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Re: 623VV linear motion - 10 years ago

if you can find steel runner that will be suitably straight and cheap, then you have yourself a winner. if you had access to a decent machine shop, it would be fairly easy to make something suitable. Bus usually steel with a suitable tolerance aint cheap.

by LMColl - General

Re: Where to get gear reducers with a flat ratio? - 10 years ago

You'll be hard pressed to find any gearbox (at a reasonable price) that will have little enough backlash to achieve a repeatable 5 or 10 micron resolution. Also, other than wanting your contact details, most companies that quote rather than stating an outright price deal predominantly with large orders where the price is both quantity dependant and negotiable.

by LMColl - General

May have fried my ramps - strange behavior - 10 years ago

Hi guys, i'm stumped and looking for a little help. I recently rewired my printer (it was an awful mess) and on initial startup... i messed up. I somehow managed to wrongly insert the power cord. skipping a couple of contacts over. I got a magic puff of blue smoke and quickly unplugged it. There's no obvious scorch marks or blown resistors. Although i haven't had a look at the arduino yet. On

by LMColl - Controllers

Re: CoreXZ - 10 years ago

@nickolas Great concept! Since building my i3, I've had nothing by aggravation from the flawed z axis. I've started putting together a CoreXZ design using V-slot. I'll post it up once the preliminary design is finished.

by LMColl - Developers

Re: Wire EDM - 10 years ago

All the solidworks files are there for that extruder. although it doesn't look like it'd be the lightest of extruder.

by LMColl - General

Re: choice betwen delta and xyCore - 10 years ago

it shouldn't be too hard to convert your h-bot to a core-xy setup, if the new rails don't help.

by LMColl - General

Re: Dimensions of laser cut parts MendelMax2 - 10 years ago

A bit late to the party, but another option if you're hand cutting the parts is to just print the DXF's off in a 1:1 scale. You can then glue the printed pasterns to the material to be cut/drilled. Most cad software will be able to print a dxf.

by LMColl - Extruded Aluminum Frames

Re: Help finding nuts and bolts (and springs) - 10 years ago

Yes, ballpoint pen springs work fine. The BOM on the i2 wiki seems pretty exhaustive, )

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: z -Endstop that doesn't need adjusting... - 10 years ago

Surely the plastic on the nozzle is a bit of a none issue. you could just have a probe slightly offset to do the same job. That way it can be shimmed to suit varying initial layer height.

by LMColl - Developers

Re: A suggestion about printing electroics - 10 years ago

I'm going to hedge my bets and say that rather that trying to fully integrate circuit building technology into a single extruder, the easiest way will be to use multiple tooling heads. Something along the lines of this could be used in conjunction with a pick and place function for components. The slicing software could be made to take electrical components into consideration and encase them in

by LMColl - General

Recommissioning - connection problems - 10 years ago

I'm feeling a little stupid right about now, any help? I'm currently trying to get my i3 up and running again after a being packed up for a couple of months (moved house and job, had a busy few months). It powers up fine, and axis seem to work fine, can control them manually from the lcd panel and heaters work as they should. However I can't seem to get any response from the pc with either repe

by LMColl - Controllers

Re: Want to build a Wallace. - 10 years ago

I've never really understood this design, or why the printrbot is so popular. You're relying on the rigidity of the smooth rods for the stability of the entire x & z axis, it's basically a prusa design but without the frame. That aside, post up your location and someone local is bound to be able to lend you a hand.

by LMColl - General

Re: Prusa i3 bent aluminium frame - 10 years ago

The only real disadvantage is that bent sheet generally isn't all that accurate, if you have holes on the flanges, they may be a few mm out. It should be fine though.

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: Random not-thought-out Idea - Partial Bowden - 10 years ago

That makes sense... and should work great. But for the price of two complete carriages, you could probably over engineer one carriage and use larger steppers (to make up for the added weight) and end up with the same or better results.

by LMColl - General

Re: I've redesigned the RepRap. Videos. MSF printer. - 10 years ago

I know it's sort of against the reprap ethos, but would it not be worth opting for steel rack & pinion set up. they're reasonably priced and way over engineered for the application.

by LMColl - Developers

Re: [EU] Best quality/ value Prusa i3 kit in Europe? - 10 years ago

Another option is G3D I got this kit when it first came out. had a few problems here and there (and have seen a few people post up with issues) but i think in general it's pretty good value. They're EU based but ship from china. Customer support seems decent too, I got a complete new hot end sent out when my peek isolator melted.

