Two weeks ago I had an email inviting me to join a discussion about an open-source filament diameter sensor I commented in this discussion to point to this thread and other methods including my own air restriction method and the capacitative sensor proposed by frankvdh I found in the discussion that the air restriction is well known and potentially accurate and is called air gauging. Having neby leadinglights - General
@deckingman I will await your return to the forum and of course to YouTube fully invigorated with lots of new and interesting ideas and designs. btw, you are but a spring chicken. I celebrated my 75th a week ago. I would normally keep my antiquity top secret to avoid inducing culture shock in the under 30s, but I seriously doubt that there are many who read this forum. Mikeby leadinglights - General
I was an early adopter of heater cartridges and abandoned them when the majority of those I purchased turned out to be faulty. I would think that they have improved considerably since the ones that I purchased, but that is no reason to change from resistors to cartridges as long as resistors remain reliable - which they have. I do have some of the original cartridges that were within spec. Thoseby leadinglights - Reprappers
I was quite intrigued by your link to the earlier discussion back in 2014 where nophead recommends a 3W 6.8 Ohm resistor, Vishay RWM04106R80JR15E1. I have been using 7W resistors without failure since my first 3D printer but had only recently, and with great trepidation, tried 3W resistors. I will be interested in how well your silicone resistor holds up although I am a little skeptical as thby leadinglights - Reprappers
Quotemishaelbrown Importing data from a variety of database types into our format. We gave some basic information on the process that we were using within our company and no documentation on the database itself. I have done an excellent job of familiarizing myself with our database and other database types, creating their own processes to more efficiently import the data, and working with custoby leadinglights - General
A nice implementation of independent dual extruders. I have a somewhat similar mechanism which suffers from excessive complexity - although, in self defense, it does have space for nozzle wiping as well as nozzle capping. I have subscribed to your YouTube channel and will follow your developments with interest. Mikeby leadinglights - Firmware - Marlin
A further comment on the dangers of underbed probing. Mikeby leadinglights - Tech-Talk
A stone-age but reliable way is to use a thermal fuse. The problem here is that the highest rating for proven thermal fuses is 240°C and this needs de-rating a bit to get a decent lifespan. I would go for a 227°C fuse and position it with just enough reliable thermal contact to keep its temperature to about 160°C-170°C in normal use. That way it will fail if the hotend gets to 350°C or thereaboutby leadinglights - Reprappers
Hi rq3, It may not have been apparent in my earlier posting, but I was the Yahoo. Let me explain, and perhaps clarify why I seem to be regarding it almost as a religious mission to tell everybody to take care with underbed sensors. I fitted all of my own printers with variations of underbed piezo sensors. In every case the sensors were bulletproof and all reports I heard from others were the samby leadinglights - Tech-Talk
Quote from 1st April QuoteMKSA ......... No, a properly built machine doesn't need it. ....... Quote from 2nd April QuoteMKSA ......... I use ONE sensor integrated in the print head carriage to determine Z0 when the nozzle touches the bed, ...... So was the first reply a case of "do what I say, not what I do", or was it an April Fools joke? Mikeby leadinglights - Printing
I have just put another video on showing the calibration procedure - or at least the first try at calibration. So far, the normal mix of things that work surprisingly good, like the positional accuracy of the head positioning, along with disasters like two parts trying to be in the same place at the same time. I would be interested in any comments, questions, and particularly, in any suggestionby leadinglights - Tech-Talk
MKSA seems to be unable to see that that lazy users not setting their printers up correctly is not the same thing as bed sensors not being useful tools. If I change a nozzle or build surface I will check the level and even the flatness with my sensor(s) Mikeby leadinglights - Printing
In this particular case, I would advise that it is not a good choice and very likely to fail. I say this despite the fact that I use a 3W resistor and pass 30 watts through it, the composition of that resistor is glass enamel, aluminium oxide/silica ceramic, and nichrome wires - all materials which would be the chosen ones to run at the sort of temperatures. Most importantly, I have taken great cby leadinglights - Reprappers
Hi rq3, I read your document on Thingiverse with great interest. It is obvious that you have put a great deal of thought into the subject and I can't find any significant problems. In particular, the idea of filtering out high-frequency vibrations and most of the first order acceleration component is new, as is the use of a mass attached to the piezo sensor to affect some of this filtering. Haviby leadinglights - Tech-Talk
Hi rq3, I am not sure of the limits that the forums software has on size, but I think that it is 800 kilobytes, not 8 megabytes as advertised when you try to attach it. For pictures, I typically use old-fashioned Windows Paint to reduce them. Paint is now found in the apps tray under Windows Accessories. Just open the (.jpg, .png etc.) anduse the size button to change it to a reasonable size - eby leadinglights - Tech-Talk
