Interesting, I did not know that anyone was using purely PLA in their printers. That is very cool, I've got a small house fan blowing on my build stage that should also keep things cool enough -- or would I need a fan directly on the hot end? Can you get your nozzle hot enough to print with ABS and still not warp your x-carriage?by unicoder - General Mendel Topics
I've got my printer pretty well tuned now, and I want to start printing parts for another Prusa Mendel RepRap. I want to use PLA as much as possible, but I know that certain parts that are near hot things like motors and nozzles must be printed with ABS or they will warp while the printer is in use. For those of you who have used PLA for a lot of parts, which parts are safe to do with PLA and whiby unicoder - General Mendel Topics
Good news! I have printed 3 things in a row that have stuck very well. The only things I changed between my last failed test and these successfully runs were the following: 1. I got my nozzle a tiny bit closer to the bed, so now the filament is getting smashed pretty flat on the first layer rather than just going down as a round tube. 2. I'm using a transparency, attached directly to the heated bby unicoder - Reprappers
I have switched to a 0.33 mm layer and that does seem to print better. I've never printed with ABS but I gave my glass a really good scrub first with dish detergent, then with denatured alcohol and wiped it dry with a paper towel. I set up skeinforge to generate gcode to print at 20 mm/s, with the first layer at 10 mm/s. I heated up my bed to 75 degrees and tried again, first layer looked good, bby unicoder - Reprappers
Just called Michaels and they said my glass is tempered. is the gcode used to print the piece in the previous image. Had to zip it to bring it down under the allowed max size.by unicoder - Reprappers
Quotebrnrd I've printed black PLA from Ultimachine succesfully on heated glass with my bed set around 70C. No way! That's the exact same PLA I'm using! What kind of glass are you using? Like I said I'm just using standard craft store picture frame glass. I guess about 3mm, but I haven't measured. Also, what is your normal printing speed? I'm going to try and get my setup as close as possible toby unicoder - Reprappers
Ok, I tried a print at 75 degrees. First layer at 10 mm/s, the rest at 100 mm/s. Cleaned the glass just before the print, got a solid first layer. Window closed. My layers are 0.37 mm and my nozzle is 0.4 mm. I didn't try a smaller first layer because I couldn't find the setting in skeinforge. It started sliding around loose mid-print. I've attached the stl I'm trying to print. Here's a picture sby unicoder - Reprappers
jcabrer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 200mm/s feed rate is huge! Bring that way down. At a 0.2 ratio my first layer was printing at 40mm/s which, from the sounds of it, is too fast for the first layer, but are you suggesting that I need to bring down my normal feed rate as well? Why would that make a difference?by unicoder - Reprappers
Ahh, yes. I forgot to mention printing the first layer slow and solid. I am doing that as well. I've been testing at a 0.2 ratio, normal printing speed is 200 mm/s.I have tried a few different temps ranging from 65 to 115 (getting different answers from different folks). I will try keeping it at 75 the whole time to see if that works. Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure what type of glass I'm usinby unicoder - Reprappers
Hi everyone, I'm trying to use a heated bed to print PLA and I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to stick. I received some advice in this thread but it was pretty far off topic so I created this thread for this specific issue. Here's my current understanding: 1. Some people claim to get PLA to stick to a heated bed at 65 degrees celsius, but others need to heat it as high as 120 degrees. 2. Iby unicoder - Reprappers
brnrd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > For ABS on Kapton, you need to keep the > temperature at 110 or above or it would come off > easily. What do you have on top of the Prusa PCB > heater? Did you just put kapton on top of it? Or > do you have an aluminum or glass plate with Kapton > tape on top? If it's glass, then I don't think 10 > minutesby unicoder - Skeinforge
Thanks, that was exactly it! The default was 1mm. I just turned limit off.by unicoder - Skeinforge
My skeinforge (40) profile was doing too much retraction too fast and it was causing jams in my extruder so I started from scratch. But now the printer move really really slowing from home to where the print begins. I can't get a good first layer because all the plastic in the nozzle drips out on the way to start printing. Anyone know why it's doing this? It seems like it must be default behaviorby unicoder - Skeinforge
I'm also experiencing the temporary version in RepSnapper ("Kick" gets it going again) and permanent pauses using pronterface (I have to close and reopen the connection to the printer to get going again) I'm not sure why it's happening but I just noticed something very unusual. During a print (in RepSnapper) if I click/drag on the 3D rendering to move it around, the print halts while I'm draggingby unicoder - General
brnrd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As far as wiring the heater, go to the RAMPS wiki > and scroll down about halfway to see the figure > showing how to wire the RAMPS with a heated bed. > This is the same wiring that I used except I used > two wires from the ATX power supply to the heated > bed and to the RAMPS ground as I wrote earlier. I &gby unicoder - Skeinforge
