Folger Tech 2020 i3 Printer Kit (Official Thread)

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Uncertainty

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markts

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Uncertainty
I'm back to printing at 230c (abs)/ bed 110->105c with great results. Extruder motor gets hella hot though, I'm worried it will warp the carriage. My Vref is at 0.38 but I fear going any lower due to skipping.

Interesting! I was having problems with the extruder clicking and I figured the temperature wasn't high enough (also ABS). Someone suggested LOWERING the temp and yep, it works much better. I think my last print was at 205? I'm not crazy about the stringiness of the ABS though (some of my stuff looks like Mini Wheats) so I'm still getting it dialed in. Last two prints at the lower temp had no skipping or clicking though,.

lol that was me who recommended bringing temp down

Ha! Didn't you have the clicking at that temp originally? I actually dropped the temp to 200 over the weekend and it seemed less stringy. Until the glass on the bed broke. (full disclosure, I bumped it)

Finished putting it together this weekend. Still have a few issues to work out before I start configuration.

Some feedback: There were some small confusing elements in the guide which can be fixed or polished, but nothing major. I will make a list of suggestions and post it here later.

I found that I was missing a few bolts. And the hardware count was exact. I think it wouldn't hurt to throw in some spare M3s and M4 of each size.

Hey guys, got my kit on Saturday morning and pulled an all-nighter putting it together. The instructions were a bit challenging to follow at times and a lot of things required reassembly. I also didnt fully tighten anything down until I had to or was happy with where it was at. I got lots of spare parts which came in really handy. Especially the extra 2 linear bearings, since after assembling the whole thing and doing some test prints, I realised that my z carriage was upside down and flipped. I knocked a bunch of balls out of the 2 that slide on the Z rod since the rods weren't straight up and down and I wanted to take apart as little as possible when reassembling the carriage properly with the motor on the right.

You will see in the picture album I linked below that my Z carriage is flipped in some pictures and the correct way in others. Good news is it prints fine like that after I played around with the electronics/firmware. However since the nuts face upward on the threaded rods, when going close to the top of the z axis my whole carrage fell down onto the plate. Which when searching for a fix, is when I realised the whole thing was backwards and upside down.

Anyways the 3 cubes in the album were my first three prints with the 3rd being pretty successful imo for only my 3rd try. I ran out of the sample filament after the three cubes and half a minion from dispicable me. My SainSmart PLA filament got here today so I will start working with that when I get home from work. I also ordered 2 rolls of Hatchbox 1 PLA and 1 ABS and a roll of Sainsmart ABS today because on my lunch break I got to play with the Sainsmart PLA a little and was happy with it so far. I got ABS to try out and print spare parts/fan shroud/etc since you dont want PLA near anything hot.

Been thinking about switching to a E3D V6 setup similar to [www.thingiverse.com] and I see some of you already have, so let us know how it works out for you long term! I do however have some questions about the extruder that came with the kit. Mine has a tab on the left side of it above the spring that looks like you can press it down, I am not sure what this is for and I don't see one in many of your builds. Anybody know what its for? Also is there a way I can adjust tension? I see most extruders have a tension adjustment.

Here is a photo album of my first prints(before I got glass from lowes so they were directly on the heated bed) and build:
[imgur.com]

I should point out that I did have issues with endstops at first but looking at the board and software settings, along with the direction of movement, I was able to make heavy use of the emergency stop button until I had things moving and homing in the correct directions. I believe I moved the X endstop left a set of pins to the X-Max pins since as far as software is concerned, the right side of the printer is the max side, and thats the side of the printer that the endstop is on. Then in repeteir I told it under printer settings to use X-Max as home.

But I am an embedded software engineer with a lot of PIC and Atmel experience so the firmware is easy to me and I have been making all my fine tuning changes in there as apposed to eeprom.

