Folger Tech 2020 Prusa i3 Build Log

[jhitesma]

The layer shifting can be caused by lack of current for the Y motor, or acceleration set too high. You probably want it around 1500 mm/s/s. It looks like you get the failure on the model where you are making short fast movements in the y axis during the infill.

Funny story...I just turned the Y current down even lower and it's doing fine on even smaller faster Y movements I actually turned down the X current first trying to solve the horrible noises it was making..and that went so well I turned down Y as well. SO MUCH nicer now. I'm down to like 0.23 on the X and it's still moving fine with no issues and quieter than the Y was before when I was happy with how the Y sounded

Since the issue happened in the exact same place on both prints I'm really thinking it was an issue with the G code from slic3r. Wish I had saved it so I could have looked at it manually.

I am seriously amazed that you are getting 0.4 mm layers out of a 0.4 mm nozzle. I have never tried it. Did you adjust the extrusion width or are you letting Cura/Slic3r calculate it automatically?

Yeah, once I learned about nozzle vs. layer size that surprised me as well. Using slic3r and letting it calculate automatically. That was actually the defaults that folger suggested - but no clue why. It does MUCH better at 0.2mm but it's a lot slower since it's twice as many layers

For printer parts, I almost exclusively use ABS. PLA just doesn't do well around temperature. You may not see it right away, but the parts will soften and slowly deform which will end up producing sloppy prints.

I'm pretty sure the stock parts are PLA...and that makes me nervous. I honestly mostly plan on printing with ABS...I've only been using the PLA to get started and learn the ropes. I'm printing all the upgrade parts in PLA mostly for practice. Once I have a full set in PLA I plan on swapping over and starting to experiment with ABS and hope to re-print all the parts in ABS before I do the lead screw upgrade.

Also, Snarls you should run M119 to get the end stop status to make sure they all are reporting what you think it should be if you get problems with moving the axes.

Yes Though I have noticed that when you haven't homed it shows axes that aren't even wired up as triggered. So that confused me when I was trying to sort out my X axis mirroring!

Just got brave and did 6 parts at once for the first time. And they all seem to have come out great! 2 more pieces to print and then it's time to try ABS

 

[jhitesma]

First print in ABS was a success. Smell wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Bed heated to 110 tolerably quickly. I'd have preferred it to heat quicker but it's not that much worse than when I was trying 90 for PLA (So happy it works great at 60 for PLA now with the hairspray)

The hairspray also let the ABS hold just fine, and released itself once it cooled.

I just did a quick 10 minute print (the x axis endstop - my most hated part of this printer!) and the ABS version is definitely the best one I've done yet. Snaps on and off the best, holds the endstop securely but not too securely. I like it.

So tomorrow I'll try reprinting all of the parts I printed today only in ABS so when I tackle the rebuild I can do it all in ABS. Looks like I'll have a pink printer. Maybe I should dig out my pink paracord to help cleanup some of the wiring.....

If the ABS printing goes well I'll have a full set of PLA lead screw upgrade pieces if anyone has problems printing their own and doesn't mind orange

 

[Snarls]

First print! At first I was pressing print and nothing was happening. I soon realized that the program was expecting the bed to reach 70C, but it was off. A quick change in the settings and it was off printing. First thing it does is home itself and almost run into the binder clips holding the glass to the heater. I'll have to figure out another way to position the clips or hold the glass. For this first print I was running stock settings and Marlin as provided by Folger. I figured that would be a safe bet to avoid any unexpected errors. First thing I notice is that the printer is a pretty good speed. Of course I want as fast as possible, but compared to the printer I once used a couple years ago this one is at least 2x as fast. Second thing I notice is that the extrusion is a little off. It may be over extrusion because the print head was running over freshly laid infill, or it could be something else because the lines look wavy. One thing I did notice is that a thin strand of PLA would leak from the head when temperature was reached, but that may be expected if you let the extruder idle in place. Extruder is running at 219C.

