Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Started to sell RepRap Prusa V2 kits on eBay.  First one sold in less than a day.

I have started to notice a need for higher resolution.  My current printing quality is being held up by my 0.5mm hotend nozzle.  I just ordered another J-Head hotend with a 0.35mm nozzle from Hotends.com. (Yes thats a real site)  I love my original J-Head.  Unless nearly ever other item associated with my RepRap, my J-Head has never had a problem. (Knock on wood) 

I am also in the process of building another 3D printer.  This time built out of 20 Series T Slot extruded aluminum framing.  While I apreciate the fact that my RepRap can replicate, or print, itself (especially since I can sell those replications to fund my hobby), I am looking to make a printer that is much more sturdy.   My Prusa can easily print over 80mm/sec, but the quality of the print suffers.  When moving at that speed, the entire printer vibrates causing "waves" in the finished printed part.  While this doesn't affect the integrity, it does tend to make it unsightly. 

I was inspired for my new design from the Pocket Printer on Thingiverse.  My design differs slightly by incorporating the X motor onto the X axis.  The Y axis will then move the entire X axis (x axis slides, x axis motor, printbed, etc).  While this will increase the weight of the X axis, I'm going to risk it.  I may even try a NEMA 14 instead of a 17 if it will work, in order to decrease weight.  I appreciate The Pocket Printer's novel design, it seems overly complicated and I'm not sure that belt configuration provides much benefit to printing speed/quality.  But I could be wrong.  I'll keep this blog posted with my findings. 

Saturday, April 7, 2012

PRUSA!

99% Completed Prusa Mendel Iteration 2.  Just waiting on the MK1 PCB heated bed.  All parts printed on my now defunct Huxley.  The X axis is a little short since the Z height on my Huxley was about 10mm too short to print them, but they work.

I'm also using a greg's accessible wade "reloaded" by Jonaskuehling.  Wade Reloaded

The blue glow is a bit of EL wire heading down the wire spiral.  Serves no real purpose but looks good.

Once again I'm using RAMPS 1.4 with Marlin firmware.  This time I hooked up a cooling fan to cool down parts while printing if needed.  (Skeinforge and Slic3r both have this option)

My "D9" terminal was screwed up and was always on.  It turned out to be a faulty MOSFET which I removed and replaced with another transistor I had laying around.  Since I'm only switching a fan on and off, it'll work.

When removing the old MOSFET, I pretty much destroyed the traces around it, so I had to hard wire the transistor in.   Will post more pics once my heated bed gets in.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Prints

Here are some examples of prints from my rewrap Huxley.  I have been experiencing some banding which is likely caused by my Z leadscrews.  I'm not overly concerned since my Prusa will be printing by the end of the week.  I would post pictures of my Prusa build but there is plenty of documentation on that model.

Fishbone gears for Wade's Extruder
 Hollow Owl at 35% scale and 12 tooth T5 pulley  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18218
 1.5 scale Love Loft Box http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18656
 50% scale hollow Stanford Bunny. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3731

My tool chain is:

Pronterface host software.  Slic3r/Skeinforge/SFACT (Depending on print).  RAMPS 1.4 with Marlin Firmware.