Congrats! I'd advice you print the following as spares, in order of importance regarding which parts I've broken the most of. Some of these you might want to do a upgrade on anyway, like switching to herringbone gears on the extruder. Extruder small gear. Pulleys (if printed). Extruder idler. Bar clamps. X carriage. Extruder large gear. Extruder body. Z couplings. Y belt tensioner. X ends. Fraby Nudel - General
It definitively looks too hot, so I second the suggestion of trying with a fan. 200C is pretty hot for PLA, I only use 150-185 at regular speeds. Where did you get your filament? Some suppliers recommend higher temperatures than others, so 180-200 might be fine. Also you might have to tune your retract settings. I retract 1.5mm@15mm/s with my arcol v3. Finding the sweet spot for long brides canby Nudel - General
Can you print functional parts, even though they may not be pretty? If you can, consider upgrading the various parts of the machine to Prusa v2. People are able to print very well with Sells Mendel, but I personally never got the hang of it, and find the Prusa much easier and more reliable. The Y axis is simple to replace, as you only need four lm8uu holders. The X axis is more difficult sinceby Nudel - General
I'd guess it's a 6-32, that's what I use on my PSU.by Nudel - General
The issue with the map is there's a limit to the number of pins per page, if you scroll all the way down and turn to the last page, you'll see your pin. It's also possible to drag other persons pins around, and mistakes happen.by Nudel - General
glyn Wrote: > (I must admit my initial reprap enthusiasm is > wearing off now.) Hang in there! We've all been at that stage, most of us many times. It will pay off in the end if you push forward.by Nudel - General
epareja Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm printing the Github parts for mendel metric V2 > so I cannot modify the file. Yes you can. Get the source folder from github and generate new stl files with OpenSCAD. The variables for hole sizes is in metric.scadby Nudel - General
Make sure your retract settings are spot on. Turn on lift/hop to lift the z axis while moving. Add a fan to cool down the part faster so the plastic doesn't curl up. Slow down acceleration and/or travel speed so if the z should catch on, it's at least with less force. Print several small parts sequentially. (Advanced tab in Slic3r).by Nudel - General
There are various reasons why holes tend to shrink when we print. My m8 holes are 9mm, m4 is 4.5mm and m3 is 3.6mm. (I believe these are standard prusa sizes?) Do some test prints to find how large you have to make the holes. Or you could use polyholes, which nophead explains in depth here:by Nudel - General
People report both very varied temperatures an humidity, as far as I have seen. High moisture will - over time - damage your filament. Especially PLA sucks up a lot of moisture, and it will be difficult to print nice with. This can take months though, so if you keep your filament in an airtight box or sealed plastic bag when you're not using it, you should be good. Low temperatures are not thatby Nudel - General
richrap Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > That does seem to be the case, I don't ever use a > higher first temperature, same for the whole print > - normally just 55 degrees, some are ok at 45, the > Red PLA needs 62 degrees C for some reason. I can confirm this with my printers. With a freshly cleaned glass plate I can run at 45C, but I usually run atby Nudel - General
If the ridges match the threads on the threaded rod on z, it could be the rod is not straight and is pulling the entire x gantry out of position. Lube. Check/adjust z couplings and trapped nuts. Exchange bent z rod for a higher quality (=probably straigher) stainless steel rod. Cool print though, my nieces would love that!by Nudel - General
@OP: A fresh install of pronterface and skeinforge should fix your problem with the integration. If not, you can start skeinforge by itself, then export and open the gcode in pronterface. A few more mouse clicks, but many of us do it like that anyway. The beauty of the various reprap software is you can pretty much use the pieces together in any way you like.by Nudel - General
Some people make that type of hot end work very well, others - like me - break one after another. It relies on threaded PTFE as a structual part, which will not stand up to very much abuse. The version number tells you absolutely nothing when comparing various types, as they are individual to each model. I suggest you go for a j-head, makergear, arcol or buda (lulzbot) instead.by Nudel - General
Nice blast from the past there kyle! Now when I see it, I remember I did learn it on the wiki as well.by Nudel - General
The acrylic one looks slick!by Nudel - General
