I mainly make ABS filament in 2.8mm. I tried poly carbonate but was not fully successfull and needs more tuning to get right. The cost of the ABS granules is about $5/kg . Polycarb is a bit more expensive around $8/kg. It would be nice to recycle wrong prints, but never done it. There are several problems with recycling: You need someway to grind it down. Then there is the issue that any pollby wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
The wade extruder can pull lots and lots of kg. If my filament roll jams, it pulls the whole x axes up till it jams, so strong it it. So possible you need to increase the current through your extruder stepper, and increase the pressure on the filament to let it hold better. Also run the filament through a teflon tube. But if you like to use an extra motor: what you do is the same as filament eby wingmaster - Developers
Do you like to get rid of your stack of empty spools? I like to have them please. My filament maker always needs spools and is always running out of empty ones! If you are interested in filament making just contact me. I am located in Napier. THANKS!by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
Very nice build! Now am I very tempted to build something similar. The design has several structural parts make from plastic. Are these parts stiff enough? Any deflections during milling? How do you create presssure on the bearings that run over the conduit and the C channel ?by wingmaster - CNC Routers, Mills, and Hybrid RepRapping
Love your setup ! That is a huge laser cutter you have. Sadly not really local.by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
It is possible to save the design as step file using freecad. Install openscad as plugin in freecad. open your .scad design in freecad and then export as step file. Works great.by wingmaster - OpenSCAD
I had a lot of trouble in the beginning with my e3dv5 clone with NO teflon. Things I did to solve it: - First I used a 0.3mm nozzle on 3mm filament. This needs a lot of pressure - too much - and caused a lot of slippage in the hobbed hub. Changed to 0.4 mm nozzle now. - There is a very loooong thread somewhere in a forum where they discussed the jamming of pla in all metal hotends. The conclusioby wingmaster - General
Very nice and elegant of your extruder design. Why do you use a cooling fin on the extruder? I did not see ventilation holes in the housing. Also you don't use insulation around the hot end. Is the inside of your extruder box not getting very warm with a 200degree heater in there ?by wingmaster - Plastic Extruder Working Group
This is the spool holder I use on my Mendel90: Nophead. Thanks for you great printer design !by wingmaster - Mendel90
Have a look at my square nozzle fan on . That gives a bit more clearance.by wingmaster - Mendel90
I only used virgin granules, never recycled ones. But I came across the following sites in nz while searching for granules: In the last one of these sites listed specific abs granules, but don't see it listed any more.by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
Not much information to go on. Is the psu power correct? is there 5 (or 3.3 v) present on the cpu? Can you talk to the usb port? Are all the connectors pressed in. Any leds on the processor board on. What board are you using?by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
On aliexpress they sell 3040z and 6040z mills with a very good price. I don't have experience with them, but they look mechanical quite good. You likely want to replace the electronics with a ramps board or so. Parallel ports are hard to find nowadays.by wingmaster - CNC Routers, Mills, and Hybrid RepRapping
More info about the extruder on my blog http://3dwingmaster.blogspot.co.nz/by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
Never tried anything other than abs granules. The granules are only about $9/kg. Likely you need a lot of bags or bottles to make up a kg of plastic. If you like to shred things, why not use the plastic from a fridge or washing machine? Much more bulk in them. Also you can buy recycled abs granules. But whatever source of recycled plastic your choose, it has to be clean. If there is any junkby wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
Here some pics of my setup. Standard wiper motor driver the drill. The granules hopper is way oversized. The extruder is a bit of stainless 1/2inch tube and a heater. Internally there is a filter and a breaker plate to help increase the pressure in the extruder head Some grinded granules do fall out of the air holes drilled in the pipe. The filament is sized with the filament puller (seeby wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
I am running at the moment Chi Mei polylac Pa-758 This has a MFI 3 at 5kg 200deg C . This mfi gives me about 1kg/10hours. This is a clear ABS plastic. I started with this, because you can see any junk and air bubbles in them. Plan to try other abs types, nylon and maybe even PC in the future, To control the filament diameter better I also designed this thing: Will post some pic later.by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
Yes, I made one . Lot of issues to look out for: - use a lot of back pressure to remove air from the melt - as stable melt temperature as possible. Any deviation here creates filament diameter differences. - use a winder - use a strong high torque motor and cooling for it. - filter the molten filament It did cost me quite a while to get nice filament out of the system but still not finished witby wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
Have a look at these designs: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:128700 and http://reprap.org/wiki/R_360 Looks like the same approach you like to take. Some firmware for this type of printer: https://github.com/kory75/Marlin_360 Note that these printers suffers from issues around the center of the circle. Good luck with your build!by wingmaster - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
Hi Grael, QuoteGRael I have several Kg of ABS pellets and some ABS masterbatch colorant Where did you buy the granules?by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
If you balance the weight of the 3d printer head with some counter ballast, then the motors on a delta printer would not need to create force to hold up the weights. The only force they have to create is to accelerate and de-accelerate the mass. Sadly the amount of it mass need to move doubles in this case. But because no power is wasted in lifiting weight, all power can do to move mass.by wingmaster - Developers
In het begin had ik ook variaties die gekorrleerd waren aan de spiraal boor rotate. Deze heb ik weggekregen, door the nozzle te verlengen met 10mm. Dit hielp ook om de luchtbellen sterk te verminderen. Ik gebruik doorzichting abs, en dan kun je precies zien of er lucht in je filament zit. Als rollers gebruikt ik rubber zie Wat is the MFI of the abs die je gebruikt? Ik gebruikt een MFI 3 (5kgby wingmaster - Projecten
I am also seeing similar fluctuation in my filament. Do you know what causes these fluctuations?by wingmaster - Plastic Extruder Working Group
I had the same issue 2x now: somewhere in the middle of the print it move to position [0,0,0] whacking through your builded parts. Then it asks on the screen an user conformation. I tracked this down to the used SD card. It only happens on a very old SD card of 128mbyte. My guess is that these cards are so slow, that it cannot keep up with the dataflow needed, or that it halts the cpu in a wrongby wingmaster - Mendel90
I would suggest to buy a kit for a prusa i3 from aliexpress (just search for it). Cannot beat those prices. And these kits do work very well - but they are I3, and they have some issues.. Couple of people here in Napier have bought them, and they print surprisingly well for their price!by wingmaster - New Zealand RepRap User Group
I used a J head for a while, but switched to an chinese e3d v5 alike all metal hotend (no teflon inserts). This for 2 reasons: the jhead was 0.5 and I liked to use 0.3 or 0.4mm head. Also like to use nylon and PC in the future, needing temperatures exceeding j-head capabilities. Still the j-head worked ok, but had a design error internally. I found out the hard way that using a 0.3mm head with 3by wingmaster - Mendel90