And the Printing continues

I've printed, broken and adjusted lots of things since my last post. I've taken my frankenmendel to a science expo and had a lot of people very interested. I've submitted a few things to thingiverse. I've snapped my Z belt a few times, I've had pulleys spinning on motor shafts despite set screws on all four axes at different times. I've added springs under my bed, reshaped the bed clamps, replaced parts with ones I've printed, ripped up my tape with the nozzle countless times, had wires falling out of my electronics... It all seems to be settling down though, anything that comes loose gets blasted with the hot glue these days!

Here's a quick photo tour:

Herringbone Extruder Gears Cube Gears Lash Maze modified Y bracket Heart Crown Spool Holders Butterfly, two colour Frame Vertex Frame Vertex Complete Electronics Mechanics

My things are on thingiverse if you're wondering.

First Print!

Just finished my first print!

Material: 3mm Orange PLA
Layer height: 0.35mm
Nozzle diam: 0.5mm

Something happened here, printer randomly decided to slow down to about 10 steps per second and start driving out into space. I paused it, cut off the blob with my dremel and hit resume. It seemed to go okay from there, but there's a noticeably bad layer through the middle of the object. I hope it won't affect it too much.

Here's the object still stuck to the bed

And here's the other side so you can see the bridges. They're a bit stringy, but good enough to print over the top of. Not bad for a first print :D

I calculated my E_steps_per_mm instead of measuring it, seems like my calculations were good! :D

Calculation was 3200 [steps/rev] * 39/11 [wade gear ratio] / 6.75 [hob effective diameter] / 3.1415926535 [pi] = 535.0

For those curious, that's cheap cloth tape on the bed, probably PVC or something. I just couldn't get this PLA to stick to the bare glass.

Extruder failure!

After my success with MakerGear's new SS barrels and thoroughly enjoying my heatsink mounting system, I tried printing some PLA. This involved switching barrels for a brass one with a 3mm bore that I had lying around. I decided to try reusing my heatsink mount to see how it would go with the brass barrel, and also because I didn't want to have to take my entire wade's apart again to put on the groovemount that came with this barrel. A few short minutes after getting it all warmed up and squirting hot PLA at 200°C, I noticed the following:

Extruder failure Extruder failure Extruder failure

Considering that this same wade's and carriage had been perfectly fine printing nylon at 290°C, it becomes evident that the stainless steel barrel and its thermal break had far more to do with that success than my heatsink!

The heat really likes travelling up that brass:

How am I gonna clean this?

Now I know why everyone's adding fans!

One of Greg's Accessible Wade's has been earmarked as the first thing to print for quite a long time due to how much of a hassle it is getting around this classic wade's. It seems my hand is being forced.

I think this is salvageable...

And It Begins!

Here's my first print!

Something happened to the comms after that little bit, and I was so excited that I pulled it off the bed and ran off to show people before taking photos which is why you can see that it's not stuck to the bed.

First Print

First Print

First Print

That's the 1.65mm nylon weed trimmer line I showed yesterday at 290°C nozzle, 110°C bed- printing nylon apparently requires an excellent hot end!