I've tried making a looped belt myself for my Sells Mendel, and it's not easy. The main idea is to grind away some teeth on one side and the back on the other side, and then glue them together. (See attached pictures). The problem is the joint is going to be stiff, and it made all sorts of problems for me. I might have made the joint far too long, but you do need a certain amount of area to makeby Nudel - General
Nice setup you've got, I'm lookin forward to see pictures of your new place! > *What heavy power tools (if any) do you personally > find important? The single most used power tool I own is my Bosch GSR 10,8-2-li hand drill. It's super powerful, and with a high quality set of drill bits, it handles every job I throw at it with ease. It's pretty expensive though, but for me it's been worthby Nudel - General
My current printer is a oversized prusa, with a theoretical build volume of 33x40x20cm. The only changes I made was to use 12mm rods for the top parts of the triangles, and it's working pretty well. There's still quite a lot of wobble in the x direction, so my prints doesn't come out pristine, but it works fine as my daily printer. I'm only using a close to standard prusa sized bed on it yet thoby Nudel - General
The software side of things is super simple, building it without the entire frame wobbling is a whole other story. Depending on the firmware you might have to adjust the soft endstops there. You also change the size of the build area in slic3r so you can center the objects. I don't know if there's any limits built into slic3r, but I'm guessing the plater tool wouldn't work very well with a wrongby Nudel - General
Post the scad, stl and slic3r config files and we'll have a look.by Nudel - General
I guess a raft gives about the same effect as a brim? It's pretty old school though, if you ask me, it makes artefacts on the print and shouldn't be needed with a heated bed. I often angle my 80mm fan up towards the carriage when printing large things. The increased airflow helps the print quality even though it's not directly over the bed surface. I also up the heated bed from 55C to 65C if I'mby Nudel - General
STL is okay in itself if the mesh is exported properly. The problem is the format "allows" the meshes to be broken, so to reverse the process - like we do when generating gcode - is much harder. The problem is it's "tacked on" many 3D packages, which doesn't take into account the shortcoming of STL, often ending up with non-manifold and intersecting faces and so on. Sketchup is one of the worst aby Nudel - General
J-Heads have a good reputation. Personally I'm very happy with my arcol v3, and have used it for 6-7 months without major issues. (I haven't tried v4 though). I'd advice against buying random unknown, untested home made hot ends from ebay, but maybe that's just me.by Nudel - General
Have you tried The Brim(TM)?by Nudel - General
That's better! How tall are the cubes supposed to be? If the model is supposed 20mm tall, your z-height is way off. If the cube is supposed to be 10mm tall, I still think your e_steps are off, so you lay down too much plastic. You don't have to re-calibrate when switching filament. Just put in the new diameter in slic3r if it's very different. And perhaps you have to increase or lower the tempby Nudel - General
It's very difficult to tell from your picture as it's out of focus, and with translucent filament. If you have some solid coloured filament, preferably in a light colour like gray or pink, it's much easier to see how the extrusion behaves. First guess is your e_steps are too high, so you're extruding too much filament. In slic3r you can test this easily by lowering the extrusion multiplier, butby Nudel - General
I much prefer having the circuit board vertically on the side of the printer, as I mount spool holders on the top. You also have to account for not only how far up the carriage can move, but also how you are going to feed the extruder filament. In Ryans picture, the mounting plate will block the filament feed for a large part of the right side print volume. Of course you can just rotate and moveby Nudel - General
Malx Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What Nudel is saying is that the raw cost is NOT > the cost to produce a single card. Exactly, though my comment was a bit unclear, so I edited it. Speaking about the bare PCB boards only; lets say you can get 100 boards made for 2$ a piece, and sell them for 5$. But if you make only one board it'll cost you 15$ to haveby Nudel - General
It's a common error in badly exported or damaged STL files (which is why some of us doesn't really like STL very much). You can sometimes fix it by running the file through netfabb basic, and repairing it with "remove degenerate faces", or editing it manually with a mesh editor (if the editor can even import the damaged STL). Many times slic3r does a good job of fixing it automatically though,by Nudel - General