Thats the heat sink paste, the heat sinks always slide off leaving those pastes trapped at the chip legs.. Whats the best way to clean them btw? Those are almost impossible to clean with cloth or tissueby ahbtsang - General
I did nothing stupid.. when I set it to print it was fine for the first 10mins... Then suddenly SO MUCH smoke came out from one of my Pololu and a second later a flame could be seen, it was as high as 3cm (as far as I could remember)... I was so freaked out and I quickly switched off the PSU power then the fire died soon after that. Attached photos show the aftermath of the fire, 2 resistors turby ahbtsang - General
well, the readings from those pins went over 200M Ohm when the thermistors were unplugged, so I said 0Ohm.. in fact it should be very very large.by ahbtsang - General
LOL.. no, I was just testing how hot it could go.. and I found with my setting, the max temp was exactly 110C.. of course I set my bed to much lower for PLA.. I set it to 70, thats to account for the drop in temperature on the glass surface. I measured to be about 8-10C drop from the bottom of the plate to the glass top.by ahbtsang - General
I DIY-ed my heated bed using 50 Ohm/m nichrome wires, 9 wires in parallel at 20cm each, held by kepton tape. Without insulation underneath my aluminium plate, it can heat up to 110C in about 10mins. Since I'm printing PLA this is quite enough for me already.by ahbtsang - General
I measured the resistance again.. this time I managed to find the ground pin for pins 13,14&15. When plugging the thermistors to T0 and T1 Pin 13 - 110K Ohm Pin 14 - 7K Ohm Then when on T1 and T2 Pin 14 - 7K Ohm Pin 15 - 110K Ohm When no thermistors plugged in: Pin 13 - 0 Ohm Pin 14 - 7K Ohm Pin 15 - 0 Ohm Does this suggest something's wrong with pin 14 ie T1? But clearly T1 is the oneby ahbtsang - General
#define TEMP_0_PIN 15// ANALOG NUMBERING #define TEMP_1_PIN 14 // ANALOG NUMBERING I made the changes as about to the firmware, then plugged in the thermistor to T2, I got exactly the same result. Does this mean my Arduino is gone? But the bed temp is still reading correctly even I heated it up. Many thanks.by ahbtsang - General
nophead: I removed the Arduino like you suggested, then I looked up the pins from the arduino to RAMPS.. #define HEATER_0_PIN 10 #define HEATER_1_PIN 8 #define TEMP_0_PIN 13 // ANALOG NUMBERING #define TEMP_1_PIN 14 // ANALOG NUMBERING so I measured the corresponding pins on RAMPS for 8 & 10, 13 & 14, I got around 110k Ohms from 13&14, meaning signby ahbtsang - General
which chip is it I need replacing, sorry I don't understand what you meant by damaged input?? I hope it is not the arduino board..by ahbtsang - General
nophead: thanks. I just checked the the resistance on 4 cables (2 from thermistor, 2 from heater) they are not connected as I couldn't measure any resistance in any combinations. The temp reading from ponterface fluctuates from 287 to 260+, once I unplugged all cables, the bed read 0C, and the heater read 80C, again fluctuated with +-20C What can I do now to solve this? Thanks very much forby ahbtsang - General
Yes, both the bed and extruder use 100k thermistor. It was working before i re-wired the whole thing. I tried plugging in the extruder cables into the bed pins and it read fine. Then when I unplugged all 4 cables, the bed reading was 0C but extruder was reading at 80C. So I think there must be something wrong with the 2 pins on my RAMPS board. I took the board out, double/triple checked whether aby ahbtsang - General
Hi all, I re-wired my prusa today, when i plugged everything back in, all components worked fine except for the heater temp reading... I'm using RAMPS 1.3, the reading is showing at 278C even it is at room temperature, however, reading of the bed temp was fine. I've double checked and 100% sure not the problem with new wires and direct ohm measurement from both the bed and heater thermistors apby ahbtsang - General
I might have to disagree with some of you here, I actually think having 2 printhead is almost essential in 3D printing. Let's not get into printing in colours because this is a lot more complicated, it involves texture maps, "ink" mixing, resolution, etc, simply I don't think STL file can handle that. As far as I know, ZCrop requires 3ds files with proper texture coordinates in order to print inby ahbtsang - General
well, I don't like the software but doesnt mean it is bad, otherwise it wont be so popular here! My point was, as not a programmer myself, I don't see the ease of the software having to write code in order to see the obvject. I prefer something with an instantaneous visual feedback (pan and zoom) so I can model an object much easier. I see the point of being cross platform and free, but don't foby ahbtsang - General
I agree with pasta... I downloaded OpenSCAD tried to use it to modify thingniverse models... and guess what, I couldnt bear the interface so much that I closed it within 5 mins... I also don't understand the benefit for using SCAD over other software... I guess it is easy to do simple geometries like a box boolean with another shapes.. but doing curves or anything involves polygon, I doubt SCADby ahbtsang - General
