You're on the right path, but be sure to upgrade the frame of the machine to a rigid design or all the fancy linear positioning you buy will not improve your prints.by the_digital_dentist - Reprappers
Steel frame is good, if it is rigid and square. They appear to use lead screws in the Z axis- also good, but then they screw it up with two drive motors. End supported guide rails in X, Y, and Z axes- not so good. The drag chain bending radius at the extruder carriage looks a little small- a possible reliability issue. No enclosure- OK if there are no kids or pets around and you don't care aboutby the_digital_dentist - General
If you're interested in the challenge of printing threaded parts that fit together, go for it, but, if you need parts to actually hold other things together, it's hard to argue with using hardware store nuts and bolts. Printed parts have to be BIG compared to something like a 6-32 screw, and a 1" printed nut/bolt won't come close to the strength of a little 15 cent, 6-32 screw and nut. I use aby the_digital_dentist - General
Are optical fibers for communications made using extrusion? It might be worth a look at those machines to get an idea about how to handle the input material.by the_digital_dentist - General
Some switching power supplies have a small potentiometer to adjust the output voltage, but be careful. Power/current increases rapidly with increased voltage and you can easily push the supply beyond its limits and kill it. What is the power rating of the heater?by the_digital_dentist - General
QuoteFuselium Im using a 12v 30a Power supply That's a good start. And the heater is ? How long does it take to get bored to heat up the bed? If you want people to help you, you have to provide all the relevant info.by the_digital_dentist - General
We have a couple stratasys machines (FDM1600 and FDM2000) at the makerspace that run at 70C inside the build chamber (and they run the extruder at 270C for ABS). They have a flexible hose on the hot-end to bring cool room air in/out without affecting the enclosure temperature. I have found that 45C seems to work well. Even at 45C, you'd better keep the electronics outside the enclosure- heat aby the_digital_dentist - General
Set the bed to about 105C, cover the bed with Kapton tape, set the extruder to about 235C. Turn off cooling fan(s). Print the first layer slow- maybe 20-30 mm/sec. Use a brim for sharp cornered objects. Use a raft for objects with vary large (hard to break free of the bed) or very small footprints (hard to make stick) on the bed. If you want to print big stuff, you'll need to enclose the priby the_digital_dentist - General
I don't know. Start by opening up the valve on the propane cylinder a little more... Too bored to provide any useful information?by the_digital_dentist - General
With a 200 step/rev motor, increasing ustepping beyond 16 smooths the motion but doesn't increase resolution because the ustep size becomes smaller than the 5% typical error in the full steps. If the motor is running quietly enough at 16 usteps, leave it there. Microstepping reduces torque as well as limiting maximum speed. You can get back some of the torque lost to microstepping by running tby the_digital_dentist - General
Regarding bang-bang, I'd say measure the temperature swings you get with your heater (put a thermocouple on the bed). If it's just a few degees, it's probably OK. After an initial overshoot of 1C, PID keeps my bed within +/- 0.5C, and that can't be bad for print quality. Bang-bang control is one of the many small compromises that contribute to reduced overall print quality and reliability. Itby the_digital_dentist - General
I had one die the same way- lost communications. I think the USB interface chip dies, maybe due to ground loops between the computer and the printer if they are plugged into separate household electrical circuits. I ultimately replaced the Arduino board. FWIW, I'm using a smoothieboard now and configuring the printer is much easier. There's no screwing around with compilers and hunting througby the_digital_dentist - General
Not sure about DC SSRs, but the SSR I use to switch the 5A or so AC into the transformer under PID control has no heatsink and doesn't get warm. I would NOT recommend trying to switch the AC input to a switching DC supply under PID control. It will probably cause a few blown circuit breakers until it ultimately kills the power supply, which probably won't take long at all.by the_digital_dentist - General
This is how it gets wired. RAMPS and smoothie are the same- the MOSFET on the controller board provides a switched ground. If you're using a DC supply for the bed, it goes where I have a transformer- you're going to switch the DC side of the supply, NOT the AC side. Use an SSR designed for DC power switching. Thin sheet will help, but if the bed is 17x17 and the heater is 8x8, no, it won'tby the_digital_dentist - General
