I do prefer the Mendel90 a lot. Way more vertical build space, much easier to "line out" and much easier to work on. BUT... the big problem is that you have to find a place that can cut the acrylic or you will have to build it from MDF. MDF is fine and works ok, but it doesn't look as good. The Prusa is more common and it will be easier to find alternative parts for it (extruders/carriages). Bby north90ty - General
You might want to check if the pulley isn't slipping on the stepper shaft. If you are losing steps it often looks different than this. (more sudden and not so nicely skewed. I had a similar problem which was caused by the pulley slipping on the axis of the stepper. You need a little flat on the axis of the stepper for the setscrews to grip on. Good Luck!by north90ty - General
I build a Mendel (way too many parts), build a Prusa (great machine), build a smaller Prusa/huxley (small z-height). Tried Printrbot, but i was way too wobbly, and now have a Mendel90 (out of wood). I would 100% recommend the Mendel90, if you absolutely can't figure out how to build it (the instructions are minimal), the Prusa2 is a good alternative.by north90ty - General
On ABS parts: use superglue (cyanoacrylate), special ABS glue or epoxy. For PLA: i only has limited succes with epoxy and the surface needs to be really rough.by north90ty - General
WARNING: long time ago. I ordered a lasercut Mendel kit and 5lbs of natural ABS in november 2010. Paid with credit card. Heard absolutely nothing for 2 weeks and recieved the kit after three weeks. The ABS and one bearing were missing. Not bad. The ABS arrived two weeks later. The parts were cut with a laser that was not at a right angle to the bed, so the whole printer was warped. The print-bedby north90ty - General
For soldering: look up a guide on the internet! It helped me a lot. Not that i am happy with most of my soldering. But it did help. I found some guide that was aimed at soldiers, so people who didn't get much other training in this field. It was great!by north90ty - General
I wanted to try a bowden extruder system for my 2nd Reprap. I was reading about the different designs for the bowden cables and hot-ends and read that some people have trouble with the connection of the bowden cable to the extruder and hotend. At my job i work with high pressurized gasses (for greenhouse gas emmision research), there we always use Swagelok components for all the hook-ups of theby north90ty - General
QuoteGuess the assumption is that we are all engineers, electronic whizzes, and computer nerds. hehe.. Well if you spend enough time with your Reprap you will be all three of them in no time. Most cements are not conductive, try sticking your Multimeter in the stuff and try measure resistance (set you meter on the highest range resistance). If it isn't conductive your life will be easier. I wby north90ty - General
5A has been enough for me. As long as you don't try running a heated bed. Try measuring voltages on the connector for the hot-end.by north90ty - General
Thanks for all the input! What about a not square print-bed? For example 12*20cm? In general the very large parts are only large in one dimension. I think it would help a lot to reduce the lenght of the x-axis, to make the Prusa more sturdy. I know quite a few solutions have been posted with sturdier frame-vertices or crossbars to tackle the same problem. By reducing mainly the x-axis size theby north90ty - General
After running a standard Prusa for a long time, i am building a second/new printer now. This new printer only uses parts that i designed and will basically be my personal Prusa version. For Repraps there is the question of how big do you want your printbed to be, there are some pros to bigger and smaller: - bigger bed gives the possibility to print larger but especially more things - smaller beby north90ty - General
Hi, well there a lots of options of course. I got "24 awg stranded wire" from ebay ( seller: 1michiganger), and i like it a lot, great quality. For making the wires look neat: search for "braided expandable sleeving" for the reprap 1/8" and 1/4" is great stuff. Get some shrinktube to finish it. For tips on sleeving search on "psu sleeving" on a search engine. Good luck!by north90ty - General
@CdnReprap That is great what you've been working on, you are really just using the peltier as an resistor (that is self regulating though)? I tried to make a double stage and hopefully use the peltier effect. Well my try was not a great success, the "hot" peltier runs cold at 12v 7amp, the cold one at 5v 2.5amp. Up to 65 degrees it all works good, the cold side is colder than room temperatureby north90ty - General
Peltiers are generally available in 20x20 up to 50x50mm and are about 3mm thick. For a hot-end it is a very ugly package, and they generally break down at those temperatures. Another limiting factor is the maximum temperature difference between hot and cold side, which is about 70C. For the heated bed i placed the peltier (40x40mm) in the center of a 200x200mm aluminium bed of 5mm thick. I plaby north90ty - General
I have been thinking about heating the printbed with Peltier elements ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect) . A peltier element gets hot on one side and cold on the other side when you apply some voltage over it. Normally they are used as cooling elements. They can produce more heat than you put power in it because they transport heat from the cold to the warm side. They are veryby north90ty - General
