Hold it against your z rod and check if it matches the threads. If it does your z axis is over-constrained, meaning the z rods pulls the entire x gantry out of alignment. This is the reason why using smaller diameter floating lead screws seems like a good idea. I'm going to try out m5 on my current new build.by Nudel - General
You need electronics like RAMPS which support two extruders. In Slic3r (v0.7.1) you can select a secondary extruder to do the support, but the feature is pretty new. I have not seen a straight up guide myself but there are plenty of dual head x carriages on thingiverse. Your best resource for dual head printing is probably #reprap IRCby Nudel - General
I guess the fan defaults to be turned on? It would depend on your firmware though. You should be able to send M107 to turn the fan off, and M106 (or M106 [0-255] for PWM output) to turn it on. More info:by Nudel - General
bobby_rep Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Nudel do you not find a fan over the build draws > heat from your heated bed? Do you use a heated > bed. Yes, and yes. I print on glass over a custom nichrome heated bed, but since I only print PLA a much lower temperature is needed. With a fan tilted to direct airflow over the bed and not into it, the bed is sby Nudel - General
According to the wiki the fan should be connected to D9 on RAMPS. Print a fan holder, mount and connect fan, enable cooling in slicing software and go ahead. I personally find turning the fan on and off gives big temperature swings, especially on the bed but also on the hotend, so I prefer to run a 80mm fan to blow across the entire build surface constantly. It's given me a huge quality increaseby Nudel - General
Pointedstick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My machines have extruder bodies and gears printed > with 25% infill and they've been printing for a > little under 2000 hours now, at ≈18 hours/day. > I've needed to re-tension the belts, clean the > hobbed bolt teeth, replace the hot ends, and > re-level the bed, but not one of the printed parts >by Nudel - General
For the z-couplers, extruder idler and all pulleys/gears I use 0.9-1 fill to make them strong enough. It the extruder body and x carriage is in PLA, it benefits from 0.5 or higher infill, mostly to stand up to the heat in the area better, but for the x carriage also to avoid flexing. The rest I do with 0.25-0.35 infill, three perimeters and three solid layers.by Nudel - General
1) Yes. 2) Not always, but it's a good safety precaution. Also the electronics will live longer, and you can run the stepper controllers higher/hotter. 3) You connect both z motors to one stepper controller. Yes this works perfectly fine. 4) That's up to you. My advice for ones first build is; go for the proven, widely used, well tested and documented option. Then again, the Azteeg sure does lby Nudel - General
Hi, and welcome! The parts in the visual manual is the old version (Prusa v1), but the new parts for sale have the same mechanical function. You should be able to follow the build manual without problems. Best of luck, and keep us updated.by Nudel - General
sminnee Wrote: > It depends on your goals: do you want RepRap to be > a successful project, or do you want to serve your > own needs only? Successful open source projects > consistently focus on lowering the barrier to > newcomers, and I don't see why open hardware > projects should be any different. True, though one could argue RepRap has proven to be very successful already,by Nudel - General
Never heard of the Azteeg, and since it's not widely used, you're more on your own regarding support. It looks like a SMD Sanguinololu though, and it even has a fuse. I can personally recommend Sanguinololu, it's working very well, (though I do wish I opted for RAMPS for future expandability). It's also a very simple and fun soldering project for beginners, if you have some experience and a deceby Nudel - General
owbridmark Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > When I was first looking I didnt really want to > build one. I was going to buy a kit. But the more > I looked into it the simpler these machines > became. Yes there are lots of options to choose > from which can be overwhelming but once you have > decided on electronics etc they really are simple > pby Nudel - General
That looks like the mendel-parts v6 hotend? It's notorious for leaking in my experience. To stop it you need to add generous amount of plumbers tape, as well as the copper washers that should come with the set, and tighten it very hard. I also cut the ptfe tube/liner a few mm too long to compressed it and make a better seal. You also have the peek block the wrong way around btw, and it might noby Nudel - General
Check your export scale settings, you want it set to 1 stl unit == 1 mm.by Nudel - General
There's no visible/proven benefit to need for 0.9 degree steppers when we're using 16th microstepping, so 1.8 degree steppers is perfectly fine, as well as cheaper. You might be able to find a good deal on steppers from ebay, I personally prefer to use a RepRap vendor so I know the motors will be powerful enough. XYZ printers is located in the Netherlands, and I have good experience with them.by Nudel - General
