I know this is a bit old, but I am at work and don't feel like working, so now I'm browsing. I notice with the uneven layers, that thinner layers appear fairly regularly. Every fifth layer or so. This looks to me like a problem with the hobbed bolt. If there is a bit of filament plastic stuck in a few teeth in the hobbed bolt, when it comes those teeth's turn to grip the filament and push it intoby blabbersnitch - Printing
Yep, I second insufficient cooling. Before adding a dedicated fan for the print, I would also get one side of my prints looking mediocre. I am not sure why. It might be that one side of the print got some small amount of cooling indirectly from the hot-end fan and the other did not. But when I added a dedicated fan to cool the print directly the problem disappeared. (Of course, cooling the printby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
It might be that your resettable fuses are going off. They are F1 and F2 on your RAMPS board. Big yellow flat things (on mine) near the power connector. From what I can tell, they aren't really fuses, but thermistors, PTCs. So if they get hot, they go high resistance and limit the current, dropping the output voltage. If the one supplying your hot end goes high resistance, it will cut off power tby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
As digital dentist said: Dual Z motors work fine. I have dual Z motors and have not had to calibrate for a very long time (I made some adjustments when i changed the glass). You need to get your Z motors working before you worry about the rest. There are guides and posts on how to setup the motor drivers so they deliver enough current to give reliable operation. Reducing your feedrates and accelby blabbersnitch - General
This is great info, Thanks everyone. Ericby blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
I am surprised you have issues engraving the ply. I too have had issues, but I thought it was related to the fact that the laser I am using is a measly 300mW (or thereabouts... red DVD burner). With my red laser, trying to engrave ply would sometimes work and sometimes would not. Once the burning started, it seemed to keep going, but it wouldn't always start. The lighter the ply, the more problemby blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
On first read of your email, I thought 'Hooray, you got it to work, well done!'. You found a way. Don't worry about D9, you don't need it now. As far as PWM goes, those outputs pulse at 500Hz. That's too fast for dithering anyway. I think you will need to do the dithering in your g-code. I generally just have it all on or all off. There have been some occasions i have used the PWM at a lower outpby blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
A multimeter will read average voltage. It doesn't matter if it's PWM. Make sure you have it set on DC Volts. The pulses are 12V. With the S255 setting you are using, the pulse width is 100% and the output just looks like a steady 12V DC. And with S128 (for example), each pulse will be at 50% duty cycle (the pulse would go for 1msec, and repeat every 2msec). The multimeter will read the average,by blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
As Viktor said, it's a PWM output. So at max output, you should be measuring around 12Vdc. My laser is 200-300W and I have no problem driving it. Do you get anything at D9 with the laser driver disconnected? Have you set the motherboard type to 'EFB' in the configuration.h file? With no 'F' in the middle, M106 will not do anything (M106 drives the fan output, the 'F' in EFB tells Marlin a fan isby blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
I know it's already been said, but print fans are generally not used for ABS. But that's a personal choice I suppose.... From your photo, it looks as though the heat bed is installed with the actual heating element underneath. Have you considered turning it upside down so the heated side is making contact with the glass? The way (I think) you have it, the heat bed pcb is actually acting as an insby blabbersnitch - Printing
Try this: Triffid Hunter's Calibration Guideby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
Fans getting hot? Fans will get hot if they are stalled. Can you spin them by hand? Are they getting stuck on something? Humming. I don't know about the Geeetech printer, but my Prusa (marlin) doesn't power any motors until I tell it to print something. Maybe the humming is coming from the fans. Can you move the bed and the extruder on their axes? If they motors are on and holding them in placeby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
Did you make an aluminium frame? Did you screw the Arduino to the frame with steel screws? This was a problem i had when I first built mine. I can't remember the symptoms so I don't know if that is your problem. The screws could bite into tracks on the board (supply rail tracks), then they would short through the frame. So with the Arduino on the table, it all worked fine, screwed to the frame anby blabbersnitch - General
There was some discussion here on this a few weeks ago (I was wanting to know how Marlin dealt with 'arc' moves). This was the thread: old thread about Marlin use for laser engraving. I eventually got my 3D printer to work as an engraver with some inspiration and guidance from Groover's instructable (essential reading): Pocket Laser Engraver I posted a bit of a summary in the Laser Cutter Worby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
I did a similar thing to the 3ders.org laser cutter/engraver. My inspiration came from Groover's instructable: Pocket Laser Engraver He (and I) used a laser from a DVD burner. The instructable shows you the things you can do with it. A red DVD burner laser is good for a few hundred milliwatts. The laser used in the 3ders.org link is a blue laser good for a couple of watts. It would need some coby blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
