Good point, should definitely be in the wiki!by droftarts - General Mendel Topics
I've got the same motors and they work fine, though I'm using Gen6 electronics from Mendel parts. Mine are wired in series (see the second post here ), rather than in parallel as suggested by the wiki , as connecting in parallel can give a non-uniform distribution of current through your windings. I'm actually going to replace them with smaller NEMA17 motors as I think the 1684B motors are overkiby droftarts - General Mendel Topics
This is probably not quite the same thing, but when I was reading through all the reprap source material, I'm sure that I read somewhere that, to grow the community, you should give away the first two sets of parts you make, in recompense to all the free help and advice from the community that guided your build. I'm still intending to do this as I built a repstrap, and have a set earmarked for myby droftarts - General
MrKim created a seamless crown pulley using a helical path. The gcode was created in common Lisp apparently, and the code was parametric. More here: Hmm, I might have a go at writing an Excel document to do this.by droftarts - Skeinforge
Always fun to build these things for yourself, isn't it?! Well done for taking the harder route. It looks like you are having to use significant force to get it to extrude out of a large nozzle; with a normal size 0.5mm or less nozzle, it will be need even greater pressure. Is the barrel lined with anything like ptfe? If you are heating most of the barrel, the filament will melt and expand alongby droftarts - General New Machines Topics
I think I was looking at RS-online, perhaps the specific resistor I was looking at could only be bought in 100s. So thanks for the quick response and kind offer, nophead. I'll take you up on that, if only because Farnell have a minimum £20 order, and I can't think of anything else I need at present. PM sent. I was hoping to get other Gen6 users' experience, if they had fluctuating temps and noisyby droftarts - Next Wave Electronics Working Group
jgilmore Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It should also be fairly trivial to reroute the > belt so it goes the other direction around the > pulleys on the X carriage. I think that's what a respondent to Madkite on the thingiverse page has done in this video:by droftarts - Developers
I'm repeating this here from ErikZalm's original post on the mendel-parts forum here: www.mendel-parts.com, so it reaches a wider audience. While I don't have a massive problem with the Gen6 board, the temperature does fluctuate a lot, and motors whine when on hold. Other people seem to have had problems with temperature not being reported after putting the sprinter software on the Gen6, though Iby droftarts - Next Wave Electronics Working Group
As well as Wernham Hogg, of course!by droftarts - General
Hi Andrew, I'm not too far away from you if you need any help; I'm based between Amazingstoke Basingstoke and Winchester. I've built a fully functional repstrap (a mrkim 1X2) and I'm only waiting for a new hotend before finishing a Mendel Prusa with a linear bearings. Who's your local stockist?by droftarts - General
I've been thinking about this, and agree with jbayless; multiple heads only give a limited palette of colours in FDM. Perhaps another option for a range of colours is to mix different-coloured filament as close as possible to the point of final extrusion. I imagine a single hotend fed by small filament (perhaps 1.75mm would be small enough) with cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white filament (weby droftarts - General
Funnily enough, I wondered this a couple of weeks ago, so put together some frame vertices for a spool with nylocs. I realised pretty quickly that you have to thread a lot of nuts onto the threaded bars, and sometimes you'd have to thread them on backwards, ie nyloc end first. Also, adjusting the frame becomes problematic; you need to have a couple of nuts on as locknuts to have something to turnby droftarts - General
Not sure if it's entirely relevant seeing you have gen 3, but there is this note on the Techzone monotronics wiki page "ANOTHER NOTE Several people have had problems uploading the firmware from the Arduino v22 environment, I have not yet investigated this, please use an older version of arduino to upload this firmware. I have used V17, V18, and V19 they all seem to work fine. Arduino V22 uploadby droftarts - Reprappers
Hi Vato, your version of the Prusa looks very interesting, especially things like the vertical x-axis, combined extruder and x-carriage, z-axis pulley, and your printed z-carriage. I hope you will share your development with the rest of us soon! I had a look through your site using google translate: I hope you don't mind me posting this picture from your blog here:by droftarts - For Sale
I had the same problem when I imported stls into the java-based 'reprap host' software, which I think is what naples is referring to. This was on a Mac running Leopard 10.6, which I believe doesn't have as good support as in other OSs. Some stls imported correctly, but most did not, they looked exactly like naples describes them; "chaotic combination of vertices bearing no relation to the originaby droftarts - General
