Try running it through cloud.netfabb.com to see if that fixes it - I often find that if slic3r complains about an stl being non-manifold then it will have problems slicing correctly. I suspect that the file is broken, but I don't know why blender thinks it's ok.by james glanville - Slic3r
Yep, rptynan is correct - it turns out just to be simpler/cheaper/easier. The original mendel used one motor, but you get a lot of problems like needing extra bearings, finding some way to tension the belts (not as easy as the x/y belts as the belts need to loop continuously around the sprockets so you need an idler pulley. You also get much more consistent backlash - with a belt you get differenby james glanville - General Mendel Topics
There's the potential, I hadn't even thought of it though since I've never had to pay anything extra. It may be it just doesn't look at all valuable, or I may have been lucky.by james glanville - General
Do you mean for the threaded or smooth rod? Smooth rod you don't have to change anything at all. If you meant the threaded rod, it's probably much better to go for smaller than m8 if anything, say M5, and avoid the z-wobble you'll get with larger rods.by james glanville - Firmware - mainstream and related support
flamethrower? Might sound ridiculous, but if you could ignite a thin stream of flammable liquid you might be able to just melt/set fire to the laces so the shoes fall.by james glanville - Laser Cutter Working Group
Cheers for organising it, it was great. Sorry to run off - I got the last train home by 5 mins which was scary. Next time I'd be keen to swap filaments if anyone was interested, I'd quite like some abs to play with, and have loads of pla to swap. Cheers, Jamesby james glanville - Beds/Herts/Cambs RepRap Usergroup
See you all later, if anyone needs a spare part printed or anything like that let me know soon.by james glanville - Beds/Herts/Cambs RepRap Usergroup
I would recommend getting a range of colours from faberdashery, because it's great quality when you're starting out. Don't buy less than 20m of one colour, since you'll waste a fair bit starting out. I now exclusively get plastic from repraper.com, because it's so much cheaper (about £24 a kilo delivered vs nearly £40 from faberdashery). I only print 3mm pla, where I think quality matters just aby james glanville - General
That's the kind of object where it is probably worth designing support into the stl, then printing without support enabled in the slicer. You can probably get away with a couple of thin walls, and let the rest be bridged. For example, I designed in support on this: which significantly reduced the amount of support material, and increased the quality of support compared to slic3rs default.by james glanville - Look what I made!
I think the problem is that slic3r does need a lot of processing power, but perhaps more importantly a decent amount of ram. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a free service that lets you use the 1gb or so of ram you need for some jobs, even if you use a swapfile. Personally I think that even on a raspberry pi, printing is almost always going to take longer than slicing - even if the slicingby james glanville - Slic3r
Win8 x64 here, everything works fine. You need to disable driver signing to install the ftdi driver I think (maybe not any more?) but that's pretty easy. You probably want a decent amount of ram - I'm currently using 10/16gb, and while I am running a lot, openscad+slic3r+chrome are using 1gb each right now, and that's before I start running other things. I'd say 8gb is a reasonable minimum. Multiby james glanville - General
I've made a printer in less than a day, but it really depends on what you consider finished (assembly takes a bit of time, then you need to calibrate it for a long time, a process that is never really done). A weekend would be a reasonable estimate to get decent prints.by james glanville - General
Without a microcontroller it'll be pretty tricky - is there any reason you don't want to use one? You'll need a quadrature encoder if you want it to work in both directions - a quadrature encoder has two outputs, and the order in which they trigger gives the direction of motion. If you really don't want to use a microcontroller, this is what I'd do: Start with the quadrature encoder and a steppeby james glanville - Stepper Motors, Servo Motors, DC Motors
Have you scaled the stl or are you printing as-is? I'm using the latest slic3r, with pretty standard 0.5mm nozzle settings, with 0.2mm layer heights and it printed really well. I would just open up the scad file and very slightly increase the gap until it generates decent gcode.by james glanville - Slic3r
