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Using an Anet A6 3D printer in the UK... (mains voltage issue!) | The UK uses 230 V mains voltage. The 220 V designation is from the past, Europe is now using 230 V. You do not have to worry about the frequency.
You should place the switch to 220 V and plug the cord into the socket. The printer should start immediately booting (cycling) the printer firmware, the LCD should light up and the cold end cooling fan will spin (annoyingly).
If nothing happens, you need to check the Power Supply Unit (PSU) and all cables for proper connection (does the fan of the PSU spin if it has one, you should at least see a led light up). A multimeter is not expensive and generally very valuable to test if it outputs 12 V. That way you know the PSU is working or not, if it works the problem is at the main printer board.
As these PSU's are pretty cheap and faulty, you could well have received a broken one.
How to measure the voltage?
If you look at the connection terminals you will find labels above them. Measuring position 6 and 8 might be the incorrect ones, this depends on your PSU. If you have exactly the same PSU as from the linked video, measuring between 6 and 8 would be correct:
From the image above the connections from left to right (for other PSU units, the order may be different, I have units where the connection to the mains is on the right):
L, N and ground are used for connection to the mains,
COM (stands for common or 0 V) or sometimes denoted as -V is the output ground (negative, connection for the black wires) and
+V is positive, connection for the red wires.
You need to measure the voltage difference over COM and +V, this should be the voltage of the power supply. Ideally you measure the voltage when the power supply is delivering a load (e.g. directly connected to a strip of LEDs or directly connected to the heated bed; some faulty PSU crash in under load, this can be seen by a lower voltage than the rated voltage).
If the PSU is correctly wired, your fuse is not broken, does not have a LED lighted and the voltage is zero the unit is defective. |
Can I really throw failed PLA prints on compost? | This question has been asked on just about every forum out there. Here's one example from filabot.com .
The reality however, is that this process will take several hundred
years in a typical landfill. To biodegrade, PLA requires a laundry
list of conditions to effectively break down. Specifically - oxygen, a
temperature of 140+ degrees *[Fahrenheit -- ed note] *, and a 2/3 cocktail of organic substrate.
Collectively, these are absent in any scenario outside of industrial
composting facilities.
I found similar comments -- tho' with perhaps slightly lower temperatures elsewhere. |
Delta 3D printer extruder? | My FLSUN Kossel 3D Delta printer ($224) has a bowden extruder. It works really well too.
The main advantage of having one is that it reduces the mass of the hot end. That means less inertia, and it's easier on the driver motors as well. All this leads to (hopefully) greater and more precise control at the extruder tip, and, best of all, faster printing. |
Finding a shredder for my failed prints | there is a project called precious plastic and there is a plastic shredder, but it is a rather expensive solution.
As I am waiting for parts for my Lyman extruder, my plan is to hammer the parts and then process in old kitchen robot with steel working area, an example here
The paper shredder will be ok as long as you can feed it with plastic. |
Will this MOSFET allow the heat bed to run at a different voltage than the control board | Short answer YES. You can run it from a different power supply at a higher voltage. Also it has a PC817 Optical isolator (for some reason) therefore the second power supply and your main board should not be electrically connected at all. |
Z-axis of Anet A8 always moves additional 5 mm upwards when moving X and Y-axis in Ultimaker Cura | Answer taken from OP's question
(24.01.2019) UPDATE: I updated Marlin to 1.1.9 and used the configuration from repository. Since I also printed a new print head (for Bowden extruder) I had to rework all offsets. Same time I switched to Simplify3D (cause I need better control for support blocks). Since then the problem disappeared (not surprised). I could not figure out what setting caused my problem. Thank you! |
Beginner FreeCAD question on axes when sketching | This answer assumes you're working in the Part Design workbench.
So you want to adjust the starting height of a pad or pocket. There are two ways I can think of to do this easily.
Adjust the Z attachment value of the sketch to lower the sketch below the surface.
Use the "two dimensions" option in the pad/pocket operation and set the second value negative.
By the way, it is highly suggested not to attach a sketch to a surface. The current development version (0.19) and previous versions have an issue ("topographical naming") where editing a previous feature can change the internal name of a face causing the attachment to break. There is a solution under development but it doesn't loom like it will get in earlier than 0.20. You should instead simply adjust the Z attachment value to match the face you want.
Also, there is a very active (and very helpful) forum here. I'd suggest asking further FreeCAD questions there. |
Skipping Y-steps, only when using Ultimaker Cura | You answered your own question in a comment.
Yes, of course, increasing the maximum supplied current to the motor gets rid of the issue. Still, I'd rather go with lower current to limit heating up the motors. I was just wondering if there is something in the two slicing engines that makes cura provoke much harsher movements that cause the printer to lose steps... – kamuro May 21 '17 at 21:22
Motors are tough
Motors are meant to be warm, some are made to be hot. Not all motors have the same specs, but I pulled one on Amazon (link) which shows a rated temperature rise of 60°C above a rated ambient temperature of 50°C. If these specifications stack, and they should because the insulation of the motor is rated to 130°C, you can boil water on the stepper motors.
But ... other factors
But, what are the real limits, and how much current should you run through the motors?
First, many 3D printers have plastic mounts for the stepper motors. You don't want that plastic to soften. It can if the motors get too hot. I've seen it in a commercial 2D printer, and gnashing of teeth across the Pacific ensued. Even for PLA, that temperature is uncomfortable to human flesh. I soften PLA at 75°C when fitting tight parts, but PETG and ABS are good for higher temperatures.
Low current hurts accuracy
Motors are remarkably linear converters of current to torque, but they still have non-linearities at the limits. This matters most when micro-stepping, which (AFAIK) all 3D printers use for higher resolution.
Two factors hurt accuracy at lower currents when micro-stepping.
Non-linearities in the drivers result in magnetic fields that do not linearly align with the commanded drive strength. The torque is not exactly what is needed to position the motor between the poles at the correct angle.
Static friction, sometimes called stiction, requires additional torque to overcome. In a slow micro-stepping move, this will result in the motion hanging back, then jumping ahead. Motion can be ragged rather than smooth. Extrusion can be pulsating rather than smooth.
Both are improved by applying enough current to the motor to generate enough torque. More current gives more heat, but also better behavior and performance.
Power up the motors!
They can take it. Check their mounts to be sure the mounts aren't underdesigned.
Why Cura and not Slic3r?
A deeply detailed review of the g-code would be needed. It could be as simple as the direction of infill, or the preferred direction of your model compared with the direction chosen by the two slicers.
It could be some limits coded into the "custom g-code" portion of the two slicers. I am not familiar with Cura, but Slic3r allows you to insert additional g-code under many situations. Something brought in with a printer profile may be limiting acceleration of jerk.
Could be differences in fan setting, or almost anything.
When you are dealing with a marginal situation, and it sounds like this is right on the edge, very small differences can cause dramatic changes in how the whole system responds. 3D printers are complex systems, with resonances, many vibration modes, non-linear friction. Knowing for sure may be beyond the scope of your and our engineering tools.
Don't operate on the Margins
Set the motors to the proper current levels. Set the bed to the proper height. Set the hot end to the right temperature. Try to always stay in the sweet spot. Your prints will reward you. |
I am using a stereo 3D pen. What surface should I use? | You could use a piece of glass, that's what most people using 3D printers have as a build surface. An easy source of glass for pen use would be a picture frame but the edges are likely sharp so be careful. Acrylic would also work and is easily obtained in small pieces from places like Lowes/Home Depot, I used Acrylic for some time on my Kossel. The plastic can stick to Acrylic very well but I had no issues using it with my printer, just test it out and see what process works if you go that route. |
Is there a slicer that can set the print speed for each layer as a function of the layer area? | Most slicers have a feature in their cooling settings to "slow down if layer print time is below xxx".
Setting this to a higher value should ensure that small / short layers aren't printed too fast, so that cooling is still reliable.
Shorter layers are slowed down linearly to reach the specified minimum time - unless a "minimum print speed" is also set. |
Upgrading to silicone heat bed, will it burn my house down? | The heated bed port on your board has a 11A fuse. It will not work for a heated bed requiring 16A of current, no matter how good the MOSFETs might be. Note that the terminal block might also not be rated for that much current. You'd have to check, because often it is not the MOSFET itself that catches fire but the wiring or terminal blocks.
Also, keep in mind RAMPS only drives the gate with 5V. The value specified in the datasheet (for 10V) plus 20% is probably a bit optimistic. The datasheet doesn't specify the resistance at 5V, so you're guessing at what the resistance might be. Since you're already running the part quite close to its limits, and considering ambient temperature might rise above 25C, I'd be cautious. The designers of that board only intended it for use at 11A, probably with good reason... |
Change Slic3r settings for left handed coordinate system | The direction of the end stop is set in the firmware of the printer. Even with different setup end stops, you should be able to get a correct coordinate system without mirroring axes in slicers. This would be the preferred method to fix your problem!
E.g. my Ultimaker 3 Extended homes the Z on Z max having the platform at the bottom of the machine, a calibrated offset determines the actual Z=0.
Not knowing which firmware you are using, in e.g. Marlin Firmware this is set by code lines in the file Configuration.h:
// Direction of endstops when homing; 1=MAX, -1=MIN
// :[-1,1]
#define X_HOME_DIR -1
#define Y_HOME_DIR -1
#define Z_HOME_DIR -1
Your end stop triggers at the maximum of the Y axis, so you need to configure it as a MAX end stop, i.e. use the Y_MAX pins by defining (search for the Endstop Settings section, note to also disable the YMIN endstop):
//#define USE_YMIN_PLUG // This disables the YMIN endstop
#define USE_YMAX_PLUG // This enables the YMAX endstop
and change the homing direction (Y_HOME_DIR) to 1:
#define Y_HOME_DIR 1 // This tells the printer where the endstop is located: positive for YMAX direction
Otherwise when used at Y_MIN endstop and the homing direction set to -1, the axis is reversed as you experienced. |
Labists ET4 printer nozzle hits bed after automatic levelling | Dirt. It was dirt. Most likely.
Apparently the machine establishes bed level with a sensor, and I might be wrong, but I think the ET4 monitors capacitance as a means to notice how far the nozzle is from the bed.
After all else failed I looked at the nozzle closely and noticed that the whole thing looked fuzzy. Looks like soot (from where though!?) had settled on the machine's sensitive components and de facto blind-folded its sensor.
A wipe and a levelling later, all was back to normal. Yay! |
TEVO Tarantula under extrusion | Summarizing for correct understanding: you measured 100 mm without the hotend heated and attached and about 50mm attached and at temperature but not hearing any clicks using a pretty long Bowden tube?
Bowden setups require a little more torque to push the filament all the way to the hotend. I've experienced this with my own 2.85 mm setup when I converted a 1.75 mm BullDog extruder to accept 2.85 mm filament. Your problem is most probably caused by filament not being gripped by the extruder gear and causing slipping on the filament (this does not necessarily mean that you hear clicking!). The Titan is a geared extruder so you should get more torque than a direct setup; this is exactly why you don't hear clicking, the gear turns but does not move the filament. Please inspect your filament after the extruder by removing the Bowden tube; ideally this should show you a regular pattern of the extruder gear.
What you can do to prevent this is to put more pressure on the filament by adjusting the pressure of the spring. In my setup I use some screws to get the spring out of the equation and clamp it directly only tightening the screws by hand (when switching filament I need to unscrew these).
You should also PID tune your hotend to be sure that the heater is optimally tuned to keep the hotend at a certain temperature level. |
Power supply not working | I would expect the root cause to simply be the power supply itself.
5 Ω is a reasonable resistance for a 12 V / 30 W heater. It seems strange that you are not seeing continuity in the heated bed as this should also have a low resistance (since it's a heater as well). This might be worth investigating further, but I think it's more likely the power supply itself is the cause (and you simply made a measurement error). |
PETG grinding with direct drive extruder | This does sound a lot like you are experiencing the effects of heat creep (How is heat creep characterized?). You should lower the temperature of the hotend and increase the printing speed and retraction speed and possibly lower the retraction length.
If this is heat creep, a new extruder will not help you until you solve the heat creep first. A new hotend that can be cooled better might be a better solution. |
Replacing jerk with ridiculously high acceleration? | In order to evaluate whether this is possible, it's necessary to realize that following a curved path with zero jerk (in the classic jerk sense) requires stopping and restarting at each junction point in the piecewise-linear approximation of the curve that occurs in the gcode. This is because there's no way to accelerate/decelerate the individual axes continuously through a non-smooth corner. So paradoxically, as the number of segments approximating a curve goes to infinity, speed goes to zero. If the length of any one segment is bounded below by a constant, then acceleration can be chosen high enough to ensure that arbitrarily close to 100% of the segment is at full nominal speed. For example, for a minimum length of 0.1 mm, speed of 60 mm/s, reaching speed in 10% of the nominal segment time (1.6 ms) would take an acceleration of 360000 mm/s². So, not happening.
