IMO if you're using pla, a hot glass bed covered in watered down pva glue works wonders. Perfectly smooth bases, but good adhesion too.by james glanville - General
Superglue definitely works well - I use it for any PLA parts I need to glue together, and the bond is usually much stronger than inter-layer adhesion. The trick is try and glue surfaces together than were printed on the bed so they're flatter - superglue is ludicrously strong between flat surfaces, not so much the slightly-wrinkled tops of parts. Sanding with a fine sandpaper really helps if you'by james glanville - General
Ooh those look good, shame if I bought 50 to the uk I'd spend more on postageby james glanville - Extruded Aluminum Frames
I'd be surprised if you manage to find boards for these easily, they're pretty ancient tech compared to pololus. I used that circuit on my darwin, and made a couple of drivers on protoboard (the pcbs with either unconnected spots or breadboard-style copper are my preference), which is probably easiest. Just put the chips in sensible positions nearish each other and solder traces according to theby james glanville - Controllers
You should be fine just connecting the motors in serial or parallel in the same way that the z motors are wired. If one motor goes the wrong way, just switch two of the leads to it. I'm curious as to why you're doing this though? Btw, I'd love someone to correct me, but I think these are the pros/cons of serial/parallel: series pros: lets the max current of the driver flow through both, so you mby james glanville - Firmware - mainstream and related support
Biggleswade is good for me, there's a reasonable train I can get. 1st march is ok too, but i'm usually around if another time suits others better.by james glanville - Beds/Herts/Cambs RepRap Usergroup
I use pla on pva coated glass too, and I'm really happy with it. I use a 70C bed, extruding at 207C. I use repraper filament, which is not amazing quality, and it never stuck to plain glass (it seems slightly oily). However, I can print huge bases with no warping or curling with the pva. I resurface the pva sometimes, if I'm doing the same print again I rub a damp sponge over the bed quickly, othby james glanville - Printing
Another option instead of filing a flat, is to add some superglue, that way you'll get much less of a tendency for the gear to slip on the shaft. I ended up having to do that after my screws eventually came loose.by james glanville - Tantillus
I got bored, so here's my openscad design. Fully parametric, just open it in openscad, choose the variables you want at the top, and it'll generate you the design. I got bored and couldn't be bothered to do the edge clips, but it 90% of the way there.by james glanville - Job Shop: I need stuff made!
I think the danger would be that compared to injection molded plastic, 3d printed parts might break into spikier parts when chewed. If you try it, I'd try and make sure your layers bond really well.by james glanville - General
I bought stainless steel rods from ebay, and they've been great. Ebay was much cheaper than anywhere else I could find.by james glanville - Ireland RepRap User Group
I'm interested in a meetup, but I'm in cambridge with no car, so I'm limited to that sort of area. Bedford is a bit too far for meby james glanville - Beds/Herts/Cambs RepRap Usergroup
There's no reason it wouldn't work in theory, but you would have to make some significant modifications to the printed parts. Looking at my mendelmax 1.5, you'd need to modify the bottom vertices, and the top, and either modify the z-motor mounts, or adjust the lengths of the top bars. You'd also need to modify the y smooth rod holders, and probably modify/drill all the holes bolting the plasticby james glanville - General
Well it'll probably cool down the hotend a bit which will increase friction a little. You might not be able to measure this temperature drop with the thermistor, since usually the thermistor is closer to the heater than the tip is.by james glanville - General
Try setting the temperature to about 100C (I assume from your temps you're printing pla?), then pulling the plastic out. That way the plastic just about will come out, but will pull any detritus from your extruder. I do this every month or so, and always get a huge clump of crap from the cheap plastic I'm using. As to reducing the power so it slips before strips, basically you want to reduce theby james glanville - General
Give pronterface a try, it's worked for me in the past, I think the nice opengl things repetier host is supposed to do aren't playing nicely with x11 forwarding. VNC would also work, and might be a better option in some ways - the print won't be affected if the connection drops.by james glanville - Repetier
