Quotejim_blagIt's a bit of both. If you are using SF40+, E_STEPS_PER_MM needs to be set to the number of steps required to push 1mm of filament into the extruder. There are various techniques to doing this, but I prefer marking 110mm up from the extruder on the filament and running 100mm into the extruder slowly via RepSnapper. Then you can calculate how much filament actually went into the extruby raldrich - General
If you end up buying that Radio Shack soldering iron, be sure to buy a supply of spare solder tips for it - They've removed the iron from their online catalog, and I expect it won't be available in their stores for much longer.by raldrich - General
From what I've seen, TechZone's hot end is the weakest point in their design. It's got two problems that I can see. First is that it uses a very specialized thermocouple interface chip to read the hot end's temperature. The serial communications needed to read that chip are easily disrupted by timing issues within the microcontroller, and by noise from the heater MOSFET. I've seen my hotend gby raldrich - General
oswim8, You can just move one of the optos to the other end of the carriage, without moving the motor, and then adjust the wiring so that moving in the - direction moves toward the opto. Or, you can bodge it, and just swap the x and y axis around (y on the extruder carriage, and x on the build platform).by raldrich - General
I was able to get ABS to extrude onto painters tape by applying a thin spray of adhesive (Scotch Super 77) to the tape. I still had considerable trouble keeping prints from warping, but this was most likely caused by Skeinforge extruding too much material when you attempt to scale down the print. In the end, I switched to PLA, and will print with that until I'm convinced that I've solved the prby raldrich - General
A simple hack to get things to print properly, without rebuilding an axis would be to simply swap the wires between your X and Y axis.by raldrich - General
QuoteAnother benifit (though some may disagree) of using this kind of encoding methoud would be for future comercialization purposes of objects, I understand that the subject tends to be a sore spot for many reprapers but lets face it. people like to get paid for doing good work. so, what i mean by this is if a comercial company some time in the future has a product that they are selling, they coby raldrich - Polymer Working Group
atul Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Some body told me that MDF Board can not cut on > water jet machine because when it goes in the > contact of water it will spoil. Is it true? The adhesive used in MDF is water soluble, so any part of the object that comes into contact with water. Better to use a CNC router, CNC jigsaw, or laser cutter. Or, use plywoby raldrich - RepLab Working Group
nophead Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I have seen a few references to using wood as the > insulator but I have also seen pictures of charred > ones. Surely wood will not handle 250C will it? I > even find ceramic wool chars eventually at that > temperature. Having personally experienced how quickly a wood insulated hot end can break down, I wouldby raldrich - Plastic Extruder Working Group
If you're looking for an easy item to rework into a nozzle, brass gas jet nozzles of the sort used in backyard BBQs look to be fairly easy to rework on a standard drillpress. I'm also considering aluminum as a nozzle material - it might be a bit too soft by itself, but by anodizing could solve that, and should help to keep the plastic flowing smoothly.by raldrich - Plastic Extruder Working Group
First, you might find that vitreous enamel resistors are less prone to failure. Second, my experience with a TechZone hot end leads me to believe that using wood as an insulator is just going to be problematic, regardless of fireproofing - fireproof coatings generally are designed to stop flame, but don't always do much to stop charring, which is what proved to be TechZone's hotend design's downby raldrich - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Traumflug Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think RAMPS is probably the best choice for > electronics right now. > > Several electronics of equal usefulness exist: > Gen6, Gen7, RAMPS, Sanguinololu. All of them are > well proven and only differ in single features > and/or manufacturing preferences. Also, they're > all interchangeable. Thby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
Morrist, I had a similar problem with my Techzone extruder, which stemmed from problems with the thermocouple. As it turns out, Techzone's thermocouple is very sensitive to noise on the line. If you're often seeing very high (and obviously wrong) temperatures (1970 or greater) it indicates that noise on the thermocouple communication line is making it difficult to read. This, in turn, will mesby raldrich - General
Watching "How It's Made" the other day, I saw that they were making the circuitry for a membrane keyboard by silk-screening conductive paint onto a plastic sheet. It seems to me that attaching a conductive ink pen to a mendel, and using it to draw the circuit would be a pretty easy analog to silk-screen. The difficult part would be placing and covering the membrane switches.by raldrich - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Sublime Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > OR Change to a firmware with ramping acceleration > if you want high speeds with skeinforge. Since you're running on Gen 3 electronics, your choice of accelerated firmwares would be TeaCup.by raldrich - General