Overall I am happy with how well the print came out with stock settings. Blue tape worked great to hold the piece down. Even the M on the robot turned out great. The Make logo on the back not so much, but that is to be expected with such a small model. Next I will switch to your Marlin version Jason and see what the difference is.

 

[jhitesma]

If you're using PLA 219 is WAY too hot. I'm doing ABS at 220 but I'm not totally happy with it. Getting usable parts but they don't look as nice as my PLA parts yet.

The settings from folger are pretty horrible. The moosteria blog has better starting points for slic3r.

Right now I'm doing ABS at 230 first layer 220 other layers on a 110 bed (first and other layers)

PLA I'm doing 190 first layer 185 others on an unheated bed with blue tape...but I get corners lifting on bigger parts.

On a heated bed I'm doing PLA at 190 first layer 185 others with the bed at 65 first layer 60 others and a light mist of hairspray - which is giving me the best results overall.

I did have to turn my extruder steps up to 100 as well, but that still needs some fine tuning - my marlin repo has that set in it.

I'm doing either 0.3 or 0.2mm layers, 0.3 for bigger parts so they don't take as long, 0.2 for parts I want to look nice. Probably going to try 0.1 soon but might wait until I get these leadscrews installed. Got all the hardware I need today, but been reprinting the parts in ABS all day and keep having my Y jump on the one part ruining it partway through. Guess I turned the current down too low on that stepper, bumped it back up a bit and it's been working well since.

Hyped you got your first print! Drop that layer height to 0.2 and it will look a lot better. The default 0.4 folger uses really is too tall for our nozzles. I've gotten decent prints with it but it's not a good setting.

 

[Snarls]

Got two and a half prints done tonight. I tried printing something with the rest of the red sample I got from Folger, but I ended up running out before the print was over. Put a fresh roll of white PLA and started with the new code. For some reason the x-axis and extruder were both reversed so I had to reverse the connection on the RAMPs. Switched to 0.2mm and things look pretty good.

The biggest concern right now is that I'm getting some waviness/gaps between layers at points. This is best seen in the bottom layers of the red piece below. With the white PLA it is lesser of an issue, but is still there. I thought it might be related to doing curves and small objects so next I printed a calibration cube to check out longer lines. The layers look better, but there is still some small gaps between layers here and there. So maybe it is a cooling or extruding calibration problem. Calibration cubes are pretty spot on in X and Y. Z is slightly short (~0.5mm overall).





Almost forgot. I tried a quick 2D Eiffel tower that took up about half my print bed. After about half the tower on the first layer the Y axis shifted about 2cm and then again a minute later. Not sure what the issue is. I turned up the current a little on the Y motor and there is no shifting for smaller pieces.

 

[jhitesma]

Have you leveled your X axis snarls? The instructions didn't mention it that I noticed but it seemed like a pretty important thing to do. Basically I homed the zaxis, then used some calipers to measure from the table to the lower smooth rod on the X axis. Then which ever side was lower I turned it's screw manually until it matched the other side. Originally I had done it by measuring to the bottom of the printed carriers - but figured they may not be as accurate and it's really that the rods are level that matters. Actually it's level to the bed that REALLY matters...but with the floating bed for leveling I figured level to the table then let the bed adjust was the best route.

I've spent all day fighting Y jumps They've just been getting worse and more annoying. Mainly because they usually happen at the end of a long print. I tried turning the current on my Y back up...that got things louder but it's still jumping. I also tried slowing it down but that just slowed it down and meant taking longer to wait for the jump

I did eventually get the pieces for the leadscrew upgrade printed out of ABS...but they're not as nice as the ones I did in PLA. Might be because I didn't re-tune the PID's for the higher temp of ABS, could be the ABS (Even though it's fresh from the package I heard a bit of sputtering every now and then - and it seems to be less consistent on it's diameter as well as being undersized.)