On the other hand, with very low but nonzero (classic) jerk, just to handle the matter of smooth curves approximated by small segments, this might be practical. Just looking at 90 degree cornering between segments long enough to run at nominal speed, to match the time spent cornering with 60 mm/s speed, 20 mm/s jerk, and 3000 mm/s² acceleration, it should only take 4500 mm/s² acceleration (original, scaled by 60/(60-20) to account for having to decelerate/accelerate to/from 0 instead of 20). This is completely reasonable.
How small can jerk be without breaking motion for approximations of smooth curves? As the number of segments approaches infinity, the lower bound should go to zero. For a circle approximated with 15° steps, one component of the change in velocity looks like it can be around 25%, so "25% of nominal speed" seems to be what you get. Oops. For 60 mm/s, that's 15 mm/s. Not very low at all. I may have gotten this math wrong; I'll review it later. But it doesn't look good for declaring this practical. |
Irregular 3D printed part | Your print isn't cooling fast enough. With small, thin prints like this, PLA needs a fair bit of airflow to solidify before the next layer goes down. Your printer doesn't appear to have a proper print-cooling fan, so I have two suggestions:
Print two or even three of the part at the same time, spaced a fair distance apart on the build plate. This will give each of them time to cool.
Point a box fan into the front of the printer to get good airflow over the print. |
Home-brew alcohol to clean resin prints | Isopropyl-Alcohol - Propan-2-ol - and Ethyl alcohol - Ethan-1-ol - are different chemically. As a secondary alcohol, Propan-2-ol has quite different solubility of different materials than ethyl-alcohol.
Now, let's look at home made alcoholic destillate. That stuff is, if done in one refraction and without tossing the first low temperature part, some percentages Metanol, Ethyl alcohol and maybe some water. That has not the same solvent properties as Propan-2-ol.
While it might work, nobody will sign a guarantee that it doesn't negatively impact your print. |
OctoPi command v412-ctl not found | It's an l (ell) not a 1 (one). v4l2-ctl. |
Which connectors should I use to connect my Power Supply Unit to the Ramps? | You're quite right :)
L (AC): Brown colour. Single Phase line or Three Phase Line (L1)
N (AC): Blue colour. Neutral
GND: Green and yellow colours. Protective earth or ground (PE)
COM: DC Negative (-) - Also referred to as "Common"
V+: DC Positive (+)
V(ADJ). This is for a potentiometer, in order to modify the output voltage. You won't need this unless your power supply is far off.
The way to go about these things is to connect the AC side and to connect a multimeter to the output terminals (V+ and COM, there are two of them in case you need to wire up more than one connection). I like to lightly tighten down the probes under the terminals, that way you don't have to mess with the connections with the mains terminals exposed.
Now you can plug in the power supply (PSU) and make sure it doesn't start smoking or sparking.
Verify that the PSU is outputting DC 12V (that seems to be the voltage required by your Ramps board according to the picture). After that, you can connect it to the Ramps board (remember to disconnect the PSU before rewiring). If the voltage is anything but around 12 V (+/- 0.5VDC should be safe), you need to verify that the PSU is the correct type for your application. |
Is there a method or S/W available to stitch together a DLP projector's output into a "moving picture" to SLA print in a larger area than its output? | Cool Idea.
I know using a projector sounds like solution; but, I in practice, think it is going to be difficult.
My concern with trying to use a projector would be two-fold.
It would have to project on a large flat surface. Since basic optics wants to focus on a sphere, when projecting on a flat surface you have to adjust for a focus distance that varies with angle and also deal with keysoning. I know this is a common problem fro projectors; but, there is no perfect solution so either. The focus issue may be solvable with custom optics; but, that is not something that is easy to DIY. The keystoning could be corrected for with optics and/or in software; but even then you are going to have inconsistent resolution. Not only that; but, the problem gets worse the wider and closer you are, which is EXACLY what you want to do.
I would be concerned that the frequency range that the SLA resin cures at will be outside the normal range of projector so you would require A LOT more power/time to get it to cure.
On the other hand, lasers light projectors are a well established technology. They moved into the entertainment space quite a few years ago; so, I suspect you could get one that covers the space you are interested in for a reasonable price.
Since laser beams are very narrow, focus should not be an issue. Keysoning can be easily accounted for in the sweep algorithm.
You could choose the frequency of the laser to that it in the most efficient curing frequency for the resin you want to use. |
Are stepper flex couplings important? How important? | Yes and No
Let's start with the obvious: Flex couplings or rigid couplings are a deliberate choice in designing the printer. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. So let's look into the 4 types of drive-train setups that I know to be possible:
Spiral couplings make it possible to operate the machine with a slightly misaligned motor to the shaft (<1°) but can add a measurable slop, which can be seen as a systemic error.
Rigid couplings have minimal slop but need to be much better aligned by the user in setup.
No coupling at all - direct drive to the shaft - has no slop at all, but is both more expensive and needs the most diligent work on setup.
Geared. You could couple the motor with the Z-Axis via gears, allowing to trade speed for detail and vice versa. It also can allow mounting the motor 90° to the printer, but it also adds some backlash and slop. Because good gears are expensive, this is really rare.
Using spiral couplers right
A spiral coupler can actually be used in two ways:
Keeping the leadscrew tensioned into a position.
This butts both parts together, it reduces the slop induced by the coupler to the minimum, but you need to forcefully make sure that the parts push together. You lose some of the misalignment-correction.
Decouple vibrations from one shaft to another.
This keeps a little gap between the two. The slop can be larger, but you get the benefit of the shafts on both sides not transmitting all the vibrations 1:1 to the other shaft and you get more self-realignment if the motor and shaft are not perfectly coaxial.
What is better?
Well, it depends. If you want the perfect drive, you'd go direct drive. If you want the finest motor control (by virtue of getting the steps to a much smaller rotation), you might use gears. But the spring-coupler allows you to do the setup easier for a consumer that might not be the most reliable in setting it up himself. Making the spring-coupler butted can increase repeatability and reduce slop to almost the same as a stiff coupler but not lose the ability to have a slightly crooked setup that still works. |
Cura imports FreeCAD stl wrong | I suspect that your method to create the hole for the pins may not be consistent with the modeling practice that FreeCad and other programs of this nature require.
Consider the following:
Import your base shape.
Create a second shape that matches the hole you wish to create. It must be a solid object, not a plane or other single surface item.
Consult one of the many FreeCad tutorials that present the method to use next, that is to place the shape to be subtracted in the desired location, then perform a Boolean operation involving both objects. In the linked tutorial, it's referred to as a cut, which is an accurate description.
Performing this action will create a surface where the two objects intersect, removing the smaller one, leaving a solid, rather than a zero thickness surface.
You would then create and place the cylinders in a manner consistent with the original model. |
Delta printer printing incorrect dimensions in X and Y directions. Z dimensions are correct | As detailed at minow.blogspot.com (which I found very helpful for the most part - it was the first link in the answer to my related question) you need to check/adjust the zero in front of each tower, check the zero in the center, tweak the radius, and repeat (checking the zeros at the edge of the bed in front of each tower again) until it's correct.
After that you adjust the rod length to correct XY size (and recheck all 4 zeros, thus the radius - it makes for a less than exciting day, but is worth it in the long run.)
You either need to turn off EEPROM until you have the right settings, or save the setting to EEPROM each time - depends how worried you are about using up EEPROM write cycles, I guess.
You should also turn off auto-bed-levelling while getting the basic calibration correct, per the same blog instructions.
My fun with figuring out what my EEPROM was doing behind my back is here:
Delta printer not responding to changes in DELTA_RADIUS |
24 V heated bed from -12 V and +12 V ATX power supply? | No, this is not possible with most ATX power supplies. While in principle you can get a 24V supply by combining the +12V and -12V supplies, the rails are not symmetric, and the negative 12V supply is usually designed for a much lower load than the positive supply. In the example in the following picture, there are two positive 12V rails, capable of sourcing respectively 12A and 15A each, but the -12V rail is only good for sinking 0.5A. If you tried doing what you're proposing, using this supply, you'd be limited to only 0.5A from your "24V" supply.
It is very unlikely that you'll find an ATX power supply with a negative 12V rail capable of sinking significant current since computers don't need such large amounts of current from their negative supplies.
There are also issues with using a MOSFET as you describe. I assume that by MOSFET you are referring to a complete board with various support components, and not just a bare MOSFET by itself. Usually these boards have optocouplers and thus they will probably work correctly, but using just a MOSFET by itself this would not work, as the gate needs to be driven below GND (namely: to below -12V plus the gate threshold) to turn the MOSFET off. |
New PETG spool from eSUN is making popping sound while extruding | The extruder can't hold much water and transport it to the melt zone. Filament can. The printer behaves like the filament is wet, so try drying it.
Try putting the filament in your electric oven at the lowest temperature (often 170 °F to 180 °F) for an hour and see if the behavior improves.
Keep the filament at a distance from (or shield it from) the heating elements. |
Object's height not a multiple of layer height | Slicers will round off to the next nearest layer, so 20.2 mm in your case. However, you can get to 20.1 mm if you use a 0.3 mm first layer. |
What do I need to know to successfully use Taulman/Dow EVOLV3D™ USM Universal Support Material? | Advice From Taulman
On emailing Taulman asking for advice (after getting some initial failed prints), they responded with the following:
[...W]e use the following settings. Support:
Flow 115 %
Infill = 8-10 %
2 full surfaces at 100 %
Support speed 50 % of print speed.
What I've learned trying to apply that advice:
Turning the flow percentage up as advised is a good idea.
17 mm/s is definitely much too fast for this material -- at that speed it's more likely to stick to the nozzle than to the base layer -- but at 8.5 mm/s it prints well.
The advice to keep the infill percentage low is solid if you want to be able to mechanically remove any readily accessible sections. I've tried a print with 30 % infill after trying to diagnose a failure (more on that below), and while the print came out well, the support infill couldn't be mechanically removed, and was also very slow to dissolve (see below).
On Support Removal
At Taulman's recommended 10 %-or-below infill percentage, any accessible parts can be mechanically removed. At 30 %, that's not really possible anymore -- though 5-10 minutes in boiling water might get the edges loosened up enough to let the bulk of the material be scooped away.
If you're just going to let it sit in tap water that isn't being circulated, expect that to take a long time, and to have several cycles of scraping out material that's turned to a gel to allow more to be exposed.
Using boiling water speeds the process substantially. If you're using USM with a nylon (or other material that's safe to bring to 100 °C), do that.
How's Its Adherence To Nylon?
Not as strong as its adherence to itself. If you print a ceiling of USM on top of support infill of nylon, it's possible for that ceiling to come away with the print head; thus, it reduces risk of failed prints to use USM for the infill as well.
Thus, the "2 full surfaces at 100 %" advice given by Taulman above isn't (as I interpret it) just about ensuring that there's a successfully-printed support floor or ceiling; it's also about ensuring that there's enough surface area between the support floor and the nylon of the main print for them to adhere. |
Proof that Slicing Plane/STL intersection will only produce Closed-Loop Polygons? | You can't prove that because it isn't true. An STL file is just a collection of triangles. There is no guarantee that an intersection with the slicing plane will consist of closed-loop polygons. To be suitable for 3D printing an STL file should represent one or more closed, disjoint polyhedra (which would yield closed-loop polygons) but this is not always the case. Many slicers have heuristics to try and "fix" bad STL files on a best-effort basis. Especially considering the possibility of rounding errors, it is important to at least detect polygons that are almost (but not quite) closed and connect their endpoints together. |
What is the reinforcement for 3D printing concrete cement? | There is no reinforcement. You can use this ‘printing’ solution for walls but by default not for floors. There are experiments that use the solution to span a gap but they use relatively thick plates.
For example, see this paper, Design of a 3D printed concrete bridge by testing. |
Loss of extrusion in Stratasys FDM liquefier | This isn't a "turn this knob and all will be well" answer, because your machine setup sounds pretty unique to what most people will have experience with. Not being familiar with the older Stratasys printheads, but based on my overall experience with 3D printers, there are three things that could be an issue:
The nozzles are obstructed. The way you talk about clearing the jams of pushing a tool up through the nozzle end would not effectively clear a jam, it would only push the debris back into the print head, just waiting to be pushed by the plastic back into the nozzle. It could even be a piece of aluminum foil from the rebuild process. The typical way jams like this are cleared is to do a "cold pull" where you heat up the hot end just enough to be able to pull the plastic out, before it has really had a chance to liquify, hopefully trapping the debris in the plastic, then cut the end of the plastic off and reload. The 90 degree bend in their design may make this very hard if not impossible to do.
