As soon as you say heavy load, you are no longer in the realm of 3D printed parts. I'm going to go with VDX here and say that you're better off with a lathe. Get a chunk of nylon or other material, drill a hole in it and use a nut and bolt appropriate to the axle size. Put it in a drill chuck, and shave it to size. You'll end up with a far superior result.by SupraGuy - General
I use foodsafe PETG for all my printing. Not sure about the hairspray I use on the glass bed, though I figure it probably isn't TOO toxic, as it is a product intended to be in contact with a person's skin. Might be different after it gets cooked though. As mentioned, PLA is supposed to be biodegradable, which means that it breaks down in water. Not likely to be the best choice. Goldfish are fraby SupraGuy - General
I think that the question then becomes: Why go with one controller and firmware? Okay, reducing the kinds of parts I can understand, but why the firmware? You'll need to maintain different compiles of Marlin anyway for different machines. I needed different compiles of Marlin for 2 printers that were nearly identical, If I had uploaded the wrong build of Marlin to the printer, it would have cauby SupraGuy - CNC Routers, Mills, and Hybrid RepRapping
I believe that your single 24V 480W PSU should be adequate. The rest of hte stuff should be okay on the 40W of headroom that you have, (360W + 40W + 40W = 440W) So long as the 480W rating on the PSU is reliable, and your heaters aren't rounding down too much. Most of them round up. I'll also echo that it seems like a lot of power for a DC heat bed. I'd expect that to be AC powered via SSR. Alsoby SupraGuy - General
It would be much easier to design and print a different duct that would allow a larger fan as well as direct air flow from the side. Since designs for the larger fans already exist on Thingiverse, it should be a relatively simple matter to modify one of those for the tight space, so long as there's room on the side of the gantry when the printer is at X maximum or minimum.by SupraGuy - General
I remember the box frames. They were an upgrade for those of us that got the POS acrylic gantries, but not great, and there are so much better designs out that can still be built DIY with woodshop tools.by SupraGuy - Reprappers
I'm not sure that the Arduibo/RAMPS is the best solution for this. I do think that you're on the right track for the wiring the same way as the laser, but there is also the question of duty cycle. Your dispenser is going to accelerate and decelerate as it changes direction, and you most likely do not want to maintain the same rate of dispensing when the nozzle is moving slowly as you will wantby SupraGuy - General
Okay, I guess I stand corrected, in that there seems to be an SDK that wasn't there last time I looked. It seems to be for the mobile IoT stuff, rather than for the regular OS from what I see initially. I have to imagine that it's using the USB port as a serial device. I'd have to look at the specs for the "supported printers" but I would guess that with the serial driver for the Duet and an apby SupraGuy - Duet
So far as I'm aware, Windows still has no provision to print 3D objects. No drivers for any kind of system exists, nor am I aware of any kind of API that Microsoft (or Apple, or even for Linux) has issues so that some sort of standard printing interface can be made. What Windows allows is the viewing and editing of .STL models. How you turn those models into actual objects is entirely up to theby SupraGuy - Duet
I would suggest that you switch to NC endstops. There's a good reason why they're more common. In the event that an endstop cable gets unplugged, the system cannot tell that this has happened. If you use a NC endstop, then it will read as triggered as soon as it becomes disconnected. This is a less destructive failure, as the motor won't try to grind an axis into its end of travel position.by SupraGuy - Duet
Slic3r has an option for "First layer width" which can be set to an absolute width, but is generally set as a percentage of the first layer height. You can set this independently of all of the rest of the settings, so if the rest of your print is good, then this is probably what you want to fix. I believe that this defaults to 200%, at least that's what it was on my setup before I changed it. Thby SupraGuy - Printing
Well, in basic geometry terms, 3 points define a plane, so anything more than 3 points introduces potential for errors. As human beings though we seem to like 4 legs. That's how we generally build our chairs and tables, and of course many of those wobble as a result. It does make some sense when you're trying to get the maximum stability from a square or rectangular shape, which we also seem toby SupraGuy - Reprappers
I've seen a number of CNC plans using 608 bearings mounted on 5/16" shoulder bolts. 5/16" is 7.9375mm, so even at full size, there is a BIT of play for the bearing to sit on the bolt, but not enough to introduce any actual slop, even for fairly precise CNC tolerances, the bearing quality still makes more of a difference. Also, since the bearing is loaded, there isn't any opportunity under normalby SupraGuy - Reprappers
When the printer is moving, it has momentum, and you stop it suddenly (Say to make a 90 degree corner) there can be some flex in the frame and supports, which "rings" like the sides of a bell for a given period of time. While this happens, the print head has continued on its course, and the very slight ripples get left in the print path. In my experience, ringing is generally a symptom of inapprby SupraGuy - Printing
I got sick of that in Slic3r, but if you don't use a % sign, it will use an absolute value. The last one that I had left was the first layer thickness, which was set to 120%, but what I wanted was 0.5mm, and what I was getting was 0.24mm (120% of 0.2mm layer height.) once I fixed that, my first layers got so much better. Imagine that. Anyway, you don't have to use % for extrusion width, whichby SupraGuy - General
