I ditched the switches on the little boards long ago, and now just use plain switches that are simple and cheap. Its one of those things where it looks all cool at first, then you realize its just fluff. The plain switches are smaller footprint too, so better IMO.by jmaeding - RAMPS Electronics
@DLC, Thanks for the advice. It is good to hear there can be a happy (hot)ending to all this. Now that would be a good blog title "Happy Hotends"... This weekend I took apart my three hotends, and compared dimensions to the E3D V6 drawings. On the main one I have had trouble with, it had several odd things going on. The heatsink had m7 threads, which is for 1.75 mm filament, but the depth for heaby jmaeding - Printing
Well, that is the question - why do they sometimes not behave? I got a genuine E3D for my dad and it had issues also. His and my extruder are geared, not direct drive, so have lots of pushing power. I need to play with things more, but it seems like some people have great luck, and some none. Its really tricky to know what proper behavior is. Has anyone measured the force you should need to pushby jmaeding - Printing
I've been having some similar problems. The immediate suspect is the E3D hotend has a heat break tube with major grooves in it from lousy milling. They grab onto the filament somehow and cause friction. I was skeptical of this at first, as there are several videos on polishing the inside of the tubes, but its more like "re-milling" as the grooves in my hotend were bad. Like the drill used was comby jmaeding - Printing
no, the endstops still would be hooked to the ramps, and the config file settings apply. The thing to be careful about is whatt wires go to what pins. I recall that the only thing you can mess up if no circuit board, is the normally closed or open, which is easy to reverse in the config file. Be careful here, and look at the wiki for "normal" setup without a board. email me at jmaeding123 you knoby jmaeding - RAMPS Electronics
also, I no longer use the end stops on those circuit boards. I cut them off and mount with ziptie or something. I do not like having to remember the logic so cut the board right out of the equation. Those are a disservice to the reprap community IMO.by jmaeding - RAMPS Electronics
I guess I expected exactly what they did, this is Autodesk. Does not mean the king is not naked. Well, maybe he has a speedo on.by jmaeding - General
BIM is a term brought about by modeling progs like Revit and Archicad. They are not CAD programs, you do not draw lines and arcs in them, only objects. What has happened though, is the lovely marketing folks have decided anything that 3d models anything is BIM. Its rediculous, as we have 3d modeled projects for years, and do now, but the items are dumb solids and triangles. Some of the stuff isby jmaeding - General
Autodesk makes their money from AutoCad (and add-ons like Civil3D), Revit, Inventor, Maya, and special effects progs. I would love to see the pie chart of that income distribution, I wonder if its available since they are publicly traded. They make nothing from these little ventures, and likely lose money on them. They love to use them to get credibility. "If they are hip with 3d printing, theyby jmaeding - General
Since I talked to Carl Bass about this, I really don't think more information is needed. I explained to him that his plain and clear web page that says open free, connected, then a pic of a 3d printer, is not pre-launch. He said they might add some info on timing of upcoming available stuff. They seriously waited to be called on their claims. Their game is clear. Or...if they want to claim ignorby jmaeding - General
I'd be happy to, and actually have cad files and so on for the design and other things I have done possibly worth sharing. Can you explain how to edit the wiki? I've never done that so a sentence or two might save me an hour. thanksby jmaeding - General
oh, so you mean a future ceramic printing method, not what is available now? Cool idea for sure, has anyone done that on a non-million dollar machine?by jmaeding - General
Its great that Autodesk has figured out some cool process, and are making it available to select business partners. I'm not picking on the good things they have done, and are doing there. I am picking on their marketing, and to say this project is open, with the huge generic logos they did (see attached), is slimy. The only way they get away with it is no one knows what the spark thing is becausby jmaeding - General
ceramics? do you have a kiln and glazes handy? You do fire them right?by jmaeding - General
here is the pressboard extruder I did, its a copy of gregs/wade with realigned motor mount holes to provide access to screws behind belt. I've done 2 of these now, and even found you can sew the requires closed loop belt with thin needle and nylon thread. Closed Loop beltby jmaeding - General
