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Discuss any sort of mechanical stuff here: positioning systems, gears, extruding methods, etc.
Re: Reversing extruder stepper direction - 14 years ago
Heh, apologies GeertB and thank you Nophead! I did the experiment, and yes, reversing the stepper motor plug does reverse the stepper direction. Good to know, and a good reminder that one should actually test things occasionally. Jeff B; I think you're using the extruder controller board, right? My stepper driven extruder is on the back burner, because I had a similar problem. My stepper iby Wade - RepRap Host
Re: Reversing extruder stepper direction - 15 years ago
Actually, reversing the cable reverses both coils, and the motor turns the same way. You have to reverse one of the coils, and that will reverse the motor. Use a pair of tweezers to pop out the AB crimp connectors out of the plastic housing, and stick them back in the other way, ie BACD. I'm pretty sure you can do it in the firmware, depending on your firmware, but this works for sure, as I diby Wade - RepRap Host
Re: Has there EVER been a RepRap set sold on this thread? - 15 years ago
I've also noticed that there's a number of people offering parts for sale that haven't actually printed the parts yet. I'd be a bit wary of that, as I know how much effort it takes to print a set. I sold a set cheaply here last year (for a case of beer), and I traded another set away last month, but I think the issue is that the demand for parts is still pretty high. For the few folks that havby Wade - For Sale
Re: PLA surface treatment - 15 years ago
I just hit some PLA with both a Dremel tool and a file, it seems to work just fine. Due to the low melting point, it can get too hot and glob up if you go really fast, but it wasn't really a problem. You can also dunk it in boiling water to re-shape things a bit, and a quick pass with a torch makes the surface a bit shinier, although it's pretty shiny to start with. Some pictures of PLA reprapby Wade - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Re: Concept: The EZ-bake RepStrap - 15 years ago
Just for reference, this reprap was built completely from cast parts cast by Bits from Bytes last year. This was back when the original printed parts cost $2000 to $3000 (printed on a commercial RP system), so hand casting 110 different parts seemed like a good idea. Not many of these were made before BfB switched to the laser cut acrylic design; I'm assuming they switched due to the amount oby Wade - Casting and Moldmaking Working Group
Re: a few small darwin parts needed - 15 years ago
The circlips never worked for me, so I didn't print them, sorry. My PLA machine doesn't seem to need them, and I used zip ties on the old cast Darwin. So far they've held up fine. Here's a shot: The bearings tend to need a lot of carving to fit, so on the PLA machine I just dunked the bearing inserts in boiling water, squished them into the bearing block, then drilled them out to size. Soby Wade - Wanted
Re: Interesting build technique - 15 years ago
Skeinforge has an option now to do the inner shell first, which has cleaned up my parts quite a lot, even without reversing the drive. Overhangs work much better now as well.by Wade - General
Re: Canadian Suppliers? - 15 years ago
William, I added the part number for the Darwin Z pulley I used from SDP-SI to that wiki page, but if you're using a 0.196" shaft (not the 1/4" Darwin Nema 23 shafts), I'm guessing you are looking for Mendel pulleys for a Nema 17 stepper. For Mendel, I'm using some cheap MXL 20 tooth pulleys that Bing, Mo and Jacob sent from China; I don't know the actual supplier. You basically need pulleys thby Wade - General
Re: Student seeking a test model produced by a reprap - 15 years ago
There's always this:by Wade - General
Re: Canadian Suppliers? - 15 years ago
I too rue the day McMaster stopped shipping to Canada. I ordered some belts and pulleys from sdp-si.com, they work fine, but were pretty expensive, the shipping was expensive, and the brokerage fees were expensive too. I'd love to find a Canadian source for MXL belts and pulleys, or anything that would work. As for other Canadian suppliers, I found Metal Supermarket usually has stock of 5/16by Wade - General
Re: PLA and ABS Filiment in Canada - 15 years ago
I can vouch for Johnny's PLA - I've printed two Darwins and a Mendel in PLA, and about half of it was from Johnny. Good stuff. Wadeby Wade - Reprappers
Re: Mendel Bearings - 15 years ago
In Canada, I get 624ZZ's from a bearing shop for less than the price of skateboard bearings, but of course your mileage may vary. Over here though, skateboard bearings have an 8 mm ID, which is kind of a pain if you don't want to use M8 bolts on everything. Wadeby Wade - Reprappers
Re: Extremely Low Torque to Extruder Stepper Motor - 15 years ago
Have a look here: Not sure how well tested this code is yet, but M108 Sxx should set your extruder stepper current, 0 to 1, 1 being 100%, 0.5 being 50%. Also, in the extruder firmware's configuration.h file: There are defines for the default PWM: #define STEP_PWM 150 and full stepping to get more torque out of your extruder motor: // Uncomment the next line to use full-stepping for the extrby Wade - Mechanics
Re: Mendel Bearings - 15 years ago
My 624's have a 4 mm ID and 13 mm OD, and seem to fit fine in the Mendel extruder. The Mk2 extruder needs a smaller bearing though.by Wade - Reprappers
Re: Extremely Low Torque to Extruder Stepper Motor - 15 years ago
Adrian's latest 5d code in subversion has a new Mcode to adjust the extruder controller current setting. You can also just change the default and recompile.by Wade - Mechanics
