I had been using PVA glue stick on glass for my nylon prints. I can get functional parts but found no matter what I would do I had edge warping. I used to have a similar problem when printing ABS using hair spray on glass until changed to a PEI surface. That stuff worked wonders for my ABS prints. It sticks great at temperature and comes off easily on cooling. I am looking for something similar fby CTCHunter1 - Printing
Following up & I believe problem solved for me. The problem was negative terminal of the bed was shorted to AC (chassis) ground. The bed control is will a pull down fet configuration. Solution: Clear the short, make sure negative terminal of bed and V- on PSU is not at low resistance with the PSU and USB disconnected. Additionally, I bridged the V- terminal on the PSU to AC ground. Trouble Sby CTCHunter1 - RAMPS Electronics
Lost a Arduino Mega on my P3Steel printer 2 days ago. It was strange because it happened when it was hooked up to the PC in a configuration that's worked for a few months. The failure mode was the ReprapDiscount LCD Display going really bright then blinking. After which the PC stopped seeing the Arduino board. This only happened when I when I was heating up the bed and hot end. I noticed the USby CTCHunter1 - RAMPS Electronics
you might have too much tension in your x belt. It also could be a bad X axis bearing. Does the carriage slide smoothly with the belt off the motor pullyor does it feel like there are subtle micro steps.by CTCHunter1 - Printing
An ounce of luck is worth a pound of skill. That's great news. I hope most people never have z-axis problems. What kind of firmware (Marlin/Repetier) are you/r running the GT-2560? What is the max current on your z-axis steppers? It's normally marked on side of the motors. Mine is 2.25 A. My understanding is you can have sub optimal performance if you under drive the motors. I'm not sure it'sby CTCHunter1 - Printing
We have a Taz5 at work which uses 3mm filament. It also has the Aleph objects version of the hexagon hot end. I can say that it takes much more force to push filament by hand though that hot end by hand than it does to push it through my hexagon or Prometheus V2 I am running at home. We've ground a lot of filament on the Taz5 but lately it has been running smoothly. Thinking about it we changedby CTCHunter1 - Printing
@FA-MAS Retraction 1.8mm. with .2mm advanced after retract. I had terrible stringing that I would clean up with a knife. I used have blobbing but choose settings for strings over blobs. The was on a HE3D extruder which doesn't even have herringbone gears. I also was often printing nylon @265 degrees which flat out leaks out. I couldn't retract much more than 2mm without seizing the hot end. Iby CTCHunter1 - Printing
Re: the_digital_dentist: aligning axis to bed and my plumb line Agree, axis should be square. If you were I was out when this thread was started then aligning the axis to the bed after prints can make sense. It's the axis that's drifting out of alignment during the print because one motor is losing sync causing misalignment. Nothing has changed in the bed so just trim the axis back down before sby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I would look at your x and y axis. Is there good tension in those belts? Is they carriage and frame tightly secured? What are your steps per mm set to for our 4 axis?by CTCHunter1 - Printing
It sounds like your tube might be too tight. Even you get PTFE tubing that's right in spec. your filament can be thick in diameter and cause seizing. I've ordered some PTFE tubing from amazon.com back when I was doing bowden. I looked up those orders and put them bellow. I've heard looser leads to more strings while tighter can lead to the problems your having. Here is 1.8 mm inner diameter (IDby CTCHunter1 - Printing
QuoteJamesK natural alignment of the X axis is slightly off I have the same issues on my P3steel build. Without screws, the right wants to be ~3mm higher than the left z-axis. I think it's from lack of squareness in my x-motor and x-idler z-axis mounts I repraped(3D printed) them with my previous i3 build. Your on a belt system with one z-axis motor. You can only see the motor missing steps tby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I don't know of a hot end with a 6mm transition zone. If one retracts longer than the transition zone they bring melted filament into the cold part of their hot end where it instantly cools and jams it.by CTCHunter1 - Printing
JamesK: That was a typo it was 2.38 not 2.83. I fixed the typo with the edit feature on the forum. It's still high but I have back up drivers and motors. The z-motors are also heat sunk by the p3 steel chassis even though they are getting warmer in the always on configuration they are in with repetier compared to off after move in Marlin. Are the screws out of sync on your build. If you mark tby CTCHunter1 - Printing
My findings were you can only retract up to the distance of your transition gap. After I started, I moved to using a hexagon hot end with a bowden and if retracted more than 3 mm I would jam the hot end. Confusing at first and figured this out later. This is also what Eric from DisTech Automation would say to. He sells a hot end with customizable distances. I tended to get blobs if I spent tooby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I've had fine results with Gizmodorks and Hatchbox ABSs I've purchased from amazon.com. At work we've been using 3mm IC3D abs on a Taz5 that has worked too. I would recommend having ABS from a second manufacture on hand for trouble shooting purposes.by CTCHunter1 - Printing