Heat creep. The tubes are a slightly smaller diameter, and if heat is creeping up the print head and letting the filament expand in these tubes, it may be expanding enough that it will no longer move through the print head. Diagnose this by letting the printer jam, then cool off for a few hours. If you can print again for a short time period before it jams again, this may be your issue, where as an obstructed nozzle would not allow any more filament out. Either turn down your temps, or increase your cooling on the print head to address (or get the original size tubes if possible).
Print head temperatures too low for the print speed. The Stratasys Fortus 250mc I use runs ABS at about 300 degrees. Many of the reprap printers run even higher than this for ABS. The other thing to remember when ever you see people mention what temperatures they use, is that this is relative, and only a guide, as what the temperature reads at the thermocouple or thermistor is usually slightly off from the temperature that is melting the plastic based on heater location in relation to the plastic and thermistor. This can be diagnosed by printing until it jams, pause the print for something like 30 seconds to let the hot end melt more plastic, and then resume printing. If resumes proper printing this may be your issue (and it will jam again shortly if you do not adjust temps). |
Is G-code read line by line? | Yes, G-code is read line by line. G-code is a numerical control programming language. It basically instructs the machine sequentially line by line to do a specific task. The printer than executes the lines one by one until it reaches the end.
If you instruct the printer to wait (G4 dwell), it will do the wait/dwell first and than will execute the next command to retract the filament. As such, your examples will not work if you want to retract the filament during the pause, you reversed the process if you want to achieve that.
To add a pause (simple) for e.g. filament changing, you should instruct the head to go to a certain position, extract the filament, and now insert the pause/dwell command. Give yourself enough time to insert and prime the nozzle and go back to the last location to continue printing.
You could insert something like (e.g. in between layer change, before G1 Zx.xx):
...
G1 X0 Y0 F2000 ; Relocate the print head
G1 F4000 E-50 ; Retract filament
G4 P40000 ; Wait for 40 seconds
G92 E50 ; The new filament should continue at this value
...
G1 Zx.xx
Depending on what happens after G1 Zx.xx, you may need to set the head back to the location prior to where it was before G1 X0 Y0 F2000.
Do note that there are pausing scripts/plugins available for e.g. Ultimaker Cura, and there is also a filament changing command M600 that can be enabled for certain firmware (if this is your ultimate goal).
Using a post processing plugin of Ultimaker Cura, a pausing script looks like:
...
G0 X137.692 Y105
;TIME_ELAPSED:707.873599
;TYPE:CUSTOM;added code by post processing
;script: PauseAtHeight.py
;current z: 5
;current height: 5.0
M83
G1 F300 Z6
G1 F9000 X190 Y190
G1 F300 Z15
M104 S0; standby temperature
M0;Do the actual pause
M109 S200; resume temperature
G1 F300 Z6
G1 F9000 X133.423 Y105
G1 F9000
M82
G92 E911.50045
;LAYER:24
G0 X137.692 Y105 Z5
...
Note that G0 and G1 are "move to" location instructions (albeit through a different way, fast move and linear move respectively). If you look closely, you see that after the pause, the printer returns to the X-Y position where it left prior to the pause (X137.692 Y105).
Side note:
Some firmware flavors allow buffering, but each statement is executed sequentially. |
Problems with elephant's foot | Elephant's foot can be caused by different causes.
Incorrect leveling or incorrect nozzle to bed distanceThis answer describes that it can be caused by a too low nozzle to bed distance.
Bed temperatureA too high bed temperature and weight of the print can cause bulging out of the bottom layers. This also frequently occurs as the result of an uncooled/too less cooled first layer.
Improved cooling, lowering bed temperature or adjusting nozzle to bed distance and proper leveling are the most obvious solutions to fight this problem. Other solution can be found in using chamfers on the bottom of the print (requires modifying the model) or printing on a raft, this latter solution does lead to losing the nice bottom layer finish. |
Finding the right material to print RC CAR cover | I have 3D printed models which were then sanded using progressively finer grades of sandpaper, terminating with wet sanding using micromesh to 12000 grit. The result was smooth and shining without any coating applied.
If your original results were not acceptable, the process may have been flawed and should be re-considered for technique.
For your purposes, as a body for a radio controlled vehicle, you'll want to consider something that can manage an impact reasonably well. ABS is going to be less expensive and provide some energy absorption but will have layer lines that require sanding and finishing. Layer thickness plays a substantial part in providing for good results and a smooth finish. I used 0.100 mm layers to get optimum smoothness.
You could request your model to be created in nylon using the SLS method, but the surface will be granular and would also require sanding to accomplish a smooth finish.
SLA or MSLA resin printed models will provide a very smooth surface, but the material is brittle and may crack during "on-road" use. You may find a printing service which offers to create using a more flexible resin, but you'd have to request that or confirm the selection when placing the order. |
How can I make bed leveling improvements in the middle of my Ender 3 V2 bed? | The gaps are, because the nozzle is to far from the bed at this point. It may sound like a big deal, but actually this is not leveling alone, but it looks like the bed is not a perfect plane/perfectly flat. This is normal, my ikea mirror and my stock bed show the same thing. Now here's one solution:
Print calibration stickers, like you already did on various places around the bed to get a feel, where it is too low. Let it cool and put painters tape (the very very thin tape, that should not burn) on areas, where the bed is too low. Print more calibration rectangles and check if you have enough. Repeat until you cannot see a difference.
It took me about 2h to level everything absolutely perfectly. This was 2 years ago and I didn't have to touch the tape below my bed ever since. It just works.
Alternative solutions involve mesh bed leveling and buying a new bed surface or even the surface below the bed. However, I found that to neither of them work reliably, whereas the simple tuning does what it's supposed to. |
Why all the excitement about linear rails? | The following is a compilation of the input from a number of sources.
Linear rails in general are mechanical components that - when designing equipment - offer great flexibility.
The profile of the rail can be designed in nearly infinite ways. This in turn allows for:
Different levels of stiffness in different directions (for example you may have stresses only on a given plane, or you may actually want the rail to slightly flex in one plane but not in another one).
Placing the surfaces for the rollers strategically, for example in a location that is unlikely to get contaminated, or where the maximum force will be applied.
Curved paths, so that the carriage can move along a line that is not straight.
Because the contact surface between the rollers and the bearings is flat, cylinders can be used instead of spheres. This in turns diminishes the mechanical stresses, and the amount of play, increases longevity and allows for more bearing capacity, among others.
Linear rails can be anchored along their full length, rather that at their extremes, thus increasing the accuracy of their positioning, their stiffness and their bearing capacity.
Linear rails can be machined while pre-loaded, thus achieving maximum accuracy when in use, rather than when coming out of the factory.
The bearings on a linear rail only allow for one degree of movement. There need to be two rods with linear bearings/bushes to achieve the same result.
All that said, when it comes to the specific application of consumer-grade FDM 3D printers, it seems that none of the above is very relevant, nor confers any real advantage to the printer in terms of quality of the final print:
the mechanical stresses involved in 3D printing are very small,
the movements all happen along straight lines,
most of the axis cannot be anchored to a large, rigid body,
...
On the other hand, the design with rods + linear bearings is cheap, effective, simpler and lightweight, all characteristics that are highly desirable in a 3D printer.
All in all, it seems that there is no good reason to prefer linear rails over rods in general.
Still, there may be specific designs that may benefit from their adoption. I postulate that the Cetus printer linked in the question may be such a design: the cantilever arrangement of its axis - for example - is well served by the fact that a single rail locks movement in all but one direction, and the orientation of the X rail offers maximum rigidity against the action of gravity. |
Printing files over USB drive (Ender 3 Pro) | Unfortunately, no.
There are two types of USB devices: host, such as a PC, and device, such as a thumb drive. (Actually, there is a third type, on-the-go, which can act as either.)
The Ender 3 mainboard is a USB device which means that it can only connect to a USB host. You cannot directly connect two USB devices, such as the Ender 3 and a thumb drive) and have them work.
One option would be to set up OctoPrint software on a Raspberry PI single-board computer and connect that by USB to the printer. |
Replacement Z Probe for MP10 | From Thingiverse you can find a BLTouch mount for the MP10 (and MP10 mini):
Note that in order to use the BLTouch sensor you need a different controller board that supports connecting a BLTouch sensor as the MonoPrice controller board doesn't support connecting a BLTouch sensor.
From ref.:
A BLTouch adapter for the Monoprice MP10 & MP10 Mini. NOTE: you will need an open source control board to get this to work as the stock firmware on the MP10 line of products does not allow for a BLTouch. |
Installing multiple versions of ChiTu side by side | Running multiple versions of the same software did not sit well with the software person in me, so I dug a little deeper.
ChiTu has a "settings" button to the right side, and under that section it is possible to configure different, separate printer profiles. That may take care of the differences if properly configured, unfortunately only some printer profiles are pre-loaded. ChiTu 1.6.4 includes the Creality LD-002R profile, while the very recent Kumitsu KL9 is not predefined (yet), but the manual comes with a screenshot of the parameters just as they need to be entered. |
Anet A8 stock replacement fuse between motherboard and PSU | Couple things to note.
First one is that as @Paulster2 mentioned, the fuse itself should have its rating printed on it.
Second one is that if your fuse blew, there's a reason for that, and you really should try to figure out what that reason is before you start putting fuses back in. The Anet A8 isn't exactly what I'd call a high-quality kit, so there's a chance you've got a blown FET or something somewhere that has shorted closed and is just drawing power nonstop. You should start by getting a multimeter and checking the continuity of the power traces for your hotend and bed, without power in the system. You can do some basic safety checks that way.
Once you've gotten that done, if you're referring to a 12 V feed line, that should be somewhere in the ballpark of 20 A fuse. If it's a fuse on the mains power, it'll be like 1 A or 2 A depending on whether you're on 240 V or 120 V mains (respectively). |
Brim around just one section | I don't know a way to do that with Cura without breaking it up into multiple parts with different settings for each, but what about just enabling supports? You'd only get a very small amount of support material and it would act similarly to a brim to keep the small part from detaching. |
TMC2130 External VM RAMPS 1.4 | First of all, I'm not talking on a first-hand experience: I don't own a RAMPS based printer.
If I were you and wish to be 100 % sure the setup you are describing doesn't blow up in my face I would use a spare pin on the Mega to drive the relay which, in turn, drive the 24 V source line. In terms of delay I would use a couple of seconds after power on: enough time to have the bootscreen completes and all the pins being set as per firmware configuration. |
Delamination issue Ender 3 Pro PLA | This is under extrusion, not delamination. Delamination is the result of the under extrusion.
It typically happens when the wrong filament diameter has been set in the slicer (a larger diameter than used, e.g 2.85 mm instead of 1.75 mm). Another option is that you accidentally put the printer in volumetric printing mode which is accessible through the display of the printer:
Control -> Filament -> E in mm³ -> Disable
Other solutions may be found in the extrusion process, e.g. the extruder may be skipping. |
Why does the Ultimaker 3D Printer has a Heater + Heater transfer plate (aluminium) + Glass? | According to this page, heat transfers more evenly across an aluminum build plate than with just glass. But as Kevin pointed PLA adheres better to glass because it doesn't flex as much as aluminum under heat.
The link above shows that aluminum has a much higher thermal conductivity at 205 (W/(mK)) vs glass at 105 (W/(mK)) at 25 °C (77 °F).
Because of this conductivity difference, you may find that it takes longer to heat the glass plate, but it should heat more evenly. |
Printer fails to print a cube | There are multiple issues that cause this result.
First, your nozzle is to far from the bed. This can be seen by the curly deposited filament on the build plate (I guess that is the brim or the skirt). Please properly level the bed and position the nozzle at a distance of a plain A4 paper as best as possible (should be doable as you have a glass sheet that are usually very flat as a result of the production process to make glass).
The second problem you face is layer shift. You see that the squares are printed further and further to the left, the print head does not return to original position. Layer shift is usually caused by improper belt tension or a loose grub screw of the belt pulley. This answer describes layer shifting in more detail. This question may be helpful too, the answer contains some references to layer shifting. |
Filament is stuck in nozzle | There are a number of options you could try. If heating up the hotend does not work, you'll have to disassemble it. Remove the nozzle and the heatbreak (the threaded part). To disassemble the nozzle, you will need to heat it up and use pliers or wrenches to unscrew the parts.
You can use a blowtorch to melt and burn out the plastic that is stuck. Make sure to do this outside.