Thanks for the explanation brnrd, and while I agree with you about filament width, the limitations you state apply equally to adjusting it using FPDR. I'm still happy that I set e_steps to at least 99% observable accuracy (like nophead, less than 1mm over 100mm), so I don't have to worry about it when I occasionally let repsnapper make the gcode. Or if any new gcode software comes along. It givesby droftarts - General
nophead Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 10mm is not enough to measure accurately. True, 10mm was an example. Prusa's instruction say 3cm, but better accuracy can be achieved by a longer extrude. I calibrated mine measuring 100mm. @brnrd - Is your firmware e_steps_per_mm setting still your calculated value, or a value from an observed length of extrusion? I canby droftarts - General
Getting your reprap accurately calibrated is it a waste of time? With your way of doing it, you still have to change the firmware, so taking the extra couple of minutes to get it accurately extruding (especially when it is easy to make a mistake with the maths) is hardly a waste of time. Your method relies on measuring the circumference of the hobbed bolt; any error in measurement is then compounby droftarts - General
You just need to 'mod' the e_steps_per_mm in configuration.h part of the firmware. You hook up your new and improved extruder to your electronics, send a gcode like G1 E10 which means extrude 10mm of filament. If it extrudes 5mm of filament, you double the e_steps_per_mm value, and upload the firmware. Repeat until it accurately extrudes the amount of filament you're expecting. This way any variaby droftarts - General
You are likely to have to edit the firmware anyway. To achieve accurate calibration it's a necessity. I would try to make your extruder from commonly available parts, and tweak the firmware afterwards, rather than custom parts that will be hard to reproduce. People seem to be nervous about firmware edits; you're not changing the firmware code, all you are doing is changing the conversion factorby droftarts - General
You could also try theodleif's amended dimension.py, which removes retractions where the travel distance is short. Works within Skeinforge 41m, configurable in SK GUI. See this thread: and make sure you get the latest version (linked in one of the later posts).by droftarts - General Mendel Topics
Hey mc_n_g, we're not ALL cynics here, and everyone has to start with their first post sometime! At least you're not anonymously slagging someone off! So welcome to the community, and I'm sure others interested in this kit will welcome the notes on your positive experience.by droftarts - Plastic RepRap Parts for Sale
Andrew Diehl Wrote: > Stratasys came up with an ingenious solution to > that. They bump a selector button on the head at > the axis ends to select filament. No second motor, > servos etc. Just pure mechanics to select > filaments. From I'm not sure that's how it works, he says there are two extruder motors, one was removed in the 4th picture. I think the solenoid lifts the supporby droftarts - General
Grid beam, Tri Lap joint. This sort of thing? From here:by droftarts - Developers
@Njones - sorry, but none of the top-end machines use Bowden cables. Arguably the best prints come from Stratasys printers, which don't (see the teardown of a Stratasys printer here ), and possibly the best cheap commercial printer - the UP! - doesn't either. In the home-built world, Nophead's highly regarded hydraraptor doesn't use a Bowden cable. So I'd love to know what prints you've been lookby droftarts - General
DeuxVis Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I can't tell for windows systems, but on Linux > (Ubuntu) my techzone Monotronics board could talk > to the PC as soon USB was plugged, no additional > drivers needed. It says on the FTDI driver page that the driver is included in 2.6.31 kernel and later, so I guess your Ubuntu version is later than that. Driverby droftarts - General Mendel Topics
theodleif Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Do you have comb activated? I thought I did, but checking my settings it appears not. I'll give it another go soon with comb activated. Though this won't effect stringing between parts that are closer than the retraction threshold, which I can live with. I'll try and remember to take a picture of anything I print beforby droftarts - Skeinforge
Are you using Absolute or Relative Extrusion Distance in the Dimension settings? I use absolute. Your start.gcode will have G90 in it for absolute. Your end.gcode switches to relative to do your final moves; G91 (relative) then back to G90 (absolute) at the end. Without these, the line "G1 Z7 F70 ;lifts nozzle 7mm from finished print surface" would send the Z axis to 7mm, crashing it through theby droftarts - Skeinforge
Hi, and welcome. Well done on completing your build, don't lose heart, you are nearly there! This is the page that explains your electronics However, there are a couple of extra things. First, I can't see anywhere on that page that talks about installing a driver on your computer so it can talk to the electronics. I think this board uses an FTDI chip to allow communication between the Arduinoby droftarts - General Mendel Topics