Welcome! - the machine is pretty quiet as long as you use newer electronics (gen6, gen7, ramps). The old electronics are LOUD. Place the machine on a piece of foam (playmat for children) to make it super quiet. - time is super dependent on about everything. But a rough estimate, things i print typically take 30-60minutes. Anything large (100*100*20mm) takes multiple hours. - yes you can burn yoby north90ty - General
Great that you are trying out this design. And you make a good point about the mount. I think the best solution is to print the 16mm dia plug, as you say. I don't print my extruders with that hole in it, so i never thought about it. The heatsink should be exposed to some airflow, otherwise it might overheat in a long print and when using a heated bed. My heatsinks get pretty warm, but i have tby north90ty - General
billyzelsnack Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Does the filament ever tend to curl up as it exits > or is that issue completely eliminated due to the > nicer interior surface of the needle? That feature > alone would tempt me to give it a try. I have had no problems with extruded filament curling. With my makergear GrooveMount nozzles it sometimes curlby north90ty - General
The tiny drills made me very unhappy. i got 1 nozzle out of 5 drills . I truly think that the welding nozzle (0.7mm id) with the injection needle insert (0.4mm id) works great and it is truly easy to make. You might need to order a few sizes of needles to find the ones that work the best but it IS much easier than trying to drill a hole. See: I have made about 10 hot-ends this way and had no fby north90ty - General
It is great to have more companies producing filament here in North America. I will definately consider buying from you. How do you want to sell your filament? Ebay/ webshop/ email? Good Luck!by north90ty - General
Printers shown on the front page should at least have a nearly complete documentation. If anyone (company or not) wants to promote their design, i think that writing a documentation is not too much to ask. Showing printers with no documentation does not make any sense to me. Furthermore i think it is important to have links to more than one supplier for all of the parts. Sourcing parts is a diffby north90ty - General
Thanks a lot! Now i can turn the power on the Pololu stepper driver up and run the z-axis much faster!by north90ty - Repetier
I do agree that the PTFE needs to be totally enclosed and held securely in place. I found that the pressure of the molten plastic can easily push the PTFE out of the stainless steel tube. Version 2 of my hot end design keeps the ptfe really well in place by crimping the stainless steel. And it is easy to build. Here are two pictures of version 1 and 2 mounted. http://www.flickr.com/photos/249by north90ty - General
Ok. i cut some traces and made the z-enable independent of the other axis. I used dpin 21 for z-enable and the other enable are on port 24. I updated this in pins.h and uploaded the code. When the printer is manually controlled the enable and disable works fine. But when i print the z-axis still doesn't disable. Any idea why? My gcode has the z in every move (but it will remain the same number dby north90ty - Repetier
Thanks a lot Repetier! This completely explains and answers my questions. Maybe i will upgrade the board a bit to be able to disable the z-axis seperately. I like to be able to because that way i can adjust the height above the bed during the start of the print. I was using pronterface but i will try building repetier host for my linux laptop. And: The prints with Repetier firmware do indeed loby north90ty - Repetier
Hi, I am running Gen7 electronics (Thanks Bryanandaimee!) with repetier. I have an issue with the disabling of the axis. On my old Ramps+Sprinter setup the z-axis stepper driver is disabled whenever there is no z-move. The steppers don't get hot and the driver isn't overheating. When i click pause during a print in Ramps the steppers are not disabled. With repetier the behaviour of the disabliby north90ty - Repetier
If you want an easy to build hot-end try this design: For me this design has proven reliable. I can print at pretty high speeds (never actually tried to find the limit). Another pro is that this design is extremely compact. Also think about the diameter of the hole through the insulator, it needs to be quite a bit larger than the filament diameter (3.5mm for 3mm filament).by north90ty - General
Probably lighter than the surrounding air if you use a heated bed. I never really find the fumes to be too bad though.by north90ty - General
Costs totally depend on your sources. It will be hard to buy parts for just 1 or 2 hot-ends. - the stainless steel on ebay for 10$ incl shipping (enough for at least 20 hotends) - teflon tube can be found on ebay, but i now have a local source (count on $20) - syringe needles on ebay (5$) - welding tips (16$ at home-depot for 15pieces?) - aluminum for the mount (scraps of local metal supplier) -by north90ty - Developers
I would suggest extruding into a length of teflon/ptfe tube that runs through a water bath. The real trouble would probably be the coiling of the extruded plastic. Also the heat transfer needs to be pretty high if you want to "convert" a substantional amount of 3mm filament into 1.75mm filament. Pesonally i was thinking about extruding plumbing ABS (40mm tube) into 3mm filament. By weight the fiby north90ty - Developers