You can use solvents to dissolve the plastic. This works especially well with ABS, which can be dissolved in acetone. You can also try dissolving different plastics with acetone, but for example PLA does not really dissolve in acetone (it does become somewhat soft, so this can still be helpful towards getting it out). You could also try using other solvents if acetone does not work for your particular plastic, but consider these tend to be quite toxic compared to acetone so be careful. Note that in any case, the plastic will need to soak in the solvent for at least a few hours or overnight.
Do not try to disassemble it while cold, the expansion and contraction of metal with heat makes this impossible. When reassembling, be sure to heat up the nozzle before giving it a final tightening (again, this is to make sure that when the nozzle expands as it is heated, it makes a tight seal). |
What am I doing wrong with my M3D Micro? | It's not you - it's the printer!
The M3D Micro is not a very sturdy setup. The X-axis is a single pair of thin rods, hung up on a pair of similarly thin rods in Y and mounted on 3 very thin pillars in Z. While the idea is good, the execution is not particularly well: The rods are too thin and the design is virtually unchanged since 2015 and thus this review from 2016 still applies. As does this from 2018:
The extruder having problems to extrude reliable and steadily was not fixed since at least 2015.
The mounting of the motion system is not very sturdy and the system itself is under-designed. This means it is particularly vulnerable to oscillation - which your print shows.
The extruder is mounted flexibly on the motion system, which amplifies all those errors. But that is designed for bed leveling - so there is little you can do to gett the needed stiffness
The motors are underpowered. This leads especially to trouble with movement accuracy unless you print super slow. And that print you showed shows that you print with more normal print settings for a 2021 machine. This also shows in your print.
If a professional in 2018 can spend 2 days calibrating and get no results with the owner's proprietary slicer, then that slicer is not worth the disk space it uses. If you need to hack Cura to get the proprietary g-code derivate and you need to do that to get even decent prints, it's a bad design.
All in all, you might squeak out better prints with a lot of calibration work, but the printer suffers so heavy from the design flaws that it would be a labor of love. |
Can the resin from Resin based 3D printers be used to make printed circuit boards? | Brushed aluminum is a common bed surface for resin based printers. The aspect of the aluminum that is important to the print is the adhesion, hence the roughness of brushed aluminum. It has to be sufficient to hold the print in place, but not so extreme as to cause destruction on removal.
In the case of copper as a print surface, one would certainly want some mechanical adhesion in the form of surface roughness. You've not specified the forces that would be applied to the copper once cured. If you do not plan to manipulate the copper surface in an excessive manner, it's likely that it would adhere. It's also just as likely to pop free if the plate or surface is flexed. I've seen no reference online to copper coated print beds. This would lead me to believe that it was tested and rejected as suitable for 3D printing, but not necessarily unsuitable for your purposes.
This is one of those situations where testing is warranted and not particularly difficult to accomplish. You can purchase UV curing resin, build a tin to hold the copper surface and pour the expected layer thickness. Leave it in the sun and let nature's UV do the curing.
Consider if you have not yet done so to research safety practice for handling this substance. Wear gloves and eye protection, cover any exposed skin surfaces and have good ventilation. |
How does wireless 3D printing work? | Slicers don't talk to the printer. Slicers analyze an STL file and generate a GCODE file, based on your parameters. A print manager sends the commands from the GCODE file to the printer board, which executes them sequentially.
They are not. Commands are sent to the printer from a print manager of some sort. This varies among printers; some printers can be managed by more than one manager, and some managers can handle many models of printer. Some printer-manager pairs are proprietary and exclusive.
You do not. See above.
Note, some programs do have an integrated slicer and print manager. - Thanks, Trish |
How can I run two instances (or equivalent) of Slic3r on OS X? | You could duplicate the application by clicking on the application and pressing Command (⌘) + D, and then run both - although I'm not sure if that would mess with the preferences. I haven't fully tested it, but both instances opened up and worked, seemingly ok.
You could even rename them to something other than "Slic3r" and "Slic3r copy" to remind you which application is slicing which model, for example:
"TestCube" and "Benchy", or;
"Slic3r-TestCube" and "Slic3r-Benchy", or whatever.
However, Mark's answer seems much more elegant. |
Upgrade hot-end to achieve higher temps (e.g. for PETG) | Most PETG reacts vey badly to temperatures above 255. The typical optimal PETG temperature ranges from 225 to 245. Above that it gets sticky...
If PETG is your goal, you might want to find a filament that is more friendly to your printer. They are pretty cheap, and now you have transitioned to an all-metal hot end, you should be good to go! |
Why is CLIP so much faster than SLA? | It's important to understand what specifically is being compared. CLIP is much faster than bottom-up technologies that require a peel step between every layer. For example, the Form1 galvo SLA printer tilts the resin vat to separate the transparent bottom from the print. That is, by far, the slowest part of SLA/DLP printing with most modern light sources. Where the speed comes in is that without a peel, a continuous "movie" can be used to cure the resin rather than a series of alternating images and peels.
Top-down printers can print dramatically faster than bottom-up-and-peel printers. CLIP is not necessarily faster than top-down. For example, the Gizmo 3D line of top-down printers are very similar in print speed to CLIP. (http://www.gizmo3dprinters.com.au/)
Most "consumer" SLA printers these days use bottom-up-and-peel techniques, because this has some practical advantages over top-down printers:
Way less resin is required to fill the printer when the part is pulled out as it builds rather than being lowered into the tank (along with the Z stage) as it builds. Resin is expensive. This also means bottom up printers can be smaller and have fewer mechanical parts such as leveling devices submerged in resin.
Standard resins contain an inhibitor chemical that prevents polymerization in the presence of oxygen, which causes the surface layer exposed to air (and low-level stray light) to not cure. So top-down printers must shoot light through a non-curing layer before reaching curable resin. This makes the tuning more sensitive and can somewhat reduce detail compared to a bottom-up printer curing right on the window.
Replacement vats or windows for bottom-up printers may be seen by manufacturers as a profit-generating consumable, since they have to be replaced somewhat frequently.
Top-down printers have to worry somewhat more about resin flow rates as the part is lowered. Air bubbles may be pulled into the resin or the fresh resin layer above the part may vary significantly in thickness if the part is submerged too fast for the resin viscosity. (Admittedly, bottom-up printers will experience excessive suction forces and potentially break off bits of the print at high peel speeds.)
CLIP is a bottom-up technique that doesn't require a peel step, because the vat creates an oxygen layer over the window that keeps the resin from curing directly on the surface and sticking. In that way, it arguably performs more like a top-down printer than a bottom-up printer.
Top-down printers that are designed to overcome the above issues and use high-intensity light sources can achieve exceptionally high print speeds. This includes similar "continuous" build techniques used as in CLIP. |
Where to define grid for bilinear levelling in Marlin | If you have managed to setup 3-point levelling, you should be able to enable bi-linear levelling in the firmware.
From the configuration.h file for Marlin firmware you can find the following options:
/**
* Choose one of the options below to enable G29 Bed Leveling. The parameters
* and behavior of G29 will change depending on your selection.
*
* If using a Probe for Z Homing, enable Z_SAFE_HOMING also!
*
* - AUTO_BED_LEVELING_3POINT
* Probe 3 arbitrary points on the bed (that aren't collinear)
* You specify the XY coordinates of all 3 points.
* The result is a single tilted plane. Best for a flat bed.
*
* - AUTO_BED_LEVELING_LINEAR
* Probe several points in a grid.
* You specify the rectangle and the density of sample points.
* The result is a single tilted plane. Best for a flat bed.
*
* - AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR
* Probe several points in a grid.
* You specify the rectangle and the density of sample points.
* The result is a mesh, best for large or uneven beds.
*
* - AUTO_BED_LEVELING_UBL (Unified Bed Leveling)
* A comprehensive bed leveling system combining the features and benefits
* of other systems. UBL also includes integrated Mesh Generation, Mesh
* Validation and Mesh Editing systems.
*
* - MESH_BED_LEVELING
* Probe a grid manually
* The result is a mesh, suitable for large or uneven beds. (See BILINEAR.)
* For machines without a probe, Mesh Bed Leveling provides a method to perform
* leveling in steps so you can manually adjust the Z height at each grid-point.
* With an LCD controller the process is guided step-by-step.
*/
//#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_3POINT
//#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_LINEAR
//#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR
//#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_UBL
//#define MESH_BED_LEVELING
If you are using 3-point levelling you enabled constant AUTO_BED_LEVELING_3POINT by removing the comment characters (//):
#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_3POINT
to enable bi-linear levelling, you should remove the comment characters before constant #define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR:
#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR
Definition of the grid is done by specifying how many point you want to have using constants GRID_MAX_POINTS_X and GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y:
#if EITHER(AUTO_BED_LEVELING_LINEAR, AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR)
// Set the number of grid points per dimension.
#define GRID_MAX_POINTS_X 3
#define GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y GRID_MAX_POINTS_X
The code above shows the default definition of a 9 point (3 x 3) grid.
Note that this will only work well if the area for the sensor to reach safely is correctly defined. If the sensor is missing the build plate, you have not correctly defined the limits for the sensor. Question "How to set Z-probe boundary limits in firmware when using automatic bed leveling?" has an accepted answer that describes how to define an area on the plate that the sensor may reach (the answer on this question also discusses Marlin 2.x).
In the specific case of the OP (after posting the config files)
From the posted configuration files your probe position can be obtained:
#define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 25, 55, 0 }
So your probe is at the right-back when facing the printer. Also your bed area attempt (commented) and the current active bed area can be obtained:
#if PROBE_SELECTED && !IS_KINEMATIC
//#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT 5
//#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT 200
//#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT 55
//#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK 200
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#endif
From these excerpts it is clear that the bed limits are incorrectly defined.
Following the theory from this answer the probe is only allowed to visit the following (dark red) area:
This area is defined as:
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT (PROBE_OFFSET_X_FROM_EXTRUDER + MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT (MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT (PROBE_OFFSET_Y_FROM_EXTRUDER + MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK (MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
which translates to:
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT (25 + MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT (MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT (55 + MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK (MIN_PROBE_EDGE)
As seen in the commented //#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT 5 and uncommented #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT MIN_PROBE_EDGE (equals 10) left probe limits, you are at least respectively 20 or 15 mm short, hence the sensor is not on the plate on the left. |
Controlling a 3D printer with another Arduino device over serial | This isn't really a 3D-printing issue as much as it is about Arduino, USB, and how serial connections over USB differ from a generic UART serial connection.
For a UART-based serial connection, there are only two devices, and both devices are peers - either can send data to the other with no real restrictions as long as the speeds are set correctly.
USB allows multiple devices to be connected, and is much more complicated. One device must be a "host", which manages everything. The other devices can be much simpler as they don't need to be a host. Typically, your PC is the host, and your keyboard, mouse, memory stick, Arduino, printer, etc. are all just attached devices.
If you've managed to connect your Arduino's USB port to your printer's USB port, the problem is most likely that neither device has hardware or software to be a host, so the USB connection won't work.
There was a "USB Host Shield" for Arduino, but is is no longer in production. Perhaps you can still find one somewhere, or somebody else makes an equivalent.
There is also an Arduino "USBHost" library, which is compatible with the Arduino Due only. |
Extruder Clicking without Extrusion Problems | Even though you may have acceptable extrusion, any clicking from that area of your printer is likely to be a missed step on the extruder motor. This may be insignificant with respect to print quality, but as you suggest, it is an irritation.
If you are confident that your nozzle is clean of debris (which is likely), you could consider to raise the nozzle temperature a few degrees. If the nozzle is not applying enough heat to the filament, it may resist being forced through and a click representing a delay, allows that much more heat to be applied.
You should not have to increase by much, certainly no more than five degrees. It's also possible that you can slow the feed rate a bit to accomplish a similar result. |
Extrusion test cube resulted in one wall being thicker | Why not that test print?
You don't want a print constraining your walls to 0.8 mm, since you don't want to print with 1 nozzle diameter for better print quality. Atop that, slicing can induce errors that increase the thickness of walls without us noticing it in the slicer view. Two sources of error (once for each wall)
means an additional 10% error, which would bring the wall as you got perfectly into the expected area: $0.8\text{ mm}\times 1,1\times 1,1=0.968\text{ mm}$
Let's Troubleshoot!
You might not have calibrated the extrusion multiplier correctly, or the steps/mm might be off, or other print settings shoot us way off. Let's make sure to find the source.
