Great question. I have a new kit I'm putting together and had exactly the same question. 1.75mm and a nice J-head. It takes more force than I expected to get the filament through the PTFE but I'm sure it's really not much compared to what happens when extruding. Hopefully it all just works. :-)by cobrageek - General
Thanks Sublime. That's good info to know. I think I'll start out with KISSlicer and worry about bridges later. Sounds like spanning a gap is a later "tuning" step anyway after I get the basic printer working. Maybe by then KISSlicer will support it and if not I'll try one of the other slicers.by cobrageek - General
jernardis, have you tried KISSlicer? How does it do on the bridging cases?by cobrageek - General
The 7805 is a good idea. I checked through my surpluss parts but I don't have any laying around. But I do have the car USB adapter that I'm never going to use and it was easy to break open. It's more sofisticated than I need, but it's free and will do the trick so I'll probably go that direction. I'm sure I could wire a second fan off of it as well if I decide it's needed later on. Thanks forby cobrageek - General
I've come up with a couple of good options I think: 1. I have a cheap USB car adapter that I bought for my iphone but doesn't work with apple products (cheap). I could rip it apart and use the 12V-->5V converter and just wire it from the 12V supply to run the fan. 2. I've seen a lot of people who run fans blowing right below the nozzle to help with overhangs. I have a second one of these fby cobrageek - General
Possenier, my plan was to use the 5V from the ATX supply, but it turns out that supply had issues so I bought a 12V only supply (30A) that is a smaller form factor. That means I have no 5V supply other than the Sanguinololu. ttsalo, I was afraid of exactly that. I know motors can create considerable noise and I didn't want to mess up the electronics. I'll consider the resistor approach but wasby cobrageek - General
One thought along these lines that I saw suggested in another thread leads to the following questions about the end stops: From the schematics it looks like they can either be 5V or 12V, but I can't find the "jumper" (SJ100) that seems to control the voltage choice. Where is this jumper? What is the "normal" choice here? Does it matter? Are the end stop switches wired normally open or normalby cobrageek - General
I may have just answered my own question. I looked at the wiki page for the Sanguinololu and it looks like on the Aux connections, the second pair in (counting from the Z-stop connector) is a +5V and ground connection point. Assuming I understand correctly the connection for the SD card setup, it even looks like that will still work if I use this connection point to power a fan. The next queby cobrageek - General
I was going to use an ATX supply but found that it had issues so I picked up a 12V 30A supply that seem to be common for repraps. I want to run PLA so I want to keep the PEEK tube cool to provent issues. The fan I was planning to use is a 5V fan (grabbed it from the junk pile so the price was right). It says 5V 0.14A on the label. I figure I've got two choices: 1. Pick off 5V from the Sanguiby cobrageek - General
I thought as much. I have a background in CPU's and ISA's in particular as well so NOP is a part of my daily vocabulary :-). Great name. NOP-head. I like it and may have to use it on occasion. Thanks again for all the help.by cobrageek - General
Thanks nophead. Great Blog BTW. I may have to copy your fan hack too, but for now I'll just have it run all the time (or maybe wire it through the Z switch so it is on any time the head is off the first layer). Can you help me answer an important question from my wife. How do you pronounce "nophead"? Is it 'nop-head' or is it 'nofed' or 'nofeed'? :-). Thanks for all the help and sharing youby cobrageek - General
brnrd, thanks for the excellent links. That post had a really good discussion with some very nice ideas and pictures. It looks like nophead's original fix was mainly to avoid the smal connector problems. He has taken care of the connections to the heat bed (+12 directly from PS and common back to the mosfet drain/ring), but the source connection back to the ground on the PS doesn't appear toby cobrageek - General
Interesting idea to join the filaments together. I'd be afriad that my "melt point" would make it too wide and it wouldn't feed through the hot end. Maybe if I went through and sanded it down and measured to make sure it was a perfect match, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has a good technique for joining them as it would allow you to leave tby cobrageek - General
Thanks brnrd. I'll read through the material during lunch today. Looks like great stuff and I'm sure I'll get it setup safely after all that help. For a heat sink, I was ripping apart an old PC power supply and found some perfect heat sink's that are just a flat piece of sheet aluminum at the bottom where they bolt to the regulators (which are shaped just like the MOSFETs) and then have fins aby cobrageek - General
I have the same MOSFET (P55NF06L) so it should be able to handle the current. The suggestion is to use wires to replace (or replicate) the traces on the board, but I was actually thinking to run a separate wire directly from the 12V supply to the bed and ground to the MOSFET. And running double connectors on the 4 pin connector seems to be standard (at least shown in the wiring diagram). Gooby cobrageek - General
