It was a long post, but the only important part was my first reply where I jump into the question. I just didn't want to reappear after over a year without a little greeting and preamble. ;-) Regarding your tips... 1) I relubed all the rods recently and they are pretty slick and good. 2) I printed a spare set of bushings (just in case) but the ones on my Tantillus aren't new. They've gby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Now... to the main question of my post today (my apologies if this has been covered before... I searched for it in the past posts, but couldn't find it)... In spite of a few successful prints, my Tantillus seems to have developed a weird issue that it never had before. In the majority of the prints I'm attempting now, it does an unexpected jog or offset midway through the print. It seems incoby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Before I jump into my question, I thought I'd offer a little image-rich detail on my Tantillus background, and also say "Hi!" to everyone who may remember me from way-back-when, and offered me tips along the way. (if you aren't interested in the background, just jump ahead to my second post in this thread, where I get to my question) Also, I wanted to say Season's Greetings especially to Subliby Yonderboy - Tantillus
And while I'm asking questions... here's another. Are there any other alternate approaches for generating the G-code from .STLs? I've been using the endorsed workflow of creating the G-code using Slic3r v0.7.2b (both the Windows and MacOS builds). Generally speaking it works very well... but I have the recurring problem that whenever I throw a very complex model at it (anything with lots oby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Hey Sublime, When you have a free moment, could you please go over the advanced technique for adjusting the Z-axis offset that you told me about, step by step? For the rest of you, this approach involves the use of custom start G-code instead of slicing with a baked-in z-axis offset. It has the benefit of letting you go back in and tweak the Z-offset for a file that you've already sliced anby Yonderboy - Tantillus
That looks great, guys. Sublime, I know that GeraldO is talking to you about doing some Tantillus printing for you, and he said that he was gonna try reprinting the new XY ends to test for you. I'll gladly mount them onto my machine to try them out. Also Eric, thanks muchly for sharing your great looking design. If I can resurrect my dead hotend tonight I may try printing that next to seby Yonderboy - Tantillus
> This is most likely a result of printing at too > low of temperature or possibly too low of flow > rate. Both can cause poor layer adhesion. I have > few of these printed and one has been hit so hard > that it pulled the bolt through the back of the > holder but never broke the holder itself. That's probably true. Since I didn't already have one, the spool holder was the thiby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Thanks for these great updates, Sublime. Looks good. A further inquiry... I've noticed that due to thermal expansion, I always seem to get quite a lot of plastic oozing out in the time between when I do a preparatory extrude and when my head has reached temperature, the z-axis has homed, and the print begins. I heard tell that there was some custom gcode that I could insert in Slic3r thatby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Hey all... so, I was inclined to start a discussion about the best approaches to levelling, calibrating and tuning a working Tantillus. My Tantillus has been functioning for about a week now, but the one thing I've observed is that it seems to slip out of whack pretty easily, especially right after transporting it somewhere. But before going down that rabbit-hole, I need some other advice becaby Yonderboy - Tantillus
> It has definitely benefited everyone as I have > gone an redesigned some of the parts and have > improvements to the instructions from all the > talking. That's great to hear. I'm not sure about all of the redesigns, but there was definitely talk about the XY ends. It seems like many, including myself, have broken theirs by tightening the cable-anchoring screws too much. In my cby Yonderboy - Tantillus
So, it's been a little while since my last update. While I'd had a few successful prints last week, there definitely were some remaining problems with my Tantillus. Thanks to everyone for the advice on how to get my prints to stick... your advice has been assimilated. Thursday, last week, Sublime held a gathering here in Vancouver to get many of us Tantillus users on our feet. That was anby Yonderboy - Tantillus
A purge and also a retract menu option would be good. I've never tried extruding before retracting when unloading, but it makes sense that would help it come out more easily. I'd say go ahead and make that change.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
Agreed.. It's a small issue, but annoying. It could be solved in a couple of ways. You could go tweak the firmware settings to change how much gets retracted when unloading... Perhaps 700mm or 750mm might be enough. Conversely perhaps Sublime could add a "Retract" option directly below extrude in the move axis menu.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
Bah! I'm so frustrated. I can't seem to figure out why, but after my amazing successes last night, I now can't make a single successful successful print. When I arrived home, I had wanted to trade out from the translucent orange that I had been printing with, and try a different colour of plastic. I unloaded my filament by heading the print head and then reversing the extruder 850mm. Thby Yonderboy - Tantillus