I will say though I only have 2 gripes. First, the acrylic peices, could have been something better than acrylic, and my arduino/ramps combo doesnt line up with more than 2 holes on the board mount acrylic piece no matter how I orient it. Second, I cant get the threaded rods lined up with the z carriage properly/the max print height is more like 140mm - 145mm (depending on how well you can get your rods to line up) not the advertised 178mm (7"). Which is really interesting because with the carriage upside down like I originally had it, I got a max print height of about 165mm in software. This was mostly affected by the threaded rod being too close to the sliding rods so as the carriage gets close to the top it pulls the threaded rods away from the slide rods. So I can get it up to about 145mm maxed out but it makes horrible popping noises once it passes 145mm and is basically trying to rip out the nuts in the printed slider/bearing holders. If anybody knows a way to fix this please let me know. I have already aligned my motors/rods as best i can and the distance between the rods in the 3d printed part is simply smaller than the distance between the hole for the rod in the acrilic and the center of the motor.

Also I ran all the calculations on the Prusa calulator [prusaprinters.org] and the numbers produced were the same as the defaults in the firmware. So for anybody wondering, all you should really need to calibrate is your extruder values. X/Y/Z should be pretty darn close out of the box assuming your endstops are in the correct place and you have fine tuned your stepper drivers to make sure your not missing steps or overheating the drivers.

Over-all so far I am very happy with the build and happy about the extra hardware that came with it to fix some of my goofs/make slight design changes. It seems like most of you are happy with it as well

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 04:55PM by mel0n.

How far off were the extruder values? I haven't done this and am curious what the effect is if it's wrong?

I haven't got them dialed in perfectly yet since I didn't want to waste the sample filament just extruding it. I ran 1 calibration attempt while I was home for lunch but need to fine tune it further as its all I had time for.

The default Esteps value is 90. I noticed both with the sample filament and the new stuff that that number is low. at 90 Esteps I requested 100mm and got 92.8mm so my new esteps value is 96.9828. I changed it to 97 and ran the test again, and it seems it extruded too much so as I said i need to work on it a bit more when I get home.

Here is a great how to video : [www.youtube.com]

I have found that Tom has some of the best and most in-depth videos on youtube so I feel more apt to believe what he says than some of the people out there spewing crap. [www.youtube.com] This is also a great video that explains why people make calibrating more complicated than it should be. And as I said above, the default estep values are all the same as the prusa calculator so they shouldn't need to be changed. Only the extruder, and voltages.


On a side note I know i mentioned above about changing extruder/hotend and I was just curious if anybody had tried a Bowden tube setup yet? I thought the results in this video were pretty interesting, and I can already see the side feeder being a bit tight/hard to pull filament from.
[www.youtube.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 05:29PM by mel0n.

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markts
How far off were the extruder values? I haven't done this and am curious what the effect is if it's wrong?

I calibrated mine by using the technique of putting two pens marks a known distance apart and seeing how it corresponded to advancing by a known about. It was under by about 10%, i.e. I asked to extrude 20mm and the filament advance 18mm. I've adjusted this since, and I don't see any difference in the print quality.

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See my blog at [moosteria.blogspot.com].

I just got home and since it went too far last time i bumped down my rounding 96.9828 to 97 down to 96. Ran the 100mm test again and got EXACTLY 99.995mm which is good enough for me and is small enough to breath on the calipers and get that reading haha. Just got everything set up and started my first big print (1 hour long) that isnt a hollow test cube haha. Once I get stuff more dialed in I might try Benchy

Also ill just leave this here:
[www.thingiverse.com]

Going to make one right away, hate the side spool holder, it has to pull as way to awkard of an angle

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 06:51PM by mel0n.

Guys,

I have a problem that I hope you can help me fix. I have everything setup as per the build guide and just started configuration. All the motors seems to be working well expect the X carriage motor which only wants to move in one direction or not at all for some reason. Moving in one direction works 90% of the time but sometimes it doesn't register the input at all. So far I've tried reversing the wires and changing out stepper driver with a spare one. Nothing seems to work so far. Trying to move in the other direction results in two different scenarios: Sometimes, the motor whines and tries to move but other times nothing happens, not even a whine.