Filament extrusion multiplier
use a solid cube as a base, for example, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:38108
set line width to 0.45 mm to counteract errors from die swell and get a better print result in general1
$d_\text{line width}=0.45\text{ mm}$
set the number of walls/perimeters to 1
$p=1$
set infill to 0%
set top layers to 0
set the extrusion multiplier to 100 %
print the cube (or half of it, Z-height does not matter too much) with no top and infill and 1 perimeter
re-measure the walls
Done that? Math time to calculate the correct multiplier for the filament! The average wall is easy:$$d_\text {average}={\frac{\sum_{i=1}^4 d_i}{4}}$$ $$\frac{d_\text{line width}\times p}{d_\text {average}}=\text{Extrusion multiplier}$$
Remember, that the result is not in % but a float point number! 1 is 100%. So you fill in that value times 100 into the extrusion multiplier.
After this, repeat the whole process with 2 perimeters.
1 - further reading: Why is it conventional to set line width > nozzle diameter? & Slicer line width vs. extrusion multiplier for layer adhesion?
Steps/mm
Make sure to test the extruder against the heated extruder, then repeat the calibration as your tutorial explained.
For some tests, let's fudge to some degree: Trying a filament dependant value of steps per millimeter can help to try to find other sources of errors easier - it makes them at times more pronounced. So we just multiply our steps/mm with the extrusion multiplier that we calculate the way outlined below. For 428 steps/mm and the numbers from Update 3, this gives about 306 steps/mm. This is not a proper calibration, but a means for troubleshooting. After fudging with the parameters reset the extrusion multiplier to 100%, we just want to check what influences our thickness.
Other print settings
215 °C is way hot. Even if it can increase print strength in solid prints, it is usually better to print at 200 °C and less.
Reduce retraction, possibly to 4 mm or maybe even 3 mm.
Lower temperature and less retraction should get prints more consistent, as pressure changes in the nozzle are more consistent. Remember, we are playing with the settings here.
And now Properly
Back to Calibration!
After all the fudging and probably making everything worse, we got to make sure to properly calibrate, those settings will be WAY OFF, in fact, we might go back to the original steps/mm or higher:
Note the current steps/mm as $s$.
Mark the 150mm from the extruder intake. remember if you marked on the close or far side... or simply cut the filament as exact as you can.
Heat the hotend
send a G1 E100 F100
Measure the distance to the extruder intake afterwards as $d$ to get the actual extruded filament $e$. Make sure to measure the same side of the marking!
$(150-d)=e$
$\frac{s\times 100}{e}=s^*$ as the corrected steps/mm
send M92 E###.## with ###.## taking the $s^*$
send M500 to store the value to the EEPROM
Extrusion/Flow Calibration
Now, go back to print a single filament extrusion multiplier calibration, as above. It should be somewhat close(er) to 100% now.
Slicer Fault?
Note that not all Slicers are equal: some slicers are better and more consistent in the results than others with the stock settings, and even with the same settings results may varry. For example the line width for the same settings with Simplify3D and Cura or Slic3r Prusa Edition can differ. The reasons for this are hard to find exactly, but they are most likely rooted in the different slicing processes and optimisation. Sometimes it is some setting that might be overlooked that results in line width variations.
The Slicer world changed a lot betwene 2015 and 2019, and even if you got fed up with one slicer years ago, now it might be worth a shot to test it again. See if you might get better results with other slicers, as for whatever reason, your slicer might cause the issiues, whih allows you to hunt down setting dependant items. |
What is the best way to build a closed loop continuous rotation servo for 3D printer? | You can use a magnetic position encoder.
AS5048B High Resolution Position Sensor
14-bit rotary position sensor with digital angle (interface) and PWM output
14 bit means 16k steps/rotation. With a stepper which does 200 steps/rotation and 16x microstepping, you will need only 11 bit, so you have plenty of extra accuracy you can use to filter noise.
You may use AS5600 Positioning Sensor instead, which is 12 bits, since you don't need to track each microsteps in a closed loop, 4x is enough.
AS5600 in PWM mode does up to 920 Hz, AS5048 1 kHz. I'm not sure in I2C mode but surely more. Of course you have to take into account delay between measuring the position and transmission of the position. |
Prusa MK3S 0.8 mm nozzle layers separating | After printing ~30 calibration test cubes I finally figured out the perfect settings.
Apparently, the extrusion width in my slicer was set to a certain number, instead of
percentage. I was printing at 0.45 mm extrusion width, which was ~105 % of the 0.4 mm nozzle diameter, but less than 50 % of the 0.8 mm one. Changing the value to 130-140 %
solved the majority of my printing problems.
As I predicted, the 230-280 ℃ nozzle temp. was ridiculously high, even with the
0.8 mm nozzle. I gradually lowered it to 210 ℃ (ironically, the value I chose at the very beginning).
There was some warping, so I cleaned the heatbed from the glue, put the glue again and decreased bed temp. to 50 ℃
Finally, I decreased the flow from 1.3 to 1.05 and everything seems perfect now. |
Tuning line width and flow compensation in Cura | That is very bizarre. Since GCODE describe each movement of the printing head (so, the printer does not get to decide anything in terms of printing strategy, it just executes), I can only see three possibilities that would explain what's going on.
The print is being scaled up at printer level. This could for example be due to your firmware having your steppers improperly calibrated and moving them too much for a given unit of measure (say you say 1mm, they move 1.5mm instead). This is easy to check: if this is the case, your cube will be scaled up (so - using the example above - if your cube is 10x10x10 it will come out 15x15x15).
You are printing with a raft. Then there is no problem with your set-up, the first layer(s) of a raft are not solid, but intentionally "grated". Check your settings to verify.
Cura is producing the "wrong" gcode. This could be really wrong (as in "you found a bug", in which case you should report it on their github), or just look wrong (as in "you found a weird combination of setting producing that gcode", in which case you should reset the settings to their default and see the problem disappear). Either way, if the gcode is "wrong", you should notice the gaps in the gcode preview mode in Cura. |
What is the thinnest hotend? | The size of the nozzle usually isn't the main factor for how close you can put nozzles together. To keep the filament drive gear system from being the limiting factor, you would need Bowden extruders. "Then, the heat sinks and fans would be your limiting factor. Have you considered a single nozzle with three extruders? Otherwise, you need custom angled heat sinks similar to the three heat sinks on a single nozzle, and still a way to orient the nozzles at the same Z-height. That would be difficult if all the nozzles are on the same heater block. It still seems that nozzle size is the least of the issues of putting nozzles close together.
If you search for smaller nozzle sizes, you will get nozzles with smaller openings, not smaller overall size. The threads on the nozzles are a standard size. Thus, the smaller opening size can't be put closer together than the larger opening size. Otherwise, you have only small variations between different types of nozzles and need room to screw them in to the heater block if you put all of them into one block. You can get a nozzle using a 6 mm hex wrench that is smaller than one using a 7 mm hex (E3D). |
Filament that will not stick to wood glue? | You are looking for a filament that does not bond to wood glue, or as weak as possible. You misunderstand how wood glue "bonds" to plastics:
Wood glue is typically PVA. It bonds to wood and paper by seeping into them before curing and hardening. The mesh of the glue entangles fibers of the wood/paper and itself, bonding with not only the exposed surface but also with material up to the depth it penetrates.
When such a glue is applied to a typical print surface, it seeps into the cracks and through print imperfections but does not penetrate the print to the same degree as it does in the open wood fiber setup. It clings to the surface and only bonds - if it does - only to the surface layers. The same effect happens when you cast resin into for example a silicone mold: there is much less chemical bonding, at best at the interface, and quite some interlock.
To prevent such, two things should be made: first, you need to smooth the mold as much as possible and have all the angles right. It might be easier and faster to coat the hard molds in a smooth lacquer, which not only removes the creep areas but also acts as an interlayer, making release easier.
Then, you should use a mold release agent. Mold release agents come in many shapes: I have seen Talcum Powder being used effectively for both metal as well as cold casts, if the shape of the mold was well made (no undercuts, no unpowdered areas). Easier to apply are usually mold release sprays for many applications - careful, some are PVA based and would be the same as the glue you want to cast. For a concrete casting, I had used plant fat as a decent mold release agent.
What might be an alternative to wood glue depends on what you want to do with the finished product.
As far as materials that actively don't bond go, you could look into POM (Which is a pain to print and expensive - it's a bearing material) or nylon (also a pain to print). |
Designing back plate for Ring Doorbell | If you wannwa go fully parametric, use OpenSCAD. Or you can use Autodesk Fusion 360 (which is free for non-commercial use) |
Printer changing temperature after selecting file | The demo files are gcode files generated for use with the sample PLA that comes with the printer. If you want to print it with ABS select the file and set the temperature manually afterwards. |
How can I add an offset to the first layer to increase clearance? | Placeholders
I don't know if you are familiar with the concept of placeholders? PrusSlicer is a derivative of Slic3r which uses this concept to insert placeholders (sort of constants, with the possibility to do arithmetic) into your G-code (e.g. start or end codes) which are evaluated just before the slicer generates the final G-code upon slicing.
Unfortunately, although there is a constant for the filament type (filament_type), you cannot use a conditional expression as this does not work on string comparison (which should work with regular expressions...), but with some imagination you can fabricate a way to get past this problem.
E.g.
{if printer_notes=~/.*PRINTER_VENDOR_PRUSA3D.*/};Printer is Prusa{endif}
M117 [filament_type]
evaluates fine, but
{if filament_type=~/.*PLA.*/};Filament type is PLA{endif}
does not evaluate fine...
Solving this using placeholders, the printing temperatures for PLA and PETG are different, so in a conditional statement of the first_layer_temperature you could add an additional offset to the code at the end of the start G-code.
Start G-code
A place to do this is the filament dependent start G-code section:
You can always edit this start G-code to include a manually set offset by moving the printer to a certainly height:
G1 Z0.15
and then redefining the zero level
G92 Z0
Printer Z-offset
Note that a z_offset constant exists, so it is configurable in the graphical interface, if so, than I assume this fixes your problem instantly as the offset is directly applied in the final G-code. The z-offset option is part of the "printer settings" interface. This extra offset is added to the initial layer height movement. |
How to make it so that multiple motors respond to | One way to have two E-steppers to do the same work should be to enable MIXING_EXTRUDER in Configuration.h. I have no experience in this myself, but it is a good starting point.
A second way is to actually connect the two identical steppers in parallel. That trick is sometimes used for Z-steppers. I don't expect the current consumption to be an issue. This will require soldering, unless your mainboard has two Z-stepper outputs and you only use one of them. Then move connectors and reconfigure pins.h (or similar file) to use the correct steppers for Z and E.
A third way is possible if your mainboard has removable stepper driver modules. Remove the E1 stepper driver from the socket and cut off the EN, DIR and STEP pins. Solder thin but insulated wires between the solder-pads on this one to the E0 stepper. These are all inputs, so now the second stepper will follow the first perfectly. Soldering shall be done while the stepper driver modules are removed, otherwise the heat might ruin the sockets. (There are more precautions) |
Prusa I3 - Burn marks on print | I have seen this after I reassemble the extruder heat block and then leave it too loose during the print.
Is your extruder above the nozzle coated in a brown or black film?
What happens is the liquid plastic oozes through the loose connection, travels around the outside of the block, where it is heated longer and hotter than normal turning it black/brown. Then it drips, or flakes, into the print where it is spread around giving it a diffused look that you see.
The fix is to tighten the heating block. Do this while it is at operating temperature (be careful!) because it fits differently when cold.
Another cause: I made a tiny sharpie mark on my filament. I did not realize how concentrated it would come out in the print. Perhaps you have ink or adhesive or something on your filament that you can't see that turns brown when heated. |
Lack of isolation between axes | This is easily explained - it's the stepper motors getting powered up. Stepper motors even if not moving are constantly powered up and actively hold the position they are in exactly at the stepping point where they are.
If you power down the machine or if the board disables the stepper drivers to save energy or because the power is offline then the stepper motors can get in between steps. When powering on then the movement is quite noticeable on some cheaper motors where the inrushing current can kick the motor over multiple steps before it locks down into position.
You can test this, try to move one of the axis manually by hand (not too fast to not damage the board by providing it too much current) if the printer is powered of it does move pretty easily. Then power the printer on, it should still move pretty easily by hand. Now execute one move command on the axis via the printer board. Afterwards you should not be able to move the axis by hand anymore (or at least not without unnecessarily excessive force). |
Converting a mesh to constructive solid geometry | The calculations for your objective could be considered simple geometry, although the results in terms of formulae are a bit more complex than simple, but not by much.
According to Quora, the foundation for this goal is that the cube's eight vertices will be coincidental to the sphere's surface. If one desires to print a 3D object with this form, such an object may fail the requirement of being manifold, but may not, depending on the floating point operations of the software being used.
I found a simplistic formula which provides the radius of the sphere given the length of the side of the cube.