This Y thing is really driving me crazy though. I printed one of these to try and fix it: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:745934 But I don't have a long enough screw to actually use it.

Was going to try and print the make robot (the version with articulated limbs) but there was marvin and I saw yours so I figured it would be a fun fast print to try 0.1mm layers for the first time. Stared out amazing, but got sloppier as it went:



Those legs blow me away. Not sure why the rest of it got so sloppy though. Trying it again with the temp a little lower. But could be my speeds are too high (just realized I'm at 40mm/s for perimeters 50 for infill, and 60 for bridges/support.)

So many variables and things to tweak....

 

[jhitesma]

Whoops, double posted by mistake.

Let's just edit this one to show my 3rd attempt at Marvin. Since he's small and quick to print I'm using him to test some things on. 2nd attempt I turned my extruder down 5 degrees to see if it helped with the bridging...it didn't.

For the 3rd attempt I went up to 0.3mm layers and upped the infill to 30% because it looked like he was deforming as he printed due to the lack of infill at 10%. Got a much cleaner print other than the thicker layers:



Dang...now I'm going to have to do a half dozen more testing things...guess I won't get that robot printed tonight

 

[wilsonb]

A cooling fan on the print makes all the difference when printing detail and overhangs in pla. Your Marvin turned bad as the overhangs turned up. So either tons of cooling, or slowing it way down is the best option.

Here are the temperatures I like the use:

PLA - 200-210 with 60C bed
ABS - 245C with 100C bed

 

[pilot1]

Just so you guys know you can get a filament sample for free from http://thefoxsmart.com/free-sample/

 

[Snarls]

So I tightened all my bolts, made sure everything was level, and lubed up the bearings. I also printed some belt tensioners for the X and Y axis. I was looking at some prints from yesterday and realized that the 0.4mm and 0.2mm prints looked similar, too similar. Turns out I was not adjusting the layer height the correct way *facepalm*. I changed to 0.2mm for real and did a quick calibration square perimeter. It turned out amazing. The walls are absolutely flawless with the exception of some interesting line pattern going diagonal up the walls, and some warping due to my unheated bed.



I tried printing the Eiffel tower 2D again and got no Y shift...in return for some X shift on the 6th layer or so. There are a lot of quick movements in this design so I'm thinking it could be an acceleration issue. I turned up the X stepper current a little more anyway. I then printed a little boat called "3D Benchy" that claims to put all aspects of your printer to the test. I scaled it down at least 50% though to save some time. It still came out pretty darn good. The hull could be smoother, and the infill is just a hair too little, but some of the details such as the steering wheel and pipe in the back totally show up. Last for the night I printed Marvin again with 0.1mm layers. He also turned out great. The sphericalness of his head is really well defined. Biggest issue with him is doing overhangs. That is no surprise as I have not really looked into that yet. I'll probably investigate into a fan setup and some settings to tweak that out.

 

[jhitesma]

Wow, that's a better marvin than I've got yet! I just can't get the loop to come out well at all, my bridging is really poor.

But...going through the settings just a little bit ago in slic3r I noticed something I hadn't before. Apparently the config provided by folger specifies a 0.5mm nozzle but they only ship 0.4mm nozzles!

Just changed that and did a print of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:662447 in ABS and while it's still cooling on the bed...it looks really good. I did one in PLA earlier for the older sister of one of my daughters friends and even though I used the "Larger gap PLA" version the gears didn't move. I'm still not getting as smooth of an exterior surface from ABS as I am from PLA...but this looks like once it cools the gears have a very good chance of actually moving.



I printed one of these earlier in PLA for printing with PLA: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1161013 But it came out super ugly. Not sure why...While I have the ABS loaded up I'm probably going to do one more try on it though since I'd rather all my printer parts be ABS. I haven't got the 4 bearing X carriage to print in ABS yet...but since turning down the X stepper X has been nice and quiet and hasn't skipped. So I'm not as worried about stepping up to that carrier as I was before.

