Aluminum will oxidize readily near the melting temperature. You might need something like an inert gas air assist or possibly a fully purged enclosure to help mitigate the oxidation. There are probably numerous materials that you could use to extrude aluminum. You'll need to research binary phase diagrams and find the minimum temperatures at which intermetallics form. In the case of steel, it'sby iquizzle - Reprappers
IMO that's risky, and not the ideal solution in the end. It's better to track down the source of the problem so you don't melt anything down. When I first started 3d printing, I was unsure of which thermistor I had with my hotend. I guessed, because I knew I had a 100k thermistor using my DMM. Well, there were several options in Marlin for 100k thermistors (epcos, honeywell...) and I chose the wby iquizzle - Reprappers
Hold the phone! If you can heat the hotend up to 230C and you can't push any through by hand, bypassing temperature limits and setting to a higher temperature is not the way to go about it. Your problems are likely either: 1) you are using the wrong thermistor table in your firmware or 2) your filament is not going all the way down into your hotend or 3) your hotend is jammed As a test, cliby iquizzle - Reprappers
Hi Paulo, When I worked on the corexy support in marlin, most of the modifications were made in the file "planner.cpp". Additionally there were some modifications in "stepper.cpp" to correct the endstops as well. Deltas use a "higher level" implementation done in marlin_main (see this: https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin/blob/Marlin_v1/Marlin/Marlin_main.cpp#L901). Hope that helps to get you staby iquizzle - Reprappers
You could build a Ucon http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:102972 but I'm a little biased heh hehby iquizzle - General
Used in the right way, blue tape has benefits... namely that it has a very slight spongyness that is forgiving to slight misalignments in the first layer height. The blue tape will compress slightly and allow the filament to flow more easily, preventing backflow and hotend jamming when the nozzle is too close to the bed.by iquizzle - General
I use kapton on top of blue tape on glass at 50-60C. You might think this is crazy, but its better than either tape by itself. I can get at least a hundred print hours before I have to touch the bed again. Wipe it with acetone every now and then to get fingerprints off. I could list all the reasons for why this works so well, but if you have both, just try it yourself.by iquizzle - General
Remember that power scales with the area... so if you want a 400x400mm heated bed, expect that it will take 4x as much power as a 200x200mm heated bed. You will have to plan your traces accordingly so that the current draw is appropriate for a given voltage.by iquizzle - General
*Edit: Actually just read this. There are actually greater than 25 possible gas species that can come from ABS in varying quantities. Some of them are toxic. IMO, use in a well ventilated area. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffire.nist.gov%2Fbfrlpubs%2Ffire86%2FPDF%2Ff86017.pdf&ei=6tL6UYGaCobkyQGt7oCwCby iquizzle - General
I don't think that would work Simba. They have very different melting temperatures and I don't think you could simply mix them together and get a uniform melting temperature that is a linear combination of the mixture composition. Chances are that you wouldn't be able to mix them at all because crosslinking or some other chemical transformation of the polymer chains would occur in the PLA by theby iquizzle - Developers