$fn = 90;
edge = 10;
cube([edge, edge, edge], center = true);
sphere_radius = sqrt((3 * pow((edge/2), 2)));
sphere(sphere_radius);
The above code is done in OpenSCAD, resulting in this image with the sphere made transparent for clarity:
Translated into general english, it appears that one can take the edge length, divided by 2, then take the square of that result and triple it. Take the square root of that value and it becomes the radius of the sphere.
The above answer is courtesy of Math Forum and is represented verbatim as such:
____________________________
D = \| (L/2)^2 + (L/2)^2 + (L/2)^2
The letter D in this case appears to be slightly misrepresented as diameter when it should be referred to as radius.
As part of this fun exercise, I also subtracted the cube from the sphere, slicing it in half for visibility, resulting in this image: |
What is the benefit of using an ARM based electronics? | 3D printer controllers have to do a lot of stuff very, very fast. Performing kinematics and dynamics calculations while sending many thousands of precisely-synchronized step pulses per second is really, really hard. The 8bit AVR line of microcontrollers used in older 3D printer controllers is basically a late-1990s era Mr Coffee processor. They are completely, utterly maxed out on processor time just executing basic printing functions in simple (eg Cartesian) printers, and adding additional calculation load will bog them down and cause slowdowns, stuttering, pausing, and so on.
"But my 8bit printer works fine," you say. No, it doesn't. Your print performance is limited by it, whether you realize it or not. Slicers now automatically hide a lot of the firmware's performance shortcomings from you. For example, the standard practice of greatly slowing down print speeds on perimeters is largely a result of 8bit processors having inadequate resources for two things:
Performing centripetal acceleration calculations for curves
across multiple gcode segments
Keeping up with gcode transmission/processing and motion planning for gcode with lots of very small segments, such as in organic models or smooth arcs
When presented with a series of very small segments in a smooth arc or complex curve, the 8bit firmware will likely choke on the required command processing rate and introduce stuttering to the print. These incredibly brief pauses allow residual pressure in the extruder to push out some extra plastic, making a little zit on the print. So most slicers automatically decimate curves and output gcode with reduced resolution to lighten the load on the firmware. Problem solved, right?
But there's another issue -- the GRBL motion control algorithms underlying all the major open source 3D printer controllers were designed with lots of shortcuts and hacks to allow 8bit processors to execute fast enough. For example, the basic algorithm only looks at the speed or velocity change at the corner between two segments, and uses that to decide when to decelerate/accelerate along the direction of motion. It does not calculate or consider centripetal/radial acceleration whatsoever. This is a really effective hack when printing boxy, low-res models, but it fails miserably on smooth curves with lots of little segments. The firmware does not detect any appreciable velocity change at the corner of any two nearly-linear segments within the faceted curve, and thus does not slow down for the curve. So complex geometry is effectively printed at constant velocity, with no acceleration.
Printing complex perimeters unaccelerated means the commanded feedrate must be very low to get good quality. Most printers are limited to about 40mm/s or less on complex perimeters, despite being able to run perhaps 80-120mm/s on low-complexity infill before hitting other speed limits.
Between the command processing rate limits and motion planner shortcomings required by low power processors, print speeds must be much lower in practice than is strictly required by the physics and printer hardware. This all comes from 8bit processors. The workarounds and best practices to deal with this problem are so deeply baked into the toolchains and ecosystem that very few people realize there is even a problem. But it's a real limit that can be overcome: a high-speed processor running a more rigorous motion planner could generate higher average print speeds with better print quality.
That said, the ARM-based firmwares are only slowly moving towards more advanced motion planners. This is a big development area right now that is actually driving an upcoming shift away from low-end ARMs like the Cortex M3 towards even faster processors. It's actually not all that hard to max out an 84 MHz Arduino Due by piling on a bunch of firmware features.
The use of 8bit processors also makes printers LOUDER. The biggest consumer of processor time in a typical 8bit printer is the stepper interrupt that fires the step pulses to make the motors move. It is quite typical for >60% of all clock cycles on an Atmega AVR to go to firing step pulses. Because this occurs as an interrupt, other processing tasks that the printer must perform -- like acceleration calculations and heater control -- get squeezed into the brief spaces between stepper interrupt events.
Without careful firmware design, the step pulses will completely "crowd out" other functionality like LCD display updates and acceleration calculations. In order to allow higher motion rates without using all the processor resources, 8bit firmwares have a mode called "step doubling" that fires two (or four, or eight) step pulses per stepper interrupt so that half (or a quarter, or an eighth) as many stepper interrupts can be used to produce the same motion speed. This practice de-bottlenecks the processor, but it causes rougher and louder motor motion because the step pulses are fired in bursts rather than a constant frequency. In effect, the microstepping level of the motor is functionally dropped to a coarser mode when the stepper interrupt fires double or quad steps. So the motors get louder, less precise, and in extreme cases may have problems with resonance.
An interesting side effect is that if you switch a Marlin-based printer from 1/16 microstepping to 1/32 microstepping, and keep the same print speeds, the firmware will simply start step-doubling, dropping your effective microstepping level right back down to 1/16.
ARM-based firmwares also use step doubling, but the allowable step rates are typically ~8 times higher before double/quad stepping is used. That can mean higher speeds and/or smoother motion.
Another issue with 8bit AVRs is the lack of hardware floating point and need to spend many clock cycles on high-precision calculations or handling very large numbers. Delta kinematics, auto-leveling functions, calculating moves with extremely high step counts for large printers, and other advanced functionality all take a lot of clock cycles on an 8bit processor. Poor firmware design or carelessly adding a feature that requires a few extra square roots and trig functions can completely bog down the processor. This kind of feature creep and code bloat has seriously impacted Marlin's performance over time as people ask more and more of the old AVR.
In comparison, a 32bit processor doesn't just have a faster clock and more clock cycles, it is also able to do much more complex math in fewer clock cycles, because it has dedicated hardware functionality that takes care of many of the steps an 8bit processor must do in software.
Do 8bit processors work? Sure, they work surprisingly well for what they are and what we ask of them. But they unquestionably limit the performance and features of modern 3D printers. Even today's current generation of 32bit processors is already being maxed out by high speed printers and math-heavy features. The 8bit processor is already two generations behind what would qualify as a "modern" 3D printer controller. |
Printing with colorfabb XT fails after several successful layers | This looks a lot like under extrusion caused by heat creep.
Heat creep is when the nozzle temperature 'creeps' up through the filament and makes it melt (a bit) and form a blob (or just widen enough to get stuck) a centimeter or two before the nozzle.
The characteristic is usually that everything works perfectly well for some quite fix amount of time, then there is severe under extrusion.
Solutions:
Lower the temperature (yes, as then the heat won't creep as much!)
Add a fan cooling down the cooling part of the print head
I have the same print head as you it seems (E3D 1.75 all metal) and I had heat creep when I changed the fan to a less noisy one (but also less effective). |
Why is it conventional to set line width > nozzle diameter? | There are several things at play that can make a wider line nice to have:
First layer adhesion
Due to some filaments having serious struggle to get the first line or layer stuck to the bed, it can be an easy fix to just increase the line width, generating a bigger Adhesive Force $F_a\propto A(l,w)$, where A is the area covered by the line, and thus simply $A=l*w$ with length l and width w of the line. So, a wider line means better initial adhesion and can lead to less failed prints in layer 1.
Plastic Goo
Plastics under heat behave in certain ways: they turn into a gooey substance that expands. This is also the reason why prints shrink a little as they cool. Now, if we press the plastic onto the bed with more force (as we force more plastic through than before to go from 0.4 mm to 0.5 mm) for the first time, we have a roughly flat area. The extra filament will make a wider line. The slicher can account for that, and does.
Now, next layer up: Where does the extra material go now? Plastic goo has one property that is very interesting: it tries to shrink its surface as much as possible. Heat a short piece with an airgun and it gets a little beady. But on the other hand, it comes hot enough from the nozzle to melt a tiny surface area of the already built layers, which is how layer bonding works in the first place. But our goopy plastic finds the layer below not exactly flat like the first layer found its lower surface, it finds a shape of ridges and valley. Taking into account that it wants to have the least surface to non-plastic (=air) and slightly cross bonds with the print, it will fill these nooks and crevices inside the print a tiny little better, as the increased force we use to push it out also increased the speed at which it expands to them: we reduce the time a tiny bit to reach there. How does it matter?
Well, heat transfer bases, roughly speaking, on a formula like this: $Q = mc\Delta T$ Q is the thermal energy of the object, m the mass of the object, c its specific heat capacity and T the temperature, ΔT the temperature change. But we don't have a homogenous object, we got pretty much a heat distribution with touching zones of different heat. The actual formula for the heat transfer inside the object is a long mess containing stuff like the gradient $\text{grad}T$, thermal conductivities, and integrals, but what matters is the result: The faster-expanding line of filament loses a little less thermal energy to its surroundings than the less forceful extruded line, which can increase the bonding between the two as the temperature on several fronts:
it enters the crevices further before reverting from goo to solid, leading to better adhesion for more surface.
it contains more thermal energy that can and will get transmitted to the layer below and has a bigger surface area, so it can increase the zone thickness that gets remelted a tiny bit, increasing the layer bonding strength a little.
This can result in a problem though: if you don't give the printed lines enough time to cool, it can lead to the material to accumulate heat more and more, leading to the whole thing to melt and turn into goop. An easy fix to this side problem is minimum layer time. But that would be only tangential to the original question, so look for example at the question here or the video the thermal picture above is taken from here. |
My nozzle on my Ender3 V2 is higher when it is printing than it is when I auto home it | From my experience Auto Home procedure rearly leaves Z position at 0. By default Marlin raises it to 4 mm above the bed as far as I remember. The same might be with Z offset.
Also, could you please check "Initial Layer Height" in Cura?
Could you check the machine's "Start G-Code" for presence of G91 code (this would be bed sign) and confirm it contains line G90?
There are valuable basic tips in this discussion about printing too low, so you may want to go through these hints.
Did you already manage to solve your problem? |
Advantages of GT2 over a rack | With a belt system, the belt engages roughly half the pulley. This, and the tension in the belt, ensures the belt always engages the pulley tightly. A belt and pulley system is thus relatively forgiving.
With a rack and pinion system, only a few teeth engage at any given time. To avoid backlash and get the same kind of "tight" engagement, both the gear and the rack need to be made with very high precision. The carriage also needs to be very well constrained, because any wobble of the rack relative to the gear introduces backlash (or binding). Moreover, you also need to keep the rack and pinion well lubricated lest they wear out prematurely.
Given that belt and pulley work well enough, I don't see why you'd need to move to rack and pinion. The main advantage of rack and pinion is that the rack isn't elastic. The maximum length of a belt system is limited by its elasticity, but given we aren't building meter-long 3D printers anyway, that advantage of rack and pinion does not apply. |
DIY tensile strength testing | For these kind of tests you could rely on the ASTM standards. They define test procedures and test specimen sizes for different types of tests. Or you can derive a specimen yourself based on these standards (e.g. for my bachelor's degree I used an alternative notch impact specimen as I was bound to the amount of available material of the turbine rotor blade the specimens were taken from). Considering the material, you could device up a contraption made from extrusion profiles or something.
Please do note that to get reasonable results, you would have to do a lot of tests as the spread in results is probably even more than in metals.
The company I work for does this, these material qualification programmes run for long times (years, as we also do fatigue and creep testing), and a lot of samples are tested to qualify for use in Aerospace applications. |
Ultimaker Layer Resolution vs Nozzle Size | You need a certain minimum flow rate to achieve consistent extrusion. Flow rate is the product of print speed, extrusion width (proportional to nozzle size) and print speed. If you use a very small nozzle and very low layer height, you'd need a very high printing speed to achieve a reasonable flow rate. Therefore, it's quite possible this is not a mistake and intentional.
Keep in mind that Ultimaker uses 2.85mm filament. With a 0.3mm extrusion width, 0.02mm layer height and 60mm/s print speed, you would need a feedrate of 0.06mm/s into your extruder. The extruder might not be able to develop enough force on the filament at such a low speed (which, owing to the small nozzle size, requires a relatively large amount of force).
The ultimaker can not print 6 micron layers since the smallest increment the Z-axis can move in is 5 microns. 6 microns is not a multiple of that. |
Problems with stock gear with no screw on Ender 3 pro | This is an older Ender 3 Pro, they at one point came with these press-fit gears, these are not intended to be removed which is a poor design decision. I would recommend buying a new motor than going through the hassle of removing it. |
When leveling hotend always slams into bed? | I realised the simplest fix for this shortly after posting the question. In either your slicer or your printer controller (I use octoprint, so I added this there) add to the starting G-code something to lift the head so that it is above the point it is scraping across.
