3 arms with ball joints, will not stay flat. 3 arms with 2 perpendicular knuckle joints at each end will stay flat (this mimics the action of the two rods per axis) but it won't be possible to tilt the platform.by konwiddak - General
There is nothing wrong extruding 0.5mm or 0.6mm wide tracks through a 0.35mm nozzle. Might limit your top speed, but it will print fine. In fact the general consensus is to extrude wider than the nozzle width anyway.by konwiddak - Printing
Also 2mm seems like a lot - I would be surprised if you needed much more than 1mm on a non Bowden setup. Perhaps skipped extruder steps have caused you to set such a high value.by konwiddak - Printing
At a guess I'd say that's a retraction issue. It's as if the nozzle retracts ok but doesn't prime. On thick sections you won't notice since the dodgy permiter is hidden. On thin sections it isn't priming after the retract causing a lack of material. Likely cause is skipped steps in the extruder. Try printing with a lowered retraction speed (say 10mm/s for starters) and lower extruder acceleraby konwiddak - Printing
I have an eBay hot end (j-head) - pushed 3kg+ through it and shows no issues. Maybe I'm just lucky. The one thing I will note is it came with 1.75 and 3mm ptfe inserts - but the drilling is for 3mm all the way. I think it's dodgy modifying a 3mm nozzle like this to 1.75. I use 3mm filament so perhaps this is why I was OK.by konwiddak - General
J-head 0.5mm, 3mm filament (pla) Tempted to get a 0.35mm nozzle.by konwiddak - General
I've never had a roll of pla arrive vacuum packed, but they have always come in a bag with a couple of desiccant sachets. Haven't had a problem. Had a roll sitting on the printer in the air for 6 months - printed fine. I don't think it's that big an issue if your not in a humid climate.by konwiddak - General
You shouldn't need to change z-steps per mm if the z axis is screw driven - calculate the required steps, set it and leave it. If you have auto bed levelling, then very small movements in z as you move in X or y is normal behaviour, it's just the auto levelling attempting to keep the head at the same distance from the bed. If you move forward and back in Y do the z motors return to the same placby konwiddak - Printing
Since infill "prettiness" doesn't matter too much, you can print infill at silly speeds anyway. I'm not sure this saves that much time. Would save time if you were using a single perimeter, but no structural part should be made like this.by konwiddak - General
You can simply use dual X carriages, one for hotend, one for print cartridge. This way you can park one carriage when it's not in use.by konwiddak - Developers
It also was probably only designed for light use. It might wear out quite quickly on a 3d printer.by konwiddak - General
It's better to think of the negative terminal as "ground", in other words it's at 0v. You could have negative voltages in some circumstances, in which case you you wouldn't want to arbitrarily connect things together! However with reprap electronics I don't see why not. Personally I would use a volt meter to do a continuity check between the negative points I want to bundle together. If they areby konwiddak - Developers
Are your holes round or oval? Have you calibrated your flow rate by printing a single walled object? As a general rule, a hole should be made a bit bigger than what you are trying to put through it (not just 3d printing, in general). This is why an 8mm bolt is slightly smaller than 8mm. I find small holes comes out about 0.2mm too small, so I over size all holes in my designs by 0.4mm for a loosby konwiddak - General
On stationary/vertical moving bed machines (ultimaker, delta bot etc) then Bowden makes most sense - they have minimal carriage mass, which you want to keep as low as possible. For moving bed machines, the bed mass is the likely limiting factor in speed/acceleration, therefore a Bowden doesn't really seem worth the effort.by konwiddak - General
I use m5 nuts in 20x20mm t-slot (5 or 6mm gap, I'm not sure) they work perfectly, but must be inserted from the ends.by konwiddak - Mechanics
"16v steppers" - I think high voltage steppers perform poorly with reprap electronics. Unipolar steppers are fine, just don't wire up the connection to the central tap (I have one working like this) You really want low voltage steppers. 16v steppers won't achieve their full potential on a 12v supply. From reprap wiki: "Power and current All recent stepper controllers use a current-limiting deby konwiddak - Reprappers
