Show all posts by user
General discussions. For specific printers / electronics / fabrication methods / softwares, please see other sections.
Re: Mendelmax 1.5 vs 2.0 - 11 years ago
A more practical definition is that a RepRap is a design which only uses off-the-shelf parts and parts that it can replicate itself. So, having more custom-manufactured parts (CNC-milled or drilled, lasercut etc.) takes the design farther away from a true RepRap design.by ttsalo - General
Re: 3D printing on the moon - 11 years ago
Sniper4395 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The benefits arent exactly minor. H3 reactors > would use fusion, not fission. That means no > nuclear waiste will be produced by the power > plants and instead Helium gas will be a byproduct. > This alone makes H3 worthy of replacing current > nuclear tech. Yes, fusion is what I was talking about. Helby ttsalo - General
Re: Printing organic materials - 11 years ago
Yes, you can switch the plastic filament extruder to a paste extruder if you want. Here's a syringe-based design: Universal Paste Extruder (richrap's design) And here's a pump-based Chocolate Extruder (my design)by ttsalo - General
Re: Advice for my printer design - 11 years ago
jamesdanielv Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > simba, the design wont work unless the ptfe tubing > goes down to the hot end, because no matter what > there will be a little bit of back-flow, and pla > flows easily into this space between the ptfe end > and the inside of the hot end no matter how good > the design. you will want this to melt againby ttsalo - General
Re: GCode and circles - 11 years ago
thejollygrimreaper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > circle/arc gcode is a bit of a funny one, sprinter > and marlin simply break the circle up into the > little straight segments anyway, to help with > communications, Well it has to be interpolated at some point before the steppers in any system. I don't think that printing needs arc support that mucby ttsalo - General
Re: recess with hole - how do i do that - 11 years ago
I have one more solution in OpenSCAD. /* Allows printing a hollow cylinder which decreases in radius. Subtract from the bottom of the piece with smaller radius. lh = layer height. Uses three stages. */ module printing_magic(r1, r2, lh) { intersection () { cylinder(r = r2, h = lh * 3); union () { translate([0, 0, lh/2]) cube(center = true, ); rotate(45, [0, 0, 1]) cylinby ttsalo - General
Re: Game changer and possible paradigm changer. - 11 years ago
thejollygrimreaper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I estimate that by mid to late next year if not > sooner a significant percentage of us may dump the > idea of using filament feedstock entirely in > favour of using much cheaper resins and > ceramic/polymer mixes which literally cost less > than $5 a kilo ... What materials are you exactly talkby ttsalo - General
Re: 3D printing on the moon - 11 years ago
Sniper4395 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Helium-3 was theoretically the milk of a next-gen > nuclear fusion power plant. not sure if we dont > have the tech to use it yet or if we just havent > tried due to it's rarity. It won't fuse any easier than the fusion fuels available on Earth. It has some minor benefits but is not a requirement for nuclearby ttsalo - General
Re: Slic3r Logic - 11 years ago
kwdelre Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am printing a gear and it outlines a tooth on > one side, then goes to the other side, then back > and so on.....It is really making the print look > bad from all the short extrusions and retractions. > Logically it seems like the worst way to print the > gear. I printed another gear that did the same >by ttsalo - General
Re: no warp design - 11 years ago
I have printed some fairly big things from ABS with very minimal warping by making the body of the part from a truss segment (namely from this module: Parametric Interlocking Truss Segment) The bottom layer of the truss and the vertical slanted bits won't create much warping force by themselves and when the top connects everything together, the bottom is already solid enough to resist warping, pby ttsalo - General
Re: Are there any drill bit screw extruder heads out there? - 11 years ago
Simba Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Or are there real > fundamental reasons the carriage mounted extruder > can't work with ease? I think that the auger designs are fundamentally wrong. Here's why: The drive screw is not a positive displacement pump. It doesn't have a constant relation from input rotation to output volume like progressive cavity pumpsby ttsalo - Developers
Re: Printable parallel SCARA - 11 years ago
I made the Z-carriage and the arm first segment drive bases beefier and it helped with the arm wobble a lot. Here's some test prints. The left one is the print from the non-reinforced version. It was printed at 45 degrees, otherwise it would look even worse. The next two have been printed at normal orientation, requiring coordinated movement from the arms when printing the perimeters. The resuby ttsalo - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
Re: Remove heater block thermistor - 11 years ago
High temperature silicone sealant works well too. "Silcoset 158" is what I use. It's non-conductive so there's no risk of shorting the leads to the block.by ttsalo - General
Re: Stepper motors - 11 years ago
In the EU area, Reprapworld sells Wantai's 0.47 Nm motors for 12.50€ + tax. I'm using two of those at the moment and they work fine. Reprapworld has a very good selection of other stuff too, and pretty cheap filament (32€ for 2kgs of 3mm ABS, and I have nothing bad to say about the quality). And the postage is very reasonable in the EU area. Probably my favourite shop at the moment.by ttsalo - Reprappers
Re: Where are you uploading your designs? - 11 years ago
Wired1 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The traffic on Thingiverse is very low so I'm > wondering where people are uploading their new > design ideas. Are there any viable > open-source-friendly repositories anywhere? Why do you say this, I'm seeing as much or more new designs being uploaded as before? Anyway, none of the Thingiverse competitors seemsby ttsalo - General
Re: Help Needed: Extruding blobs on layer start/finish - 11 years ago