The Y is still driving me crazy today. It's getting noisy again and I'm getting Y jumps more and more often it seems. The stepper is still ice cold, by far the coldest of them all - but it's driver is running a little hotter (still no problem keeping my finger on the heat sink though. Since that's the bigger 5.2kg stepper I'm thinking about turning it's current back up higher like it was originally. Just not sure what the ratings on it are....

Got a tip on the #folgertech irc channel about these keysan steppers: http://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/MK00742 Killer price on some great steppers that are way nicer than the ones folger provides...really tempted to pick up a few to try on the X/Y at least at that price.

 

[jhitesma]

Woo Hoo - they work!

I thought experiencing my first print was exciting...seeing those gears move is even cooler

Also, just got a tip on the folger IRC channel that Atomic had some clearance special PETG (B grade - but apparently only due to 0.10mm variations which is less than I'm seeing on the ABS and PLA I got from Folger) so I snagged the last roll. Wife won't be happy about the extra spending...but it's a royal blue color so if I print her a few UK logo's I'm sure all will be forgiven

 

[jhitesma]

While I had the ABS loaded up last night and seeing how much better it bridged on the heart gears I figured I'd give it a try on a few other things.

There are a few other little differences at work here as well. Like having my nozzle size set to 0.4 instead of 0.5 in slic3r, and I turned down my non-print move travel speed from 150mm/s to 100mm/s to try and solve the problems with my Y axis jumping. That seem to have significantly slowed my prints...in fact they seem slower during print moves as well and I'm not sure why since I didn't change anything that should affect that - probably just my perception being off. The other thing I changed was switching slic3r's "seam position" from "Aligned" to "Nearest" to try and minimize the big non-printing moves that I suspect are causing my Y jumps. Finally I'm also printing off of SDcard instead of directly from repetier now. It's an extra step but I noticed my prints pausing at times when my computer got wonky so I figured getting the computer out of the equation removes one more source of potential print failure.

The issues I had with bridging on PLA are almost totally gone with ABS - look forward to trying PLA with a print cooling fan to see if the bridging improves there that way. But I'm still having issues with the surface finish on ABS. One person on IRC told me it looked either Z axis issues (still need to install these lead screws!) or overextrusion. I tried dialing back my esteps interactively through the LCD while printing marvin, but while I did see the infill change the overall exterior quality didn't get much better or worse.



The little loop on marvin came out great with ABS, but it looks like I may have sliced him at 0.3mm. Could have sworn I did him at 0.2 but it just looks like thick layers. Really need to dial in my ABS extrusion still...but just not in a hurry until I finish the X/Z rebuild. I really tend to suspect it's the extrusion rather than the Z causing my surface issues with ABS since I'm not seeing those issues with PLA. I suppose it could also be that I did the autotune PID on my extruder at PLA temps so maybe it's not holding temp as well at ABS temps...though watching the LCD it seems fairly consistent.

I originally printed this cooling duct in the orange PLA - but as you can probably see it came out really ugly. I'm pretty sure this is the same bridging/overhang issue I've been experiencing with PLA due to the lack of such a fan. Since I had the ABS loaded up I went ahead and printed another one in ABS.



Again, the ABS one came out much better overall...but with much worse surface quality.

Finally I gave 3DBenchy another go now that I have my bed adhesion issues worked out and to see how it did in ABS. It came out great. The surface is some of the best I've got out of ABS yet and the dimensions are REALLY good, other than the chimney on top which came out kind of goopy. Even the worst of the dimensions were only off by about 0.5mm, most were within 0.05mm in all directions.

Bottom text came out nice and clean.


Hard to see but the stern nameplate is there...but I can't read it.


Few small spots that came out worse than others but overall it came out very nice I thought!


Z motor raisers are printing now. If they come out ok then later today I'll dig in on the leadscrew upgrade. But also have to get our RV ready for an upcoming camping trip and take care of a few other domestic chores. Good thing these mounts are going to take over 3 hours to print...gives me time to get my other tasks done

 

[jhitesma]

Designed and printed my first part from scratch today!