I did the same to my Prusa i3: M106 S255 to turn the laser on, M106 S0 to turn it off, and M106 S30 to get a dim dot to locate my piece (the G4 g-code could be used to hold the laser in one place while I locate my piece). I drive my laser (from a DVD burner) through a few high-watt resistors (who needs a current source anyway!)by blabbersnitch - Laser Cutter Working Group
The photos of the red cubes look ok to me. The sides look a little wobbly on one of them, but I thought your problem was inconsistent layers, and the layers look pretty consistent. Is it worse with the black PLA? (I noticed the first photo you posted was of a black test cube.) I have seen many people on this forum say they have issues with black filament. I think you really need to fix up the moby blabbersnitch - Printing
I didn't do a lot of printing with Flex. Once I had the part I wanted I went back to plastics. But some observations I made when I was using it: Flex TPU sticks well to clean glass. My perimeters I printed 10mm/sec and infill at 15mm/sec (external perimeters at 50%). First layer at 120% extrusion width. I had bed at 60 degrees and hotend at 220 degrees. I had to increase my extrusion mby blabbersnitch - Printing
Slow your print down. I have also used the TPU Flex. I found a couple of times it would buckle inside the extruder. I think the extruder was trying to push it into the nozzle faster than it could ooze out the other end. I slowed the print down and the problem went away.by blabbersnitch - Printing
Could the problem be with your extruder? Could it be twisting (or untwisting) as it rises. For example, could the wires to the extruder be too short so that when it is at its lowest position, they are pulling on it and lifting it? Or could there be some obstruction so that when the X-axis is at its lowest position, there is something pushing up on the x-carriage and forcing it to twist a little?by blabbersnitch - General
I expect your power supply is probably fine. If it is putting out 12V when the heated bed and extruder are heating, then it's doing what is asked of it. Check the terminals where the extruder heater connects for 12V to be sure. But it just might be that the cooling effect of the fan is more than the heating effect of the extruder heater. The power going to the heater is V*V/R (... V=12, R=resistaby blabbersnitch - General
Something else you might want to do (if you haven't already), is mount your Arduino to the aluminium frame with nylon screws (or, at least with nylon washers). When I built mine, I mounted the Arduino at all four corners and when it was all assembled, nothing worked. The aluminium frame was shorting the supply rails through the mounting screws. With nylon screws, everything worked.by blabbersnitch - Reprappers
I have printed a few pieces. You don't get the quality of the original Lego pieces. I would have been able to get it better with a bit of tinkering I suppose. Where it comes in handy is if you want a Lego piece you don't have or can't get. I made a remote control car out of Lego a few months ago. I printed the motor housing so that it was Lego compatible (see attached photo). It worked pretty welby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
Well, You get this M999 error message, and then you get your strange USB power message too! Something weird is going on here! (That's just in case you didn't know.) But, on the matter of determining if the MOSFET is being commanded to come on when it shouldn't, or if it is coming on because it is faulty, you can check its gate voltage by measuring the voltage across its two outer pins. One is thby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
I guess the metal tube is there to protect the thermistor from damage from the grub screw. Where in the tube the thermistor is is hard to say. It would want to be in the part of the tube in the head, if it is in the part of the tube that is sticking out, it will be measuring lower.If it is in the part of the tube under the grub screw, I wonder if the grub screw itself could be too tight and causiby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
Quoteame The LED is also ON if the disconnected from the mega board. Andreas I was just looking through the thread again and saw this. The following post had Tim suggesting changing the MOSFET. I think I have to agree. How can the MOSFET turn on if the Arduino is not there to pull up the gate? It looks like the MOSFET has failed. I guess other possibilities is a dag or some other rubbish on tby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
And just one more (unrelated) observation: I notice the top corners fix the top of the Z-threaded-rods in place. This is generally considered to be a bad thing. If there is any amount bow in the threaded rods, and the top and bottom are held tightly in place, the bow will affect the X-carriage. Have a look at this article on z artifacts: evernote article on z axis artifacts Ericby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
AHHHHH...what a mess!! But that's not what we are here to discuss, so back to the issue at hand: As stated above a couple of times: 24V/40W is the wrong heater. The resistance you measured is fine for the heater, but the heater might not be fine for your printer! A 40W heater at 24V will only output 10W at 12V (the power output is proportional to the square of the voltage). That's probably not gby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
Quoteo_lampe Quoteblabbersnitch Those terminations to the board look fine. Veto! You should never use soldered wires in a clamping connection. The solder tends to creep away under mech. pressure and results in a loose connection. Yep! I didn't realise they were soldered (I was just looking for insulation in the terminal as Tim mentioned). I think screw terminating soldered wires is actually ilby blabbersnitch - Reprappers
I'm still learning what it takes to get good prints too, but a few observations I have made: 5mm retraction is a lot, I use 1mm I print PLA at 195, I have printed at 185 and it seemed ok, but I seem to get more consistent prints at 195. 0.1mm layer heights are tricky (though I haven't experimented much). Try printing at 0.2mm (I have 0.35mm nozzle as well, and I often print at around 0.2mm, sometby blabbersnitch - Reprappers