The problem is fixed. It turns out that a piece of insulating wire I had on one of the power leads going into the board rendered the lead too short. The connection was the problem after all. Thanks again for all your help!by mrShrimp - General
I have disconnected both Melzi boards, and upon testing the resistance of their screw connectors have concluded that the partially melted terminal on the board with which we are having problems is not causing a short. I should have tested for a short with the wires in the board (I'll do this test and post the results tomorrow), as they are rather fat wires, but seeing as they are tinned I do notby mrShrimp - General
The board resets only when we use the PSU that came with the kit, which I do not think has protection circuits. The PC PSU that we tried in lieu of the original PSU gets shut off by one of its protection circuits, so I think it is working fine. We have tested for a short circuit on the power line going into the board with a multimeter, and there does not seem to be one. The power terminal doesn'tby mrShrimp - General
I checked the power, hot end, and heated bed lines for a short with a multimeter, and there are no signs of one. As it happens, the power strip we had connected the power supply to was connected to another power strip that was filled with plugs connecting to various computers, not all of which are turned on though. We switched it to a wall outlet, but the problem persisted without any change. I dby mrShrimp - General
Thanks, I will try those out! I think the splitter we are using is connected to another splitter with a ton of plugs in it, so that could very well be our problem. The MK2 bed we have has 1.3 ohms of resistance. It has never quite made it past 70 degrees Celsius, but we print in PLA mostly, and I was hoping to see if the different power supply might remedy that issue.by mrShrimp - General
Hi, I've been having power problems with my school's RepRapPro Mono Mendel recently, but I am puzzled as to what exactly is the problem. I haven't done too much probing for fear of damaging our controller board, which is a Melzi, but I think I have narrowed down the probable causes of the issue somewhat. The issue is that whenever we try to heat up the heated bed or the hot end in pronterface, tby mrShrimp - General
I had an interesting idea while taking a look at this thread: "Experiment with Colour Printing" What if, instead of applying color through some automatic coloring device near the nozzle, the color is applied manually beforehand precisely where it is needed? I have not explored the feasibility of this, but I am willing to bet that the visible part of a print does not amount to much in terms of fiby mrShrimp - General
Cameron, I was not able to test the voltage of the power supply with the bed on because the school computer with all the software on it was having trouble connecting. The voltage of the power supply with only the hot end fan running is 11.6 volts, rather than the advertised 12 volts. The resistance of the bed was about 1.3-1.4 ohms measured from the screw connectors and the solder joints on theby mrShrimp - General
Hi, I am having trouble getting my school's RepRapPro Mendel heated bed to heat up enough for ABS printing. It is an MK2 PCB heated bed and it should be drawing around 10-12amps max from all the sources I have looked at, which should let it reach 110 degrees with the help of insulation. The stack on our heated bed is standard for the RepRapPro machines: MK2 heated bed under an aluminum plate undeby mrShrimp - General
I like it, but it doesn't mention the RepRap project (I posted a comment with this concern. Hopefully they will write a RepRap article now!). Thoughts?by mrShrimp - Washington, Seattle RepRap User Group
The benefits of 3D printing and the possibilities it presents for the future outweigh the risks associated with giving everyone access to a 3D printer. Anyone in the RepRap community I am sure would agree, so I don't think I need to elaborate on this point. I also hold the belief that there is no way open source 3D printing could be snuffed out by an organization this far down the road. The facby mrShrimp - General
Sorry for the late reply. I have not been able to fix this yet, but I should have more access to the printer now to test your suggestions. It seems a consensus among your replies is to use a fan, so that is what we will do. We have some 40x40x10mm fans on hand, but it wouldn't be hard to find a 120mm fan lying around. I found some fan mount designs that have already been made for RepRapPro Mendelby mrShrimp - General
Hello, I have been working on a 3D printing related project with a club at my school that requires us to print gears to drive experimental paste extruding mechanisms. Our printer is a RepRapPro Mono Mendel, and it has been working surprisingly well for the moderate amount of calibration we did. We have the bare glass bed leveled, and have been getting great adhesion without having cleaned it witby mrShrimp - General
We switched the pins, and there is no difference. The motor turns in the right direction (not smoothly though) if the extrusion speed is set high enough (500mm/minute), but there is no torque. I do not think that low current is a problem now either, because the same jerking problem occurs from a range of 0.4 to 0.65 volts. When I tested it at 0.35V, the motor just whined, without moving about muby mrShrimp - Reprappers
I should add that during our tests without the large gear placing a load on the motor, the motor turned in a consistent direction. The only real problem seems to be too little current being given out by the stepper drive, but the current level is set at its recommended maximum.by mrShrimp - Reprappers
Hello, I am building a RepRapPro Mendel with a club at my school and we have just finished assembling the printer. We are on the "commissioning" step on the RepRap Wiki page for the Tricolour Mendel, and we have gotten all the axes to move smoothly, except for the E axis. At the beginning of our tests, the E axis whined and jittered. Without the large gear on the extruder drive (mini-extruder),by mrShrimp - Reprappers
OK, thank you!by mrShrimp - General
Hello, A club at my school that I am leading is building a RepRapPro Mono Mendel, and we are sourcing the parts for the 3-color upgrade ourselves. I have been able to find everything except for the "double coil spring washers" mentioned on the RepRap Wiki page. The suppliers that I was able to find (Freeway Corporation and Shakeproof Group) are not interested in selling small quantities of partby mrShrimp - General
Thanks! Tacoma Screw seems to have a lot of the fasteners that I am looking for.by mrShrimp - Washington, Seattle RepRap User Group
Hi, I live in Seattle and am starting a club at my school in which we will build and upgrade a 3d printer. We are trying to build it by the end of the school year so I have bought a kit for it, but I want to source the parts for the upgrade locally as much as possible. The printer is a RepRapPro Mendel, and the upgrade will be an additional two extruders. The parts I envision being able to buy lby mrShrimp - Washington, Seattle RepRap User Group
I was wondering the same question, and when I asked Sally at RepRapPro she said that a Sanguinololu would be the easiest board to configure as a slave controller. I think that any combination of Melzis or Sanguinololu boards would work, as they are almost the same thing. From reprap.org: " is a Sanguinololu firmware compatible board, though does have a couple of extra features the Sanguinololu doby mrShrimp - General
Hello! This is my first post on the RepRap forum, and incedentally I am rather new to 3d printing. I was looking at a recent post on the reprappro blog "Ideas on RepRap Printing Graphene" (link to blog post), when something caught my attention. I was interested by the single-drop inkjet print head that the post references as a possibility for deposition of the GO solution, but I was struck withby mrShrimp - General