unicoder Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I will need to get some pre-cut, so I guess my > options are the hardware store or craft stores. If > I start with Kapton tape and decide to use glass > later, can I keep the Kapton tape on my PCB > heatbed, or will that block the heat or something? There should be no problem with Kapton tape blocking the heby raldrich - General
Why not just build an extruder for PET ribbon? It wouldn't recycle printed parts, but at least you could give yourself a cheap supply of plastic "filament".by raldrich - General
cyborg527 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > That post helped me a lot. I've been having > trouble finding documentation for many of the > finishing touches on the huxley kit I got from > techzone. When you said thermocouple did you mean > nichrome? I have one thick (thicker than the > thermocouple) wire, that has two other wires in it > (red andby raldrich - Huxley
EtherDais Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The oak tips from techzone have a few typical > routes toward failure, though they usually hold up > for a period of time, and would probably be better > with a different choice of wood. I suspect they > went with Oak due to the low thermal conductivity, > but Oak maintains this property through a networby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
Odemia Wrote: > I seem to be having the same issue. Some times > the nozzle won't even begin to warmup. Reprap > host just displays 2000C for extruder temp. Other > times it bounces between a legit temperature and > 2000C. > > I am so annoyed by all the things that simply > don't work. I am going to try to isolate and > shield the data line to the A/D but I am guesby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
A bit of follow-up on the extruder: Reworking the extruder required me to move pretty much every hole in the bottom plate, by drilling them out to 1/4 inch, plugging with dowel, and then redrilling 1/16 away from the original hole. I also had to add a 3/32 inch "lift" to the extruder, in order to keep the large drive gear from grinding against the x-carriage. It extrudes, but now I have to recby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
I found that my extruder problems came down to 2 issues. 1) The hot end wasn't mounted firmly enough, and was increasing friction when it moved out of place. 2) I wasn't running it hot enough. Given that you tried to calibrate the thermistor by hand, I'd expect that the second issue is what's causing your problem. Look through the Temperature.h file, and try to see if you can find a table whiby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
Some possibilities: 1) Is the path that filament takes through the extruder fairly straight? If the filament is being bent significantly by the hobbed bolt, there will be too much friction for it to work properly. With the extruder unpowered, and the hot end removed, you should easily be able to run filament through it by turning the large gear. 2) Is the extruder's steps per mm calibrated coby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
Adrian Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I've been exhibiting all the same issues here... > > Just uploaded the sprinter firmware but in > Repsnapper for mac I'm not getting a temperature > reading (blank). In windows, repsnapper does > report it. Any thoughts? > I may need to move to a later version of > repsnapper mac but I'm clueless withby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
Having finally reached the end of my build (onward to calibrating it!), I thought folks might be interested in how it all went. 1) The parts showed up promptly, within a week of my order having been placed. 2) Once I opened the box, it became clear that I had just ordered a big 3D puzzle - There was no documentation inside the box - not even a web link to a starting point. The Mechanical assemblby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
If you have the option, you should look at using linear bearings (LM8UU bearings seem popular) for the Prusa, rather than bushings.by raldrich - General Mendel Topics
Thunor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just use a regular Cat5 Ethernet cable. I had the > right cable in the kit, but one of the wires did > not make it into the connector. You could see it > pushed back through the clear connector plastic. > > > I hooked up a much longer Ethernet cable and the > heater works fine now. If you switchby raldrich - Huxley
Personally, I'd go for RAMPS rather than Generation 6 - with Gen 6, if you blow out a motor driver, you're either trying to repair a surface mount board, or replacing a $160? all in one board? With Ramps, if you blow out a motor driver, you're replacing a $15 daughter board. I also like the fact that RAMPS has an extra (unused) motor driver connector waiting for the day that you decide to makeby raldrich - General Mendel Topics
I came across this as well, but again, the manufacturer hasn't made it into the 21st century from an internet sales standpoint, so I have no idea how expensive (or inexpensive) it is. With a thermal conductivity of .64, it's only 3.2 times that of PEEK. It's also moldable, so I could picture casting it directly onto (or into) the heater block, and casting the PTFE liner directly into it - eby raldrich - Mechanics
nophead Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Look at the thermal conductivity of ceramic > compared to PEEK. I think it is about 10 times > higher. That would mean using a a heatsink. Also I > think you would need to line it with something > slippery like PTFE. shows MACOR at 7.3 times the thermal conductivity of PEEK shows Limestone at 10.5 times thby raldrich - Mechanics