brnrd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As far as wiring the heater, go to the RAMPS wiki > and scroll down about halfway to see the figure > showing how to wire the RAMPS with a heated bed. I'm going to assume you meant to link hereby unicoder - Skeinforge
brnrd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It sounds like your heater might be turning itself > off before the print is finished. I don't think so, it was still on at 86 degrees at the end of the print. > Or your part is > not making enough contact with the bed. What do you mean by this? If it's as sticky as I here it shouldn't need much contact and likby unicoder - Skeinforge
Doh! I think I was using the wrong temperature table. I was using the 100k one (beta 4066) that comes with the firmware, but I'm using a thermistor from ultimachine.com which needs a custom temperature table. The thermistor looks exactly like the one from makergear, I guess I just assumed they were the same. So I changed the temperature table for the bed, cranked the temperature up to 86 (that'sby unicoder - Skeinforge
Thank you for the GCode reference! I've been wondering if there was a good reference out there. And thanks everyone for the tips on temperature. I'm afraid that by posting twice in a row, I may have obscured the more pertinent issue I'm having. Does anyone have any ideas why my PLA isn't sticking to glass? Every single time I've tried, the print doesn't even get halfway through when the edges staby unicoder - Skeinforge
rhmorrison Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Skeinforge sends an appropriate GCode command to > tell the firmware to set the extruder/bed > temperature to a particular value (and keep it > there). > Look at the GCode the Repsnapper created. > Look for M104, M109, M140, M141 and M230 commands. But do those GCodes command the printer to wait for theby unicoder - Skeinforge
Alright guys, I'm at my wits' end here. I finally bit the bullet and went out and got some glass sheets and the PLA still doesn't want to stick to it! I've set the temp to 60 degrees. The thermistor is attached to the bottom of the heat bed, but I think the temp should be about the same for the glass. I even tried setting it to 80 degrees to make sure. I'm not even printing a very large object, iby unicoder - Skeinforge
Thanks for the great tips, I have fantastic start/end scripts now and a short skirt fixes the other problem. Do you really have a 200mm y axis? I swear I followed the instructions perfectly and all my dimensions are smaller than the claimed dimensions. Is it because I made a Prusa rather than a standard Mendel?by unicoder - Skeinforge
> but I do turn on the heat to the extruder in > Repsnapper until it reaches temp, however I use > the temp setting in SF to set the printing > temperatures, I'm printing PLA at 175C. Big but > though before hitting print in Repsnapper turn off > the heat to the nozzle as otherwise SF and that > setting cancel each other. ? It didn't work this way for me. I turned off the heby unicoder - Skeinforge
Nelson, I'm afraid to add code that moves the bed toward me 100mm because what if that puts it over the max? Is there a gcode that will tell it to move to an absolute X/Y position? I'm very excited to try skirt! This was one of my biggest problems.by unicoder - Skeinforge
Hey guys, just getting some decent prints with skeinforge, now I'm looking to make my printer a little more user friendly. There are a few things that I do before and after every print that I would like to be automatic. Currently I just have a home command in both the start and end script. I'd like to put something in my start script that extrudes a bit in the corner just before the print. The thby unicoder - Skeinforge
I'm pretty new to skeinforge but I'm getting some pretty decent prints with it now. I just have a few questions left. I have a heated bed covered in kaptop tape and I've been getting really bad warping when printing large objects. I was a little surprised by this because I was under the impression that heated beds solve the warping problem. I took a random guess that maybe I didn't have the tempeby unicoder - Skeinforge
I have my hotend working again and I've figured out how to use skeinforge to generate gcode. Unfortunately, the printer is still pausing all the time, with both pronterface and repsnapper (always using gcode from skeinforge). The difference is that when pronterface pauses, it seems to lose it's connection to the printer or something and it seems that it's impossible to continue the print at thatby unicoder - General
I have been using Repsnapper for printing and generating g-codes. Perhaps it's because I'm not spoiled by the great g-codes that skeinforge generates, but I think my prints have turned out pretty well. They aren't perfect, the main problem is they are a little globby around the edges. Another problem is if you don't have full infill, your top and bottom layers will be printed the same as all thby unicoder - General
I did it the way you suggested and it works OK for me. I'm using RAMPS though. A plus side to this is that I was able to use the unused molex connector for the hotend/bed thermistors.by unicoder - General
I had been avoiding calculations and measurements because Repsnapper was giving me pretty great prints without the need for that. However, when trying to print tall skinny tower-like objects it just breaks down. I'm hoping the cooling module can help by slowing it down on the tower parts. Anyway, long story short, I haven't done any measurements yet. By "measure the actual extruded filament", doby unicoder - General