be enough? It looks like the extruder Folger sells now isn't exactly the same, and they may not have this part - but I do have an email into them. Of course, if I could find it locally, or closer that would be soooo much better (Peterborough, Ontario area). I'd rather not wait 2 weeks to get such a tiny item.

I'm wondering has anyone changed which extruder or cold end they are using? Which one is best? I like the concept of the direct drive off the stepper, but I would love to see a design where the pin wheel has teeth too, not only to assist in grabbing the filament, but also to interlock with the drive gear. Has anyone seen such a beast where both sides of the filament have a gear, and the 2 lock together to ensure the media goes through? Possibly something like a Raptor gear on each side of the filament. I've come up dry through searches. If I had a working printer I might try to design something myself - right after I get my buddy's item printed. Grrrrr.

I would love any input you can offer. Thanks muchly!

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Public Pictures on my Google+ Profile: [goo.gl] *shown newest to oldest
Ontario, Canada

One of the first replacements I made on my FolgerTech Prusa i3 was the extruder. I printed THIS ONE and never looked back! It uses the parts from the stock extruder, plus a couple screws and a spring. It puts sufficient pressure on the filament and facilitates filament changes and clearing of jams.

I have made several mods to my printer - take a look at the linked photos in my signature.

Also, check out the new group on Thingiverse dedicated to this printer >> HERE

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-David

Find me online at:
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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

Quote
MindRealm
One of the first replacements I made on my FolgerTech Prusa i3 was the extruder. I printed THIS ONE and never looked back! It uses the parts from the stock extruder, plus a couple screws and a spring. It puts sufficient pressure on the filament and facilitates filament changes and clearing of jams.

I have made several mods to my printer - take a look at the linked photos in my signature.

Also, check out the new group on Thingiverse dedicated to this printer >> HERE

Will be printing that extruder assembly and spool holder when I get home..

So I would like to do the auto bed leveling upgrade to my printer. I have the servo and I found where to jumper to enable servo control on the ramps and where to plug the servo in. My question is do I wire the switch I am going to use for my Z probe switch to NO or NC? Also, please confirm that with the Z probe I want to put the two wires for the switch on the outside two pins of the MIN Z axis endstop pins? Also, I have read various places you can use the regular Z endstop in conjunction with the Z probe switch to be sort of a failsafe. Can someone advise how to go about wiring that? Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this stuff...

Quote
JSR82
So I would like to do the auto bed leveling upgrade to my printer. I have the servo and I found where to jumper to enable servo control on the ramps and where to plug the servo in. My question is do I wire the switch I am going to use for my Z probe switch to NO or NC? Also, please confirm that with the Z probe I want to put the two wires for the switch on the outside two pins of the MIN Z axis endstop pins? Also, I have read various places you can use the regular Z endstop in conjunction with the Z probe switch to be sort of a failsafe. Can someone advise how to go about wiring that? Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this stuff...

There are a few youtube videos that show how to set this up.. you may want to watch a few of them.

I'm in the process of setting up an inductive sensor like the Printrbots use (part # LJ12A3-4-Z/BX) rather then the servo/switch for my auto leveling. Having used hundreds of 9gram servos for R/C planes & heli's im not sure i would trust their consistency unless you use a high-end servo. Most 'cheap' (towerpro. etc) servos have a hard time returning to center. My fear is that over time it will start to loose accuracy.

Thomas Sanladerer has a good video showing how the proximity sensor works..
[www.youtube.com]

I'm using a 'PRINTinZ' built plate that has a thin coper layer built it for this type of bed leveling. Once i have everything working i'll post pictures.

Printrbot use Hall effect sensors because its printing bed is made out of steel. If you use glass, you won't measure the good distance. Your heatbed and your glass could have pretty different shapes.

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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
Printrbot use Hall effect sensors because its printing bed is made out of steel. If you use glass, you won't measure the good distance. Your heatbed and your glass could have pretty different shapes.