Keeping four motors synchronized, if you're using them to lift the corners of the print bed or undercarriage, is going to be a real challenge, whether they all connect to one driver or you use separate drivers for each. The electronics to drive multiple motors in sync is the easy part. The mechanical stuff is the hard part. I hope your're using lead screws and not threaded rods. All you needby the_digital_dentist - General
I recently rebuilt my printer and put the electronics in a drawer under the build chamber to ensure they wouldn't overheat during large ABS prints. The floor of the build chamber is a couple pieces of 1" foam insulation board. The machine is a 100% custom design/build, so I made all cables long enough so there would be no problems opening the drawer. I ultimately decided to mount all the contrby the_digital_dentist - General
Using fully supported guide rails or linear guides mounted on a suitably stiff base will help prevent bed deflection due to flexing rails. You'll still have to deal with the cantilever itself.by the_digital_dentist - Mechanics
How did you print the outside at 50um and the support material at 400 um?by the_digital_dentist - Mechanics
I think they can be more precise - i.e. repeatable, but it depends on how the opto interruptor and the flag are mounted. The weak spot is the way you adjust it- if it isn't very stable the precision goes away. I used a microswitch for a long time and it was fine, but recently decided to try an opto to see if it behaved any better. One thing I noticed immediately was that unlike microswitches,by the_digital_dentist - General
It can't become a consumer product until someone makes it into a reliable process that doesn't require a PHD to get a machine to make a quality print. From what I see, dozens of small companies are trying to make printers cheaper and cheaper as if the price is the only thing that consumers care about. As the machines get cheaper, they get more and more unreliable and require more tweaking to geby the_digital_dentist - General
In my printer, the X and Y axes run on 32V supplies powering DSP motor drivers. All axis motors in the machine are NEMA-23, the extruder motor is NEMA-17. The controller is a Smoothieboard running from a 12V supply. The bed heater has its own, dedicated 24V transformer with 117VAC switched by an SSR driven by the smoothieboard. You can see it here: 200 step/rev motors all provide the sameby the_digital_dentist - General
There are two types of ball screws- rolled and ground. The cheapos are the rolled ones and specs won't be as good as the ground screws. The rolled screws (which is what the ones in the photo appear to be) might be adequate for z axis lift. You might want to watch for ground ball screws and see what ebay turns up used.by the_digital_dentist - Mechanics
I think having a big lever sticking out like that is going to be a problem. It's just begging curious fingers to push or pull on it or for it to get bumped when moving the printer around, and since it tensions the belt against the vertical guide rails, over tightening will flex the rails and cause the Z axis to bind. Here's what I use- it's designed for a 6-32 screw/nut. Turning the screw pullby the_digital_dentist - Look what I made!
Before you decide on a cheapo kit, I suggest you read this: http://www.instructables.com/id/An-Almost-Reliable-High-Precision-3D-Printer-Son-o/by the_digital_dentist - General
That's like asking which is best, syphilis or gonorrhea? The answer depends on the form of pain and discomfort you prefer...by the_digital_dentist - General
Uberclock sells them in the US.by the_digital_dentist - General
That's one of the problems with those little plug-in driver boards. It's easy to kill them by shorting out traces with a screwdriver when trying to adjust the pot, and it's really easy to break the pot. It's best to keep a few spares handy- they're cheap enough. If you ever get tired of dealing with those problems, check out the Smoothieboard. Among its many nice features are digitally controby the_digital_dentist - General
Like you, when I started on my first build, MegaMax, about 3 1/2 years ago, I too, knew nothing about 3D printers, only that I wanted one and wanted to print larger things than the readily available kits could print. I studied a bunch of stuff on-line and carefully examined every 3D printer I could. I looked around the Makerspace, found some good parts on the hackrack and starting building. Iby the_digital_dentist - General
Maybe its the teeth of the hobbed bolt in the extruder causing it. As far as the filament can see, the hobbed bolt is a polygon, not a circle...by the_digital_dentist - General