I think you might have an intermittant short. Check your wires and see if they ever come close to an actual heating element in your bed. It will be much hotter in that area and cause the wires to expand, allowing possible bowing and warpage all along the wire. I once had a similar problem where a wire to a thermistor was heating up and warping until it shorted to the other wire, which wouldby PeteD - General
Question: Does the power to your bed turn off when you hit the 220C reading?by PeteD - General
The Repraper and Printing subforums have a lot of useful threads with good info in them on calibrating specific Slic3r settings. I recommend you go through and browse several of them. Unfortunately, the search engine on this forum leaves somthing to be desired (not entirely the software's fault - people can use very different phrasing for the same thing), so it is difficult to search for a specby PeteD - General
I found that as little at a 1/8 turn on the nuts made a difference.by PeteD - Reprappers
I just tried to get the alignment between the bed and the stepper motor as close to perfect as I could and simply moved the front bearing in whatever direction was requied to stop the drift. I didn't worry as much about keeping it aligned to the other points.by PeteD - Reprappers
I have an RRP Mendel as well. I was tweaking the Y Axis bearings for two weeks after I 'comissioned' before I got it to be stable. My problem was that the printed gear on the stepper motor kept drifting in towards the motor, even when I used super glue. It didn't seem to matter where the stepper was in realtion to the rest of the machine, the gear always pushed towards the motor. It kept throby PeteD - Reprappers
@jzatopa I hate the mooshiness of law. I agree we need to put forward our own stance. Before we do so, what, exactly, is our stance? For myself, I want some sort of guarantee that any designs that do not fall under current copyright law I put out for public use will not easily be stolen. I'm more interested in ensuring that somthing I intend to be on an open license and shared cannot be stoby PeteD - General
@crispy1 and jzatopa Read the second whitepaper I posted. The whole thing. I realize it is long, but the author did an excellent job of explaining where copyright laws stop, patent laws start and where the grey areas are. Including electronic designs of a physical object. It isn't as cut and dried as you seem to think. Edit: If you don't want to read the whole thing (I recommend you do) theby PeteD - General
The problem with using a variant of the GPL is that it is a license granting use of a right, not the actual right to IP itself. While a GPL may exist, however worded, for a useful object, it doesn't mean a thing in court if there are no underlying rights involved. For example: A recent thread on this fourm ( ) discusses a kickstarter for a 3D printer that looks suspiciously alot like a Rostocby PeteD - General
There's a lot of excitement and investment right now in 3D printing due to the huge potential it has, despite the fact that it is a very small market right now. It makes the ability to create physical objects that don't fall in a category that's protected by copyright as widespread as the creation of copyright-protectable works. It also takes the manufacture of these objects away from the highby PeteD - General
You are going to be hard pressed to find a printer that can go as high at 12" on the Z axis. Most are doing well to get half that. Off the top of my head, I'm only aware of one that has that kind of build volume, the Rostock MAX, but I'm no expert on the different 3D printers out there. One site that does a side by side comparison can be found in the link below. Be aware that not all printersby PeteD - Reprappers
Just throwing my hat into the ring, You may need to play with your speed settings as well. It looks like you're extruding too much plastic per layer. @ohioplastics, I've come to really, really like Slic3r in my vast 2 weeks of practical 3d printing experience. What kind of .stl's does it have trouble with?by PeteD - Reprappers
Setting the perimeter width to 0.5mm fixed it! Thank you.by PeteD - Reprappers
I keep seeing the infill not meeting up with one side of a perimeter wall, or no infill between two very close together perimeter walls in my prints. (see attached pictures) Everything connects for the first layer, but there is no connection on all later layers. I'm pretty sure that I have something set wrong in my Slic3r settings, but I'm not sure which parameter would be best to tweak. How dby PeteD - Reprappers
Just finished building and testing my RRP Mendel. On my first print, the y-axis skipped some steps towards the end of the print. At first I thought it was an underpowered stepper or the fact that the belt traveled to one side during the print. I increased the power to the stepper by about 10% and repositioned the bearing the belt rested on to stop belt travel. It made no difference. The y-axby PeteD - General