I use a PRINTinZ printing bed. It has a thin coper layer below the build surface that works with inductive sensors. Probably one of the best $40 i spent on my printer.. well worth it. No tape, no hairspray, no glue stick.
[printinz.com]

Quote
MindRealm
One of the first replacements I made on my FolgerTech Prusa i3 was the extruder. I printed THIS ONE and never looked back! It uses the parts from the stock extruder, plus a couple screws and a spring. It puts sufficient pressure on the filament and facilitates filament changes and clearing of jams.

I have made several mods to my printer - take a look at the linked photos in my signature.

Also, check out the new group on Thingiverse dedicated to this printer >> HERE

Wow. That's looks impressive.

Unfortunately, I can't print ANYTHING right now. This is my only printer - it was my initiation on a limited budget - and I don't know anyone that can help (everyone said I was nuts). I can't even find a bearing to replace the damaged one on the pinwheel (I went right to a bearing place?!) - I may have to resort to ordering a set from Folger, when I only need the one. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the bearing is a 683zz? 3mm bore, 7mm exterior diameter, 3mm width? I may just check ebay for some / one, or see if my dad has any in his RC hobby stuff. Then I have to figure out how to get the old one out, and a new one pressed in, without damaging the wheel itself. Until I get this thing running, I may have to find someone that sells the plastics for that extruder, or get someone to print them and mail them to me for an email money order. I like the idea I might be able to try some of that NinjaFlex stuff too.

I like the looks of the LED ring too. Do you have a link to where you picked that up? I just have a desk lamp aimed at mine, but it still casts shadows. I always thought something like that would be a great idea.

Final question. Do you have a link to that spool holder as well?

Thanks for the pics and the info.

(*it looks like Google+ has done something funky, and the link to my pictures is acting up. It may or may not work.)

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NukedWorker
Final question. Do you have a link to that spool holder as well?

Here you go. I printed it last night, exactly what I was looking for.

For the LED rings, CLICK HERE - I got two for $6.50 shipped!

---

-David

Find me online at:
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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

Quote
bengele
Not sure if this is confusing people or not but I took me a bit to figure it out.

What I realized is that in Pronterface you are not giving it a command to move left/right, forward/backward, and up/down you are telling it to move +steps or -steps. That means once you have homed your printer (moving the bed all of the way forward and the head all of the way to the right) the coordinates of your printer are at 0,0,0. If you want to move the head to the left (increasing the value of its coordinate) you need to use the +x button in the Pronterface interface which happens to be the right button. This is somewhat confusing but makes sense if you are not paying attention where the buttons are on the screen but what they do.

Left should be negative. Left is always negative. Just like any Cartesian plane. And down is also negative. Your y axis position is the position of where the head is relative to the bed, not the direction that the bed moves. Moving the bed towards the back of the printer is moving down your y axis or negative. If your top right corner of the bed is 0,0,0 (home) then your bottom left is -200,-200,0. This will cause prints to be backwards and may not matter if you are printing certain items but if you print something that needs to face a specific direction you're going to have a bad day.

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louspinuso

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bengele
Not sure if this is confusing people or not but I took me a bit to figure it out.

What I realized is that in Pronterface you are not giving it a command to move left/right, forward/backward, and up/down you are telling it to move +steps or -steps. That means once you have homed your printer (moving the bed all of the way forward and the head all of the way to the right) the coordinates of your printer are at 0,0,0. If you want to move the head to the left (increasing the value of its coordinate) you need to use the +x button in the Pronterface interface which happens to be the right button. This is somewhat confusing but makes sense if you are not paying attention where the buttons are on the screen but what they do.

Left should be negative. Left is always negative. Just like any Cartesian plane. And down is also negative. Your y axis position is the position of where the head is relative to the bed, not the direction that the bed moves. Moving the bed towards the back of the printer is moving down your y axis or negative. If your top right corner of the bed is 0,0,0 (home) then your bottom left is -200,-200,0. This will cause prints to be backwards and may not matter if you are printing certain items but if you print something that needs to face a specific direction you're going to have a bad day.

Maybe I am missing something but I can't see how this would mess up a print. If I am standing behind my printer then the top right becomes the bottom left. In fact that is probably an easier way of explaining what I was trying to explain before. That is that when using the Pronterface controls you have to imagine that you are behind the printer and not in front of it like I would expect most people are.