What's so special about this funnel? How did I design it? What was involved in printing it?

Well, I just typed that all up on my blog and I'm too tired to do it again here So I hate to do this but...you'll have to read the details on my blog this time: http://www.nevermindthesand.com/2016/01/04/first-3d-part-from-scratch/

 

[Snarls]

Nice print! Funny enough I also printed my first custom design yesterday. I made a quick prop wrench for my zmr in CAD and sent it over to the printer. Turned out great, except for the last layer where it added bumps on the top for some reason. I also printed two LCD mounts. I was going to print the LCD front casing, but my printer stopped extruding quickly into the first layer. I tried clearing it and started the print again, but only got a little bit further down the first layer. I think one part of the bed was slightly off and the nozzle scraped up some blue tape, clogging the nozzle. Today I will try to unclog it. I'll post pics of the new stuff later.

 

[jhitesma]

LCD casing is on my list...just can't decide on a design

Got a couple of nice packages in the mail today.

1st a small padded pouch from Folger. Inside, as expected, were a new hotend and a replacement fan for my extruder. I've managed to patch the original parts into service but it's nice that I have official replacements now, and a spare hotend is quite welcome. I noticed last night that mine has been leaking a bit where the heated block screws into the heat break. Not bad, but there's a small pile of well cooked plastic up there. I guess this is fairly common and not unexpected from what I've heard.

2nd my sample filaments from Cubicity. I took full advantage of their samples and ordered the maximum 10 allowed:
Reference Product Unit price Quantity Total price
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : bioFila Linen - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : bioFila Silk - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : ExcelFil PLA - Arctic Silver - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : ExcelFil PLA - Coal Black - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : ExcelFil PLA - Sky Blue - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : ExcelFil TECH - Aluminum - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : ExcelFil TECH - Wood - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : eco3D - Plaster - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : eco3D - Oak - 1.75mm
Free Filament Samples - Select Sample : eco3D - PLA Light Diffusion - 1.75mm

Having the spare hot end will be nice for trying the wood and aluminum samples since they can be a bit rough on nozzles I hear. The bioFila stuff I haven't heard much good about...but figured it may be interesting to try, and besides I didn't want to just order a bunch of different colors of PLA

But probably won't start playing with the various filaments for a few days. Really want to get the Z upgrades done...but have to finish a little quadcopter video about some motors I was sent to review.

Kind of wish I had a second printer now so I could let one print while I upgrade the other

Hmm...I do have some spare arduino's, a couple of stepper drivers, some rods and steppers salvaged from printers and collating machines...and 3 complete sets of plastic parts now. Maybe I should print up some original prusa brackets and build a second from scratch. Well, maybe this summer. I'm in no hurry to sleep in the RV full time and I'm pretty sure that's what would happen if my wife caught me building a 2nd printer. She's gone from quiet acceptance, to intrigue, to excitement, and now seems to be drifting towards slight disapproval that it's been printing almost non-stop if I'm in the house

 

[Snarls]

Fixed my extruder issue for now. I cleaned out the nozzle with a flame and that did not solve the issue. Gave me an opportunity to clean the hot end and remove some of the goop oozing from the heated block which I had as well. Started it up and nothing would extrude, I could push filament through, but the stepper did nothing. Opened it up and turns out the hobbed bolt was completely loose around the stepper shaft. Tightened it back on and everything works again.