Check the bed thermistor. Make sure that it has a good electrical connection to the board, and a good thermal contact to the bed.by SupraGuy - Printing
That looks perfect for PCBs, Viktor! Thanks! Still struggling with etching graphics though. I think that I have milling out a part figured out, though I'll want to be careful with that, as I'm not 100% confident in how to do that with having things clamped down. I guess I'll see when I give it a test run.by SupraGuy - CNC Routers, Mills, and Hybrid RepRapping
Not to hijack the thread, but I have what seems to be the same question. So I got a little engraver/mill. It's not ever going to be anything spectacular, but I have hopes that it'll manage some simple things, and maybe help me put together some more complicated things. Software that it came with gives me something that will visualize the GCode before it engraves, and send the code to the machineby SupraGuy - CNC Routers, Mills, and Hybrid RepRapping
So far as I'm aware, the MKS controller should run on 24V just fine. The screen should be running off of an on-board regulated 5V, so supply voltage isn't an issue there. 12V fans get kind of excited on 24V and won't last long. Not recommnended. My MakerBot clone uses a 12V part cooling fan with a resistor to allow it to accept 24V input. You have that option for your fans, too, if you want toby SupraGuy - Reprappers
I was using a 12V heated bed with a 24V printer. (Actually, it's still connected, but I haven't used that printer in months.) I used my old 12V PSU, a MOSFET and it works as well as it ever did, which is to say that it gets to temperature, but is much slower than the very similar 24V heated bed that I use with my other printer. This is one of the big reasons that I don't use that printer often.by SupraGuy - General
@jens53 The Z probe can also be the endstop. In my congig.g I have the following: M574 X2 Y2 S0 ; set active low endstops M574 Z1 S2 ; Set Z endstop controlled by Probe M558 P8 H8 F780 I1 T9000 R0.8 Z1; set Z probe to digital, 8mm dive height, 780mm/min speed, 800ms pause and set as Z endstop G31 X0 Y0 Z-0.1 P100; set Z probe trigger value and offsets My endstops are active low, so that's difby SupraGuy - General
No, I was not. Looks like I've got my evening's reading ahead to do.by SupraGuy - Printing
I've been keeping an eye out for developments like this for a while, the ability to print things in silicone would be extremely helpful for automotive applications. The temperature stability of silicone makes it suitable for engine compartment applications or even interior parts that PLA and even ABS might have trouble with. Temperatures in strong sunlight on the dashboard can get amazingly high,by SupraGuy - Printing
1. No. Well, not really. Something with a large number of steps/mm is probably going to have difficulty going really fast, since there's a limit on how quickly the board can send pulses to the stepper driver, and chances are that we also have to give the motor time to actually obey the commanded pulses. 2. No, it's more accurate to say that it changes the commanded number of millimeters extrudedby SupraGuy - General
Quotejens53 When a print is started, the hot end normally heats up and then the printhead is homed. Will any bits hanging off the nozzle affect where the printer thinks that z 0 is ? Is there a special procedure for the Orion sensor to establish z 0 ? I understand that for bed mapping the nozzle is heated up to below oozing temperature, the nozzle is cleaned and then the surface is mapped but itby SupraGuy - General
Alas, this was all much less trouble before Photobucket got greedy and screwed up most of the forums that I've participated on, but that is a problem with relying on an external web service. It's bad enough when users delete their accounts, or delete their photos from the service to reduce their overall usage, but that's another matter. Other services will reduce your image if up upload one tooby SupraGuy - General
You don't really need to understand much GCode to run your printer. The slicer does the vast majority of the work. Some things that you will need, is the stuff that the slicer needs to configure it, or the configuration instructions if you're using RepRap Firmware. For the slicer things, you'll need stuff like homing, turning off heaters and fans, maybe a little bit of information for homing axby SupraGuy - General
I priont PETg directly on glass, sometimes with hairspray. I have never had trouble with the glass, and I use CHEAP glass. (8X10 picture frames from Dollarama.) the trick is basically to let it cool. I heat the glass to 65°C to print, and when it cools to room temperature, the print comes right off, no trouble. I use hairspray for larger area prints, particularly when the print will be thin, butby SupraGuy - Printing
Well, I can help with the steps/mm at least. The steps/mm is relative to the diameter if the supposed filament, which is a part of the tool definition. Common FDM printer filaments are 1.75mm and 3mm, and the steps/mm for the extruder is how many pulses are sent to the motor in order to extrude that amount of filament. The slicer is really looking for a volume, so it calculates that based on theby SupraGuy - Duet
Have you considered something like a bandpass filter? A smallish circuit to attenuate unwanted frequencies to single out the desired frequencies so that you get fewer false positives? This is how glass break sensors for alarm systems work, a mic (Oh look, a piezo one!) is filtered to attenuate sounds outside of the frequency that glass breaking makes, so that it can very sensitively report when tby SupraGuy - General