Parts: 450W 24V kapton heater w thermistor (from Trinity Labs, no longer in business, ~$40 IIRC) 500W 24VAC buck/boost transformer (from ebay, $50 shipped) D1225 SSR (Crydom) - from the junk at the makerspace I have a 10A circuit breaker acting as a power switch for the entire printer. Each of the power supplies, except the transformer, has its own fuse. I let the high current MOSFET on the sby the_digital_dentist - Look what I made!
As a point of reference, the Stratasys FDM1600 at the makerspace prints ABS inside a closed chamber at 70C.by the_digital_dentist - Printing
BullDog XL is 5.18:1, not 1:1 (direct drive). The RRD site has a page of info that says to use 495 steps/mm for the extruder. I'd say that's a good value from which to start calibrating.by the_digital_dentist - General
You'll get best calibration results if you have the printer lay down a square that goes almost to the edges of your print bed. If you have a 250 x250 bed and you print a 200x200 square and measure it and calibrate with it, if the error in your measurement is 0.5mm, when you print a 20x20 square/cube, the 0.5 mm error divide down to 0.05mm.by the_digital_dentist - General
You can check for parallel guide rails by taking the belt off and pushing the print bed/extruder carriage back and forth down the length of the rails. If they are parallel there won't be any binding. If they bind they may cause the motor to slip and skip steps and that will cause the sort of weird behavior you're seeing. While you're at it, check the belt tension and the grub screw on the motoby the_digital_dentist - Printing
The calibration should not matter where on the bed you print the part. Think about how it works- the motor steps/rev doesn't change, the belt pitch doesn't change, and the number of teeth on the pulley doesn't change with XY coordinates. If you calibrate with a very small part then print a big part, the error in the small part calibration will multiply in the dimensions of the larger part. Itby the_digital_dentist - Printing
Not so much the lazy man's way out as the cheap printer maker's way out. It is far cheaper to add an inductive sensor (about $5 at retail) than to build a solid printer. One thing it would allow, and I expect to see it in a printer kit soon, is to eliminate bed level adjustment hardware altogether. If you have a working autolevel system, why bother including hardware to mechanically level theby the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
The problem with super low speeds is that the very hot extruder nozzle will remelt the layer(s) of plastic below the one it is printing and wreck the beautiful precision with which they were deposited. The result may look pretty bad. The good news is that you can try it and if it sucks, convert to higher speed drive.by the_digital_dentist - General
The only improvement autoleveling offers is eliminating the need for you to manually level the print bed before starting a print. If your printer is solidly built and doesn't need frequent releveling, autoleveling is sort of pointless.by the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
Dead wrong. There is no better way to bring the filament to the extruder. It is almost a straight line path wherever the extruder is on the X axis and the only friction being where the spool turns on the pipe. You are doing fine. Don't change it.by the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
What are the first and second layer thicknesses? Does the hot-end temperature remain steady?by the_digital_dentist - Printing
I used a kapton heater from the no longer operating Trinity Labs. It is a 450W heater that runs on 24V. I use a 24V transformer to power it with an SSR switching 117VAC into the primary of the transformer under PID control from the SmoothieBoard. I turned the PID frequency down to 8Hz in the SmoothieBoard so it wouldn't blow circuit breakers- Smoothie runs at about 20Hz by default, I think. Tby the_digital_dentist - Look what I made!
I think you'd need more air than an aquarium pump can provide. A blower like the things used in CPAP machines would probably do the job since they are designed to blow air through a hose.by the_digital_dentist - General
Aluminum is more thermally conductive than most other metals, cheap, relatively light weight, and easy to cut/mill. You could use copper, but it is a lot heavier, more expensive, and harder to machine.by the_digital_dentist - Printing
We have a Stratasys machine at the makerspace that has a couple flexible hoses attached to the hot-end for bringing cool air in from outside the box to keep the hot-end cool. I don't know what sort of blower they have attached to it to force the air through the hose. Quotesungod3k I like the idea and even calming down the airflow would be positive, however my main concern would be hotend coolinby the_digital_dentist - General
The bed temp is a little high, extruder temp is fine. I don't know about the speeds- my printer runs slower. You might try slowing down a bit- maybe 50mm/sec. I solved the delam problem by building an enclosure around my printer using PIR foam insulation board. The 450W bed heater was raising the enclosure temperature to about 45C during prints (with the door propped open a little to preventby the_digital_dentist - Printing
MegaMax was a great printer but there were a lot of things I wanted to change. First, he was a little too large- barely fit through doorways and required a huge enclosure. Next, I wanted to separate the electronics from the print chamber so the chamber could be allowed to get very warm. Finally, I wanted it all self contained- no more power supplies in a separate enclosure. For the newby the_digital_dentist - Look what I made!