You can try increasing all of the following: Z jerk to 5.0, Z max speed to 5.0, Z acceleration to 100. (Z jerk at 5.0 is a bit high, but I was just using that on one printer.) If these work on your printer, you should see pretty fast layer changes. Other than the Z speed, I found that the extruders with high gearing, resulting in 700-800 E-steps-per-mm parameter, limit the retraction speed too mby ttsalo - Reprappers
Re: Filament Extruder - Convert pellets to filament - 11 years ago
crispy1 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > This could be a stupid idea, but what about just > using a food blender? Reminds me of Will it blend? I'm pretty sure their blender would handle any failed prints! Anyways, if the mini shedder was this thing, it's total overkill for shredding plastics. That one is a scaled down version of the ones that can shred carby ttsalo - General
Re: Polycarbonate printing - 11 years ago
Daniel Stein Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hey richrap can you go into details of your > extruder and how you were able to achieve high > enough temps to extrude PC? There's nothing secret in it, you can go and just buy an extruder which works at 270-300 degrees. Arcol.hu makes one, and there are other makers as well. I guess you could make one yourselby ttsalo - Polymer Working Group
Re: heater resistor not fitting in the larger hole in the heater block - 11 years ago
The resistor physical tolerances are awful. They almost always look a bit like bananas... I have had to dremel the hole in the heater block on every extruder I have built so far. Taking out a bit of material is fine, and a better idea than cutting into the resistor (which creates a danger of shorting it into the block itself). I use hardening heat sink compound and once the resistor fits in, I coby ttsalo - General
Re: New Filaments - Heavy Weight, Rubbery, Conductive, Semi-conductive - 11 years ago
I would say that Orbi-Tech's TPE is somewhere in that area. I don't have any real numbers, but I would estimate that from handling the TPE and Shore A 70 and 90 O-rings. Just a guess, though, I might be wrong. Oh, and someone was talking earlier about the possibility of getting that in 1.75 mm. I don't think it would work even if it was available. I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to feed wby ttsalo - General
Re: Printable parallel SCARA - 11 years ago
The sources and STLs are up at GitHub. Basic build instructions are in the README file. I changed to a bowden extruder and did some more test prints. First (the one printed in the earlier video), second and third prints: The last, blue one is at 0.3 layer height and was printed at 45 degrees rotated. Looks like the wave pattern in the first one was just wobble from the drives and not a softwby ttsalo - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
Re: Printable parallel SCARA - 11 years ago
martinprice2004 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I would certainly get a bowden extruder on it as > soon as possible to take the load and inertia off > the arms. I actually have all the necessary parts for a bowden extruder but I have never used a bowden in anything else, so I didn't want to introduce a completely unknown variable into the test... > Tby ttsalo - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
Re: Slic3r Gcode not starting print - 11 years ago
kwdelre Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I have tried everything suggested. Now that I > lowered the temp to 0, it starts right away, but > it lifts the Z-axis by a layer at least right > before it starts printing. (why in the world would > they program it to do so??) And I cannot find any > setting that alleviates this. It's common to set the Z-by ttsalo - General
Re: MOD for 1 mm extruder nozzle - You'll want one! - 11 years ago
Simba Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So I MUST pose this question. Everyone is trying > to go smaller and smaller. Whats the big deal? I need to routinely print things where the loss of sharp definition just from using a 0.5 mm nozzle instead of a 0.35 mm nozzle can cause the prints to end up in the trashcan. Going to a 1.0 mm nozzle would be much worsby ttsalo - Developers
Re: Printable parallel SCARA - 11 years ago
Ok, here's the completed prototype printer. It needs a snazzy name so I thought that Armstrong A1 would be a good one. And here it prints. 0.25 layer height, 50 degrees/s print speed. There's a weird sinewave pattern in all X moves, I thought at first that it was somehow caused by the harmonic drives, but now I'm thinking it might be a software problem. The calculations use the float datatypby ttsalo - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
Re: Note to self: Don't buy 2lb spools of ABS again - 11 years ago
I have been using this: Prusa-Top Spool Mount with tightly wound 1kg spools. No problems with premature unrolling.by ttsalo - General
Re: Slic3r Gcode not starting print - 11 years ago
I would set all the temperatures in Slic3r to zero and let the printing program (repetier-host, pronterface, or whatever) handle them instead. Just activate the heaters, watch the temperatures rise and start the print when the printer is hot enough.by ttsalo - General
Re: Printable parallel SCARA - 11 years ago
martinprice2004 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Another Parallel SCARA arm video here. The working > envelope looks quite large, but I am not sure its > able to move in straight lines across all of its > envelope. I was looking at that earlier, it sure is an impressive machine... I have my own design finally ready to print the first ever test object.by ttsalo - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
Re: Understanding Belt Calibration Numbers - 11 years ago
avayan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > On my X Axis I have a 17 teeth GT2 pulley. Why did > I chose such a weird teeth number? I think because > of the stepper motor shaft, if I recall. Anyway, > what this gives me is 200*16/2/17=94.117. > > On my Sprinter firmware I placed 94.117 but when I > run the cube I get 19.76mm width. > > So 2by ttsalo - General
Re: How long is the filament on a spool? - 11 years ago
Slic3r also writes the length and volume of filament needed as a comment on the last line of the G-Code file. Pronterface independently reports a very similar value (Slic3r's 3317.5 vs. Pronterface's 3316.48 mm on a thing I'm printing right now). Pronterface's initial time estimate is pretty bogus, though. I wonder how it's calculated...by ttsalo - General