Over at thingiverse, I occasionally see some things about a sarrus linkage. There were also some experiments with a design kind of like this. I don't remember where I saw it, but I think this particular developer was trying to use printed linkages in place of all the metal rods you see in that video. Your design is much simpler than anything else I've seen. Good job. I'm curious to see what youby dazed.dnc - General
> my printer prints things in "generally" the right > shape but nothing looks very good, gears have very > fine teeth and a round buildup in the middle, I'm not sure what you are describing. Sounds like maybe the infill isn't connected to the perimeter? Post a picture? > surface details are VERY hit and miss(like dots on > a die either being non existant or hard to see), This coulby dazed.dnc - Reprappers
As long as it doesn't vary by more than half your layer thickness, I think it should stick ok.by dazed.dnc - General
Edit: After seeing how the edges were sliced differently, I assumed this was causing that edge to be printed differently every time. I set overlap to 0 as nophead suggested, and now I realize this is also an edge where my extruder retracts. Parallel extrusions have always joined quite well, so I trust that my width/thickness/feed/flow are well adjusted to one another. Perhaps some combination ofby dazed.dnc - Skeinforge
If nothing else, it may help to clarify which versions of electronics you are trying to work with. I have a complete RAMPS kit from ultimachine, so I know what endstops they are using, but I'm not familiar with what ultimaker is selling or what endstop you may be trying to use with it. Here is a link to data on the standard end stop, I don't know if any of that will help you. This is what came wiby dazed.dnc - RAMPS Electronics
Hmm. My belts are as taught as I can make them without being so tight that it stresses the motor. The motors are quite rigidly mounted, nothing is able to rattle or slide around. What else would cause backlash on the axes? My only guess would be the build plate springs. It takes more force than I should think an additive manufacturing process would exert but my build plate is really the only thiby dazed.dnc - Skeinforge
RAMPS uses a different pinout for the endstops. The reasoning was something to do with keeping the resolution printable so that the reprap could put etch resistant ink on a copper clad board. If you are using the same cable to connect them to either set of electronics, this is probably the issue. You have probably damaged the endstops if you did.by dazed.dnc - RAMPS Electronics
I don't think this is purely a backlash issue. Admittedly, my extruder does have to rotate some odd number of steps before engaging the gear, but there is a pretty clear cut difference in how the edges of that hexagon are joined to the infill. If that one edge would overlap the same way the others do, there wouldn't be a problem. Even the extrusions that are ending at that edge rather than startby dazed.dnc - Skeinforge
I just hit the "print screen" key with skeinlayer open. The scale is set to 60 or something like that so you can see the detail better. After that I just pasted it into paint.net and saved it as a jpg.by dazed.dnc - Skeinforge
I was never quite able to get all sides of the perimeter to join to the infill without setting the overlap so high that it ruined the outside finish. Adding shells and tightening my belts helped substantially, but there are still some sides that do not connect well unless I use excessive overlap. After trying to find the sweet spot for a while, I gave up and decided to live with slightly deformedby dazed.dnc - Skeinforge
With the help of some other members, I pinned it down to a speed/step resolution problem - at least, this was the issue in my case. The short and sweet version... If you use higher than normal micro step settings or you are gearing down the axis in a way that has the same effect, you have to increase your feed rate to maintain slightly-faster-than-a-slug speeds. You also increase the number of sby dazed.dnc - Reprappers
Did you rename it, close arduino, then reopen it or did you just rename it with arduino open and try to upload? If you left arduino open, you may have to close it to get it to re-load the files. Just another guess here if that doesn't help... If you extracted all the files into just any old folder, arduino will prompt you to move the main pde into a folder that is of the same name as the pde. Ifby dazed.dnc - Reprappers
I think these mosfets have a max current output of something in the range of 10 to 14 amps. It would only handle that much if it were well heat-sinked. On our electronics, it isn't. I have no way to be sure what the actual maximum amp draw would be, but I'm guessing it would be in the ball park of 3A. Your parallel resistors, at 2.5A, may have been pushing the limit too far. This is one of thoseby dazed.dnc - Reprappers
If you measure your heater's resistance and it is less than 6.5 ohms or so, it will draw too many amps and you risk blowing the mosfet. High thermal mass extruders (the MK5 hot end for example) require more power for the heater, but they are driven via relays rather than the mosfets on the extruder controler. Check that your heater's resistance is somewhere in the range of 7.5 to 6.5 ohms. If itby dazed.dnc - Reprappers
I own a Reprap (repstrap to be more technically correct) and built a Makerbot for my employer (he wanted to evaluate if we could benefit from rapid-prototyping before dropping ten grand on a commercial printer). Our makerbot is a pre-TOM version, so I don't have any personal experience with the ABP, but I am familiar with building and operating the rest of their printer and I have read some commeby dazed.dnc - General
Kind of hard to tell from that picture, but I'm guessing that either your stepper motors are skipping steps because the toque is too low or your pulleys are slipping. If the pulleys are slipping, use a couple drops of super glue to lock them in place. Don't let the glue run down the motor shaft and into the motor! If the torque is too low, try adjusting the trim pot on your stepper drivers soby dazed.dnc - General Mendel Topics
