^^^ Aha! No I hadn't thanks that helps enormously. On the D connectors there are DE DA and DB types available? Georgeby gsport - Mendel90
^^^ Thanks Alzibiff. The Manual lists:- "The parts list is in D_connector_assembly.txt" But I cant seem to find this. It doesn't seem to be under vitamins or anywhere else I have looked, and a Google search brings up nothing. I need to order some other things off Farnell soon anyway, so wanted to add these in, but need to narrow down a bit from this:- They also have ribbon cable at £1-50 oby gsport - Mendel90
Hi, I have a Longboat Prusa at the moment and am looking to build a Mendel 90 frame to switch it all over to and end some of the annoying problems and create a bigger build volume (particularly the Z axis, which should be 100mm on my current machine but the extruder motor actually hits the side threaded bar long before then if the print uses the full width). I have done a fair bit of hunting roby gsport - Mendel90
The bed is a 200mm x 200mm piece of 4mm aluminium with 1.8mm glass on top. That is obviously quite a lot of thermal inertia, which is good in some ways as it keeps things stable, but makes heating (and cooling) slow. I was surprised how much difference a bit of low tech insulation on the top during heating made, so thought I would share that's all. Georgeby gsport - General
As Jbayless mentioned, averaging is a good tool. So for example, lead screws for lathes could be made on lathes using the same type of lead screw. By clamping the carriage to the lead screw using a simple box filled with wadding the new lead screw would be cut to an average of the previous one. You could then put the new lead screw into that same lathe and make an even more accurate one... Obviby gsport - General
I had been having a problem with the time it took for my heated bed to get up to temperature. I was using 69degrees and getting there took an age especially the last 2 or 3 degrees. I fiddled about a lot with insulating the underside and it made very little difference, but what did make a big difference was just laying three sheets of kitchen roll on top. Once it is up to temperature I take thby gsport - General
The glass on my bed is also from a picture frame, but is just 1.8mm thick. Not had any problems with it, but it is on a 4mm aluminium plate. MDF is a terrible material really as it tends to creep and has very poor stiffness for it's weight, if you put holes in it it may well distort. 8-10mm birch ply would be good, and you could cut out some triangles to save weight. An aluminium honeycomb likeby gsport - General
^^^ The ends of that part would be held in bearings on the carriage, relying on the stiffness and straightness of the hex bar doesn't seem a like a good way to go. Georgeby gsport - General
Thanks Have Blue, I hadn't seen that, might be worth a try. The Aluminium Hydroxide is likely to be the only problem. Epoxy is listed as having "good" resistance to it, as long as the temperature stays pretty low (under 22C)... Georgeby gsport - General
This is the sort of thing I was thinking of. (please excuse the very rough nature of this model it was just to work out spacings, I haven't included washers and obviously need to build it up into a full assembly) A printed small gear with a spider to hold 3 bearings that run as idlers on the 8mm AF hex bar. This is modeled on MR104 ZZ bearings which are 4mm bore 10mm OD and 4mm wide. This meansby gsport - General
Sorry this took me so long to come back on. Had virtually ZERO success with Caustic Soda/Sodium Hydroxide. My research on the epoxies suggested that they were fairly happy with up to 50% solution, but even 50% seemed to have very little effect on the PLA. After several days, weeks even, the part was still 90% intact. Prodding, stirring etc seemed to make very little difference. I am now wonderby gsport - General
Hi, Been off the forum for a while, printer has been working pretty well and used regularly for mocking things up etc but just been using it as a tool and not keeping up with developments. I am now thinking of making a new one, probably Mendel 90 ish using Birch ply and with a very tall Z axis (since going to a bigger bar diameter and bearings on this shouldn't bend under its own weight it shouby gsport - General
My experience of the de-icer is that the print needs to be cooled to this same kind of level to remove. And it seems like less effort than what you describe. One squirt, wipe, done. I have done it before turning the heat on and during and both seemed fine.by gsport - General
Thought they must be pretty close hence I thought it worth trying, wasn't sure what else would be in there that might spoil the effect. For me de-icer is a lot more readily available and cheap...by gsport - General
Topic title about covers it. I was having a lot of problems getting prints to stick to my glass bed (PLA), I thought that it was pretty clean but having read on here that cleaning with acetone or isopropyl alcohol could help I started hunting around for something in the house to use. Found a bottle of car windscreen de-icer and thought I would give it a go... Works brilliantly. One squirt, quiby gsport - General
So I tried making a small test wax core and combined LDPE, paraffin wax and beeswax. The resultant material was nice and strong, relatively hard, and had minimal shrinkage, however it also seemed to need temps way in excess of 100 degrees to re-melt so would be hard to remove at the end without overheating the part (unless I use a high temp epoxy). Am going to try some sub 50% Sodium Hydroxide sby gsport - General