I'm now running xubuntu on a old-ish (single core athlon, 1GB ram) dedicated box. It runs pronterface perfectly fine. I used ubuntu on it before, but the gui (unity) was slightly sluggish and the entire installation crashed hard after an update. Still, if your computer can run it, unity is quite nice. Earlier I ran my printers from my main desktop with win7, no big problems with that either. Thby Nudel - General
A similar thing happened to me, discussed in this thread: We were unable to locate and replicate the problem, so no solution was found. It does seem to be a very rare bug though. I suggest you switch to the newest version (0.7.1 as of right now) as the bug might have been fixed unknowingly.by Nudel - General
Welcome to RepRap! 1. You first use a program like slic3r to generate gcode from the 3D model, then an interface program like pronterface to controls the printer and sends the gcode via USB. If your electronics support it you can also use a SD card. 2. The filament is a 3mm rod of solid plastic rod in a coil. Here's a older video I found where you can see the basic principle of the feeder systeby Nudel - General
There are a whole bunch of places that sells vitamin kits, so feel free to take your pick. Note you might need to order belts, pulleys and lm8uu bearings separately. There already exists several lists of RepRap shops, and I won't list them here. But I have personal experience with and can recommend though I have not ordered vitamins from them. You might also want to have a look at and ebay.by Nudel - General
I've made a couple of heated beds with uninsulated nichrome under dibond fr. They work very well with PLA @~45-70C, but is a bit fiddly to put together.by Nudel - General
Since the photo is out of focus, it's kind of hard to see what's going on. A small gap at the base of the teeth shouldn't be a problem, but if they are large, or if it doesn't do infill at all the gear won't hold up very long. I suggest you try using only one perimeter to force more fill, and get stronger teeth.by Nudel - General
Go for a LM8UU Prusa v2, as the improvements are definitively worth it. Build instructions are pretty much exactly the same, the parts may look a little different, but they have the same functions. There are plenty of Prusa v2 kits for sale on ebay. You can also drop by IRC, where many of us are selling kits.by Nudel - General
Also check for loose pulleys, belts binding against something, false triggers/noise on the endstops and serial communication errors.by Nudel - General
sells 2.5kg PLA in various colours for 51$+shipping. It's not the highest quality perhaps, but it's good value for money. sells 500m~4kg for $160NZD+shipping, and for larger batches you get really good prices. It's very high quality, and a joy to print with. There are also often good deals to be found on ebay.by Nudel - General
I would assume brushing an ABS part with acetone would help fusing the layers better together, making for a stronger part?by Nudel - General
@Dissidence: Check out It works much the same way as sketchup, but at a lower level which gives you full control over every vertex of the model. It's based on manifold models built with edgeloops (box modelling) and can thus do perfect STL output if you model it properly. I can't say how beginner friendly it is since I've used it for a while. (Just checked, and it's at least 9 years. O_O ). Butby Nudel - General
You might have to go a bit faster over the bridge to stretch the filament. The settings is in "Speed - Bridge - Bridge Feed/Flow Rate Multiplier". (That's in my old-ish version of SFACT). It also helps to tick "Infill in Direction of Bridge" in Carve. It can also help to lower the temperature a few degrees so the filament droops less, but do this with caution if you don't know your temperatureby Nudel - General
95% of the time I could've used a smaller build plate, but when you need it it's so very convenient just to be able to print 30 copies of the same small part, without having to reload the machine all the time. Many people use the Prusa PCB heatbed, and it's a good tradeoff for size. The main concern I'd have if you scale down the printer to a smaller build plate is the build height would decreasby Nudel - General
WD40 is not lubrication (or at best only a light lubrication), it dries out and doesn't help much, if at all. Try using something like the PTFE based Super Lube, or similar. The idea behind using a soft brass nut on a hard stainless steel rod, is letting the nut wear out first since it's the cheapest to replace. With proper lubrication, it's been said the soft on hard metal actually might lead tby Nudel - General
Do you use the latest version of Slic3r? It's said to have a much better slicing algorithm. But it's probably a sketchy Sketchup file, they don't always like to be converted to stl properly for some reason. Try running it through or download netfabb stuido basic and use the repair function "remove degenerate faces". You can also open it in a mesh modeller like Wings3D (or Blender?), and manualby Nudel - General