I have been looking at this again as I am doing some tests on my newest printer and have been annoyed that I couldn't really get to grips with the problem (Spoiler alert, I still can't, but results are intriguing) Just to summarize what has gone before in this project: Underbed piezos are "Best in Class" as bed sensors if done correctly, but there are many ways in which they can be used incorrecby leadinglights - Tech-Talk
For ABS, but not PLA, I print on plain glass (no hairspray or goop) which I clean only with distilled white vinegar. The worst thing is cleaning glass with acetone using kitchen tissues. The acetone dissolves something in the paper tissue and then spreads it on the glass resulting in no stick at all. To avoid this last problem I used Kimberly-Clarke "Science" tissues for applying the vinegar andby leadinglights - Printing
I don't imagine that deckingman has outgrown the Duet, simply that he has a problem which he is unable to solve and the Duet people are unhelpful. Considering the price of the Duet, along with its expansion boards as well as deckingman's contributions to the troubleshooting and popularising of the Duet controllers, it is easy to sympathize. Mikeby leadinglights - General
Quoteqrp-gaijin ........................................ 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 ....................................................... That is what appeals to me as well: Originally, the RepRap movemeby leadinglights - General
I have been occasionally looking at the discord for Klipper. As you say, it is not as useful as a forum - but at least there are some signs of life; you can't say the same for the RepRap forum. Mikeby leadinglights - General
The printer I am working on at the moment has two different Z sensors, one of which is a touch sensor used for bed leveling and the second of which is a single under-bed sensor used to find the heights (offsets) of each of the two nozzles. The question is, is there any practical way to make the two calls using two different pins on the controller? The actions of getting the two offsets at one pby leadinglights - Firmware - Marlin
Just a note that I have been playing with Klipper and so far it is giving me few problems other than my own hamfistedness - like not putting my thermistor definition in the Printer.cfg file before I called it for example. It would be nice to try something that had an active community like the RepRap forums used to be in the old days. Mikeby leadinglights - General
Nice prints and tremendous photography. Mikeby leadinglights - Extruded Aluminum Frames
@deckingman, I did not think I had anything to add to this discussion as I have kept to 8-bit processors with additional functions such as print head swapping being controlled by slave processors. This architecture may not be to everybody's taste, but it suits me as my high-level language skills really suck although I can do useful work in assembly language and have some hardware skills. I had nby leadinglights - General
Thermocouples and PT100 are different kinds of sensors. Thermocouples produce a voltage output and the kind is important although it will almost always be type "K". PT100 and PT1000 are resistive types where the resistance depends on the temperature. Stepper motors can get quite hot and 45°C is very acceptable. One of my motors runs at 80°C and is still well within working limits. Mikeby leadinglights - General
Thanks, rq3. That was exactly on topic. For the moment though, I will simply list the companies for future investigation as, with fingers crossed, I have a suitable material. Coltronics, in particular, appears to have a wide range of potentially suitable thermally conductive fillers although none of these companies seem to have a visible presence in the U.K. Mikeby leadinglights - General
Hmm, so nobody can offer a real-world measurement of how much energy is used to melt the plastic filament. My best calculations, based on 100cm³ of ABS per hour is that this takes about 8W while observations show that about 11W is needed to counter losses to the environment. The hotend heats up from 20°C to 230°C in a little less than 2 minutes which seems to be a lot faster than with the no-nameby leadinglights - General
It is worth trying Cura even if Repetier host reports that the .stl is not manifold. I found on the well known 3DBenchy files that the hull in both the multipart and dual part were problematic. They reported as non-manifold and Repetier/Slic3r was not ably to repair them. Microsoft 3D Builder failed to fix them as did Meshmixer and Meshlab. I tried a number of on-line services including Netfabb -by leadinglights - Slic3r
I am trying to understand a problem I am getting with a stepper motor which is stalling unexpectedly. The stepper swaps between two print heads on a 3D printer and can be seen on The motor in question is the NEMA11 model 11HS20-0674S just above and to the left of the print heads. The problem is that the stepper stalls at full speed approximately halfway through its travel, when it has alreadyby leadinglights - Stepper Motors, Servo Motors, DC Motors
In the end, I got all of the data I needed. Perhaps I shouldn't complain though, at least I have spent many years when ready availability of complete datasheets was a given; but I also remember many years ago having to sign NDAs and wait weeks for a datasheet for an MCU, only to find that the instruction set summary, the most important bit, was missing. Mikeby leadinglights - General