If you do have a power hungry servo, you can get small switchers off of eBay for about $2 to $4 (delivered from China) to generate far more +5 than a servo ever should use.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
I have seen 15 mm fans that put out more air than 180 mm fans. They do sound like a jet engine on take off, but they move a lot of air. You really need to look at the CFM ratings on the fans to make any real sense of what it what. All that said, yes a 30 mm fan should be ok.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Start with the mechanical side of the printer. Make sure that all the stuff that moves does move. Make sure that the bed is level. Plan on spending a lot of quality time on calibration. Load the latest version (with stock headers) of the Marlin firmware into the Mega. Once you are confident of the basic stuff, hook up the end stops and the X, Y, Z steppers. Fire up Pronterface and see if you canby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
A motor on top would put more weight high on the frame. That's not going to help the stability of things much. Shake / shimmy / frame flex are some of the many contributors to Z axis errors. If the thrust bearing is not absolutely flat (and aligned) it will add to the Z axis error. The load on the M5 rods is mighty low. I doubt they would do any better pulling than pushing. The real answer is pby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Do the pots rotate properly? How / where are you looking at the voltage? I'd check it with a DVM if you are trying to read it in software.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
The standard J head starts to melt at a bit above 235C, so running it at 230 is right on the edge. They do appear to be ideal for PLA.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
On the standard Ramps 1.4 board there is a diode between the bulk power supply and the supply to the Mega board. If you remove that diode, the Mega can only be powered via USB. If you want a stand alone solution, you would need some sort of secondary regulator to take your "high voltage" power down to a more Mega friendly level.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
I just got a Maker Farm running. I see no problem at all getting the heated bed up to temperature (as in 120C) very quickly. I'd guess it's doing it in under 10 minutes. That's with the stock fan on the Magma hot end and the fan almost touching the heated bed. With a good power supply, there's no problem with the fan at all.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
If I feed in Pronterface, I can run anywhere from 30 to 100 mm/min through a 0.40 mm nozzle at an indicated 230C. I haven't tried anything faster than 100by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
If your end stops are connected wrong they will short out the power supply on the Mega. With the power supply shorted the firmware update will fail. The drivers will not work with a mega with a shorted supply. You must correct that before you can proceed with the update.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
The Ramps 1.4 board will handle a lot of voltage (like 35V). The Arduino Mega that's attached to the Ramps probably will get unhappy above 12 volts. It most certainly will die at anything approaching 20 volts. ------------------ The board will handle a lot of voltage.... The capacitors used on this or that build may or may not handle anythig over 16 volts. With derating that puts you into the "by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
With a 12.0 volt supply, an 8" x 8" one ohm heated bed gets to 110C in under 10 minutes. A Magma hot end with 40W heater gets to 220C a couple minutes faster than the hot bed. SInce power goes up by the square of voltage in this case, bumping the supply to 16 volts would cut those times about in half. You would need to do some hacking to get everything to be happy at the higher voltage.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Hi I think you can use either set of instructions. They are pretty similar. The Arduino is flash based. You simply blow away everything in there when you write in a new load of code. The key issue is making sure the "stuff" in your config.h files is correct before you do. If it's not right for your specific printer, you will have issues. Since you have a mix of parts, you will probably need toby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Well the hotter you get the hot end the faster you can feed.....by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
It probably would be easier to come up with ideas if we knew what you have now.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
If your thermistor is not glued into the hotend you can dunk the thermistor into boiling de-ionized water. A DVM will let you measure the resistance of the thermistor and compare it to the manufacturer's spec. If the thermistor is glued in and you can remove the heating element, dunking the whole hot end might also work. You can then check the 4.7K resistor on the Ramps board. If both are correctby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Laser / IR thermometers all have a basic problem. They are based on a specific emissivity. More or less stuff that's black glows more at IR than stuff that's shiny silvery. The thermometers *assume* a black target. One solution (which we commonly use at work) is to paint your target flat black before measuring anything. It takes a surprisingly thick coat of paint to get rational results. Otherby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
1/4" plastic tubing seems to work pretty well. Lowes sells the stuff for 14 cents a foot. That's enough to last you for a *long* time.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
At this moment the I3 is the safer choice. The Robo may be more of an adventure.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Hi Well it's a typo ... (sorry about that) It's probably the most common thing to debug your situation with. The Ramps electronics instructions here: are pretty easy to follow. Downloading the instruction pdf for their closest version of your printer is the first step. Once you download it there are links to various videos and lots of pictures. Try using them to do a basic wiring checkoby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
If you have been fiddling pots and don't know where they are - beg / borrow / steal a voltmeter and get them all set somewhere consistent. Start at a low voltage (= low current) - the motors should not step or should step really poorly. Slowly bump it up until they are running smoothly.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
A few basic questions: 1) What kind of board do you have between the mega and your printer? Ramps 1.4 is one possibility. There are many others. 2) What version / type of I3 do you have? They range from Maker Farm kits through piles of parts off of eBay. 3) Does the printer it's self work properly? Can you print a proper cube? A very common toolchain for an I3 running Marlin is: Pronterifaby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
With the I3 you are (likely) buying a kit and putting it together. With the Robo you are getting a finished product. With the I3 there are a massive number of add on's / upgrades / tweaks that you can do. With a "factory built" printer, what you see is what you get. The Robo is new enough that there's really not a lot of information on them. They shipped their first printer at the end of June Theby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
I'd try and dig up an XP machine if you are going to run those drivers under Windows. There have been a *lot* of things go dead due to the driver singing and driver structure changes in Win Vista and Win 7.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
There are a lot of threads (and blogs) on problems with cheap J-Heads. I'd go for something from a known source. I will likely be 2 or 3X more than the one you are looking at.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
I suspect you would do better to start a new thread rather than trying to revive one that's been dead for 2 years. I know this from personal experience at trying to revive dead threads ....by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
What version of Windows are you running? Driver files have specific issues with each version of Windows.....by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
Except for the probe it's self, most of the information on doing this is in the Thingiverse instructions for printing the mount. I suspect that the switch is either glued to the end of the probe or there's another printed part description coming "real soon now". Bobby uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
It's also very possible that your brand of ABS is not quite the same as their brand of ABS. The other variable could be how fast you push matterial through the hotend.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics
You may have started with one issue (the lead screws) and fixed it. What you may now have is simply play / slop in the X and Y. Most likely source would be belts that are not as tight as they should be. There is a long list of unlikely other sources of X/Y slop.by uncle_bob - General Mendel Topics