After a quick test print of a 5mm wall square to confirm functioning I went ahead and printed the LCD cover. About 10 mins in I was getting some pretty bad warping from the corners. The beginning of the cover is a large, thin sheet so it is no surprise that it started warping on an unheated blue tape bed. I decided to try to salvage the print as I really did not want to start over. I paused the print and applied some CA to each corner. This worked pretty well and I finished the print. About half way through some of the edges started to develop bumps like I described with my prop wrench earlier. Not sure what causes it, perhaps poor spacing between. Luckily the printed is still able to print over the bumps and it does not look too bad. You can see the difference between smooth layers (bottom) and when the bumps developed (top) in one of the pics below. When it was done (2.5hrs later) I ripped the piece off along with the blue tape I glued it too. Good thing about being PLA is that I can take some acetone to help me remove the CA and tape. Overall it looks good for being my biggest and longest print yet and that I was able to salvage it.





After that I quickly printed up the knob for the LCD and another prop wrench because for some reason it it only 3 mins longer to print both the wrench and knob than the knob alone. Knob turned out fine with some gaps in the infill that I'm still tweaking out. The prop wrench turned out a little better than the last, but there are still bumps on the top layer. I'm thinking the printer/slic3r has a problem with very small chamfered edges. The printer is also still in its temporary testing place of my not so sturdy computer desk. So there may be some strange resonance/noise that will be eliminated when I move it to a more permanent spot.



Almost ready to put the LCD on the printer. A bit of sanding to get the parts to fit a little better and it will be good to go.

 

[jhitesma]

Snarls - have you checked the current on your steppers? If not you do it by measuring the voltage between the adjustment pot on the stepper drivers and one of the negative output terminals on the RAMPS board (like the one to the heated bed.) Mine all came set to 0.61 give or take 0.02v or so. Which is apparently 750ma and the max that the smaller steppers should be run at (since they're rated for 1A but you should stay 25% beneath that to keep them from overheating.) I turned them down to .42v which is a bit over 500ma and a lot safer/quieter...except then my Y started skipping but it's a bigger stepper so I turned it back up to 0.61 and it hasn't skipped since. (though I also switched to only printing from the SD card so it could also be eliminating my ancient computer from the mix that solved that issue.)

Reason I ask is I wonder if your issue with things getting ugly over time could be due to something overheating. You also ran an autotune on your PID right? Maybe your extruder isn't holding temp well?

My printer is down for at least 24 hours

Dug in on doing the lead screw upgrade tonight. It's not going as easy as I anticipated.



First I spent a bit of time starting to clean up some wiring. Figured it would be good to cleanup the wires first so they wouldn't get in my way while working on the mechanical upgrades. I got the X endstop and stepper wires in some hot pink (go look at my posts in the multirotor forum if this needs explaining ) paracord. And the heated bed plate in some black expanding wire loom. Then decided I needed to tackle the Z motor wires since they're the shortest wire runs resulting in the biggest pile of excess wire.



But..thankfully before before I cut them it dawned on me...adding the motor standoffs is going to make those wire runs a little longer. So I had better add the motor standoffs first.



I mean I paid way too much for bearings at the local skate shop yesterday so I wouldn't have to wait two days for amazon prime to get me some cheap ones...better dig in!

Except that didn't go well. I found that the design of these standoffs is not much to my liking. The parts that attach to the motor have sloped faces where the screws seat. Well, three out of four on each mount do:



Vs - Not sloped:


Not sure why they were designed like this but looking at them in repetier it's obvious that only one has a recessed bolt hole, the other 3 don't.

Ideally I'd like to stop now, re-work the parts so they all have a recessed hole and then reprint them before continuing. But by the time I discovered this I already had the steppers off.

No big deal I thought...I'll just add the lead screws and not the standoffs. The standoffs are listed as a separate entry on thingiverse so they're a separate upgrade from adding the leadscrews.

So I dug myself deeper. Took the entire X and Z assemblies fully apart. Installed my new plastics on the ends of the X carriage...much snugger fit than the stock pieces on my polished rods...made a few noises that worried me as I pressed them in...but nothing LOOKS broken. LM8UU's fit snugger in these new parts than they did in the factory parts...and that's without adding the cinch bolts the upgraded parts have provisions for. Starting to think this leadscrew upgrade will go easier than I anticipated.

Then I re-installed the X axis assembly and tried to remount the Z motors.