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: My DIY 3D Printer approach - 10 years ago

That's a great looking extruder, nice and compact Looks like some good resourceful engineering going on. What kind of set-up do you have to mill the acrylic parts? I've always fancied getting a small mill.

by LMColl - General

Re: Hot end and vents completely blocked - 10 years ago

They look like slightly altered J-head clone hot ends. You should be able to put them into an oven at ~220c and the PLA will melt away. Make sure to not go much over that, otherwise you'll be risking melting the PEEK body of the hot end. I've never actually used this method though, so you'd be best off waiting for someone else to chip in.

by LMColl - Printing

Re: Update on the E3D All Metal Hotend (Now finally shipping!) [Lots of pictures] - 10 years ago

That's no fault of the hot end, that could only be a firmware issue or electronics malfunction really.

by LMColl - General

Re: RepRap Steel tubing plasma cutter - 10 years ago

I was in my universities FSAE team for 2 years and I feel your pain. Notching tubes by hand is the worst. Those guys are right though, building a cutter from scratch is a project all in its self, you can get simple tube notches pretty cheap. printing out the tube profile and tracing it helps too.

by LMColl - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)

Re: 2 axis, one belt - Festo Gantries - 10 years ago

Well I can't say I'm surprised, nothing's ever new. It's an interesting concept that I'd never seen before. I'll still start putting together a design for one, I'll be looking into building a new printer over the next six months or so, could be a decent candidate. Looks like there's plenty of configured firmware out there to work with this style of xy carriage, so that's a bonus. thanks for

by LMColl - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)

2 axis, one belt - Festo Gantries - 10 years ago

Hey guys, I have a feeling that this will have been explored here before, but my search didn't show anything up. I've just had a Festo sales team out at my work, doing a bit of a showcase of their new products. Although most of the stuff was boring PLC and pneumatic stuff, one thing that really caught my eye was their gantry systems. The basic premise is that the two (in this case servo) m

by LMColl - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)

Re: Gadgets 3D i3 Build, Loads of problems! - 10 years ago

I've had some success with this printer, if it's any help, i can post my h.config so you can cross reference your settings. I had some trouble with z and extruder scaling, but its just about sorted now, just a bit of tweaking to do. From memory, I set the extruder steps/mm to around 1600 (thanks to some guy on reddit) I need to do a propper measure calibration, but it seems to be printing abou

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

steps/mm not changing - 10 years ago

I've posted this elsewhere, but i figured it's best to put it somewhere dedicated to issues. I've build an i3 from the Gadgets3D kit, got pretty much everything going alright except for that I can't seem to calibrate my z-axis. It may also be effecting the other steppers, but they seem about correct with the default settings. The Z axis uses m5 rods and so should be set to 4000 steps/mm, but w

by LMColl - Printing

Re: Z Axis drives not syncing [i3] - 10 years ago

Still Having Z-issues. No matter what I do, i cant get the the scale to change. I've checked eprom is enabled, but it doesnt make any difference what value I have for #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {80,80,4000,760*1.1}

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: Z Axis drives not syncing [i3] - 10 years ago

Sorry for the late reply Kaylem, I'm running marlin. and a j-head is just a simple and fairly cheap hot and, seems to be working better. I seem to be having a z axis problem, it's moving twice as far as it should be. I've adjusted the steps/mm from 2000 to 4000 which should have sorted it..... but it hasnt changed it at all. i've tried changing it both on the machine and through h.config. Wi

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: Z Axis drives not syncing [i3] - 10 years ago

The link to their firmware wasnt working for me so I just ended up going elsewhere. I also had the same problem with the fan mount. Im thinking of just going for a j-head now.

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: Z Axis drives not syncing [i3] - 10 years ago

I'm at work at the moment so I'm not too sure on the microstepping. Last night I reduced the z velocity the the minimum possible and it seemed to work well, maybe you are right, lazymonk. And as for the build, I did hit a few snags. Either my hardware was labeled wrong, or the manual was wrong, but a lot of bolts didnt match up, so I had to improvise. The printed parts seemed very tight to t

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: Z Axis drives not syncing [i3] - 10 years ago

Hey Jay, current settings are: accel: 3000 Vxy jerk: 20 Vmax Z: 5 Amax Z: 100 Zsteps/mm: 2607.8 I adjusted each driver to 0.9v as suggested in the g3d build manual but have since fiddled with the z driver in a vain attempt at fixing it.... how does this translate to current limit?

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics

Re: Z Axis drives not syncing [i3] - 10 years ago

I'm still stumped with this. I've tried to make sure it's aligned properly to get the bearings running as smoothly as possible, Lubed up the bearings and threaded rods and even rewired the whole thing just in case i'd crossed a wire somewhere. Here's a little demo video to give a better idea.... awful noise

by LMColl - General Mendel Topics