Keep me posted on your results, if you could!by PeteD - General
Is anyone out there experimenting with printing with Polystyrene? I have a friend who builds a lot of prototype models that is curious if it is possible to use a 3D printer for PS.by PeteD - General
PLA has been used as a template in lost-wax style casting. Perhaps you don't need to use any other material. In the article above, no chemicals were used, just an oven over a long period of time.by PeteD - General
Just curious, What other sites provide the same kind of service as thingiverse? They're the only one I know of where a large number of people share their designs.by PeteD - General
@ Polygonhell You seem awfully certain that an American civilian force could not overthrow the US government with the weapons currently in the US. Considering that the largest and most advanced military coalition in human history was basically stymied for a decade by a small group using high school level chemistry and the Afghani equivalent to Radio Shack, I have to question how you can be so cby PeteD - General
I think a lot of people are forgetting that no-one has yet posted any actual gun designs to thingiverse. What has been pulled are add-on modifications that are decorative in nature, nothing more than harmless art, IMO. (Albeit art that can be attached to a gun.) Since what has been pulled has no effect on the function and operation of any gun, I have trouble seeing how thingiverse can justify pby PeteD - General
@TerryKidd - Just curious, Do you use PLA or ABS? I've heard it is possible to print with PLA on bare glass, if the glass is on a heated bed and absolutely clean of oils and dust. I personally have not yet had an opportunity to try it, though.by PeteD - Reprappers
Thanks for replying everyone! I guess I'll have to run some RT experiments once I get my Mendel assembled. I'll post my results when I have them. @ a shorething I live in essentially a cold desert. I'm not too worried about moisture being a major issue, so long as I keep my fillaments in sealed containers when not in use.by PeteD - General
My Mendel kit should be arriving today, and I intend to keep it in my garage, which is not heated. Since it is below freezing right now, and will likely stay there until sometime in March, I'd like to know what is a minimum temperature for printing PLA? I'll have a heated print bed, and if I need to, I can also build a moderately sized box around it with a small space heater periodically blowby PeteD - General
VDX Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ... here is the article about converting heat into > laserlight (sorry, only in German): > > s-waerme.html > > With this concept it should be possible to convert > excessive heat into laserlight and so 'cheat' the > local entropy by transferring the energy to > another remote system (into empty spaceby PeteD - General
Dark Alchemist Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Valid points indeed. This is why I love the new > transistors I mentioned because we might be able > to do that for other things as well. How cool > would it be to have light instead of heat from > things? For now, though, how would we handle it > and the vastness of the dark void cold? In deep &by PeteD - General
Dark Alchemist Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > VDX, I am waiting for the new found technology > that turns heat into light. It is done for > transistors and the person who found this is the > person who found the transistor so he says within > 30 years we will have Integrated Circuits going > into the petahertz range, or more, because all > hby PeteD - General
Dark Alchemist Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Dark side of the moon is near Frozen Co2 temps so > really cold and the warm side is warmer than > boiling water. So the near side (light side) of > the moon is hot, damn hot, while the dark side is > damn cold. The in between would be fun as the > temperature difference at the spot would be > mby PeteD - General
bobc Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > PeteD Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Hydrogen Cyanide is nasty, nasty > > stuff and should be avoided when possible. Its > > damage is also cumulative over a period of > months, > > so even a low-level but continuous exposure can > do > > aby PeteD - General
The volitiles that are released when ABS is melted are listed below, along with their Material Safety Datasheets*: (information from the ABS MSDS.) Phenolic Compounds (a plastic resin) - MSDS Nitrogen Oxide - MSDS Hydrogen Bromide - MSDS Carbon Monoxide - MSDS Small amounts of Hydrogen Cyanide - MSDS Small amounts of Styrene - MSDS Phenolic Compounds are pretty benign and won't do much harm.by PeteD - General