I am having a hard time getting bed autolevel to work, or more specific just getting a sign of life from my servo. Latest Marlin (as of 3 days ago), Arduino 1.0.5-r2. It compiles and uploads just fine, in Configuration.h I have uncommented: #define NUM_SERVOS 1 M280 P0 Sxxx Gives absolutely no response on the servo pin, I would expect to see pulses of xxx mS on my oscilloscope. uP is brand newby Ralf - Reprappers
It could be that your accleration is set too low.by Ralf - Printing
QuoteGtwoK I've got all 3 jumpers on each of the drivers in my Ramps, if that would do it. Or is there more to it than that? That is 1/16 microstepping, that should be more than sufficient for the z axis.by Ralf - Printing
QuoteGtwoK How would I go about increasing the microstepping? Depends on your electronics and firmware, typically you just have to move some jumpers, maybe also rebuild the formware, in Marlin you can use M92 to adjust steps/mm.by Ralf - Printing
Hmm.. I totally overlooked that.. Yes the print speed could definitely be contributing to the problem. As for accleration, raising it for the extruder might also help.by Ralf - Printing
Are your z leadscrews straight? Bend z leadscrews can lead to non linear motion, which again leads to inconsistent layer height, which is seen as ribbing, since some layers is overextruded and other layers is underextruded. Bend leadscrews can also move the x-carrige around in circles, preventing layers from being stacked nicely on top of each others. Alternatively it could be your steps/mm noby Ralf - Printing
1.2mm sounds reasonable unless you have a bowden setup, but are you sure your extruder is capable of retracting at 60mm/s? If you retract too fast, it might not retract at all.by Ralf - Printing
It looks like inconsistent extrusion, check if filament is slipping on the hobbed bolt, or if extruder is missing steps, or stepper driver is overheating due to wrong current setting. It could also be bad filament, it looks like it contains quite a bit of moisture. As for temperature. When printing ABS, hotter is usually better, I print at 245 degrees, and ideally no cooling.by Ralf - Printing
I tried it yesterday, apart from a faint milky appearance in the top of the part, probably from residue, I can't really see any difference. The part was printed with green PLA. But now I have a clean part.. Maybe PLA Sous Vide should betested out, this is after all a more controlled process than the dishwasher.by Ralf - Printing
Assuming you have a heated bed, are you running PID to control the temperature? If not this could be the issue.. In the first few seconds after the bed is switched on or off, the bed moves a bit up or down due to the sudden heat change. Those prints look exactly like mine did, before I enabled PID.by Ralf - Printing
If the ribbing doesn't match up with the pitch of the z-axis lead screws, it could be problems with the hobbed bolt in the extruder, if the hobbing isn't consistent, the extrusion wont be either. Try printing 2 cubes at a time, if the pitch of the ribble doubles, it is most likely an extrusion issue.by Ralf - Printing
I struggeled with that exact same issue some time ago, especially printing gears was a no go, generally they stayed on the bed, but on the first few mm of the print, pointy details got smeared around. As Steve is writting drop your bed temperature after the first layer, I'm using 95 degrees but I might try to go even lower. Too hot a bed will keep the part too soft for too long. But instead ofby Ralf - Printing
And the above pages is easier to use, and not as erronous as my calculations.. 11.7 is the conductance in siemens, so it needs to be inversed.. Or easier, just swap the division and you end up with 0.085 ohms.by Ralf - General
Try looking here: Divide the areal of the trace in square meters with the resistance of copper per square meter. In theory, a 2mm trace with 0.1mm thickness, would then be ~11.8 OHM / meter. In pratcice the purity of the copper, and the tolerances of the PCB affect the final outcome, but it is a start. If I remember correct 120-150W should be the lower pratcial limit for a 20x20 cm printbed.by Ralf - General
Depending on the hotend internals, it is sometimes possible to pull out all of the old filament, while the hotend is cooling down or warming up, if done at the right time and with a bit of luck, you should see an imprint of the internal shape of the hotend in the filament. The sweetspot seems to be between 95 and 110 degrees C. Pic:by Ralf - General
Nice work, and a good writeup on the project..by Ralf - Look what I made!