Thanks Greg, the idea of sponging it smooth is very attractive I hadn't thought of that, if it saves me a lot of sanding then the expense of the PVA would be well worth while... but would the PVA be stiff enough to hold it's shape while I fill it with wax (or something)? Also I am still looking for a UK source if anyone knows of one. The only place I have found is RoboSavvy but they only seemby gsport - General
Thanks for the suggestion Pete but my composite part will be a couple of feet long* so an ordinary domestic oven wouldn't be big enough and the highest temperature I feel happy subjecting the composite part to is about 170 degrees or so (with a high temperature epoxy) and I think that the PLA would take a long time to slump out at that temp... George * core will be made in multiple segments andby gsport - General
My further searching has found the PVA described as "soft" and "like the glue", which would make it difficult for me to sand the surface smooth and correct any blips. I also haven't yet found a UK source of the filament (?) and I don't really want to spend the money to order a large reel from the US only to find that it isn't suitable, so any clarification or feedback from people with experienceby gsport - General
Thanks for the suggestions. I couldn't find much info on the PVA, my only experience of it is as glue where it is very soft which wouldn't really suit my purpose, is the filament or rather the printed part fairly hard and rigid and sandable? Surely the acetone to dissolve the ABS would be pretty tough on the epoxy too?by gsport - General
Hi, I want to print a "core" or "plug" for a composite part, wrap it in carbon and epoxy resin and then remove as much of the core as possible. My initial idea was that I could print a shell in PLA (which I have plenty of) and then fill it with something cheap like candle wax to get a fairly solid lump that I can sand and mess about with prior to applying the carbon. I then thought that I couby gsport - General
Are you trying to create an assembly of two separate parts, or will these two end up joining into a single entity? I would create a sketch of your layout (where you want the two parts) and contrain the parts to that sketch. With mates if it is an assembly and by sketches on top if it is going to end up as a single part.by gsport - General
How tight do you have the nuts/springs? I can let mine fully run out and still just feed new stock in and have it catch. I have never yet had to open it up.. Though when I built mine I was shocked at the poor alignment of the hobbed section of the bolt with the entrance hole so spent a little time shimming the bolt to line it up, maybe this is the real problem? Georgeby gsport - General
That is great thanks, fixed it no problem... seems ridiculous that such an expensive piece of software as SW cant generate proper STL's... It looks like this is going to be a recurring problem, should I download the basic version of the studio? Does anyone know how much the professional version is? Georgeby gsport - General
Help. I have printed a few things and it seems that I can suddenly not get anything to slice correctly with any version of Slic3r. Maybe I am doing something wrong? I keep getting the error:- "The model has overlapping or self intersecting facets. I tried to repair it, however you might want to check the results..." As far as I can make out there is nothing wrong with my model (created in Solby gsport - General
When my filament runs out or I need to change colour I just do the following. 1. Snip off the remaining filament just above the entrance hole. 2. Hold the new end of filament against the end of the old. 3. Do a 20mm filament extrude while pushing the new filament in behind the old. 4. Repeat. Done... I hope this helps Georgeby gsport - General
Thanks for the replies. Wasn't aware of the micro-stepping, I was just going off the motor specs. I feel like I am getting pretty poor resolution right now. Looking at Configuration H I have 80 steps per unit, so I guess that means 0.0125mm per step. My problem is that when I try to print a fine zig-zag for a sort of spline, the corners are getting very round and the definition is being lost.by gsport - General
I have a fairly stock Prusa Longboat with (split) belt drives for the X and Y axis. By my reckoning this gives me a step size of about 0.25mm. Then there is the stretch in the belts to consider. So. I was thinking of changing the X and Y axis to use a simple screw thread (like on the Z axis) to increase accuracy. If I use M6 threaded rod which has a pitch of 1mm then my step size becomes 0.by gsport - General
I finally managed to print the part but it wasn't what I had intended. I had to go back to an earlier blockier version and do a fraction of the amount of rounding off of corners etc that I had done on the new version that couldn't be sliced. Once I had this new model it could be sliced successfully on all the versions of Slic3r I now have... very strange. I did wonder if it was because the newerby gsport - General
Hi, Been printing away for a while now with Slic3r 0.7.0 and decided to try a more recent version.... then my problems started. With Pronterface (which I downloaded in March this year, not sure how to check the version) anything sliced in the new version of Slic3r doesnt seem to load properly, it stalls at estimating print time and doesn't spew up the multiple lines of layer time calculations oby gsport - General