the self replicating idea is funny, because only about 1/2 of most cheap machines are printed, and I would argue only a few important things are hard to make with other means. I started switching parts in the build zone to laminated pressboard so I could do heated enclosure. A cheap bandsaw and drill press are all that is needed.by jmaeding - General
Belts are way better than geared imo. I make gregs type extruders using laminated pressboard and belts to make things slop free and heat warp resistant.by jmaeding - General
wow, lots to talk about there. I totally agree on the platform, and have built two prusa I3's using 1" thick plywood. Pic attached, but not totally done with the one in the pic. One issue I keep running into is the x-axis rods not being parallel or same spacing as the carriage, and no way to adjust any of it. So I am making an adjustable carriage design, then using heated rod to change anythingby jmaeding - General
I agree on the electronics and motor feedback. If you look at the evolution of 2d printers and even copiers, it is reliability of operation and quality that gains market share. Look at how we went from old style RC airplanes, to gyro stabilized copters. Things got easy, so more people buy and make more and so on. With repraps right now, the management of the hotend is not great. You have to keepby jmaeding - General
intentions of making it open are one thing, but when you see they have developed a printer from it, and are selling that printer before posting the design? They went out of their way to make it simple and clear their stuff would be available, and its not. Is it an easter egg somewhere on the site?by jmaeding - General
So Autodesk has been advertising its Spark project for a while now. Autodesk Spark They say its the "first open 3D printing software platform", right at the top. What a slap to the people who have developed the reprap world. Take a look at their page, as they make it sound like they have taken over the 3d printing world. Then try getting at anything technical. You cannot. You must contact themby jmaeding - General
less noise, high heat resistance, no backlash. My extruder stepper gets hot enough I cannot keep my finger on it for more than 4 seconds. That heat transfers to the parts its touching, including the small gear. I went through 3 gears, about 1 every 20 hours, and started to hate wondering when the next gear would fail. So if yours is working, cool. I would argue a belt design covers a wider rangby jmaeding - General
I posted a vid to youtube: video of belt extruder If you look close, the seam is visible near the end of the video. Its not easy to see even in person unless you are looking for it. I made the whole extruder from pressboard as I wanted something high heat resistant. The motor is rotated a bit compared to normal gregs because it allowed better access to the motor mounting screws which you must tiby jmaeding - General
I tried that. It does not work as it messes up the way the belt bends. I was going to do that the whole length, not just at the seam, but it will not work with the aluminum pulley, the teethe do not line up.by jmaeding - General
I have a reprap Prusa I3, but this applies to any situation where a closed loop belt would be nice. I wanted to make the extruder motor turn the big gear attached to the hobbed bolt run via belt, not gear. I think it would have been done like that from the beginning if it were not for difficulty of getting closed loop belts of any size. So I needed one, and tried gluing with neoprene glue. Not iby jmaeding - General
So I tried switching to marlin firmware, as it supports the FGSC lcd thing. I noticed when I tried manually moving the extruder, I got some message like "cold extruder ignored...". So I preheated the extruder, and then it worked. I then switched firmware back to Repetier and same trick worked. This means I fooled myself on the part about the extruder not working during a part print. I think whatby jmaeding - Repetier
I have a super generic Reprap Prusa I3, with Mega and Ramps 1.4. I have been using Repetier Host and firmware 0.83 for a while with no issues. Then I bought a "Reprap Discount Full Graphic Smart Controller" to allow printing detached from my computer. The latest repetier firmware says it works with that lcd screen, so I tried. It all works, except I noticed the extruder cannot be manually movedby jmaeding - Repetier
well good, I was starting to wonder if 0 was just a name. like 0 indexed as a programmer would do.by jmaeding - Repetier
note that the difference is likely because the firmware has one speed, and the slicer another. I ran into this too.by jmaeding - Repetier
I downloaded the latest firmware, 0.91, and tried the config tool as I downloaded to set things up for me. Things are going ok, and I am even trying the host ver 1.0 RC2. My extruder will not heat or manually travel. I noticed the setting for NUM_EXTRUDER in Configuration.h is 0. Does that sound right? My previous configuration.h had it at 1, as I have one extruder. I did switch x-axis to extrudby jmaeding - Repetier