Oh and insulate the hot end of your hotend!by konwiddak - Printing
Almost certainly nozzle jamming - either due to poor nozzle design, high speeds, low temperature. That is not a hotend I have heard much about.. Is it all metal? All metal hotends often have issues with pla. If it has a ptfe liner, the liner may be damaged. Try upping the temperature to 200C or even 210. Watch the printer for an hour or so - monitor the hotend temperature it should stay withby konwiddak - Printing
Cable tie one end of the tube somewhere on your printer. Put your filament through it and into the extruder... The filament will hold it in place against the idler block. You can print a new idler block with a tube support, but this isn't necessary.by konwiddak - General
Flexible couplings serve two purposes 1) allow bent rods to move slightly - you can actually have visibly bent rods and no z wobble if your couplings are appropriately flexible. 2) account for any angular and axial misalignment between the motor axis and the z nut trap. With #1 straight rods will solve. But reason #2 necessitates a coupling which can cope with misalignment. Pretty much all maby konwiddak - Printing
I think sensibly matching heater power is another thing that people should be thinking about more. Sure a 40 watt heater cartridge heats up your hot end in 30 seconds, but you have to wait 10 minutes for the bed anyway. If the thermistor falls off, then 40 watts will very quickly start a fire. For most people, dropping down to a 20 watt resistor will allow the same printing performance, but temby konwiddak - Safety & Best Practices
Auto bed levelling stores some values in EEPROM which take president over the values set in configuration.h There is no way to manually change these values individually via g/m code. What you need to do is: 1) Upload the new firmware with adjusted configuration.h 2) Turn on printer and send command M502, this loads the values from configuration.h into memory. Then send M500 to store these valby konwiddak - Reprappers
Normal superglue works fine with pla. I have also tried some "evo-stik serious glue" - it has successfully stuck to everything I have tried very very permanently.by konwiddak - General
Quotebrucehvn My question is if the z axis is built using this and still using M5 or M8 threaded rod for the drive, do I still need smooth rods to constrain any wobble in the threaded rod, or is the vslot setup rigid enough to handle it? It's best to not try and constrain the wobble! Trying to hold slightly bent threaded rods rigid is what leads to z wobble. Use flexible couplings (rubber fueby konwiddak - Reprappers
I really like this idea for the heating element. I would not recommend a plywood bed. I used to have one, it seemingly randomly adjusts itself enough to need constant re-levels (moisture differential most likely) Personally I would recommend a dibond sheet as the main stiff component of the bed. Then sandwich two thick pieces of flat corrugated cardboard between the element and the dibond. Thby konwiddak - Developers
I think there should be a sticky along the lines of: "I'm thinking of building a (insert ridiculous size here) sized printer" 1) Don't - it's not that good an idea 2) If you really insist - then take any of the multitude of the good existing stationary bed basic designs (coreXY, ultimaker etc), and scale it up using really thick linear rails, large motors, custom electronics and then throw someby konwiddak - General
+1 unless you are planning on using a 1cm nozzle, then just no, seriously that's too large to be of any use. 1ft X 1ft X 1ft or thereabouts is the largest feasible printer IMHO.by konwiddak - General
Dual power supplies can be used in some cases, but they are not like a battery, you can't just stick switch mode supplies in parallel unless they are designed for it. If you join the +ve lines together and - ve lines together any voltage imbalance between the supplies can cause a massive current and then fire as both supplies try to balance the voltages to slightly different values. What you cby konwiddak - General
It's pretty easy to straighten bent rods using a sturdy table, two v blocks and a g-clamp. One of the 5 12mm rods in my printer was bent (about 0.5mm off in the middle), was a 5 min job to get it perfectly straight.by konwiddak - Printing
Was there another adjacent part being printed? You can get effects like this when jumping between parts.by konwiddak - Printing
The moment "won't reveal a basic working principal" and "crowdsourcing" were used in the same paragraph I became oddly sceptical!by konwiddak - Developers
Encoders typically only know the position over 360 degrees - they still need a rough starting point to know what turn they are on.by konwiddak - General
I used to run without end stops. Setup is much easier now I have them - unless there is a good reason, I'd install them. On some of the more exotic designs (delta) they may be required since the amount to move the three axes changes depending where you are.by konwiddak - General
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea, but I'm still quite dubious about its integration into a reprap. One way to potentially increase accuracy is using bearings with an internal radius larger than the bar diameter and running the inside of the bearing along the rail. This will result in a more favourable line contact rather than a point.by konwiddak - Mechanics
www.zero-max.com Positioning Accuracy The Roh’lix is a friction drive device and as a result, will show an accumulated error that is, in general, up to 0.002 inches per shaft revolution. Where greater accuracy is required, linear encoders can be used to indicate position.by konwiddak - Mechanics
I don't see this as a feasible positioning method on a reprap. It's entirely friction based - therefore there will be small errors. This error will be have a component due to: 1) The acceleration 2) The speed 3) Distance Since we cannot guarantee that the path taken in the +ve direction equals the path in the - ve direction, although the net distance is zero we cannot be sure that the speeds/by konwiddak - Mechanics
Is the belt wandering a bit off the idler pulley? If the pulley has non rotating fender washers or similar the belt can bind a bit - I find the best solution is a crowned pulley. You should be able to print continuously - but fans are advisable on the electronics. Also I once did an old belt up too tight and it snapped one of the reinforcement cables. This shifted one tooth out of place which cby konwiddak - Printing
Kapton tape should not degrade until 400C although the glue may unstick before then. If the kapton is burning then either you don't actually have kapton or your hot end is dangerously hot! Ptfe shouldn't be used above 260 although it doesn't melt until well above 300.by konwiddak - Mechanics
Or a constant force spring (a coil like a tape measure)by konwiddak - Mechanics
A counterweight could be used to help stop the gantry falling - it could even be set up to make it rise upon power failure!by konwiddak - Mechanics
Insert filament, heat up to temp, push a little bit through (if possible), cool down to ~130, pull out filament. This can pull out the junk if you are lucky. Also you can dismantle the hotend and stick just the metal tip (no thermistor or resistor should be attached!) over a hot flame to burn out junk.by konwiddak - Printing
With a 0.4mm nozzle, then a good layer height is 0.2mm - the first layer should be printed a bit closer to the bed than this (height of about 0.1 to 0.15mm). Is your drive mechanism properly gripping the filament? Is your nozzle temperature actually staying at 240C? Is your extruder stepper skipping steps? What speed are you printing? For a first print try something slow like 10mm/s, disable reby konwiddak - Printing
Do you run a pipe from filament reel to extruder? If you don't then then loose filament can pull on the X carriage lifting it upwards. This causes every n layers to be too thick to lay properly. Try unwinding enough of a coil of filament before printing and see if the issue goes away. Also could be temperature swinging due to incorrect pid settings. At 70mm/s your extruder may only just maintaby konwiddak - Printing
With this arrangement you may also find that your steppers have enough clogging torque to hold the axis Un-powered. This would be a good improvement!by konwiddak - Mechanics
+1 Blobbing and drooling sounds like too high temperature. It's normal for filament to ooze out slowly under gravity, but it should come out as a nice clean strand, not a blobby one. I have set up my slicer such that it adds some starting g-code so that upon pressing print it hovers the head 1mm above the bed in the corner of the print area, extrudes 5mm of filament, zeros the extruded amountby konwiddak - Printing
Without positive engagement, any friction based device will drift gradually over time. It may take hours of printing but eventually it will accrue measurable error. This mechanism necessitates a re-home of the carriage every n moves or ideally a linear encoder.by konwiddak - Mechanics