@ Remondo: Thanks. They are less DIY as far as making it all yourself, but to some people easier is more satisfying. The password for Thingiverse was non trivial and long. A brute force direct password test would have taken a long time, although over night would have made it quicker, I don't think it would have been done that quickly. I doubt this was the method used, there are faster ways. The wby Beekeeper - General
@Nudel: It actually does add more structure than just having threaded rods and plastic vertexes. Next week, I will try and post on RepRap and YouTube the structural side loads of my standard (well tuned) Prusa Mendel with LM8uu Bearings -vs- a Vision Prusa Mendel. It is approximately 4 to 5 times more rigid when loaded laterally in the X direction. It will take me a bit to fixture both, and put tby Beekeeper - General
Is RepRap now too old for new ideas or variations on existing ideas? Is it better to have new printers with bugs, than hone an existing good design further? Why can't RepRap have both? Inherent in the meaning of "inNOVAtion" is "NEW". Does RepRap have too many members, so that new members need not apply? Unless the new members are willing to suffer abuse and be trashed for putting forth their iby Beekeeper - General
Good luck with that one. At $250, they have made sure the money will never be paid out. Plastic filament like natural ABS colored with a marker will come out as a very pale pastel color of the marker color. There is several renditions of this on Thingiverse. Like Filament Marker Colorizer Making the filament with the right diameter, roundness, and right tolerance is something even experience eby Beekeeper - General
Andrew Smith: Thank you for the advice. I didn't think that the M500 worked.by Beekeeper - General
@JLudlow: Thanks. @kwando: Thank you also. Pick whichever printer meets your needs. Check back later this week, I am about to post a huge project on Thingiverse.com - it should be good for a laugh. I am also going to post a bunch of prints with varying resolutions and sizes.by Beekeeper - General
Also, apply a little household machine oil to your Z rods and the Z nuts and cycle them up and down about 50mm to work it in a bit. A little lube really helps and reduces wear and tear on the Z rods especially the threaded ones. If you want a faster Z axis, you can also change out the Z motors go give larger motors with more torque. Thankfully, the Z axis is the one where the speed of the motorsby Beekeeper - General
For one thing, plating grade ABS it is VERY clean, and able to resist the acid cleaning and coating processes without becoming brittle. It also, cannot contaminate the plater's tanks and chemicals used to get the first metal conductive coatings on the parts (usually copper). Any contamination really gets magnified once you start putting a mirror finish on it. Black plastic always concerns me, siby Beekeeper - General
You can electro-plate ABS, but you should use what is known as a "Plating Grade ABS" which is electrically conductive. It's natural ABS color is a dull / light grey. No one in the world currently sells a plating grade filament. If you are trying to get a "mirrored finish" on printed parts, you could Vacuum Metalize the parts instead. It is cheaper, you don't need it to be made out of a special Aby Beekeeper - General
A bit of an add on, if you try this, you should do the M303 (PID autotune for Marlin) when the nozzle is COLD (or close to it). Normal operating temps of PLA or ABS are too warm for it to tune.by Beekeeper - Firmware - mainstream and related support
The Vision BigFoot can go up to 12.5" (311mm) Z height. I am working on a video that shows 1 continuous print that lasts 50 hours and burns a couple lbs of filament (more on that later). I do wonder what the longest running print is. I remember in the early days of Makerbot, they had their "Makerbot world records" and Zach had it at just over 2 hours with a Cupcake, in just 3 years, times haveby Beekeeper - General
WildBill, "You missed out on one chance for improvement, Z height... You are no longer constrained by equalateral triangles, so why not make it taller while keeping the existing footprint? Looks like you will have a mx z height of 100mm, why not go 200mm? " Actually, no I didn't. Good of you to notice though. The 2 larger Vision Printer (the Vision "Plus" and the Vision "BigFoot") are not Equby Beekeeper - General
Nice bi-lingual blog, I wish there were more of them. I am absolutely going to quote you often, "that’s The Pile of Shame!" - That totally sums it up, although these days, my "Pile of Shame" stopped growing, except for purgings, outlines, and an occasional mishap.by Beekeeper - General
@harodwilliams: Thanks! @destroyer2012: Ouch! I don't know where the rules are that officially designates one design a RepRap an another as not. All the RP parts in the Vision 3d Printer require another 3d Printer to print them. All RP parts are either Prusa parts, Greg's accessible extruder parts, or working derivitives of those parts. There doesn't seem to be a formula to say what percentage oby Beekeeper - General
I just posted my RepRap Prusa Mendel variant on Kickstarter. I like the Prusa Mendel in all it's flavors, a LOT. It is simple enough that most people could build one with most parts that they could have in 3 days, but it takes a long time to assemble and it still looks too hobbiest for most people to consider. Most people that I show my original Prusa Mendel to are unimpressed... until they see wby Beekeeper - General
nophead: Very nice print(s). What kind of ABS are you using? It's Natural color is much whiter that the Chi Mei 947 ABS that Makerbot and Ultimachine use here (theirs is more of a classic ABS off white/manilla color). I am interested in getting some to try out. Also, do you have an idea how log it took you to print the parts? sublime: Quite impressive. I really need to spend more time on Blendby Beekeeper - General
Greg, Wow, that's some heater element! You could fry some bacon and eggs, then start printing. Do you run the heated bed on AC or DC (AC is very dangerous)? How much power does it consume? I like your designs on Thinviverse, and love your extruder. Take Care.by Beekeeper - General Mendel Topics
It sure looks like a retraction issue, other than that, your part looks pretty good. I think that you should turn retraction off especially for jumps less than 2mm. It appears that you are retracting, but there isn't enough time for recovery before you start your next curve. Retraction isn't necessary for thin wall parts where the printer is continually printing closed loops. It is mostly neeby Beekeeper - General
You need to unbolt the motors (not using the built in 3mm threaded holes). I placed a gasket material (a 1/4" thick semi-compressible foam like weatherstripping) in between the Z motors and the Z motor bracket, and then used Kapton tape to tape down the Z motors fairly tight. The foam gasket material decoupled it by allowing the motor to move in the X and Y directions to further decouple the motoby Beekeeper - General
The biggest reason to use HIPS is cost. The raw material can be purchased for about $1 / lb less, so after a couple of markups by the extruder / seller, it should be about $4-5 less per lb. It also has better resonace than ABS / PLA, so whistles and musical instruments would sound better.by Beekeeper - Polymer Working Group
You need to have the Z Rod Constraints at both the bottom AND the top. Otherwise, it won't do much good. When you add the Z Rod contraints with the 608 bearings, they are always a bit loose, so wrap the threaded rod with about 8 cm of thing Kapton or electrical tape where the 608 bearings will contact the threaded rod. This cinches up more of the slack and reduces even more of the wobble. Also,by Beekeeper - General
What material(s) can the patterns be made out of? Also, what wall thickness are the patterns? Are they one sided, or two sided? A 1mm deviation is nearly impossible on a 10 ft (or 3048mm) = ±.033%. Not even injection molded parts off the same mold can hold that tolerance (especially when you change temperatures). Although the printer could be made to hold the locational tolerance, plastic is plaby Beekeeper - Wanted
I totally agree with the article. We should all settle on the exact same model of printer, just the same way we all drive the exact same car, use the exact same cell phone (or rotary dial land line), and have the exact same computer setup. There is no room for individual preferences, we must conform to a single pattern. Innovation is why we aren't all driving Ford Model T's, using land lines fby Beekeeper - General