There is g-code to set the current point to any value. If you move the head to the edge of the bed, set the current position to a point not at the edge of the bed - then you can move the head further. This is a slightly risky technique though! It would be better to set the limits further in Marlin, and then make sure your slicer is set to not exceed the normally printable area.by konwiddak - General
A belt may have small errors in pitch from tooth to tooth, but it will have an exact number of teeth per meter. Therefore the pitch error over distance does not sum up, the pitch error is an absolute error. It's a bit like using two poorly made 20 tooth gears - although there will be position error as you rotate the gears, every turn of the gears they will be back in the same state as originallby konwiddak - Printing
Your stepper motor doesn't appear to have a flat on the shaft - is the stepper shaft slipping around inside the small gear?by konwiddak - Printing
I stubbornly went quite a while without a heated bed and the best tape I found was green painters tape. I assume it's the same stuff as blue tape. I don't think kapton tape works well for PLA. However I would seriously recommend a heated bed - small ones aren't very expensive and it simply makes the whole 3D Printing process so much more pain free. First layer sticks fine, every time!by konwiddak - Printing
Use strip board. Soldering the ends together you can make a trace that zigzags across the board. It works well enough for me, was cheap as chips and is really light! (you might need to solder tracks in parallel to get the resistance down.)by konwiddak - Developers
Interesting idea but there is a flaw: Is the bed is level relative to the end stops - yes Are the end stops level relative to the XY axes - not necessarily! You could have quite an angle in either the X or y axis and this system would never show it since there is no link between the two. That's the whole advantage of bed probing, it levels everything! Putting a probe on your print head and lby konwiddak - Developers
I have a 300x300mm heat bed made from 6 100x150mm pieces of breadboard. Soldered tracks ends into threes and joined them up to make a single track running back and fourth. Will achieve 75C which is fine for PLA. Moving to 4 tracks soldered together would dramatically reduce resistance and increase power massively, 5 track wide would be very powerful.by konwiddak - Reprappers
I also think this is the way forward. It's how commercial colour SLS printers work, so it's not a new idea, just I don't think anyone has successfully applied it to FDM style printers.by konwiddak - Developers
chris33 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > why would you polish stainless steel rods? I'm not sure if your asking why stainless steel or why polish? 1. Stainless steel is pretty hard wearing, sure there are harder steels out there but #2 2. They were cheap, to a good tolerance and readily available. 3. They needed a polish.by konwiddak - Reprappers
ReprapDan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi Evan, > > I purchased 8mm Bright Stainless Steel rod from > the local steel merchant. It comes in a high > finish, but has a fine grind finish. > > I cut my lengths with an angle grinder, then i > carefully sanded the surface with 800 grit wet & > dry abrasive paper, then 1200 abrasive pby konwiddak - Reprappers
sam80 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I > mean I have a great ideas but I can't patent a > Idea right... anyone want to shed some light on > the subject? In the UK I believe you must have a functional prototype. In the US you can patent without a prototype. From a quick Google search "United States patent laws do not require you to have a prototypeby konwiddak - General
I wonder if it would be possible to build a thin shell of the object and then keep your extruder still and pump it full of plastic. I agree with a "penny fits and functional" is a good criteriaby konwiddak - Competitions
Surly some kind of quality criteria such as "recognisable", "ok" or possibly "functional' quality needs to be set against this. I'm sure I could pump out the required amounts of plastic in a matter of minutes, but it would be a hideous monstrosity that would be barely recognisable as the intended part!by konwiddak - Competitions
Frankly neither really has an effect on the "accuracy" of prints as a statistic by itself. Sure your printer might have 1 micron resolution, but that doesn't equal 1 micron positioning accuracy. Most printers have a theoretical resolution higher than the natural variation in width you get from the extruded plastic so super high precision positioning makes no real difference to accuracy. What yoby konwiddak - General