In general, the faster you print the lousier the quality. When you want a good print, 50 mm /sec is a typical print speed. I see lots of videos of people running machines at 200 mm/sec and in the vast majority of those, even with relatively poor quality video, it is clear to see that the print quality is pretty bad. I can't think of anything I'd print when a poor quality result would be acceptby the_digital_dentist - General
QuoteCyber AkumaThe glass is for an even flat surface, not for heat conductivity. Right. But you apply heat to get prints to stick. If prints don't stick, it doesn't matter how flat the bed is. What you need is bed flatness and thermal conductivity so there are no cool spots that will let go of the print. That's what cast tooling plate is good for.by the_digital_dentist - General
Quote3DS-QUAD Anybody know if this, aluminium flat bar. The same as tooling plate for flatness. Aluminium Flat Bar If it doesn't say cast/milled tooling/jig plate, it isn't. It is most likely extruded and not particularly flat.by the_digital_dentist - General
One of the people at the makerspace had a FLIR camera on their phone a couple days ago. We looked at the beds of the Solidoodle 3 and the Taz Lulzbot 3. The Solidoodle has an aluminum bed and the Taz a glass bed. The Solidoodle's heat profile was warmest at the center and then gradual reduction in temperature going away from the center with the edges of the plate maybe 10C cooler than the centby the_digital_dentist - General
The motor with the screw shaft that was linked previously appears to be very small and incapable of delivering much torque. If you're going to be driving your printer's relatively massive Y axis at anything approaching an acceptable print speed, you're going to need a motor with higher torque. I used the Oriental Motor motor sizing tools web site to calculate the torque required for driving theby the_digital_dentist - General
Yes, you can add diagonals, but you're forgetting that you have to be able to access the parts of the machine for maintenance and repairs and the prints that it produces. You'll be reaching around (and cursing) diagonals to make every adjustment and to remove every print. I don't know how you'd go about making a tensioned frame that is rigid without something rigid to anchor it to to provide aby the_digital_dentist - Extruded Aluminum Frames
6-7% is very bad. Have you calibrated the printer axis steps/mm and extruder?by the_digital_dentist - Slic3r
Three point leveling is definitely the way to go, but I see that you've got the bearings on the base of your A frame placed pretty close together. It would be better to space them farther apart if the design of the machine's Y axis allows it.by the_digital_dentist - General
It's very hard to break a motor and very easy to break those pololu driver modules. It's the driver...by the_digital_dentist - General
It depends entirely on the quality of the prints you find acceptable. Backlash is likely to cause some surface finish defects and possibly some accuracy issues if you're trying to do precision work (gears that mesh, boxes with tightly fitting lids, threaded parts that screw together). If you're going to print Yoda heads and tugboats it doesn't matter much.by the_digital_dentist - General
I don't think anyone here cares. People building 3D printers use whatever power source is cheaply available. They are all low quality. That's why they are so cheap. We know that when we buy them.by the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
You can get anti backlash nuts for lead screws. There are different grades of ball screw. If you want something that doesn't have much backlash you may have to get a precision ground ball screw ($$$).by the_digital_dentist - General
I used the motor sizing tool at Oriental Motor: I have a 10mm lead, 15 mm dia ball screw driving the Y axis. I believe the oriental motor calculator said I needed 380 oz-in torque to drive the thing to 50 mm/sec with 1000 mm/s^2 acceleration and 0.05 mm stopping precision (if I recall all that correctly). I use a 425 oz-in motor and it works exactly as expected. I use 1/64 microstepping toby the_digital_dentist - General
Your experience with aluminum is limited to a poor design. The fact that prints won't stick is not the material's fault. One reason prints fail to stick to a print bed is the temperature. If it's too low the plastic won't stick. A glass plate is a thermal insulator. You will have hot and cold spots on it. Prints will let go at the cold spots. Aluminum is a thermal conductor and the temperaby the_digital_dentist - General
If you were having a problem with aluminum it is because it was too thin and/or the leveling scheme was wrong (let me guess- screws at 4 corners?). Aluminum is thermally conductive and is the best thing to use for a heated bed. Many people use glass because they have problems with the thin sheet of aluminum provided by the printer maker because it isn't flat to start with and then they use a 4by the_digital_dentist - General
It was silly that that critical person insisted that this was a closed-source project in the middle of dozens of detailed photos of the machine's construction. If the design were closed-source, this thread wouldn't even exist. His ideas of FDM size limitation seems to be based on models posted to Thingiverse or Youmagine. While he may not have progressed beyond iphone cases, Yoda-heads, and tuby the_digital_dentist - General
You can use any low voltage bipolar stepper with those drivers. The limitation is the current, not the motor. You are limited to 2A maximum (probably more like 1.8A). If your motors run fine at 2A or less, those drivers will work. You can run a stepper at less than its rated current, but you will get less than rated torque. NEMA-23 motors tend to vibrate more than the NEMA-17 motors commonlyby the_digital_dentist - General
It sounds like you haven't calibrated the steps/mm in the axes yet, and/or the home position isn't at the corner of the bed. Calibration doesn't matter much if you're printing Yoda heads, but if you want to get dimensionally accurate parts, you have to calibrate.by the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
This is why you should level and zero the bed when it and the extruder are at print temperatures.by the_digital_dentist - Mechanics
I say try it and see what happens!by the_digital_dentist - General
If you're just going to print ABS once in a while you could skip all the effort and expense of getting a bunch of acrylic panels and building a box by just finding a cardboard box that fits over the printer. If you want to get fancy, add an acrylic window and a few LEDs so you can see what's going on inside. Cardboard boxes are pretty good insulators, and cost is essentially zero.by the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
I stand corrected, at least for simple geometries like a cube. Is there a similar way to draw a tangent between two curves?by the_digital_dentist - Slic3r
First, kudos for trying to enclose the printer and putting the electronics outside of the heated area. That said, I think you'll find that you'll lose too much heat by having the entire enclosure made of acrylic panels. ABS prints without warping or delamination when the build chamber temperature is 45-50C. Unless you plan to add a supplemental heater to the enclosure to get to that temperaturby the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
You can get signals in and out of a surplus cell phone via wifi, bluetooth, or the USB port, if it has one, so you need an interface board in the printer that can work with one or more of those. I don't think the phone CPUs have the processing muscle, and I know that they don't have the memory required to slice anything but very simple files in any reasonable amount of time, if there was a sliceby the_digital_dentist - General
Check your local scrap yards for scrapped industrial machinery. You can get motors for scrap "breakage" price. While you're at it, look for 8020 extrusions.by the_digital_dentist - General
I have noticed that many people at the makerspace have problems getting ABS prints to stick to kapton tape without adding glue, etc. When I ask what they did, they tell me they wiped the bed with acetone before printing and the parts just wouldn't stick. Then I ask them to show me the acetone and they bring out a bottle of nail polish remover. Nail polish remover is cheap (you can buy a smallby the_digital_dentist - General
Nozzle diameter !== resolution. You can get to 50 um resolution in all axes for a small printer without too much difficulty or expense. What you can't do easily is print 50 um features because the nozzle diameter dictates the smallest feature you can print. In order to get 50 um resolution, you need a very rigid frame and very high precision bearings. Use of linear guides will get you as closby the_digital_dentist - General
I'm not sure what I'm looking at in the pictures, but by your description, I think you are running into a common Sketchup 3D model problem I used to run into before I abandoned Sketchup. Sketchup is not very good for 3D printing because of problems with things that look connected but are not. Go into your original drawing and zoom into the area where the parts are supposed to meet. Keep zoominby the_digital_dentist - Slic3r