You can try insulating the underside of the heatbed. I bought a roll of cork, used to line shelves/drawers, that has glue on one side. Similar to this:by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I replaced my threaded rods with a pair od t8 leadscrews that I ordered off eBay from China. They arrived sooner than I thought and I was able to install quickly and recompile the firmware. No wobble in these at all and I do see a difference in the prints, but I still have some tweaking to do. The vertical motion is rather slow during the Z zero sequence.by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Ìanm sent me a pm to which I respond earlier (been swamped at work lately with no time to play) but for anyone else that may be interested, I posted the bracket here:by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Ianm, Nice prints, I think they look smoother than what I've been getting. Was that blue PLA or ABS? Haven't had much time to play with my printer over the past two weeks due to work, but I think I'll have to try that duct you made. I noticed with my printer that the Y belt was starting to drift to one side of the idle wheel at the front of the printer, causing some wear. I printed a pulleby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Long week at work, but finally had a chance today to experiment some more. It does appear to have been a temperature issue. I raised the temperature from 185C to 195C and I am amazed at the difference so far. Looks much smoother and printing very well so far.by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I installed a tensioner on the extruder several weeks ago, after having issues with the filament slipping. I did look for material on the gear, and played with adjusting the tension up and down, and did not notice any change in the pattern.by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I recently made some modifications to my I3, adding an aluminum Y carriage, changing the belts from 0.08" to GT2, pulleys from 20 teeth to 16 teeth, and recompiling the Marlin firmware to configure the settings properly for the new belts and pulleys. I did go from version 1.0.0 to version 1.0.2 of Marlin. Now, I'm seeing an odd issue when printing, I am seeing a repeating pattern where the printby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
So, learning more as I go... My Y carriage started to warp, so i purchased an aluminium replacement, which I started to install tonight. Then I realized my original belt is going to be about 2 inches short, because of how it mounts to the new plate. After a bit of research, I discovered that my belt is a 0.08" MXL belt, on a 20T pulley, which turns out to be an odd combination. Giving 78.82 stby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Yes, that is what I have been finding in my research. I knew very little about 3d-printing when I found this kit on eBay. What little research I did indicated that the Prusa I3 was a good design that I thought I'd be happy with for a first printer (and I am, don't get me wrong!) :-) What I did not realize at the time, was that there are a ton of variations out there, and as a results in some piby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I wanted to take a non-destructive approach to resolving this, so didn't want to cut the rods or the existing brackets. It took me a little while, but I was able to find a template on Thingiverse for a Geeetech Prusa I3 that was very close to the bracket used on my kit. After some manipulation in Sketchup, I was able to change the model to fit my printer properly, and I printed two usable, alterby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
James, After a bit more research, and re-reading your post, I think I understand this more fully. There was a very good write-up that I found here: Taxonomy of Z axis artifacts in extrusion-based 3d printing So now I understand what you meannt about letting the Z-threaded rod float. I took a picture of my printer, and did a little editing in paint: So, I figure I could either drill out theby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Yeah, an off-the-shelf professionally made printer would be nice, but after seeing the price tag on those, I'm happy with this route :-) So I removed the left threaded rod and there is a very slight curve in the rod. It looks like maybe 0.1mm off the counter-top at the opposite end. With the rod being about 12 inches long, to me, it seems within a reasonable tolerance, so not sure if this is parby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I printed another 25mm cube, and it looks a little better after the adjustment, but the wobble artifact is still there. I took more care this time removing the cube, and marked the orientation on the printbed, so I could remember the cube's orientation. From the looks of it, the wobble is more pronounced on the left hand side of the prints. The right hand side seems fairly smooth, while the leftby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Well, if I hold the cube against the threads of the Z threaded rod, the ridges appear to fit perfectly, so it looks like it does have something to do with the threaded rod. I bought this as a kit, so I am not entirely sure about the components, but after measuring: The smooth rods appear to be M8, measuring 8mm, but the threaded rods seem inconsistent. Neither measure 8mm in diameter, but insteby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Unfortunately no Ace Hardware nearby, only some local hardware stores, Home Depot, Lowes, Grainger and few True Value. True Value actually had a great selection of metric screws, but their M3 lengths stopped at 20mm. I ended up ordering 50 M3x0.5x50mm screws from Amazon, along with a screw cutter. Today, after all the parts arrived I was able to assemble and adjust things. Had to reverse the exby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