Quotegadittri Ayouden, Your problem looks a lot like mine. I believe mine was solved by switching to a solid state relay for the heated bed. The relay that I was using was causing huge temp swings. The type of relay shouldn't affect the temperature swings, but turning on PID temperature control will. With PID control you definitely don't want to use a mechanical relay to switch power to tby the_digital_dentist - Printing
There really shouldn't be any appreciable lateral motion in the screw. If there is, either the screw axis isn't accurately aligned with the motor axis or the screw is bent. If one end of the screw is flopping around in space it is hard to know exactly where the screw's axis is as it changes depending on the rotation angle (and maybe with the position of the nut on the Z axis). Bearings at bothby the_digital_dentist - Printing
I added the stuff you posted to the config file and it works fine. I seems that the board can't read files a couple folders deep- probably due to path length getting too long. I have disconnected from the computer until i need to update the firmware/config file again...by the_digital_dentist - Controllers
I'll take a look at it. Thanks. You should be able to select "play" from the LCD panel and not use pronterface at all...by the_digital_dentist - Controllers
Wow! You are one of only a few people in the world who would have figured that out. I salute you! I struggled for a long time to find a solution to the extruder cable/connector problem. I think there are three ways to solve it. First, route the cable so it doesn't bend much as the machine operates. This is usually an ugly solution because the cable has to be fed from above in a large, graceby the_digital_dentist - Stepper Motors, Servo Motors, DC Motors
Temperature drops during printing usually indicate a power supply problem. If the power supply that supplies the motors and heaters is working too hard it will produce lower voltage which will quickly cause the temperature of any heaters to drop. Check the power supply voltage with the machine idling and as it operates. If the voltage drops by much, you may need a new, higher current rated supby the_digital_dentist - Printing
I just installed the GLCD panel and haven't used it to run a print yet. I have been using the USB connection and running Pronterface (hating every minute of it) to run it. I have yet to try "playing" from the uSD card on the smoothieboard, either under USB or networked control. I don't have a network drop in my work room- a situation I need to fix real soon. I have inserted an SD card into thby the_digital_dentist - Controllers
I've seen this statement before and have no idea where it originated. Maybe it depends on how rigid the frame is. I would say that if putting a bearing at the end of the screw causes more print quality problems than it solves, your printer is in need of a redesign. Almost every industrial linear positioner has bearings at both ends of the screw. If it was such a problem they wouldn't do that.by the_digital_dentist - Printing
This all sounds like an argument to have the CAD machine next to the printer, not for an external controller that allows remote start/stop. As you say, you have to clean the bed off before you can restart the print. QuoteRickRap My issue with the SD card is that it's a pain if you are making a lot of changes to a design. More than once I've had to stop a print after realizing a design flaw (orby the_digital_dentist - Controllers
If the CPU chip is getting hot the thing is dead. You will need a new board.by the_digital_dentist - Controllers
Here's the underside of my bed: The plate is 1/4" cast aluminum tooling plate, milled flat. You can see 3 holes- top, bottom, and right edge. The top and bottom holes are in line with the Y axis. One is used for the fixed reference. The other adjusts "pitch" in the Y axis. The hole at the right edge adjusts "roll" around the Y axis. These are the only two adjustments needed to level the bby the_digital_dentist - Mechanics
Do a search for "Z axis wobble". You'll find all sorts of info on the causes and cures.by the_digital_dentist - Printing
I vote for sneaker-netting SD cards to the printer. I know it's a PITA - my CAD machine and printer are on different floors in my house - but printing from a local SD card is the most reliable way to print, and as you already know, 3D printing can be a pretty unreliable process. Adding an external controller increases the unreliability. Besides the usual computer reliability issues (though mby the_digital_dentist - Controllers