Well I realized the flaw in the QU-BD design is the motor actually has to use some torque to compress the filament into the drive gear. So you need at least a 5kgcm motor to do this effectively. The roller bearing helps but by adding the groove like I have done reduces the amount of force needed to grip the filament. The retraction is great though because its like a rack and pinion.by aduy - General
with my new drive gear i actually need a very shallow but narrow groove to effectively guide the filament otherwise it doesnt push the filament all the way into the drive gear. btw i made the qu-bd drive gear my b**** by cutting a groove in the middle of the groove, it grips the filament on both sides .by aduy - General
i think this is the way to go if you arent water cooling. ive experimented a little with some graphite but its actually fairly conductive with heat still, although not as much as metal.by aduy - General
I had mine set the alarm off one time, the cops got called and everything, but i got there and shut down the alarm and warded the cops off. the moving heated bed actually set off the ir detector in my room. anyways if you have an enclosed build chamber you could hook it up to a co2 fire extinguisher and then hook a servo or something up to the valve. then the servo is hooked up to the smoke alarby aduy - Safety & Best Practices
Just so you know acetone does not dissolve PC, it expands it and makes it cloudy.by aduy - General
yeah haha its wierd with the larger nozzles on the 1.75, id still rather use 3mm, but the hot end i have and am getting in the future is only 1.75mm, unless they make a 3mm in the future, which would be nice.by aduy - General
you should look into milling instead. extruding plastic with that small of a nozzle size is going to be very difficult, and the calibration for the machine would simply be unrealistic. the bed would have to be perfectly flat, and the rails straight as well. if you do want to do this though start with a .4 or .5mm nozzle to learn the ins and outs of 3d printing, trust me ive used everything betweeby aduy - Reprappers
Ive used up to 1.1mm and it works fine, however 3mm is going to be better at 1+mm due to the lower speed it would need to be extruded at.by aduy - General
I had this same problem a while ago, I drilled out my extruder to fit a bowden tube all the way up to the drive gear so the filament is always constrained. it made it impossible to jam and wiggle out of line which also made it less likely to jam on all plastics.by aduy - General
im a college student haha, i started 3d printing only a year ago and designed and built my own 3d printer last summer. at some point once i finalize my design i would like to document it and maybe sell kits for it.by aduy - General
QuoteCrussell Get one of these: I have one and it works fantastic. I can get my bed up to temp in about 10 min. Also, if youre not already using one, get a nice square of sound deadening or something similar to sit on top of the bed while its heating up. Ive got a couple of those on my machine, and they are way better than any atx psu could ever hope to be. its cheap, the voltage doesnt dropby aduy - General
cool one of my friends has an extra ball screw so maybe ill give it a go, although with this design i could probably use a thing stainless steel cable instead. I find kinematics fascinating.by aduy - General
I think the best way for my printer would be with a few reductions using a length of spectra line with a high load capacity. or another thought, what if you had a single threaded rod that ran the same length as the z axis, however it is not connected directly to the bed, instead the threaded rod has one nut and that nut is attached to the belts or spectra line, which is then routed through pulleyby aduy - General
hmm no z wobble you say? I might have to look into this for my machine, how many belts would it take hold a large heated bed, 18". I bet i could work out some sort of pulley system to increase the accuracy and distribute the load.by aduy - General
they were run on the rods sold by ultimachine, im using openrail now and that stuff is amazing, the wheels are a bit expensive but they are quiet smooth low friction and durable. also these were not standard igus bearings they were a specialty kind, they have no grooves and are smooth on the inside, i think the price was over $120 but since i run the 3d printing club at my school we got them donaby aduy - General
there are a couple options, you could use the print fan as the bed and get an external driver(or make one, someone has done it before). external fan driver hmm you could easily use two of those motors on one driver and double your torque, although you might as well just get a 1.2amp stepper with about twice the torque. Lets figure out the bed situation first though.by aduy - General
you can also dissassemble the hot end and remove the nozzle, then you heat the nozzle up with a torch and the abs should burn away, usually i just get a wet q-tip and stick it in the nozzle and it catches everything thats left. or you could try an acetone soaked q-tip when it cold.by aduy - General
any idea of where i can get an 18" silicon bed with 600+ watts that will run off mains?by aduy - General
5 amp h bridge? how about just a dpdt relay, as long as there is no crossover it should be ok.by aduy - General
when i had my prusa i2 i had then 8mm igus bearings, and they were great on the z axis, but they just had a lot friction on the x and y axis, those actually did wear slightly, which is wierd because they were supposed to be the "marathon runners" or something in their class. anyways continue the discussion.by aduy - General
well it depends, what are your electronics, and how big is your power supply? if you are not using the fan mosfet you might be able to use it to power the second bed, however you would need to reprogram the firmware for that, which im sure someone could help you out with. as far as frame rigidity, it should be fine, because the weight will be low on the frame and the y axis on the prusa is fairlby aduy - General
well i can produce the pcb traces at whatever width I want, and I also understand that the insulation on top of the pcb would need to be something thats hard to scratch away, perhaps some high temperature paint. also I could add a fuse inline with it. ok well if the mains is too volatile for a home made pcb, has anyone used a higher voltage supply like 48v to power a heated bed, you could use thby aduy - General
so ive made my own pcb bed, a 12" but I was wondering if it is possible to make one that can run directly from mains, and be controlled by an ssr. I need to make an 18" bed, and if it gives out the same wattage as the standard 8" pcb heated beds its about 600 watts, it seems pretty wasteful to use a power supply to heat it because it will not be very efficient, afterall the heat element will workby aduy - General
yeah it looks like they need to readjust the z axis, its off by a few degrees.by aduy - Reprappers
ive made gears in pla, abs, nylon, and polycarb. the polycarb is probably the best because of its impact resistance, however it needs to be printed fairly hot to get proper layer adhesion. nylon is also good as its very slippery, however it need to be dried first in the oven. pla gears are nice if your extruder is away from any heat source, however since i live in arizona, i refuse to print any pby aduy - General
what size threaded rods, size and pitch. are you using microstepping? if so what setting, or how many steps per mm.by aduy - Printing
ok so ive got a pelt unit, when you run it with 12v you get side one cold side 2 hot, if you reverse the wiring side 1 hot side 2 cold. i have a switch with 1 pole and three throws, so it has three pins if the switch is in position one it connects pin 1 and 2, if its in position two pin 2 is disconnected, in position 3 pin 2 and 3 are connected. if I connect the positive wire of the pelt unit toby aduy - General
at harbor freight they sell a dehydrator for 25 bucks, the chamber is round and would be perfect for drying coils of filament.by aduy - Reprappers
all of the enclosed build chamber professional models ive seen actually have just the head of the hot end in the enclosure itself. they have a sort of accordion thing that moves with the carriage to keep the heat in and the cold end out of the heat.by aduy - General
i have had my hot end for over a year, its this one, its called the europa. its a great hot end, although there are some features it lacks, like an easy way to change nozzles, and it uses ptfe so it cant be heated too hot. it has a copper heat exchanger and in the heat exchanger is a thermistor. I never actually was able to set it up to control the temperature using the thermistor but it could bby aduy - General