Quotethe_digital_dentist The heater block is aluminum. You could drill it out to 6mm in about 3 seconds with a hand drill. For various reasons that's unfortunately not feasible for me at the moment. If I can find a local supplier that supplies an appropriately-sized, appropriately-rated wire-wound resistor, I'll use that. Otherwise, I think I'll buy a new heater block and nozzle, that will fby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
My hot end is no longer heating up properly and I suspect a worn-out heater. My heater block seems to require a heater of about 4.5 mm or smaller diameter, but modern ceramic heaters seem to be 6 mm in diameter. My current heating element is a wire-wound resistor about 4.4 mm in diameter. Here is a picture (not mine) of the heater block. I found the following resistor at a local supplier. Wby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
I'm noticing a strange behavior on a gen6.d board. Admittedly, this board was exposed to dust and rainwater, which may have damaged it, but it seems to be working at the moment. The strange behavior is that the Y-axis motor works most of the time, but if I leave the motor energized without moving for several minutes, then the Y-axis motor is no longer able to move and only makes buzzing sounds.by qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
I discovered that pressing the reset button (circled in red) on my gen6.d board allows the connection to Pronterface to succeed. However, now the Y axis motor is now intermittently failing to move the bed, instead simply making a buzzing sound. Increasing the current to the driver (with the trimpot) can temporarily fix the problem, but sooner or later the Y axis motor stops moving and starts buby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Sigh... doing more research, it seems the RAMPS 1.4 boards are prone to burning up. For one, the power connectors may be working at their limit: . Much more troubling is the ominous-sounding warning on the wiki that there are some thermal design flaws in production RAMPS 1.4 boards: I can't really understand the problem that the above wiki page is describing, or how to recognize if it exisby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteDust "which has a small 12 cm x 12 cm heated bed" its the 20x20cm bed that take about 11 amp. if it was working before on 10 amp total, you bed probably takes less that 5amp.. In that case, my plan will be: 1. Connect 10A power supply in parallel to 11A input and 5A input on RAMPS 1.4 board. 2. Do not connect the bed heater or thermistor at first (leaving those wires disconnected), and geby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Quoteqrp-gaijin I managed to destroy my gen6.d board today by leaving the printer out on the balcony when it started to rain. I guess the rain shorted out the electronics. Well, miracle of miracles, I seem to have been able to revive the old gen6.d board by spraying it with warm tap water and drying it with a hair dryer. I'm assuming the years of dust buildup on the board (which is not enclosed iby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteDust stepper plugs are for 4-pin Female Dupont endstops are 2-pin Female Dupont Thanks; with this information I could find some ribbon cables on amazon with the proper connectors. QuoteDust You need 11+5 = 16 amps power supply (minimum) , and yes they are just wired in parallel to the suplly. If you don't have a heated bed, you don't need the 11amp wires at all. (11amp circuit is just foby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteDust Ramps is just a shield, it needs to be on a mega2560, or even better a re-arm 32 bit controller. Thanks, understood. I managed to destroy my gen6.d board today by leaving the printer out on the balcony when it started to rain. I guess the rain shorted out the electronics. I'm assuming the stepper motors, hot end, and limit switches are all still undamaged by the rain, so I think all I nby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
My old Portabee printer has a hot end that accepts the older 3 mm-diameter filament. I am planning how to upgrade this to a new hot end that accepts 1.75 mm-diameter filament. The old hot end looks like this: There's a short PTFE tube that guides the filament from the top of the extruder block down into the hot end. As a replacement, that would take 1.75 mm-diameter filament, I'm thinking aby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
My Portabee printer has two smooth Z-rods that are "floating" and not connected at the top with any horizontal bar. On the other hand, one user claims at that adding an additional constraining horizontal rod between tops of the two smooth Z rods will improve print quality and reduce "the wiggling Z-axis Problem". However, I have read that too many constraints will, instead of preventing aby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Quoteobelisk79 Given the popularity of hobby 3d printing, you'd think this forum would be booming. Personally, I like the self-repairing, self-replicating aspect of RepRaps that use lots of 3D-printed parts and only common hardware as "vitamins". But, as far as I can tell, modern designs aren't really RepRaps anymore since their self-replication capability is diminished due to the use of many cusby qrp-gaijin - General
QuoteMJLew First, a small chamfer on the bottom of the gear will allow the foot to be where the gear teeth do not meet. Something like this, then? So even if the bottom layer ends up being printed wider, it doesn't matter, because the narrower chamfered part of the gear will never be in contact with the drive gear, nor anything else. An excellent solution! I previously was trying to eliminate eby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