Load/no load shouldn't matter. Even If there was a solder bridge between two pins or something like that, I would expect that the voltage would have just followed the path of least resistance and fried the chip anyhow rather than flowing through the motor or heater. I can only guess that one of three things happened. 1) Something came loose and either the board touched metal or something metal fby dazed.dnc - General
If it was something on the coms side of things that burned up, it may be possible that your motherboard has been damaged too. Can you post a picture that shows what circuit smoked? If it was just a voltage regulator or capacitor there is a chance you could replace it and get it working again. If the arduino or sanguino chips have been damaged, then it will be easier to just get a new board. Wasby dazed.dnc - General
If you go with the RAMPS electronics from Ultimachine, you just need to get the complete set. It will include an Arduino mega, polulu drivers (with heat sinks, very important for these chips!), optical endstops, and a breakout board that connects it all together and provides heater/fan outputs. Other "monolithic" solutions exist, but this is the one I have been using. The only drawback I have expby dazed.dnc - General
A thermocouple is just composed of two metals twisted/welded together at one end. They are metals chosen for a specific property, but there is nothing otherwise special about thermocouple wire. If you are testing continuity (short verses open circuit), then the wire should behave similar to ordinary wires joined together at one end. Thermocouples use the Seebeck affect to detect temperature diffby dazed.dnc - General Mendel Topics
macsoft Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > They can? cool! I thoght that if the config was > different and it has one more motor, that it would > be different. thanks This isn't a firmware change, but it does take a little extra hardware and/or electronics. If your stepper drivers are strong enough (polulu drivers on the RAMPS kit are not likely to be - I'mby dazed.dnc - General
If you do that, by all means put a thermal fuse on there too. Nichrome taped to the bed was actually the first thing I tried. I abandoned it because it felt so unsafe. When I heated it, the tape wanted to peel loose and the nichrome began shifting. If you do get a short circuit, you could end up with a runaway heater. A thermal fuse will give you some assurance that it will shut down rather thanby dazed.dnc - General
The firmware is written in C (or C++? I was never very knowledgeable on the differences). With the exception of the acceleration/stepper driver code, it is relatively simple. I don't see a whole lot of advanced trickery going on. Since you have done some programming before, it might not be as overwhelming as you would think. To edit the firmware, the simplest thing to do would be to get the Arduby dazed.dnc - General
That sounds like a good order to do things. Get your electronics wired enough to at least do some testing. When you start building the extruder, rig up some kind of temporary stand for it. Don't bolt it down to the x-axis until you are sure that the hot end extrudes easily. The extruder is one of the most tricky and unreliable parts of the reprap. Expect to be rebuilding it a couple of times befoby dazed.dnc - General
I did the exact same thing to my wooden pieces. I fixed it by grinding two edges of that spacer so I did essentially the same thing. Using a thinner plate there might effect the x-to-z axis constraints a bit though. I would have to draw something up to show you what I mean. You might want to drill out a new spacer from your 1/8" material. It doesn't have to be as complex as the original one. Youby dazed.dnc - General Mendel Topics
Have you asked Ultimachine about this? Johnny keeps an eye on the ramps forum. If a moderator doesn't move the thread, you could ask over there. I just use a thermistor with mine, but presumably you could hook it up to a set of serial communication pins and configure them in your firmware. I do not see built in thermocouple support for RAMPS, but if you take a look at PID.pde and how the existiby dazed.dnc - General
Dale Dunn Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hmm. Searching a bit, I found FreeCAD. An > OpenCacade modeler capable of handling STEP files, > and it can be scripted with Python for generating > parameterized models. This seems so much more > capable and easy to use. I wonder why it isn't > more popular in the RepRap community. People tend to use whby dazed.dnc - General
Cain Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > That makes me feel much better about this, tonight > I can't figure out what I did wrong, if anything. > From what it seems, the washers I got in the > hardware kit are slightly too big for some areas. > And using the standard instructions for the Z > leadscrews won't work, the Z leadscrew mount is > too deby dazed.dnc - General Mendel Topics
Try the lowest possible RPM you can get out of your drill. You might have to help the bolt turn until the teeth are cut deep enough that the tap can naturally turn the bolt. One of the problems I had while cutting mine was that the tap would tend to pull to one side of the groove.It would ride up the wall of my groove. I would get very deep cuts on the side of the bolt where the threads were, buby dazed.dnc - General
The arduino environment This is just an IDE for programing Arduino boards. Unless you want to modify the firmware, since it is already pre-loaded you will not need it. If the motherboard is a sanguino instead of a true arduino, you need some type of library or add-on installed. I forget what it was but you shouldn't need it anyhow. Just ignore anything to do with arduino until you want to changeby dazed.dnc - General