Like you said this causes the print to print on the bed backwards but it is a 180° rotation. If it was flipping the top and bottom but not the left and right I could see that as an issue.

After the current question is answered, can we please stop adding to this old thread?

The title doesn't describe the topic of the new questions/comments.

Let's call this one dead and move on...

Thanks

---

-David

Find me online at:
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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

I think it's a good place for helping people that have this specific version if the I3. A lot of people have found help with issues. I really enjoy the thread.

You're both right, a 37 pages topic makes finding useful informations impossible for other members. A lot of questions asked here are fully transposable on other printers (Marlin, Ramps, configuration Q&A). It would be fine this topic still lives, but for specific Folger's issues : printer parts, extruder, builds, etc.

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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 !)

Quote
bengele

Quote
louspinuso

Quote
bengele
Not sure if this is confusing people or not but I took me a bit to figure it out.

What I realized is that in Pronterface you are not giving it a command to move left/right, forward/backward, and up/down you are telling it to move +steps or -steps. That means once you have homed your printer (moving the bed all of the way forward and the head all of the way to the right) the coordinates of your printer are at 0,0,0. If you want to move the head to the left (increasing the value of its coordinate) you need to use the +x button in the Pronterface interface which happens to be the right button. This is somewhat confusing but makes sense if you are not paying attention where the buttons are on the screen but what they do.

Left should be negative. Left is always negative. Just like any Cartesian plane. And down is also negative. Your y axis position is the position of where the head is relative to the bed, not the direction that the bed moves. Moving the bed towards the back of the printer is moving down your y axis or negative. If your top right corner of the bed is 0,0,0 (home) then your bottom left is -200,-200,0. This will cause prints to be backwards and may not matter if you are printing certain items but if you print something that needs to face a specific direction you're going to have a bad day.

Maybe I am missing something but I can't see how this would mess up a print. If I am standing behind my printer then the top right becomes the bottom left. In fact that is probably an easier way of explaining what I was trying to explain before. That is that when using the Pronterface controls you have to imagine that you are behind the printer and not in front of it like I would expect most people are.

Like you said this causes the print to print on the bed backwards but it is a 180° rotation. If it was flipping the top and bottom but not the left and right I could see that as an issue.

I mentioned this in an earlier post but I'll say it again here as this has become a long thread and is hard to search through so:

Assuming this is your bed, these are the four positions that your head could be at for home.

           BACK
  +--------------------+
  | A                B |
  |                    | R
L |                    | I
E |                    | G
F |                    | H
T |                    | T
  |                    |
  |                    |
  |                    |
  | C                D |
  +--------------------+
          FRONT

And these are the EndStop plugs on your Ramps board:

... Z Max
... Z Min
... Y Max
... Y Min
... X Max
... X Min

If your home is A then your endstops for home should be X min and Y max. So looking at the endstop locations on your RAMPS board you should be plugged in like so :

... Z Max
___ Z Min
___ Y Max
... Y Min
... X Max
___ X Min

If your home is B then your endstops for home should be X max and Y max. Looking at the endstop locations on your RAMPS board you should be plugged in like so:

... Z Max
___ Z Min
___ Y Max
... Y Min
___ X Max
... X Min

If your home is C then your endstops for home should be X min and Y min. Looking at the endstop locations on your RAMPS board you should be plugged in like so:

... Z Max
___ Z Min
... Y Max
___ Y Min
... X Max
___ X Min

And finally if your home is D then your endstops for home should be X max and Y min. Looking at the endstop locations on your RAMPS board you should be plugged in like so:

... Z Max
___ Z Min
... Y Max
___ Y Min
___ X Max
... X Min

Once you've got all of this set, then when homing your motors you should be moving towards those positions assuming that you've got all of your settings set right in the rest of the software. If your motors are moving in the wrong direction at that point, EITHER flip the connector on the board for that motor OR change the appropriate

#define INVERT_FOO_DIR false 

but not both, as that will basically undo what you're changing. If you are going to flip the plug, make sure the power is off.