For example, change your starting G-code from something like:
G28 ;Home all axis
G29 ;probe bed
To
G91 ;Set to relative positioning
G0 Z10 ;move head up by 10mm
G28 ;Home all axis
G29 ;probe bed
(obviously remove G29 if you do not have a probe)
10mm should be more than enough to lift by unless you have something seriously wrong, but you can adjust the figure as needed. |
Easy way to refine a 3D-model for 3D printing by removing internal geometry | About 10 minutes after writing the question, it suddenly dawned on me, that I was not using Meshmixer to its full potential, and especially not a simple property of Cura:
Cura can discard all parts of a model, that are intersecting a closed volume and thus are inside another volume - fixing intersecting shells this way. This option is called "Union Overlapping Volumes"
Meshmixer can, using the meshmix tool, add simple and somewhat complex geometries to specific places in given size and orientation.
Now, these two parts can be used to get rid or complex internal geometry by intentionally setting it up an intersecting shell. Usually intersecting shells are a no-no for good 3D design, but by having something - for example a cylinder - intersect just the internal geometry and enclosing it, these parts vanish in the slicing, if the slicer is set to fix intersecting shells by ignoring internal geometry. Cura does so with a simple setting, one that seems to be on by default in the 3.3.1 distribution.
So the odd solution to how to reduce a model's internal geometry without impacting the outer look can be this at times:
Manually add geometry, that (fully) encloses the internal geometry and turns it into an intersecting shell, allowing (some) slicer softwares to ignore this part.
To illustrate, almost the same area of the object before and after the added cylinder:
As one can see, the structure became much simpler, as the cylinder cuts away all the internal structure (the 'spokes' and 'axle' one might want to identify from the left picture, but that would be a misidentification) is gone. Much less internal geometry is retained and instead it is now filled with a cylindrical space of nice and fast(er) to print infill, here "Quarter Cubic".
While this is just a partly automated solution - demanding the manual addition of the intentional intersecting shell - I am yet to be taught about a fully automated way. |
3d Key not strong enough | That is correct! Take your raw ABS plastic and try to bend and break it. Do it again with a few lengths. Pretty easy to break it right?
You issue is the material is not up to par with your goal. Your heavy duty lock takes too much force to turn.
Your solutions are to
Find a stronger material. These are considered stronger than PLA / ABS
PVA
PET
Polycarbonate
PETT (SHATTERS!)
POM, Acetal
Use the PLA to make a lossless cast of the key and use metal
Find a easier lock and or invest in oil for the lock. |
Filament not extruding | The spindle screws on the gear are shipped not tight enough. Try taking the fan off and make sure the gear is seated properly and tighten the screws down. Here's a video that might help. https://youtu.be/zkZKzF3J3NA |
OpenSCAD "not valid 2-manifold" useful information | Occasionally, a model created in OpenSCAD will have, as you suggest, overlapping segments. Often enough, this will generate the message you receive. OpenSCAD has an implied union function when it comes to independent objects, but if you wish to clear those errors, experiment with explicit union statements where you have joining objects. It may be necessary to join only one pair at a time to clear the error. |
How does an H-bot printer work? | The CoreXY kinematics can be seen as an evolution of the H-bot kinematics. In Marlin, you both need to configure the printer as a CoreXY machine. Note that your steps are determined by the pulleys in the steppers and need to be the same for the steppers. With testing you will find out if you have the correct value.
There are many popular designs out there; e.g. the Hypercube and the Hypercube Evolution (I have built the latter myself).
I would not recommend building an H-bot, these have an inherent design flaw in that the load is asymmetrical causing the carriage to be stressed by a torque causing racking. To minimize this racking, you would require more expensive tight tolerance hardware like proper linear rails (usually not the kind that you find on typical auction or Asian vending sites, but actual pricy Japanese or German hardware). The CoreXY kinematics stress the carriage symmetrically. Note that the difference between an H-bot and a CoreXY printer is only the length of the belts, nowadays good quality belts can be bought for any length you need.
Note that a square or rectangular bed is a non-issue, just specify the dimensions in the configuration. The only thing you need to find out is how to wire the steppers. I connect one stepper to one driver and the other stepper to the other driver. I then did some tests and found out I had to flip one stepper motors connector to get the correct movement. I could have reversed this in firmware as well. |
Ready to use objects instead of 3D-printing them | If your printer is reliable enough I would suggest printing multiple parts in one go. Since the cylinders are only 12 mm in diameter you can easily fit over a hundred of them on a standard 20 x 20 cm built plate with a couple of millimeters spacing in between. |
Which digipot is this with the markings "AAJU" | The picture shows, that the marked chip is next to the letters U8 to U12. U is commonly used for Ineparable Assembies, but there are several meanings possible according to the ANSI/IEEE Std 315 (1975). So, let's assume for the moment that this is Assembly 8 to 12.
Note that the X-pot is marked to be down on the right side of each section, right under the sockets, and next to R103 to R107.
The Marking AAJU might belong, according to this reference, to two chips. Both are Voltage uP Supervisory Circuit
AAJU MAX6339AUT MAX6339 SOT23-6 Quad Voltage uP Supervisory Circuit
AAJU MAX6726KASYD3 MAX6726 SOT23-8 Triple Ultra-Low-Voltage uP Supervisory Circuit
The pinout and look of the first chip is very much in line with what I see from the photo:
Sadly, neither a user manual for the board nor the pinout of it seems to be available at the time. My best guess based on these facts is, that it is the Quad Voltage supervisory chip, as the MAX6726 has 8 legs, as the -8 in the entry SOT23-8 indicates. |
How do you calibrate a delta robot 3D printer? | This answer below is (partially) taken from my answer to Delta printer nozzle not moving square with a perfectly level bed (as if the bed is bent... but it isn't).
Whilst the answer below is for a Kossel, assuming that you are using Marlin, then the process should be more or less the same.
Calibration on any printer is difficult, but especially so on deltas, as there construction is more complex than a cartesian printer.
Have you manually calibrated the printer (at both the center and the edges), such that you can just about get a sheet of paper between the print bed and the hotend nozzle, at z = 0? This last check ensures that the first printed layer of extruded filament is actually touching and "presses on" to the print bed.
I seriously recommend that you watch this video #18:Calibration for a great explanation on the use of the paper. This video is for a Delta printer, a Kossel XL (although the Kossel Mini is also covered) and it clearly demonstrates the height that the zeroed print head should be at, and how to check using a sheet paper.
It is an hour long tutorial video, by Tom of BuildA3DPrinter.eu, and it shows you step-by-step how to calibrate the printer, and also how to deal with deformed beds (concave/convex). It uses:
Arduino IDE, and;
Pronterface
and performs the calibration by adjusting, in the firmware:
MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS, and;
DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET
Here is a run down of the video's contents:
0:00 Intro: The perfect first layer can be obtained, either with/without a probe (the printer is, arguably, better without probe) This tutorial is without the probe.
0:55 Arduino software loaded with Marlin firmware source, looking at the file configuration.h and in particular, the line #define MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS
2:30 - Ensure that the Pronterface USB port is disconnected as otherwise this will inhibit the Arduino IDE from connecting to the printer.
3:20 - Initial test - Gap at the center of the bed
Connect with Pronterface and use the following G-code commands
G28 Home the printer head
G1 Z10 Bring the head down...
G1 Z5 a bit more...
G1 Z4 a bit more...
G1 Z3 a bit more...
G1 Z2 a bit more...
G1 Z1 and if the head hits bed then this is too close
G1 Z2 raise the head again
Paper thickness is 100 microns, place under the head
G1 Z1.5 lower the head again, but no by so much as before
Slide the paper between head and bed. The paper should move freely, but with some friction felt (you should be able to hear the head lightly rubbing against the paper)
7:11 - Deduction of actual distance from print bed is 1.5 mm
7:30 Return to firmware, and finely tune MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS in the Arduino IDE, disconnecting Pronterface again and upload.
8:10 - Return to printer
Connect with Pronterface, again, and use the following G-code commands
G28 Home
G1 Z5 F5000 Move head down rapidly
G1 Z2
G1 Z1
G1 Z0 and the head comes to a rest at the correct distance from the bed
Retest with the paper
9:30 Final test
G28 Home
G1 Z0 Go from home straight down to the bottom
10:02 - Further calibration
G1 Z0.2 Raise head ever so slightly to give us some room
In Pronterface - Move the head horizontally
G1 X50 - Moves head 50 mm to the right
In this case, if there is a larger gap between the head and the bed. This means that the bed is curved, and convex. If the gap was smaller, or the head hits the bed, then the bed is concave
11:40 - Diagram of convex and concave print beds
12:10 - Endstops
G1 X-40 Moves the head to the left (of center) and the head is now further away from the bed than in the middle.
13:20 - This means that the endstops are not correctly positioned. So, before tackling the concave/convex issue, it is first necessary to adjust the endstops, for each tower.
13:37 - Tackling the tower positions individually
G1 Z10 For safety reasons, leave a margin of 1 cm.
14:08 - Calibrating the X tower (left tower). Note: The commands will depend on whether you have the Kossel or the Mini.
Printer moves in three axes:
X: parallel (to the front);
Y: perpendicular (to the front);
Z: height (not of interest at this point).
X tower is not in either of these axes exactly
G1 X-100 Moves the head to the side but 6 cm away from the X tower
G1 X-100 Y-60 Positions the head next to the tower correctly
G1 Z5 - Lower the head bit by bit
G1 Z2
G1 Z1
G1 Z0 and the head is still 1 mm too high
16:50 Endstop needs to be adjusted by 1 mm lower. There are two ways of doing this:
Lower the endstop itself - good for large changes
Adjust the screw - good for smaller adjustments. Turn it anti-clockwise, and raise the screw by 1 mm.
-G28 Home
G1 Z10 Bring head down 1 cm above bed
Move to the tower:
XL: G1 X-100 Y-60
Mini G1 X-60 Y-35
G1 Z2
G1 Z1
G1 Z0 Head hits the bed
G1 Z0.2
So the end stop needs to be raised by 0.2 mm, by re-adjusting the screw (turning it clockwise).
Now home it the head, G28
And bring it down G1 X-100 Y-60 Z0 and it should not hit the glass and the paper should slide underneath
21:00 Minor re-adjustment and fine tuning so that the paper slides without the need a too much force.
21:50 Repeat for each tower
22:15 Y Tower (right tower)
-G28 Home
G1 Z10 Bring head down 1 cm above bed
Move to the tower:
XL: G1 X100 Y-60
Mini G1 X60 Y-35
Repeat the above process - remember to test with G28 and G1 X100 Y-60 Z1 for safety, and then adjust the Z command
This is an iterative process
28:04 - Z Tower (rear tower)
-G28 Home
G1 Z10 Bring head down 1 cm above bed
Move to the tower:
XL: G1 X0 Y120
Mini G1 X0 Y70
Repeat above process
30:14 Re-check! each position (center, X, Y and Z towers)
G28 Home
G1 X0 Y120 Z0 Check Z tower & drop head (head should not touch the bed)
G1 Z10 Raise head (see below)
G1 X-100 Y-60 Move to X tower
G1 Z0 Drop head (head should not touch the bed)
G1 Z10 Raise head (see below)
G1 X100 Y-60 Move to Y tower
G1 Z0 Drop head (head should not touch the bed)
Calibration of the endstops is now complete
31:30 Why the Z10?
G1 Z10
G1 X0 Y0
The first calibration was the center point, but now the endstops have changed and as the bed is either convex or concave, we therefore raised the head by 1 cm, using the Z10, to avoid hitting the bed in the center. Now test it
G1 Z2 Lower head slightly
G1 Z1
G1 Z0 If the bed is concave then the head is still too high! Conversely, if the bed is convex the the head will hit the bed.
32:40 Adjusting the DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET in configuration.h - alter the physical parameter of the printer:
Convex: Increasing DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET lowers the hotend in the center
Concave: Decreasing DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET raises the hotend in the center
Adjust the setting in the Arduino IDE and recompile and upload (ensure that Pronterface is disconnected)
35:07 Testing the new DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET setting - again in Pronterface:
G28 - As the firmware has changed, we must re-home.
G1 X0 Y0 Z0
You will notice the the center point has not changed! It is the same. However if you go to the tower positions you will see that the (previously) perfect gap has changed. This is because by changing the DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET the center stays in the same place but the edges change instead. So, for the convex bed, we have virtually bent the surface, without moving the center point down, and moved the rim up (or, for a concave bed, down - depending upon the direction of the adjustment), thereby flattening the bed.
37:10 Demonstration of adjustment
37:51 Adjusting the height
Return to the firmware and change, again, the #define MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS line that we changed at the beginning, adjusting it by the amount that the head is from the center point.
Disconnect Pronterface and upload the new adjusted firmware.
Then reconnect Pronterface, and Home (G28) and drop to zero (G1 Z0).