I meant 16000. It seems excessive but it works. I had it set to this previously in serial motor configuration before I started to get into this problem. the_digital_dentist: that's an interesting link you posted. I'm not sure of the default decay mode. This link says it's an "intelligent mode" that auto selects. Looking at the traces in that link, his last trace post upgrade doesn't look much bby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I'm running an Arduino Mega/Ramps 1.4. The problems I started this thread with, axis moving in opposite directions intermittently on z axis moves is pretty much gone with repetier firmware. These problems have happened once in all my z-axis moves since my change to repetier firmware. Per MKSA's advice I marked the z-axis couplers with a sharpie. I was seeing them lose synchronization during thby CTCHunter1 - Printing
How consistent are the filament diameters between the ABS and PLA reals? You might want to try another brand of ABS and see if it's the same. Half a year ago I had a role of Inland ABS from microcenter that I could never get to print. It would always jam not immediately but eventually during the print. I made a lot of improvements to the printer during that time but could never get it to go. Otby CTCHunter1 - Printing
How much retraction are you using? I've been using firmware retraction in Marlin. It has to be compiled in configuration_adv.h . I have these commands in my Slic3r startup. M208 S.05 F180 ; Firmware retraction restart setting M207 S2.0 F1200; Firmware Retract Speed ; If you have too many extruder steps per mm, like I had 3200 with 32 u-stepoing, you can't set F1700 or so. It has to be dialedby CTCHunter1 - Printing
Is it backlash or some hysteresis? Do you have belt tensioners in your x and y axis? Are your belts reasonably tight? I would try lower speed and lower x and y axis acceleration and see if it makes it go away. You can change those things temporarily by adding M203 and M204 commands to your starup G-Code section of Slic3r. Mine are set to 200 and 1000 right now. M203 X200 ; max feed rate M202 Xby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I recently bought this PEI sheet from amazon.com and used this 3M stuff from amazon.com to adhere it to a glass square. I stuck it to 7 and 7/8 inch square cut 1/8" thick glass I got from a local supplier. It's not borosilicate. I don't think borosilicate is needed for bed material. I've been using glass like this for bed material for a half a year. I've broken sheets over this time but not frby CTCHunter1 - Printing
Maybe your USB on the laptop doesn't have enough current or voltage to for the mega. Do you have an LCD screen on your build? That would be powered off the USB power as well. If it doesn't light up there is no/not enough USB power. Have you tried powering it with an A/C to usb wall charger? Does it light up this way? An Apple USB wall charger will power my Arduino/Ramps1.4 + LCD display just fiby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I just had my first a dual z-stepper driver miss step in Repetier firmware. I moved up 1 mm and the right axis moved down two while the left I think moved up. Way less frequent then it was in Marlin but maybe this is for other reasons.by CTCHunter1 - Printing
My first attempt at fixing this with my 2 z-axis motors connected to a single stepper in the serial configuration was disabling the microstepping. I had line #define DISABLE_Z true in configuration.h of marlin. I was also figuring that in doing this was causing the motors to fall to the nearest step between moves leading to step loss. This actually didn't fix the issue. My part of interest contiby CTCHunter1 - Printing
Re: MKSA's comment I've seen others also say you need to use a belt or something so that you use 1 motor for the z-axis. the_digital_dentist did just this in his instructable with a belt . It sounds like you have some experience with this since you are talking about marking the z-axis and seeing them lose sync. Of note, the reason I'm looking into using 2 z-axis stepper drivers isn't because Iby CTCHunter1 - Printing
Per amigob's advice I have switched from Marlin 1.1.0 to Repetier 0.92 firmware and the problems with using 2 z-axis stepper drivers has gone away. Using 2 stepper motor drivers, I no longer see intermittently, 1) one motor move down while the other one moves up, 2) one motor move up at a different rate than the other, and 3) one motor running away during homing. I included my Marlin configurby CTCHunter1 - Printing
It was a baud rate issue. I was changing it in configuration.h but not taking the changes because the baudrate was being storing in eeprom. This thread Basic connection problem - Repetier Host helped me solve the problem. After figuring the EEPROM thing out I also noticed that the set baudrate is in the LCD menus under configuration->general.by CTCHunter1 - Repetier
It was a baud rate issue. Changing it in configuration.h wasn't changing it in the firmware because it was being store in eeprom. I had to change the eeprom set in the firmware to overwrite it. Now on to testing the z-axis issue.by CTCHunter1 - Printing
I installed the firmware. I configured it with the on-line tool. I'm having a hard time communicating with it over the serial connection. I started a thread on the repetier forum about this. I know it took the flash because the startup screen on my LCD screen changed to say Repetier v. 0.9 and the status screen is different. I've been using printrun to try to connect to it. Basically, when I trby CTCHunter1 - Printing
I took yor advice amigob and am trying to get repetier firmware working on this printer. I am having problems with the serial communication in repetier and posted into the repetier forum about it. In the mean time with Marlin I tried changing out both the z axis motors with new ones. I encountered the same problems immediately after this change so I know it's not the motors. After this I swaby CTCHunter1 - Printing