Will fiddling with the motor voltages do the trick? I don't see how the voltages can affect movement in only one direction. Hmmmmm.....

try homing the x axis first. I found all mine do that until I home them. Its like the printer doesnt know where they are, and it doesnt want to push them in the wrong direction, or considers them already at max value until you show it where home is. Hope that helps!

1. Oh and if you click home and it starts going the opposite direction of the end stop click emergency stop right away otherwise it will just keep going.

2. Same thing if it does come towards your end stop and doesnt stop when it hits.

To fix:

1. Either flip the servo wire over, or go into the firmware and set invert axis to true/false depending on what the current value is.

2. Go into your printer settings in repetier host or whatever your using and set the endstop to be a max/min (opposite of what it currently is)

for #2 you may need to do both ( I did, but I put the x/z carraige on backwards and upside down haha)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 10:16PM by mel0n.

Way back on this thread, markts reported needing to download a new Marlin and make some config change to get the LCD panel to work (I mean this one). I just tried mine and it worked out of the box. All the necessary defines are already set in configuration.h and pins.h. I haven't tried a print with it yet, so I don't know if it will kill the run the way markts said. I may have to disconnect the annoying beeper that sounds everytime you click a button.

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See my blog at [moosteria.blogspot.com].

I am new to 3d printing, I have been reading the post here and decided today to order the 2020 . Ebay says the expected delivery date is July 3. I hope the assembly and configuration goes well. If it doesn't I know there are knowledgeable people here that can give me good advice .

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animoose
Way back on this thread, markts reported needing to download a new Marlin and make some config change to get the LCD panel to work (I mean this one). I just tried mine and it worked out of the box. All the necessary defines are already set in configuration.h and pins.h. I haven't tried a print with it yet, so I don't know if it will kill the run the way markts said. I may have to disconnect the annoying beeper that sounds everytime you click a button.

I believe there is a setting in the LCD menu that can disable the buzzer or turn it down. I too thought it is ANNOYING!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2015 12:02AM by Devil Inc.

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animoose
Way back on this thread, markts reported needing to download a new Marlin and make some config change to get the LCD panel to work (I mean this one). I just tried mine and it worked out of the box. All the necessary defines are already set in configuration.h and pins.h. I haven't tried a print with it yet, so I don't know if it will kill the run the way markts said. I may have to disconnect the annoying beeper that sounds everytime you click a button.

Huh. Well, I definitely got a blank screen when I tried mine with the version of marlin on the Google Drive. I'm on my phone now so it's difficult to search, but what do you mean kill the run? BTW, mine doesn't make any noise.

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markts

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animoose
Way back on this thread, markts reported needing to download a new Marlin and make some config change to get the LCD panel to work (I mean this one). I just tried mine and it worked out of the box. All the necessary defines are already set in configuration.h and pins.h. I haven't tried a print with it yet, so I don't know if it will kill the run the way markts said. I may have to disconnect the annoying beeper that sounds everytime you click a button.

Huh. Well, I definitely got a blank screen when I tried mine with the version of marlin on the Google Drive. I'm on my phone now so it's difficult to search, but what do you mean kill the run? BTW, mine doesn't make any noise.

I meant when you said "Then the printer firmware immediately "rolled over" via kill().". Maybe I just misunderstood it. This is with the 20x4 display, by the way.

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See my blog at [moosteria.blogspot.com].

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kn4ud
I am new to 3d printing, I have been reading the post here and decided today to order the 2020 . Ebay says the expected delivery date is July 3. I hope the assembly and configuration goes well. If it doesn't I know there are knowledgeable people here that can give me good advice .

This has been a pretty good thread for getting help and advice, so please feel free to ask! I wrote up some notes from my build (see the blog my signature - the notes are split over multiple entries), in case this helps as well.

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See my blog at [moosteria.blogspot.com].

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animoose

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markts

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animoose
Way back on this thread, markts reported needing to download a new Marlin and make some config change to get the LCD panel to work (I mean this one). I just tried mine and it worked out of the box. All the necessary defines are already set in configuration.h and pins.h. I haven't tried a print with it yet, so I don't know if it will kill the run the way markts said. I may have to disconnect the annoying beeper that sounds everytime you click a button.