Raising the bed temperature might give you issues with deformation of the lower part of the print because it doesn't cool down enough before the next layer is put down. 105 degrees for the first layer, and then 95 degrees for the rest works for me. It may sound counterintuitive, but I would start by raising the extrusion temperature, this makes the ABS flow better, and pulling less on the previoby Ralf - General
Quotecnc dick Jpan asked specifically about Acme threaded rods helping z wobble and he was the one that started the post. Ralf posted a picture which is definitely Z banding and not z wobble But the banding was caused by bend z leadscrews, leading non linear motion of the Z axis. And banding is quite often confused with wobble. I think we can agree, that bend leadscrews is bad, as they cause Zby Ralf - General
Still if you look closely at the print, you will see that the layers is not shifted sideways. The above print was one of the first I printed on my all steel repstrap, with 16mm hardened smooth rods. The z leadscrews is only suspended in one end, so there is no way that they would be able to push the y carrige arount to cause that ammount banding. At the time I struggled with the problem, the coby Ralf - General
I don't believe that the primary reason for banding in prints because of bend leadscrews, is the Y carrige being pushed around by the leadscrews. No matter how stable your z-axis is suspended, if you have wobbly z leadscrews the motion along z isn't linear, because the contact point between the threaded rod and the nut is moving around inside the nut, thus changing the angle of contact between rby Ralf - General
What he said.. And also, the thread on ACME rod is 29 degrees vs. 60 degrees on normal threaded rod, so in case of a slightly bend rod, the linearity isn't affected as much as it would have had on a normal threaded rod. For me switching to Trapezoid/ACME rod really did the trick, but if you don't have any wobble in the z-rods, it won't really make any huge difference.by Ralf - General
I had the steel laying around from another project, so it was only the load cell and an instrumentation amplifier (INA125P) that I had to buy, so that was ~40€ in total. Of course it is completely undocumented but if there is any interest, that wouldn't be too dificult. It is lacking deflection measuring, but a potientiometer, a string and some more code, should be able to do that.by Ralf - General
You might want to redesign the test piece, to make sure it fails the same place each time you test it. If it fails around the attachment points, the slicing will have too great of an impact on the test result, and the test will be dificult to replicate by others.by Ralf - General
I did some testing last year, but I haven't had the time to move on with a more systematic test. It was fun to build the rig, but very time consuming to actually do some tests. I have mostly done tests with ABS, which just confirms that higher temp=higher strength, within reason of course.by Ralf - General
Could be lack of power from the power supply, when the bed starts moving around during printing, you'll have extra cooling of the bed. Above the temp graph in Pronterface there is some stats showing bed and hotend temp, the @ shows duty cycle, if it's stuck at 128, you may be lacking power. Or a bad connection.. will the bed heat up, if it's not homed?by Ralf - Reprappers
Remember that the heatbed provides a good deal of heat, depending on the size of the chamber. I have boxed my printer, and without any additional heating I reach approx 35 degrees C, even with a fan running at low speed extracting fumes via a carbon filter in the bottom. A pic of my setup:by Ralf - General
It looks like underextrusion/extruder jam. If you have done all the calibration, you can check: Idler tension. Extruder motor current, if it is too low it will skip, and if it is too high the thermal protection in the driver will kick in, and cause the motor to skip. Extruder temperature, best way to check is to stick a thermocouple in the hotend where the filament normally goes. 220 degrees sby Ralf - Printing
You don't need to fix the bolt in place if you are using fishbone gears to drive the bolt. I have ben running with this: hobbet bolt for quite some time. It is made from stainless steel, thoug tool steel would probably be better, but it works. The nut is a standard M8 welded on, and milled 12mm, so that it runs true. If you could fint a bolt with a shaft long enough, I think it could be made tby Ralf - General
eBay is always a goot place to look, it's not always super cheap..by Ralf - General
Infill in small features seems to have haunted Slic3r for quite a while. As for print width I would try to get it as wide as possible, until Slic3r starts to act up. It should give you stronger parts and less warping. With 0.5mm nozzle I usually print at 0.75mm*0.25mm, and 0.5mm*0.2mm with 0.35mm nozzle. This seems to work great for me, but for some prints this obviously needs to be tweaked.by Ralf - Reprappers