If your motors are moving in the right direction when you click the appropriate buttons in pronterface, but go the wrong way when you hit home, this is the setting you need to look at:

#define X_HOME_DIR -1
#define Y_HOME_DIR -1
#define Z_HOME_DIR 1

These will be either 1 or -1. If a particular direction is going the wrong way to find home, change the value for that axis, re-upload your firmware and do it again.

If you want more information on what everything else in the configuration.h file does, check out this page [solidutopia.com] because it has a lot of useful information.

Recently I've had longer prints fail because the extruder motor would get hot and then melt the PLA before going to the hot end and jam. I lowered the voltage on the pot and the motor would be cool but then there wouldn't be enough power to feed the pla into the hot end and it would jam. Then I tried a big desk fan to keep the motor cool and it worked but thats just a temporary fix. Does anyone have any suggestions. The 40mm fan the folger tech extruder comes with isn't powerful enough to keep the motor cool.

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Newtoprinting
Recently I've had longer prints fail because the extruder motor would get hot and then melt the PLA before going to the hot end and jam. I lowered the voltage on the pot and the motor would be cool but then there wouldn't be enough power to feed the pla into the hot end and it would jam. Then I tried a big desk fan to keep the motor cool and it worked but thats just a temporary fix. Does anyone have any suggestions. The 40mm fan the folger tech extruder comes with isn't powerful enough to keep the motor cool.

I loosened the small set screw in the cold end block and moved the hotend down about a half inch. The extra space allows the heat to dicipate before it gets to the motor. I have done several 4+ hour prints in both ABS and PLA without any issues. It is a little more difficult to load the filament, but it is worth it.

I finally got a successful print of something other than the cube.

I e-mailed the support department at Folger and the first thing they mentioned was to run a wire through the tip. I used a welding tip cleaner, the smallest wire is just at .4mm. I couldn't get it through so I drilled it out with a #77 drill bit. This read at .42mm so it was close enough. I then ran the tip cleaning wire through and it ran through easily. After replacing the tip I was able to run the extruder at full speed in repitier. At that point I bumped up the extrusion speeds to 45mm per second from 17mm per second.

That took the estimation for the spool holder from over 3 hours down to little over an hour. On the first try it was on layer 95 out of 160 layers and the x axis skipped by about 5 mm. I tried pausing the print and moving the xaxis over but i couldn't get it to stack back up. I aborted that print and lost another one at about layer 12.

I ran the tip cleaner back through the tip again, this time while it was hot on the extruder. I also pointed a fan at the x axis stepper and started another print. I noticed the extruder ticking when it was on around layer 90 and dropped the speed down to 80%. This helped some but I noticed that it was grating on the previous layer. I had to drop the extrusion rate back to 86% in repitier then after a couple of layers it was printing normally again. I was able to jump the speed back up to 90% and complete the print. I still have one to print and I will drop the extrusion rate back to 100% in slic3r before I start.

I also bumped the heat bed up to 115C and that stopped the print from warping.

Hello everyone

Thanks for the thread, tons of great information here.
My kit should be arriving in about a week, this will be my first 3d printing venture.

Can anyone confirm what was stated earlier in the thread.... that the Folger configuration file works correctly.

Thanks

A few things I forgot to note last night:

On the first print the X axis made a lot of binding noise, I lubricated the X axis by placing a drop at a time of Singer sewing machine oil each on both smooth rods and let the bearings drag through the oil. After a few drops for each bearing (LM8UU) the X axis became quiet.

My X axis stepper was getting hot so I pointed a fan on the stepper.

After the first bad print I heard something hit the table, looking under the printer the Y axis belt holder was flopping, and noticed that the front bolt was loose, and the rear nut was missing. I replaced both nuts with nylocks.

I made the rear section of the box to enclose the printer but not the front section, since the parts were not warping on me I might hold off on the front section for now.

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Tardisrepair
Hello everyone

Thanks for the thread, tons of great information here.
My kit should be arriving in about a week, this will be my first 3d printing venture.

Can anyone confirm what was stated earlier in the thread.... that the Folger configuration file works correctly.