Oh yes, I'll upload it to thingniverse once I have made a few adjustments to the model.by ahbtsang - General
I spent my last weekend making (cloning) this cute little creature, it is a big success! I took pics of the sheep, spent about an hour modeling in 3DsMax, then printed for about 1.5hrs. Of course I spent a few hours making the first attempt which failed. I manually added the support structure in 3DsMax, exported to STL and sliced in Slic3r at a layer height of 0.1mm http://adriantsang.info/201by ahbtsang - General
Hi everyone, I'm wondering whether there is a machine that can uniformly wears down the printed surface so that I can get a smooth surface instead of seeing toolpaths and layer lines?? Right now I use an extra fine sandpaper and managed to remove the vertical layers, but this is ok for one off job.. if I have 100's then it will be a problem. So is there anything like... 3d sander... surface weby ahbtsang - General
you can always hold the money or even retrieve it if the seller is not willing to deal with the problem. Of course, you'll need to use Paypal and you have to be sure that the fault was not on your side.by ahbtsang - General
Thanks for all the suggestions, I believe it has something to do with the board.. the wires came with the endstops were too short and so the only suitable place to put my electronics was to cable tie it to the A frame.. recently it kept sliding so I suspect this is causing the problem... I don't have time to try out other possibilities yet, but I'll spend sometime rerouting the cables and see ifby ahbtsang - General
I also buy from faberdashery, one very nice touch from them was the little freebie filament i get with every order.. I do have to agree that they charge a lot for the delivery although most of the cost went directly to royalmail... Usually I do not need the filament urgently, so it might be very nice that we can choose our delivery method accordingly like what many online electronic shops are doby ahbtsang - General
Thanks for your quick reply and info. About the stopping: the printing process stopped suddenly and there weren't any messages displayed in the ponterface console. Thermister being disconnected could be a cause, but I doubt it because after it stopped, I couldn't disconnect and connect or restart ponteface... I had to unplug the usb, exit ponterface and start everything again... I'm sure that Iby ahbtsang - General
Hi, Recently I am having trouble of my printer stops half way printing. I suspect it is something to do with the connection because it dosnt always stop at the same spot and sometimes if I am lucky, I can get the same gcode file printed... Also I sometimes, the layers are being shifted.. the range can vary between a few mm to even 1-2cm! I am using Ponterface ad marlin, any ideas would be muchby ahbtsang - General
That happened to me twice, even though I followed all the instruction as being NOT STRUCTURAL. I guess it broke because of the pressure built up after some time of printing. Newer versions now use PTFE tube instead of a block, I'm using it and it is ok so far.by ahbtsang - General
Hi all, I've spent 6 hours printing a set of parts for another reprap... i used Slic3r to make the gcode, and when the print was about 90% done, suddenly the motor did a massive retract of about 3-5 loops. can somebody explain why is this?? I'm using Slic3r 0.7.0 many thanks.by ahbtsang - General
thanks nudel, I am using it to cool the prints and i print in PLA. I've been trying to print a replacement gear for my extruder (the 11-tooth one), but toward getting to the top, it was clearly that each layers were shrinking inwards and i could see that the nozzle was dragging some parts of the plastic which was still soft, but as soon as i put my desk fan whilst it was printing, the areas gotby ahbtsang - General
Hi everyone, I am looking to add a fan by the extruder... I have seen some great fan duct designs on thingiverse and it appears that it helps improving the quality by a lot.. only problem is, I am using RAMPS 1.3, is there anywhere I can plug the power cables into the board.. somewhere? or do I have to power it separately? the new version of slic3r supports cooling.. so I am thinking whether theby ahbtsang - General
i knew this film had to be replaced periodically, it even had to be taken off the bed after each print in order to take the printed parts out.. so using tape or glue wont be a good idea as there is a lot of cleaning up to do, and it is prone to leave an uneven surface... At that time, I had a piece of glass with me (obviously PLA didnt stick to cold glass)... so without using glue or tape, I kneby ahbtsang - General
yes, I wrote about this about a month ago with some experimentation on different printbead materials. and appeared that PLA stuck very well on OHP films even without a heated bed. The setup was simple.. here are the layers from bottom to top: 1) top bed (wood or aluminium) 2) glass ( or anything flat and smooth) 3) spray of water 4) OHP film. 5) bulldog clips on the corners The water layerby ahbtsang - General
Will there be anything to do with the acceleration in Marlin that can improve the corner quality??by ahbtsang - General