Thanks 3dbotic. The suggestion on the main Sanguinololu page on the wiki is to run a bypass wire to the FET and use a heat sink. Do you not think that is sufficient? Have you seen issues from this kind of setup or just from running only through the PCB traces? Is the FET insufficient for the current? (anyone look at the specs for the FET?) I assume your relay play is to use an automotive reby cobrageek - General
Great. This is somethign I've been wondering about. How do you go about using the last bit of the spool? Do you just sit and watch as it pulls the last bit through and feed in the next piece somehow? Do you pause the printing somehow and pull out the old and insert the new? Do you just have to predict that what's left on the roll won't make it and swap it out before starting a print? Thanksby cobrageek - General
Interesting. The plastic parts the came with my prusa 2 kit have the same problem. All the hex nut traps are slightly too small and I need to go in with an exacto knife to open them up and get them to fit. I wonder if there is some setting that influences this in KISSlicer.by cobrageek - General
I'm setting up a new Prusa 2 and have Sanguinololu electronics. I've seen a lot of mentions of spinter, repetier and marlin and I see on reprap.org that there are several other branches of the firmware. I think the Sanguinololu came preinstalled with something, but I don't know what and I'm fine replacing it with something else (I'm sure there's a newer version of whatever is installed anyway).by cobrageek - General
Thanks everyone for chiming in on this. I've installed KISSlicer and Slic3r both. I'll proably end up using KISSlicer for a while but I'll keep Slic3r around in case I have issues or need to try other things.by cobrageek - General
The advice I received is that 0.3 clogged really easily so if I wanted something finer than the standard 0.5mm I should get 0.4mm. So that's what I ordered. The slicers being discussed are just for generating the G-code. You need something else to feed it to the printer.by cobrageek - General
What's your favorite slicer? (I'm using Windows). I know about Skeenforge but I've heard some warnings about it being complicated and slow. I've downloaded Slic3r and was thinking to use that one but just heard about KISSlicer and it might even be easier to use. What's your favorite and why?by cobrageek - General
Excellent topic. I'm just getting my printer going and the first thing I want to do is print another set of plastic parts (because the batch with the kit are "iffy" and I don't think they'll last). Thanks. Bretby cobrageek - General
lotw, Martin, thanks for your help on 123d tools. I really do think they're nice to use and I like the ipad connection as well. I'll try some of the conversion tools you suggest and see if I can make changes to basic STL files. It's good software and I hope they keep up the enhancements and nice tutorial videos.by cobrageek - General
I received the package with several feet of thier white 1.75mm PLA and it looks good to me. I used digital calipers to check the thickness along a good section of it and it seemed very consistent and right around 1.75mm (within a few hundredths). I tried looking for bubbles and other imperfections and found no issues. I don't have a microscope so I didn't look at a close cross section or anythby cobrageek - General
Where is the best place to locate the thermistor for the heated bed? I've seen a suggestion to put it through the center hold in the PCB and place it up against the glass printing bed. This makes sense in that you're reading the temperature of the actual pinting surface, but it also seems like you may end up with oscillation issues: The controller is sensing that the glass is not hot enough soby cobrageek - General
Xiando, I contacted them and they said they would send me a sample to check out. Thanks for the great idea. I have a few weeks still before I get my printer together so it's likely enough time to check out their sample and then place an order. I'll see what it looks like and I hope they don't hand pick their sample piece they send :-).by cobrageek - General
Thanks jbernardis. That actually makes some sense. It would be difficult to import if it doesn't have any metadata information. It would still be nice to be able to take the STL as a "blob" and then add shapes or subtract holes in existing objects, but size or aspect changes wouldn't really work. I think I'll stick with 123d for a while as it's the right price :-).by cobrageek - General
I've been playing with 123d Design and it's a nice tool, but my big problem with it is that it doesn't import from STL. You can export to STL, but if you find something on Thingiverse and want to tweak it slightly or make a small modification you can't import it into 123d Design and make your modifications. That's my main dissapointment. Have you found a way aorund that problem?by cobrageek - General
I'm new to 3d printing as well (still putting together the printer), but in my research the biggest difference I could find is that the smaller volume of the 1.75mm provides the extruder with more "steps" per unit volume of plastic extruded. This allows more accuracy/control in the amount of plastic being extruded and I think helps enable the machine to be able to more reasonably print thinner lby cobrageek - General