Thanks

I ended up using walter's config (page 29 on this thread, follow the github, goto config) with the most recent version of Marlin & including the u8glib_arduino_v1.17 library.

Anyone have any good pla settingS for slicer. My first layer seems to be the issue.

Quote

Anyone have any good pla settingS for slicer. My first layer seems to be the issue.

This would be a better topic in the Slic3r Forum... Also, a description of the problem or (better yet) a photo would be helpful.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2015 02:32PM by MindRealm.

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-David

Find me online at:
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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

Hi all, great thread, just looking at getting one of these down to New Zealand. I previously scratch built a Mendel90 (printed parts supplied by Nophead)

Cheers
Colin

Quote
JSR82
So I would like to do the auto bed leveling upgrade to my printer. I have the servo and I found where to jumper to enable servo control on the ramps and where to plug the servo in. My question is do I wire the switch I am going to use for my Z probe switch to NO or NC? Also, please confirm that with the Z probe I want to put the two wires for the switch on the outside two pins of the MIN Z axis endstop pins? Also, I have read various places you can use the regular Z endstop in conjunction with the Z probe switch to be sort of a failsafe. Can someone advise how to go about wiring that? Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this stuff...

I own a PB Simple Makers edition (Auto-level), Simple Metal (Auto-level) and the FolgerTech Prusa i3.

From experience, I can say that auto-level isn't all it's cracked up to be from a practical standpoint. Unless you plan to be dragging your printer everywhere with you, it's really not necessary. Once you have your level set (config manual tells you how to get it right), it really shouldn't change.

The inductive sensor is a whole other ball of wax, it works, but I don't think it's as sensitive as it should be. It gives a good reading, but it varies when I watch it report back to the firmware which is a little unnerving.

Auto level is a cool idea; except it introduces yet another layer of troubleshooting bad prints since the firmware will be moving the Z along with the X and Y. I like my static, level layers.

I thought for a while about throwing an extra inductive probe on the i3 but after thinking and looking at my good prints, I decided not to add the layer of complication.

Solved. One of the Motor cables had a bad crimp on a pin and I was not getting continuity.

I am having a very strange issue with my reprap board.

A few weeks ago I was getting these symptoms:

the X and Z axes seem to be operating normally(Jogging back and forth reasonably smooth and can Home correctly), however the Y axis only wants to stutter in place with some jittery shimmying motion that does not look like it has a direction.

Steps taken to troubleshoot:

-Tuning the A4988 potentiometer and Swapping out the A4988 driver boards. I had thought that I had shorted something out when adjusting the driver's pots with the multimeter leads (Did Not receive a ceramic screwdriver but substituted a small plastic prying tool that works ok), but the other Z and X axes seem ok and swapping drivers on axes also does not present a change.

-Swapping out the stepper motors. Unmounting the Y motor and jogging it by itself it will also stutter in place, although the same stuttering in place happens with the X motor unmounted. Using the X motor(with Y axis cable) on the Y axis yields the same results. Oddly, mounting the Y motor to the X axis (X cable)and it runs somewhat normally(not as well as the smaller X motor).

-Loosening and looking for sources of tension on the axis itself. After trying the steps above this seemed like my last resort. Currently the bed will traverse the length of the smooth rod with a flick of a finger.

I had Contacted Dan at folger tech about this issue and had him send me a replacement electronics kit. After swapping out only the Ramps board and keeping the original mega and stepper driver boards, my Y-axis issue had disappeared. I quickly realized that the problem only moved when I tried to home the Z axis and the motors gave the same symptoms.

Any suggestions?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2015 04:23PM by thefugitive87.

Perhaps this would be well suited for the RAMPS Electronics forum located >> HERE <<

---

-David

Find me online at:
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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

OK , that sounds good I will also post there. I am asking here because it is specifically a folger printer. There may be some issue specific to the folger supplied electronics that I am not thinking of.

Understood. Putting it here buries the post 1,107 messages deep... kinda hard to find with such a generic title as Folger Prusa i3 Kit from ebay...

---

-David

Find me online at:
Thingiverse
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LinkedIn
Facebook

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