The head may still a little too high.
Then move to the tower, and the head may be too close to the bed, without any gap. This means that the bed is still convex and further adjustment is required of the DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET and then, obviously, the MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS.
Again, this is a bit of an iterative process. Don't forget to home after any firmware updates.
Finally once the bed is flat (i.e. it has been virtually flattened in the software) and the gap between the head and the bed is the same at the center and the towers, then adjust MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS (an adjustment of 0.05 or less may be required) to get the paper test just perfect.
44:35 Check each tower (screw adjustment, of the endstops, may be required). As the bed has been flattened, mechanical sub 0.1 mm adjustments may be required. Note that the firmware does not need to be re-uploaded, when making mechanical changes - although the head will always need to be re-homed (G28) after each change.
The head should now be at the correct height.
47:14 - Extruder Calibration |
MK8 extruder showing 500+ °C on temperature sensor? | A brand new thermistor shows about 95-105k ohm (depends on the multimeter quality), so it looks like that one is out of the range.
To be sure that it is a thermistor, you could connect a 100k potentiometer, play with it and see readings on the lcd. If the readings are OK, then mainboard is good so replace the thermistor.
A 100k thermistor curve |
Issue with Z homing on Ender 3 Pro with Marlin | I've actually found what the issue was. It turns out that my Z steps were way out of whack (i.e. 4000 steps/mm instead of 400). Apparently, that's the default value in GitHub for version 2.0 of Marlin. Not sure if that's a typo or a valid value, anyhow setting it to 400 fixed it. |
How to interpret various thermal-related filament properties? | This depends on application.
Definitions:
Vicat softening point. Vicat softening temperature or Vicat hardness is the determination of the softening point for materials that have no definite melting point, such as plastics. It is taken as the temperature at which the specimen is penetrated to a depth of 1 mm by a flat-ended needle with a 1 mm² circular or square cross-section. [However, it seems force on needle should be included.]
The heat deflection temperature (HDT) or heat distortion temperature (HDT, HDTUL, or DTUL) is the temperature at which a polymer or plastic sample deforms under a specified load. This property of a given plastic material is applied in many aspects of product design, engineering and manufacture of products using thermoplastic components. [Again, to be meaningful, the forces need to be specified.]
Basically, Vicat softening temperature involves ability to be cut, while heat deflection temperature involves distortion from an evenly distributed force. Thus, use the parameters based on whether sharp uneven forces or a distributed force is most important to your application. This can also be worded Vicat is for maintaining shape, HDT is for maintaining load bearing properties. In other words, Vicat is for uneven loading on the print, which can change the shape. The most extreme is a sharp load. HDT is for the print to support an evenly distributed load. Many applications may be in between the two. What complicates the issue is 3D prints are ususally printed with a fill rather than being printed solid.
Appendix
Standards to determine Vicat softening point include ASTM D 1525 and ISO 306, which are largely equivalent.
The heat distortion temperature is determined by the following test procedure outlined in ASTM D648. The test specimen is loaded in three-point bending in the edgewise direction. The outer fiber stress used for testing is either 0.455 MPa or 1.82 MPa, and the temperature is increased at 2 °C/min until the specimen deflects 0.25 mm. This is similar to the test procedure defined in the ISO 75 standard.
Limitations that are associated with the determination of the HDT is that the sample is not thermally isotropic and, in thick samples in particular, will contain a temperature gradient. The HDT of a particular material can also be very sensitive to stress experienced by the component which is dependent on the component’s dimensions. The selected deflection of 0.25 mm (which is 0.2 % additional strain) is selected arbitrarily and has no particular physical significance. |
Why can my printer display remaining time but OctoPrint can't? | Octoprint is a generic application that has to work with a rather wide variety of printers and printer firmwares. The time estimation that is shipped with Octoprint by default is a very basic method that doesn't rely on any specific printer features. This also makes it kind of useless in some cases, and not very accurate.
The estimate that the Prusa i3 Mk3 shows is not actually done by the printer, it is embedded in the GCode generated by Slic3r PE. There are M73 commands added that tell the printer how far along the print job is.
As for why Octoprint doesn't do this by default, the major reason is likely that this method only works for specific printers and slicers, and only works well if the slicer can actually do good estimates for a particular printer. This is the case for the Prusa because it supports this feature and the slicer is maintained by them and has enough information to make good estimates. But this is not the case for all printers.
The feature is also not entirely standardized as far as I understand, e.g. Prusa uses slightly different M73 commands to give estimates for normal and silent mode.
There are plugins that can read the M73 estimates, you could try that. I never tried them myself, this plugin seems to do what you want from a quick glance. |
In FreeCAD, how do you copy a sketch from one plane to another? | I’m assuming you are working in the Part Design workbench. Select the sketch and click Edit->duplicate selected object. Make sure that only the sketch is copied (depending on the version, either deselect the plane or click don’t include dependent objects). This will produce a duplicate sketch in the active body (if you want the duplicate in a different body, make sure it’s active first by double-clicking it if necessary). You can then click Part Design->reorient sketch to move it to a different plane.
By the way, FreeCAD has a very active and helpful forum at https://freecadweb.org. I highly recommend asking FreeCAD questions there. |
Snapping to Ground - 123D Design | The position matters a lot if you use the default STL file without doing anything in the slicer. I've used 123D extensively and when I've inadvertently left a gap between the part and bed (and not snapped it to the bed in the slicer), the printer tries to print in mid air. Use "d" to "drop" the object to the grid. Different slicers have similar commands that will attach a face to the bed. I use Simplify3D. |
Weird temperature reading using thermistor on MKS GEN L v1.0 AUX-2 analog pins | Thermistors, commonly used as temperature sensors on 3D printers and other DIY things, work by changing their internal resistance depending on the temperature.
On the analog ports, the microcontroller can determine the voltage of the connected signal.
To actually measure the resistance - and thus temperature - of the thermistor, you need to build a voltage divider:
Most, if not all, 3D printer control boards use a resistor of 4.7 kOhms and a capacitor to build this voltage divider:
You'll need at least this 4.7 kOhm resistor to get your thermistors working on any analog pin, if the three thermistor ports on the MKS Gen L don't suffice for you needs.
You could also use other temperature sensors, especially for the case, like the DHT11 or DHT22, however I couldn't find whether they're supported by Marlin yet. |
Bowden setup keeps jamming between PTFE tube and heatsink | Filament sometimes get stuck on the rim of the PTFE tubes inside the heat sink. Josef Prusa from Prusa Research has published a document on how you should chamfer the PTFE tubes for his printers:
Maybe chamfering your tubes works for you too. |
Is it practical to build a separate hotend temperature controller to assemble hotends without taking up printer time? | You can get a suitable board for $20 or so, print a case for a few cents, and either repurpose an old PC power supply or buy a new one just powerful enough for the hotend (not bed) heater very cheap, so I think it's a lot less costly than a cheap printer, and cobsumes less space. But I'm not clear what you need it for. |
Can commodity 3D printer extrusion hardware and filament be used for injection molding? | Injection molding requires two major components: pressure and heat. So your question can be broken down into those two halves: can your average extruder handle injection molding temperatures, and can it handle injection molding pressures?
Let's start with pressure.
Per this page on the University of Minnesota's site, plastic injection molding tends to require pressures of around 2 to 8 tons per square inch. Assuming you're using a 0.4 mm nozzle, which has a cross-section of 0.126 mm², that works out to be 0.000195 (1.95E-4) square inches, which translates to about 3 lb of pressure total at the nozzle assuming you're going for the high end of 8 tons (16,000 lb). However because of the way that you're treating the molten filament in the extruder as a hydraulic fluid, you've got to deal with the fact that the "piston" on one end is actually quite a lot larger area, which means you have to multiply the force by that difference in size. The cross-section of 1.75 mm filament is approx. 9.62 mm², or 0.149 in². That's 76.4 times larger, which means you need to be pushing on the end of that filament with roundabout 230 pounds, or 105 kg, of force.
For reference, the Nema 17 that's on my extruder is spec'd at 76 oz-in of torque, geared down 4:1 through a Wade's extruder, and then acting on a hobbed gear with a 6 mm effective diameter (3 mm radius). Much to my own surprise, as I write this, that means that my little plastic extruder is actually capable of just north of 160 lb of pressure force! All these numbers would need to be recalculated for 3 mm filament, and I have no experience with 3 mm, so we're going to skip that one for now.
Now, that being said, my extruder is also capable of shredding filament if conditions aren't just right. The main two problems you'll have to overcome is 1) gripping the filament hard enough without destroying it, and 2) keeping the filament from buckling. I think if you got clever with some gears keeping multiple hobbed gears synced up, and a polished aluminum or steel feed tube, you could absolutely make your own extruder that's capable of consistently putting 300+ pounds of force on your plastic filament without it buckling or stripping. The downside is that your feed rates are going to be fairly slow, so each injection molding is likely going to take you quite a bit of time. A larger motor such as a beefy NEMA23 might help offset that by giving you much higher torque at higher speeds, so long as you can melt the filament fast enough. However we'll need to revisit these pressure numbers in a few moments, after I explain a few things about temperature.
Next, let's look at temperatures. Obviously we know that we can melt the filament itself as it's moving through the extruder. Using a Volcano nozzle or something, you can even guarantee molten filament at a fairly high extrusion rate. However most printers are designed such that the filament cools to solid (60-80 °C normally) almost immediately. Injection molding designs require that the entire mass of plastic be kept molten. Fortunately, ABS and PLA melting temps are easily reached by literally any toaster oven, so stick your setup in there and you're golden, right?
But wait, there's more!
One of the problems you'll run into immediately is that extruders are carefully designed so that the plastic is molten for as little time as possible, because molten plastic against a metal tube introduces a bunch of friction, hence the need for super high pressures during injection molding. If the plastic melts too soon, then you'll clog up your heatsink (the "cold" side of the extruder), and won't be able to extrude at all. This is a fairly common source of jams in 3D printing, where you're extruding too slowly and there's not enough cooling on the heatsink. Fortunately, E3D sells a water-cooled Titan extruder that would keep the heatsink cool. However the rest of your gearing assembly, and the motor, will also need active cooling, as heat damages the permanent magnets in the rotors, and the printed geared assembly obviously will melt if put inside an oven. Your best bet might be a water-cooled Bowden setup, assuming you can find tube fittings that can withstand several hundred pounds of force. You might look into using solid tubes like brake line rather than your normal PTFE shenanigans.
TL;DR:
Get you a water-cooled extruder, make a super-strong Bowden setup, and gear down a huge motor with a bunch of synchronized hobbed gears, and you might actually pull it off! There's plenty of Thingiverse extruder files you can use as a starting point.
As far as commercially available extruders go, however, I don't think you're going to find anything that's immediately available that can handle what you need it to without some level of modification depending on your selected injection pressures. |
I need assistance replacing the PTFE tube in the nozzle on our Flashforge dreamer | I got the same issue before. When you tried to push out the material from the tube, one end of the tube was being pressed. The tube was so soft that the diameter at that end was slightly increased. Hence it was difficult to put the tube back. When you tried to tighten the screw, more force applied and the tube end was pinched more. I got some spare tubes from the supplier. I simply replaced the tube. The PTFE tube could be pulled off from the nozzle. |
Resin printing on Voxelab Polaris | If you want to print flat, you could easily print all parts at 90 %: the bounding box dimensions now are 81.16 x 88 mm - and as a result, you can print some other parts flat next to it but not more than one tile at the same time. Remember to print all cities and roads at 90 % too. |
How to use a 3.8V stepper with Marlin / RAMPS? | The 3.8 V rating does not mean what you think it does. "Rated voltage" has a very specific technical meaning. For a 3D stepper motor to work properly, the rated voltage of the stepper motors actually needs to be significantly lower than the supply voltage of the stepper drivers.
These steppers are perfectly compatible with a standard 12V RAMPS setup with A4988 system. You do not need to and should not mess around with buck converters. All you need to do is adjust the potentiometer on your stepper drivers to limit the current to at most 0.8 A.
The rated voltage in some sense refers to the average voltage the stepper motor should see, but to actually run them at reasonable speeds you need to supply short bursts of higher voltage. A stepper driver and motor actually form a sort of buck converter themselves, and in some sense do the conversion from 12V to the rated voltage for you. |
can the intel sense "xyzprinters 3dscanner" work on amd prossessors anyway? | Here are some ways a program might indicate incompatibility:
There is something in the code that is actually incompatible -- such
as some Intel-only DSP instructions.
They are using an Intel library or source code that is licensed only for
use on Intel processors.
They added a check to their code to be sure the processor was
powerful enough to handle the load, and they forgot to consider AMD
or other processors. |