One thing to check is whether the hotend is using ptfe structurally - this design has been abandoned because it fails due to ptfe creep after just 10s of hours. Post a picture if you're not sure, but if it's an old design you might well want to buy a newer one, so it doesn't fail right when you want to get it working.by james glanville - General
Why do you need that level of accuracy? I know when I want very accurate holes for example, I find it much easier to drill/ream out the hole to exact specs than I do trying to calibrate my printer more than it already is. Getting 0.05mm in all directions is going to be very tricky.by james glanville - General
+1 for superglue here, if only because I always have some around, whereas heatsink glue I lose or it lives in a long lost esoteric-glue-drawer.by james glanville - Controllers
This is just a guess, but could they be standby power? So that there is a low current 12V supply powering an IR/bluetooth/whatever xboxes use receiver, which then has simple circuitry to enable the main PSU? You could test this by seeing if the thin wires are powered when the rest is not.by james glanville - Controllers
1) Nope, it goes weird with acetone, I don't think there's a good equivalent to how well acetone smooths abs. 2) Generally PLA prints better, warpage is much less of a problem, I don't think ABS prints any better in any way. 3) I can't smell any PLA fumes when I print at all, which is very useful as my printer sits on my desk all day printing. 4) When I used painters tape with pla (I now use a heby james glanville - General
This happens when the stl you're trying to import is broken in some way. Run it through cloud.netfabb.com and it'll work. Openscad is really fussy when it comes to importing stls.by james glanville - 3D Design tools
I'm sure at some point people will shift away from filament, at least in part. However, it works very well, and right now it's the only thing I can have on my desk in my room, knowing I'm not going to spill resin, there's no cleanup, no powder going everywhere. I will also be able to print all the plastic parts to whatever printer I want next with this one. While it's probably possible to get betby james glanville - General
Superglue sticks well to steel, I suspect that'll work well. When I want to glue things together I often add a number of small holes to the surface to be glued to allow araldite to grip better - if you get the glue into the holes and use good araldite it makes a crazy strong bond.by james glanville - General
I'd be tempted to go for a mendel90 - they look really good. I have a prusa2 and a mendelmax, and I'd recommend the MM over the prusa2. Unless a small printer is really important to you, I'd go for a common, bigger design. They have the advantage of more documentation and support, plus it's a pain to find something cool on thingiverse and wish you had a larger print area to print it on. My mendelby james glanville - General
Lego is quite hard to print and make it work well - I've found the ridges make it hard to get near the nice push fit. Other lego-clones like mega blocks aren't great in this regard - the force required is frequently too much or too little. I think this is probably the hardest thing to get right, since that lego set would be very cool, but only if it stayed together.by james glanville - General
The reason for having two z-motors is that it turns out to be cheaper and simpler than having some sort of belt driven system. While it is certainly possible to link the two z-rods with a belt or something, you then need to ensure decent tension, and for this you need to hold the z-rods quite rigidly, which can lead to z-wobble. Using two motors costs probably $10 more than 1 motor, but the amounby james glanville - General Mendel Topics
Also if you're calculating how much current you need for stuff, assume your power supply isn't quite as good as it says it is - I wouldn't try and draw much more than 10A from either of the top two rails. For some reason computer PSUs are generally awful, and lie on their specifications, which can catch people out.by james glanville - General
I used clear 3mm pla as a light guide for my logic analyser: These were about 1cm lengths, with the other end near an SMD led inside. I found sanding the top of the rods made a nice diffuse output.by james glanville - Printing
It's certainly possible by modifying code, but if it were me I'd just add a little logic in front of the drivers and do it in hardware, that way you can switch between firmwares without hacking each one. You could just get two 2-input and gates, and an inverter, and wire the outputs of the and gates to the CW and CCW wires, wire the step pin to one input of each gate. Then wire the dir pin to oneby james glanville - Firmware - mainstream and related support