Re: Hello and newbie question. - 15 years ago
Mendel uses Nema 17 motors (and has mounts that will accept Nema 14 as well), and I believe that the McWire uses Nema 23; you should verify that though, as I haven't built a Mcwire, only Darwins and half a Mendel so far. One thing to keep in mind though - screw driven stages are quite slow compared to belt driven stages. On my Darwin (Nema 23 motors), I run about 16 mm/s, mostly due to extruderby Wade - General
Re: High torque drive belt for z axis? - 15 years ago
My 2 mm and MXL belts do the same thing; despite what I thought was a pretty careful splice, the stiffness, and perhaps a not quite exact distance between the last two spliced teeth causes each pulley to skip a single tooth when the splice travels by. Since it's one tooth in about 800, I haven't worried about it too much, I just check that the bed is level after a few pounds of extruded filamentby Wade - Mechanics
Re: Printing mendel pulleys and other difficult parts - 15 years ago
I went for 20 tooth MXL, and just matched the bore diameter to the steppers I had. You can get them for about $10 each at SDP-SI. McMaster Carr probably has them as well, but they don't ship to Canada, so I try not to torture myself by looking at their website. I did manage to print some gears that look half decent at a 4 mm tooth pitch, but that's still twice the size of MXL teeth. 5 mm teetby Wade - Reprappers
Re: Power Supply questions - 15 years ago
Basically, plug the big ATX connector into the motherboard, the molex 4 pin connectors into each stepper driver, and you're done. The extruder board uses 6 of the 8 wires in the ethernet cable to run 12 V power up to it, so you don't have to do anything there. On my new Darwin, I bolted all the boards to a piece of plywood mounted to the lower frame, with the power supply. Ideally I wanted theby Wade - Controllers
Re: Problem with host software and ardunio - 15 years ago
Well, it sounds like you've got basic communications working OK if you can read the temp and move the axis. Which exact version of the firmware, and which version of the host software (and what OS) are you running? Also, are you using the Gen3 electronics with a separate Extruder Controller? One thing I often do for testing is to send Gcodes directly to the motherboard from a serial terminal (by Wade - RepRap Host
Re: Custom Machined Metal Mendel - 15 years ago
Yeah, that is beautiful! That is going to be one solid machine! Wadeby Wade - General Mendel Topics
Re: Printing mendel pulleys and other difficult parts - 15 years ago
letsburn00 - do you have any photos of your parts? I usually print at 0.5 mm diameter filament, but I use a build height of 0.4 mm - I seem to get better results when printing that way. Going slower can help with the accuracy too, depending on your machine. That said, I picked up some cheap MXL pulleys to use on Mendels, as they're pretty crucial to the smooth operation of the machine. Wadeby Wade - Reprappers
Re: Fair price for printed items? - 15 years ago
I think Dr Bowyer's original intention was that the first two sets of printed reprap parts should be offered back to the community at cost, in order to help bootstrap the project, and sort of pay the design work forward. It's mentioned on this page: That said, it seems few people are doing it; printing out an entire set is not an easy task at the moment. My darwin takes closer to a week of pby Wade - For Sale
Re: Help with 5D firmware? - 15 years ago
letsburn00 - do you have a motherboard ver 1.1? If so, it might help to add the pulldown resistor on the power switch line. Have a look at the motherboard 1.2 changelog; I believe it's R18 that they added. You can just solder in a resistor to ground. Secondly, I've found that having the extruder controller hooked up to the USB TTL cable and the motherboard at the same time can cause problemsby Wade - RepRap Host
Re: Mendel questions on 0.1 mm positioning accuracy - 15 years ago
As for the X and Y accuracy; I have some 20 tooth MXL pulleys I plan on using with a Mendel. I generally use 200 step steppers in half step mode, so that's 400 steps. MXL teeth have a 80 thou tooth pitch, but just to check, I measured the diameter of my pulley - 12.3 mm. So, 12.3 mm * 3.14 / 400 = 0.0966 mm/step. That's a little better than my old Darwin, which has 0.125 mm/step on the X andby Wade - Mechanics
Re: Help with 5D firmware? - 15 years ago
That firmware needs step and dir wires run separately. Don't ask. . Just look at the Mendel schematic.by Wade - RepRap Host
Re: Trying to get every thing to work - 15 years ago
The Makerbot firmware spits out "payload not big enough" when it can't talk to the extruder controller. Which it probably can't, if you haven't been able to load the software on to the extruder controller. When you're loading the software onto the extruder controller, make sure you unplug the RJ45 cable supplying power before you plug in the USB-TTL programming cable - sharing the 5V power lineby Wade - RepRap Host
Re: Help with 5D firmware? - 15 years ago
I used the 1.3 release of the host software from subversion, the reprap-host-linux-20090804.zip file, on Ubuntu 8.10. You can also use a serial terminal or gcdump if you just want to send gcodes. Wadeby Wade - RepRap Host
Re: any suggestions? - 15 years ago
Hey, awesome if it works with the Arduino IDE - the versions I've been playing with don't and it's a pain in the rear. If your axis are only going one way, try playing with the opto endstops - some versions are inverting, some not, although you've probably sorted that out by now. Also, Tim just pointed out to me the following problem in Ubuntu 8.04 - >It's a bug in older version (prior toby Wade - RepRap Host