So my aluminium tension adjustment bracket arrived and I tried assembling this evening. The new bracket and mount are slightly wider, looks very similar to this: aluminum extruder Everything seemed to be going well until the M3x40mm screws I used previously to mount everything to the stepper motor turned out to not be long enough. So, after an unsuccessful search at Home Depot, Lowe's and theby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
The GT2560 board I have came preinstalled with Marin Version 1.0.0. I have been considering updating to the latest firmware version, but I want to determine what values I can retrieve from the printer, to help configure the newer version of firmware. (Seeing as there does not appear to be an easy way to backup the existing firmware deployed on a ardiuno chip.) When I run Pronterface, I get theby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Interesting... I assume that you would have to feed the slope information into the slicer program, in order to produce the correct G-Code for the object. Unless it prints a removable/wedge-like base to even up the surface, before starting the printing of the object.by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
The LCD is EXP1 and the SD Card is EXP2. You can verify this by following a couple of traces from EXP2 to the SDCard (that is how I figured it out at least!)by awdorrin - Reprappers
Thanks for the link to the tensioning device - looks like I'll be ordering one (will have to see if I can find one closer than China though!) For leveling the bed, after reading a bunch of different suggestions, I created four macros in Pronterface. Each macro sends the print head to a different corner of the print bed (about 30mm in from the edges): FrontLeft: G0 X30 Y30 Z5 FrontRight: G0 X1by awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I am not sure that my extruder has a way to adjust the tension, however that may be the problem. Once I disassembled the extruder, I found that while pushing/pulling on the filament, that sometimes the filament would turn the stepper motor, but every so often the filament would slip past, without turning the gear, for an inch or so. I took a few pictures I took this morning and have attached theby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Hmm, same thing happened on my second attempt, at about 7mm high, the PLA stopped extruding... I can hear the extruder motor spinning, but the filament is not getting pulled in. After raising the extruder up, I pushed on the filament while pressing the extrude button, and it started working again. Guess tomorrow I'll be taking the extruder apart to make sure nothing is stuck in there... Not suby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
So I got my new thermistor installed and the bed re-leveled and things seem to be working ok now. I am still having issues with the first layer, but I have a 25mm cube printing at the moment. Nozzle is 0.4mm and Slic3r seems to be starting at 0.40mm, with a 0.2mm layer height configured, which seems high to me. The outline for the cube stuck, but the first pass of diagonal fill did not. The seby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
My replacement thermistors came in today. I wired one into the heatbed connector and it matched the extruder thermistor exactly (21C) when laying on the heatbed. I have not yet tried heating the bed, but when the thermistor slid off the heatbed (thermistors came with long wires) and onto the floor, it dropped 2 degrees almost instantly. It is rather cold here in upstate NY (6F) and with this rooby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
Hi James, thanks for responding. I checked the temperature readings this morning, the print head thermistor reads 23C, the heatbed 39C, so a replacement thermistor has been ordered. Still not sure why the PLA stopped sticking to blue tape on a cold bed, but I did notice when I was printing when it worked, that the nozzle would leak a little at 195C, and now it isnt, so I'm thinking the nozzle mby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants
I got a Prusa I3 clone from eBay for Christmas. Gt2560 controller, Mk8 extruder, Mk2A heated bed, Marlin firmware. Using Slicer and Pronterface under Windows 10, 64bit. Assembled it over a few days, and managed to get a couple decent prints out of it using PLA on bare glass. Then, suddenly I couldn't get prints to stick to glass, so I used blue tape, got a couple more decent prints, and now I cby awdorrin - Prusa i3 and variants