I was able to keep the printer running well enough to print out replacements for the extruder block, the 9-tooth drive gear, and the 53-tooth driven gear. After reassembling the extruder with my new replacement parts, the whole thing seems sturdier and in better alignment. Most importantly, retractions (with their rapid reversal of motor direction and high stress on the drive gear) no longer causby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Quotekranlor12 You got me really interesting in the Portabee, do you think it could be modified for a 20x20 bed? In terms of stability... My guess is that you would need to make some changes in the design to improve the stability (a wider base, and a less-massive extruder using a Bowden-tube setup?) while sacrificing portability, and the changed design might then end up looking like the printer tby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteNovaHuta @grp-gaijin Your parts look pretty good. There does seem to be an under/over extrusion issue that is causing roughness. A little hard to tell from the pictures due to resolution but I'd hazard it is over-extrusion. Have you calibrated your extruder? Thanks for the feedback on the quality of the Portabee prints. Those prints are made with the Portabee printer, but they were not mby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Quotekranlor12 I didn't know the Portabee before you posted this, what an amazing design, so simple but seems really useful. Unfortunately, I'm looking for a 20x20x20 printer and I'm not sure that will work with longer axis. I'll save the Wiki for a future reference project, as this seems to be awesome to put together, maybe make a workshop about it as a DIY cheap printer when I do it. Yes, it wby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
I have a Portabee printer that uses a similar-looking design. I don't know how it compares to modern printers, but the Portabee sold more than one thousand units and a lot of people, including me, liked it. I'm currently fixing up my Portabee and printing out some replacement parts. In the Portabee, the 2 Z-axis motors and the 1 Y-axis motor all lie in a straight line. This apparently provides eby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Quoteqrp-gaijin Printing multiple objects simultaneously on the print bed requires enabling retraction. But the plastic drive gear on the extruder motor had immediately started to show signs of increased wear as soon as I enabled retraction again. And, exactly as feared -- the plastic drive gear broke, again. Perhaps another way to avoid retraction while reducing stringing between multiple objectby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
For now, I find it interesting and educational to be able to print out my own improved versions of the Wade extruder. My super-glue repair to my current plastic extruder block (to fix the broken y-bracket motor mount) seems to be holding together, hopefully enough to print out a couple of replacement extruder blocks and possibly some improved Wade extruder variants (with thicker gears, herringbonby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
What kind of preventative maintenance can I perform on my RepRap (specifically, a Portabee) to prevent further problems down the line? With so many moving parts, things are bound to fail sooner or later. I've been mounting and demounting my extruder motor lately, which I think is causing a lot of stress on the motor's wires where they enter the motor housing. I read that intermittent connectionsby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
My old Portabee printer uses a gen6.d electronics controller board to control the printer. One of these days, I expect the electronics controller board to die. I cannot buy gen6.d boards locally, but I noticed I can buy a RAMPS 1.4 board locally. Can I simply replace the gen6.d board with a RAMPS 1.4 board and expect it to work? Looking at the wiring for the RAMPS 1.4 board (https://reprap.org/wiby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteMJLew I assume that you are using 0.2mm layers. Right, my mistake -- my experiments so far have been with 0.2 mm layers and 0.1 mm layers. QuoteMJLew I do not see a part cooling fan. That's right; the Portabee did not come with a part-cooling fan, only a barrel-cooling fan. I'm not sure if the electronics board (gen6.d) can control another fan, or not, but I'll do some research. And yes, Iby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Just to follow-up with the solution -- the following approach basically worked, with an almost-usable small printed gear as a result: Quote1. Print the detailed 9-tooth part at high speed, to ensure good extrusion. 2. After printing one layer of the detailed 9-tooth part, move the nozzle away from the object and allow the layer time to cool. 3. After the layer cools, move the nozzle back to thby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteMJLew Disabling retractions is a good idea for prints where they are unnecessary, but you will want to be able to retract for many prints. Sigh. After several failed experiments to print the replacement small 9-tooth gear, I think I need to enable retraction (and risk breaking the existing 9-tooth gear due to the increased gear wear from abrupt and reversed motion of the extruder motor).by qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteMJLew Even if your E-steps are correctly set Do I understand correctly that E-step setting does not require recompilation and reflashing of the firmware, and can be done simply with an M92 command (https://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M092.html)? (As you might guess, I have never calibrated the E-steps yet, simply relying on the original settings in the firmware.) In my Portabee printer, there aby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
QuoteMJLew If there are no negative E values and no G10 commands (firmware retraction) then there should be no retractions. I really think that lubrication is likely to be better than doing without retractions... Thanks for getting back with me. About checking for retractions, it seems that an E value that is less than a previous E value will cause a retraction. This makes it tedious to check forby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Thanks for the advice about the lubricant possibly attracting grit which would increase wear on the plastic gears, rather than decrease it. I'm rather hesitant now to lubricate the plastic gears and will instead just go with reducing print speed and eliminating retraction. Is it correct that if there are no negative E values in my gcode file, there will be no retraction? I want to make sure befby qrp-gaijin - Reprappers
Is anyone here using the old Portabee portable 3D printer? I think the compact and portable aspect of the Portabee is pretty interesting. I bought one several years ago and now am finally getting around to investing the time to getting it working properly. Unfortunately, the company seems to have gone out of business, making it a bit difficult to find accurate information about the printer. Asby qrp-gaijin - Prusa i3 and variants
Got it! Thanks for the pointer to the "Prusa i3 and variants" forum. I will try to use that forum, and the wiki, to find and gather information about the Portabee. Let's see how many other people are (still?) using this printer.by qrp-gaijin - Administration, Announcements, Policy