Huh. Well, I definitely got a blank screen when I tried mine with the version of marlin on the Google Drive. I'm on my phone now so it's difficult to search, but what do you mean kill the run? BTW, mine doesn't make any noise.

I meant when you said "Then the printer firmware immediately "rolled over" via kill().". Maybe I just misunderstood it. This is with the 20x4 display, by the way.

Gotcha. Right, on that display there is a pad that's labelled "kill", at least on mine, but there is nothing there. Presumably you put a button there to immediately kill the print like an emergency stop (I'm only guessing here). It seemed the code was reading the open pads as the "kill" signal. It was preventing on my printer from booting at all until I changed that line in pins.h. *shrug*

Hey guys, I decided to give e-squizo's fan shroud a try. It's a bit too short for our extruder so I made a modified version that works perfectly on our printer. It supplies a steady stream of horizontal air right below the hot end.

[www.thingiverse.com]

Let me know what you guys think, or how it works for you. Even using the original one that was too short made a huge difference in my printers ability to print the support-less overhangs in the new one.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2015 08:33AM by mel0n.

Hi Folks,

Are there any objections if this thread gets moved to the Prusa i3 and variants forum? That seems like a more appropriate place for it. -Matt

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mel0n
Hey guys, I decided to give e-squizo's fan shroud a try. It's a bit too short for our extruder so I made a modified version that works perfectly on our printer. It supplies a steady stream of horizontal air right below the hot end.

[www.thingiverse.com]

Let me know what you guys think, or how it works for you. Even using the original one that was too short made a huge difference in my printers ability to print the support-less overhangs in the new one.

I'll try this. I made the original one, but as you said it is too short to be useful. I may need to mirror it, as I have an extruder that is the other way round for everyone else.

It looks like you've swapped your fan round to blow on the extruder. As supplied, it sucks the air away from the extruder, I think - it's always seemed wrong to me, but can't be fixed with the bolts they provide as they are too short to attach the fan the other way round.

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See my blog at [moosteria.blogspot.com].

Nope, as you can see in my original build pictures, it blows in [imgur.com] I never took the print head assembly apart prior to taking those pictures, so thats the way it was oriented when it arrived.

I think there are recessed screw holes on the intake side for the fan to mount to the heatsink/motor.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2015 02:57PM by mel0n.

Your blog was a major factor in me making up my mind to purchase the 2020.

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kn4ud
Your blog was a major factor in me making up my mind to purchase the 2020.

I like his blog too, I am currently in the process of setting up my own blog and youtube channel. Been working on a nice maker/hacker workbench and the 3d printer is the first of many projects to come. It really seemed like the best first project as I can make parts for future projects easily.

I hope you enjoy your Ftech 2020 i3 as much as I am enjoying mine. It has already far surpassed my expectations, especially at the price point, how rigid the aluminum 2020 frame is, how many easy/cheap upgrades exist (since its a modified prusa and uses the same mk7 printhead/extruder as their acrilic version), and the overall print quality.

Then again your print quality will only be as good as how much time and effort you put in

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2015 03:31PM by mel0n.

I tried out mel0n's fan shroud this evening and got a nice print of a 0.5mm thin wall calibration object. I think it's too early to tell if this was luck or due to the cooling (especially since the weather today is a bit weird). There's definitely less bowing and layer separation than previous times I've tried this, though I've changed many other parameters since. Pics of the object and the shroud below.

[goo.gl]
[goo.gl]

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See my blog at [moosteria.blogspot.com].

