But couldn't a particular alloy be better at sticking to PLA than another? The 3.0mm e3d v6 doesn't have a PTFE liner, and I have yet to run into any of the jamming issues with it that I had with the Pico. Maybe they're the same exact surface and material and it's all a matter of design.by zachnfine - General
For info on oiling PLA, see the comments in this thread in the B3 support forum: Confusing PLA troubles In any case, I couldn't get the Pico to print reliably until I started oiling the filament. I wonder if the particular alloy of stainless they're using just has a propensity to stick fast to PLA.by zachnfine - General
I did eventually get the pico running, for a short while. I ordered the .6mm nozzle. It took forever to make its way from Ohio to Los Angeles (ordered 3/6, "pre-shipped" 3/26 , accepted at origin facility 3/29, received 4/4). I installed the .6mm nozzle, cleaned out the pico, oiled up my PLA filament, and the hotend actually functioned for me pretty well. I got a few benchys printed out while trby zachnfine - General
For a good time, replace the column header "Cost (GBP)" with: Quote=concatenate("Cost (GBP) = ",round(sum(H3:H60),2)) That way you've got a running total of the cost, right there at the top. Change H60 to whatever row number is required to stay abreast of any additions. I made a copy of the document and made this change just to be able to quickly see the total. Figured I'd share the simple codby zachnfine - Delta Machines
Direct in the 'not bowden' sense. It's a geared extruder. I've had no trouble printing with .35mm nozzle on an Ubis hot-end, but when I tried by hand the Pico really seemed to take a lot more pressure to push filament through than I remember being the case with Ubis and .35mm. The Pico seems like a nice-enough hot-end that I'm not giving up. I've ordered a .6mm nozzle and will give that a try wheby zachnfine - General
Tried cleaning it all out again, including burning out the nozzle just in case it was blocked. Then reassembled the hotend, heated it up, and pushed some filament through without mounting it to the printer. It does extrude but it sure seems to take an awful lot of pressure to push the filament through -- seemed like a fairly ridiculous amount of pressure, maybe I should have chosen the larger nozby zachnfine - General
Perhaps I'd run into the same issues with every all-metal design, but I'm finding this to be a very frustrating hotend to figure out. I finally cleaned out the jam using a heated section of coat hanger. Then I went through the laborious process of putting my extruder back together and mounting it on the printer. I heated up the hot-end, greased up a section of PLA with canola oil, and fed it byby zachnfine - General
I got my kickstarter one a while back, just finally installed it this week. It's a 3.0mm model that I'm attempting to run via a direct extruder. I added the 500ºC thermistor table to my firmware, hooked up a spool of Monoprice white PLA, turned on the cooling fan aimed at the fins, set temp to 220ºC, pushed through about 20cm of filament coated in Canola oil, set up a print job, and somehow veryby zachnfine - General
I was toying with the idea of an extruder driven by a flexible shaft back in late 2012, but was convinced hysteresis could prove a problem. I'm happy to see that there's a way to make it work. Does the design do anything to counter hysteresis?by zachnfine - General
It appears that someone has implemented an extruder driven by a (900mm!) flexible shaft. I wonder how they dealt with the hysteresis and X-axis forces: According to this writeup it works well, or more specifically… QuoteAnd there was this curious configuration at the excellent Ooznet stand... looks like a Prusa i3, which it basically is, but fitted with an unusual extruder driving mechanism,by zachnfine - Mechanics
When I first ran 1.0.0RC1, it popped up a message that for best results I should revert my settings for support back to the defaults. I don't see any obvious way to do this. I'd rather not delete my preferences and lose all my settings in order to revert just one setting that I infrequently use. Anyone know how to revert the support settings? Thanks.by zachnfine - Slic3r
You don't have to toggle Gatekeeper off. Instead, just right-click (or control-click if you don't have a right button enabled) the application and choose 'open' from the contextual popup menu. That's a built-in OS X mechanism for telling gatekeeper that a particular application is OK, it figures if you go to the trouble of doing that, you really want to run the app. And the next time it'll let yoby zachnfine - Slic3r
I've added this information to an active bug:by zachnfine - Slic3r
I'm having trouble with Slic3r support structure generation. I'm trying to print a T-Rex model downloaded from thingiverse, and no overhang threshold setting produces support for the obviously-needing-support tail. Here's a screenshot: Both overhang threshold settings of 30º and 60º produce output that looks like that image. If set to 90º, Slic3r just hangs (for hours at least, before i kill itby zachnfine - Slic3r
That last result looks pretty great, actually. I assume it'd be possible to scan from other angles and merge them as well to fill the remaining holes?by zachnfine - 3D Scanners, Book Scanners, and Optics
I will take a look at the debugging readout. Thanks for the tip. I still think it would be very useful to be able to get a report of the actual speed of the printhead after the board has interpreted the gcode and subjected it to the speed and jerk limits. Actual speed. Much like one can set and forget the extruder temperature with M104 but it's still useful to have an M105 command to check on itby zachnfine - Firmware - experimental, borrowed, and future
The ability to set the speed is not the end of the story --does it not interact with several other settings (some of which make calculations based on acceleration) such that it's difficult at any given point to determine at what speed the print head is moving? I just think it'd be nice to be able to get a readout. I'd learn from it. When I watch a print, I don't know for certain which of my sliby zachnfine - Firmware - experimental, borrowed, and future
I've been playing with various acceleration and jerk settings, and have been using the M220 command to set the speed factor during a print, but I'm not sure how to find out the cumulative effect of all of these interrelated settings. I was just thinking it'd be neat to be able to send a gcode to get a report of the current speed. It'd probably report the X and Y, and Z speeds separately, as thatby zachnfine - Firmware - experimental, borrowed, and future
Well, it might be a farfetched idea. I wonder what's easier -- compensating for hysteresis in filament delivered via bowden tube or compensating for the angular deflection of a flexible shaft? And would an encoder at the extruder end of the shaft be of help? Reading of bowden tube bots with 20 and 30mm retraction settings to avoid ooze led me to think I should seek other ways to move weight offby zachnfine - Mechanics
I was just contemplating trying to modify my Printrbot+'s extruder to be fed via bowden tube, and while reading through the pros and cons I wondered if anyone's tried to instead move the extruder motor off the print head and connect it to the gears via a flexible drive shaft (like the kind sold for use with drills and dremel tools). That would leave the weight of the gears and hobbed bolt in placby zachnfine - Mechanics