I think the main problem with 1 is you'd probably want the hot bed to stay on, and not have to re-home. I know with the mechanical endstops I use for X and Y, they are not repeatable to less than a couple of hundred microns, which leaves obvious lines in the print. Also, if my bed cools to below 40C (70C normal) then the prints start coming off. I get much better results measuring the height I paby james glanville - Repetier
I just cut mine with bolt cutters, and sanded the ends to be round with a disk sander so nuts went on nicely. You can always thread a regular nut on, cut with a hacksaw, and unthread it to repair the thread. The length tolerance is really unfussy - you could get +-5mm and probably have no problems.by james glanville - General
My current pc has an i7-3770k at 3.9ghz, 16gb of fast ram, and a middling gtx 560, and openscad rendering still takes a damn long time sometimes. Openscad can't do any multicore stuff, because the backend libraries can't. I suppose this means you want to get the fastest cpu you can, but if I were you I'd just get a reasonably balanced pc instead of tuning it for a few percent difference in openscby james glanville - Slic3r
Yeah that sounds workable, assuming you don't mind a bit of lost speed. You could always gear up the driving motor if you wanted a bit more performance, but as long as you just want a bit of turning -> a bit of movement you're probably good.by james glanville - Stepper Motors, Servo Motors, DC Motors
What's this idea for by the way? There's probably a neat way to accomplish what you want, just maybe not this way. Off the top of my head, a rotary encoder, a small MCU and a stepper motor driver and stepper could probably work depending on what you want this to do.by james glanville - Stepper Motors, Servo Motors, DC Motors
Won't they never keep in step? I would have thought they'd behave a bit like synchronous machines so that the second one will exert no torque when the slip between the shafts is equal to zero, and therefore some slip would be needed to overcome friction in the driven motor. I'm not 100% on this, but it's not really a great idea anyway.by james glanville - Stepper Motors, Servo Motors, DC Motors
I've done this a few times with various objects (like batteries: ) A useful trick is making the height of the void a fraction larger than the height of the object. That way you don't bash the nozzle, and the first few bridging layers sag a bit until they rest on the object, stopping it from rattling, but then after a few layers the surface flattens out. I think the main problem you could have isby james glanville - Printing
Yeah it seems to, it's been at 70C (I only print pla) for what must be >500 hours by now. I don't know if it's lost some strength, but if I try and lift it, I'm wary about bending the 8mm smooth rods before I am of breaking the glue. homing z seems like a good solution - doesn't it add a bit more to the print time though or do you have very fast axes? I can't move my z axis that fast without tby james glanville - Repetier
I didn't want this issue, so I ran a thin bead of glue around the edge of the glass, and clamped the beds together until the glue dried. This was I have nothing protruding above the glass. I used UHU glue.by james glanville - Repetier
I use the liquid superglue all the time and it works well, are you using it on very flat surfaces? If I'm not gluing the base of an object (which is flat from the bed), then I tend to sand the surface to be glued so it's really smooth.by james glanville - Reprappers
The ridges could work, although you'd need a slot at the top to push the connector in, then something to hold it in place or you wouldn't get the connector in in the first place. How many of these are you making? if only one/a few, then you could just make the slot big enough to let the connector through, then hot glue the back. Those connectors are going to be a little bit tricky to use as theyby james glanville - 3D Design tools
What do you mean something more solid? I can't really see what the ridges inside the cutout are for.by james glanville - 3D Design tools
The 8th sounds good to me. Jamesby james glanville - Beds/Herts/Cambs RepRap Usergroup
Toothed idlers make sense if you're not switching the direction of belt teeth half way, but I think it's better overall to do that switch. I use a weird surplus thin fibreglass-reinforced belt I salvaged from an old printer for the parts of the belt that go over the pulleys.by james glanville - General
Doesn't look too bad - mine looks worse and has printed tens of kg without stripping. Provided it feeds the filament evenly it'll be fine.by james glanville - Reprappers
I know the repraper filament I use is slightly oily once extruded - you can see that the surface of the pva is much shinier and feels different after a print. I have to reapply pva or at least wipe the surface with water after prints. I suspect that's why I never got it to stick to plain glass. Nophead - do you use higher quality filament?by james glanville - General