And realized things aren't so good.

The larger flexible couplers needed for the 8mm lead screws won't clear the vertical chrome rods without the motor standoffs to raise the motor and couplers above the mounts

So I'm stuck for the night.

Looks like tomorrow I'll have to hit the hardware store for some longer screws so I can get it back together tomorrow.

And here I am with this big stack of semi-exotic filament samples and a brand new hot end waiting for me to experiment

I did do a print of this before taking it apart today: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44579

It mostly came out...but I was overextruding so even with 0.4mm gaps it's stuck solid. And despite doing it in ABS I had an issue with the last two layers before the top printed not quite sticking so most of the top right fell in. The last layer stuck but it's definitely not a great print. My daughter still likes it even if it doesn't open and doesn't lock...but I'm itching to get this thing back together and see if I can't do it in PLA now that I have a cooling fan for prints to try

 

[jhitesma]

Woo Hoo, it's alive again!



Going to have to get more hot pink paracord to finish cleaning up the wiring. Also ordered a couple hundred dupont connector female pins so I'll be sure to have enough to shorten up the wires later this week.

Getting the lead screws installed was a LOT more work than I expected. I ended up using an xacto to trim out the bevels in the motor stand-offs. I figure eventually I'll end up printing a new set with proper screw recesses. Or...maybe this modified version I hadn't noticed before: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1163407 It says it needs support to print but I bet in ABS I could pull it off without.

I'm definitely going to end up re-printing and rebuilding this one more time. I think I was running my hotend too cold for the ABS because there are a few spots were I've noticed some layers starting to separate while I was working on them with the knife. And the X motor mount piece the X rod holes were a little tight and when I pushed them in it looks like one spot is separating a little bit.

It was also REALLY hard to get the LM8UU's into the new X ends, I haven't added the cinch bolts yet since they're so tight as is.

The hardest part was getting the vertical chrome rods parallel again due to how much snugger the horizontal X rods fit in the ends. And getting the leadscrews installed was tricky. I mounted the flexible couplers to the motors first, then mounted the motors to the standoffs then mounted the standoffs to the motor brackets...I used the big pile of extra screws that came with the kit for that - but they ended up being too long and blocking me from tightening the mounts to the frame...so out came the dremel to shorten them.

Final hard part was getting the leadscrews up into the flexible couplers...but a bit of gentle wiggling and they eventually went into place.

Then once I had it in took me 3 tries to get my bed level

But once I got it my first print came out great:




The print fan is in place but I haven't wired it up yet so this was still without the fan. It also took 45 minutes instead of the normal 15 because I accidentally printed it with a lot more infill than I meant to. Still, it's the nicest layers and overhand/bridging I've gotten from PLA yet!

Tomorrow night I'll wire up that print fan and do some fine tuning on calibrations now that I'm not planning on major mechanical changes right away. I do plan on reprinting and rebuilding...but not for a few weeks.

 

[Snarls]

I checked the stepper currents and found all to be around .4-.5 with the exception of the x axis which was .23. I turned x up, but it got really hot eventually so I turned it back down. Yesterday I was battling both the bumpy extrusion and warping yesterday. Its been colder around here and the house is cooler so I think that is contributing to my parts not sticking to the bed as much as they used to. The bumps are still a little bit of a mystery. On smaller printers like the calibration steps and marvin they do not show up. It seems to be thin (1-3mm) walled pieces that have the bumps ocurring. So my current theory is that the extruder is overextruding and in the 2-3 passes along a line it needs to make a wall it ends up running into excess plastic which causes thr nozzle to raise and lower which results in bumps. Anyway I printed a fan for the extruder that takea advantage of the current fan position. Not sure how well it works, and it is in PLA so well see how it holds up. I also installed my lcd screen. Did a few prints from an SD card and it seems to work well.





Bump issue is still at large, but I'm heading out of town for a few days so Ill have to give the printer a rest.