I'm having a little trouble understanding the "best practice" consensus for cooling fan use. The basic understand (cool the plastic once it's out of the nozzle so it reaches a solid state faster and doesn't deform) just argues to "leave the fan on all the time". But looking at existing slicer software, there is a huge box of voodoo heuristics that can be applied: we can not cool the first layerby Andy Ross - General
That's a good point. 3mm is going to produce ~3x less pressure in the melt chamber for the same drive force (ignoring friction), and the Wade extruder was originally designed in the 3mm era (where I was looking at printers, but not building any). But the Prusa claims to work with 3mm filament too, and again does it with essentially the same motor and 4x less torque from the gearing. I'm just sby Andy Ross - General
I'm looking at extruder designs and am confused: the available drive strengths are all over the map. I mean, the classic Wade extruder geneology use gear ratios of about 4:1 with a final 8mm bolt. But my Prusa i3 MK2 has it connected directly to the (apparently ungeared) NEMA 17 stepper with a pulley that is only slightly smaller than 8mm. And it works great, of course. How much drive force iby Andy Ross - General
Add me to the "Buback, how did you do it?" list. I have ideas about hot ends, but figured I'd never be able to move on them for lack of machining skills or tools. But I do have Dremel press...by Andy Ross - General
I just finished my glue joints yesterday and haven't tightened belts yet, so I haven't seem the detachment problem directly. But this makes sense to me: the glue joint is held in tension by the belt, and glue should always be in compression or shear. (That said, there is something like 3 square cm of glue-able surface: that's a lot! Surely this can be made to work fine as long as you're carefuby Andy Ross - General Mendel Topics