I just got the 2020 kit today and am in the process of assembling. Some of the 3d printed parts aren't the best quality but seem like they will do the job. However for step 10:5 I'm supposed to put in 2 LM8UU bearings into a cylindrical hole in the "3d Printed: Left side" but the hole isn't tight enough and the bearings just fall out. Is it safe to just epoxy the bearings in place? Thanks

Hello all,
This is my first post on RepRap, but I wanted to say thank you for all your post. I bought the FT 2020 about 3 weeks ago and I had some problems at first (Some of the solder joints on the back of the Ramps board had been bridged. This made it half work until it blow my Mega board.), but FolgerTech took care of me and now I am up and running. I have done a few prints like some fan mounts for the Ramps board and a case for my LCD Smart Controller all out of ABS. Tonight I tried some Woodfill from Esun and it turned out great. All in all I think this printer is a great value and I look forward to trying out some more exotic filaments. I though I would share some pics of my build and the Woodfill print.

Pics FT 2020 Build & Prints

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animoose
I tried out mel0n's fan shroud this evening and got a nice print of a 0.5mm thin wall calibration object. I think it's too early to tell if this was luck or due to the cooling (especially since the weather today is a bit weird). There's definitely less bowing and layer separation than previous times I've tried this, though I've changed many other parameters since. Pics of the object and the shroud below.

[goo.gl]
[goo.gl]

Looks good! So far I only had 1 print that had an issue caused by the fan. I forgot to adjust my bed temp to 55C like I usually do and it sat at 45C so a tiny bit separated from the plate towards the end of the print. Luckily it was only a spacer for my top mounted spool holder I am working on and will work fine with the slight imperfection. Overall though the quality of my prints with pla at 205C and the fan shroud has been great!

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Garben
Hello all,
This is my first post on RepRap, but I wanted to say thank you for all your post. I bought the FT 2020 about 3 weeks ago and I had some problems at first (Some of the solder joints on the back of the Ramps board had been bridged. This made it half work until it blow my Mega board.), but FolgerTech took care of me and now I am up and running. I have done a few prints like some fan mounts for the Ramps board and a case for my LCD Smart Controller all out of ABS. Tonight I tried some Woodfill from Esun and it turned out great. All in all I think this printer is a great value and I look forward to trying out some more exotic filaments. I though I would share some pics of my build and the Woodfill print.

Pics FT 2020 Build & Prints

Wow thats a nice looking printer! And its cool to see it printing wood filament, mind if I ask what settings you used and which brand filament that is?
Also how do you like the 2020 spool holder? I personally hate it, and aftwe watching a video on how side mounted spools reduce print quality, I have been working on a top mounted spool holder using 3d printed mounts meant for a Mendel Max since it is made out of 2020 aluminum as well. I will probably use that side aluminum peice for mounting a screen/smartboard.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2015 08:53AM by mel0n.

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Garben
Hello all,
This is my first post on RepRap, but I wanted to say thank you for all your post. I bought the FT 2020 about 3 weeks ago and I had some problems at first (Some of the solder joints on the back of the Ramps board had been bridged. This made it half work until it blow my Mega board.), but FolgerTech took care of me and now I am up and running. I have done a few prints like some fan mounts for the Ramps board and a case for my LCD Smart Controller all out of ABS. Tonight I tried some Woodfill from Esun and it turned out great. All in all I think this printer is a great value and I look forward to trying out some more exotic filaments. I though I would share some pics of my build and the Woodfill print.

Pics FT 2020 Build & Prints

Looks great!

Do you have a pointer to the mount for the LCD?

Do we have a definite launch date for an autolevel kit yet?

Would love to get one from FTech before I travel.

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arxidon
I just got the 2020 kit today and am in the process of assembling. Some of the 3d printed parts aren't the best quality but seem like they will do the job. However for step 10:5 I'm supposed to put in 2 LM8UU bearings into a cylindrical hole in the "3d Printed: Left side" but the hole isn't tight enough and the bearings just fall out. Is it safe to just epoxy the bearings in place? Thanks

I had the same problem but I fixed it by shimming the hole with a piece of paper before shoving in the bearings.

This file would be good for pimped my ride kind of show.
Imagin mounting your electronics in a transparent gerrycan and have fluorescent cooling non conducting fluids, fanned with bubles ). I call my. Projects landing a can on a plate.