I decided to follow up by getting a bit more ambitious and printing the two components for the Repraper.com-sized spool holder, since I don't have one yet. I started with the smaller piece. I gotta say that it's fun to watch this little guy doing the honeycomb infills. So much fun!by Yonderboy - Tantillus
Yup... GeraldO called it right. One word... SUCCESS!!! From when I started tonight... I rewired my power connector, and then rebuilt my extruder and reassembled my Tantillus. From there I loaded some filament (translucent Repraper orange this time), extruded a bit to test, tweaked the pot on my extruder motor, re-sliced the calibration cube, and then hit the print button on Pronterface.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
So I just got home and am about to get stuck in rebuilding and remounting my extruder, and hopefully I can make some good progress tonight. GeraldO did me the favour of reprinting my extruder gears for me yesterday. Wow! I hadn't realized what a difference there was between the earlier herringbone version and the new one. It's not just the teeth on the the gears, but the overall dimensionsby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Hmm... i had tried it both USB powered and also powered via the power supply through the RAMPS. Didn't work either way, to my recollection, but I'll test again tonight. I hadn't been testing for power as a source of the problem.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
I'll try a reinstall of Marlin tonight, but yours is the only version that I've used so far. If that doesn't do it then a replacement working encoder from you might solve what ails me. Thanks Sublime.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
Thanks for the advice guys... I suspect that while I had tried to tighten it like that at first, I was probably too gutless with how hard I tightened down the nut when I first did it, for fear of compressing the plastic too much and breaking it. However I'm sure I could've gone much harder. Also, the tendency that the loaded filament might draw the bolt to the correct height does make sense.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
Your success is inspiring, Eric. Bravo. I hope for mine to be the first functioning Tantillus out in the wild, built with mostly self-sourced parts, and printed components not made by Sublime. ;-) Still a little ways to go yet for me... but I'm getting there.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
I confess, I hadn't seen that tutorial yet, Sublime. I'd been simply living in the Build Guide lately, so it never occurred to me to hop on over to the tutorial section. After swapping my 1.25" cap head bolts back to the 1.5" pan head screws that I bought, I seemed to have gotten then height I needed to start levelling the bed properly. Ultimately I got the bed to the height it was homing toby Yonderboy - Tantillus
So I spent more time on the encoder tonight. In my case (because I wired them myself) I didn't have a convenient little black four pin connector handy at first, so my first encoder had been wired with four separate jump wires. That one didn't work. The second one was a four-pin connector that I had hacked of one of the ends of the "professional made motor cables" that came with my RAMPS kitby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Sounds good. I'm just working on this now, and it looks like the extra length on the 1.5" screws is enough to allow me to make the bed touch the hotend. Lookin' promising. One clarification needed: Now that I'm actually this close, I'm going through the "levelling the bed" process, and I think there needs to be a clarification of instruction. In the build guide you say: "Raise the bed maby Yonderboy - Tantillus
Okay... I'll give that a try and see how I fare. I'm not certain that the 1.5" bolts will cover the distance. I may need to go for 1.75" as well. I guess that the new stock J-heads are a whole bunch shorter. Does raising the platform seem like a good long-term solution? I should probably do some tests and ensure that I still get a full 100mm travel downwards once I've levelled the bed.by Yonderboy - Tantillus
So I offered a big update as to my progress in my build thread... but I also took another stab at wiring my rotary encoder. I thought I'd follow up on that here, as this is where you supplied those instructions. For the first attempt, I desoldered the connections that I had made following tommyc's instructions before, and then resoldered them to your instructions above. No dice. It seemed toby Yonderboy - Tantillus
So now I'm gearing up to do my first print test... however I have an unresolved problem: The build platform height is too low. Like the others my build platform started out way too low when I was using the 1 inch #8-32 bolts. I found some 1.5 inch #8-32 pan head bolts at Home Depot, but I switched those back to the 1.25" cap head bolts that Sublime passed back to me through GeraldO. Now taby Yonderboy - Tantillus
So, on to the recap of the activities of Friday and Saturday night... unfortunately for me, my wife had made plans for us both Friday and Saturday evening, and I had a busy day planned Saturday. Therefore, all of my tinkering this weekend has been relegated to the hours of about 12:30am to 5:00am on both Friday and Saturday nights. I wish I could say this is the first time, but like many I'mby Yonderboy - Tantillus
So it's been a little while since I updated my build progress. Busy days at work have really prevented me from spending as much time on it as I'd like. Btw, I have one little bit of feedback worth offering you to all, which I've learned along the way. If you decide, like I did, to buy just the hardware and acrylic kits, and then source all your own parts, you'll probably spend the bulk of yoby Yonderboy - Tantillus
That's very helpful, Sublime. I'll give it another try today.by Yonderboy - Tantillus