On Mon, 27 Feb 2017 04:21:42 -0800 (PST), Adam Aglionby
wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2017 at 1:43:16 PM UTC, T i m wrote:
On Sun, 26 Feb 2017 02:26:40 -0800 (PST), Adam Aglionby
wrote:
Whilst I understand they can ... and we have a roll of ABS on the
shelf, we haven only ever used PLA so far.
http://shop.3dfilaprint.com/
Bookmarked (although we generally buy off eBay).
TBH buy anywhere with best price ;-)
Ah, ok. I mentioned that because I know some people go to a particular
supplier because they have had issues elsewhere. For example, we had
one roll of (admittedly cheap) PLA filament that would snap off at the
extruder if left overnight and another where the thickness was pretty
inconsistent (affecting the effective deposition rates).
Filaprint is reasonable for price,
Ok.
just used as an example of range of materials.
Understood. We have resisted trying other materials as we wanted to
learn to walk before we tried to run and even ABS (the second main
choice for material it seems) requires better thermal control during
the printing process.
We don't even have a fan on the extruder or bed and seem to be able to
print ok, not sure you could get away with that on my other materials
(but would be nice of you could). ;-)
You also have control to print them solid (100%) down to 5% (honeycomb
https://www.technologyoutlet.co.uk/c...ant=4410312453
Looks a good price for an OOTB solution and only showing how the
prices have been coming down.
In line with UK DIY practice , what persuaded me on Wanhao is Aldi Australia have had them as the Coccoon Create before, with Aldi`s attitude to warranty reckoned wouldn`t be total junk.
No, I saw that and agree 100%. That said and outside of warrantee, I
wondered if the controller electronics was unique to them, as one of
the key requirements of the printer we were looking for was that it
was 100% available in the general supply market (Arduino Mega / RAMPS,
generic motors, stock ram sections etc).
Rigidity much improved by Z brace, printed brackets and 8mm threaded rod to create triangle at front of machine, like bracing on your Mendel.
I see there are different versions of the Wanaho i3 machine and I
though the latest one had what looked like a pretty rigid (wide sheet
metal) link between the main frame verticals and the supports for the
Y axis?
I was watching something on Youtube where the guy was discussing a
Pruser i3 and said it couldn't really be called a Rep Rap machine
because few of the parts could be made by the machine itself.
Always wondered about the RepRap purists , what eaxctly were they going to print hot ends and steppers with ;-)
Hehe.
Josef Prusa is the guy who designed the i3 and open sourced it , hence lot of Chinese variations like Wanhao. Even so about 6 week wait for kit version of Prusa i3 , he has over 300 Prusa i3 running 24/7 making the parts for Prusa i3
http://www.prusa3d.com
This 3d printing thing really fits we me as both an interest and
solution. Before building the MendelMax I'd had some experience with
Arduinos so that was quite comfortable, same with general electronics,
electromagnetics and mechanics (Kodak / personal etc).
We were able to get on with the Marlin firmware ok and the first 20mm
test cube came out pretty close (19.97x ... etc) so proved all our
belt pulley / stepper motor step figures) were all ok.
I also quite enjoy a bit of fettling and modification / improvement
and that's something that is easy to do on something so open and
accessible as the MendelMax (and building it from a kit means you get
everything you need and have everything guaranteed at component
level). So, the last little mod I did was to design and print a pair
of pointers that clip over the hex nuts at the bottom of the Z axis
rods that should indicate that the Z drive rods are staying in sync
(like lorry wheel nut pointers). It's very reassuring to see them
point in exactly the same direction, every time the Z axis homes and
amazing to think they could at all when they are 0.9 Degree stepper
motors being driven with 16 sub steps by the electronics with no
mechanical synchronisation between them!
What is also lucky is that all the software we need runs on Windows so
we didn't have the extra hurdle (as it would often be for us,
non-Linux geeks) of that to deal with at the beginning. We have since
tried some of it on Linux and had varying levels of success (just for
the S&G's, not because we have needed to). We also have OctoPrint
running on a Raspberry Pi but again, not really used it as such.
snip
It doesn't look quite so easy to work on (especially the x-carriage)
as can be seen here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZJyWjoseI8). ;-)
Thin alloy y carriage is a known issue with all the cheap i3s , replaced it with a dibond one :
http://tehnologika.net/Wanhao-duplic...-plate-reprap/
works a treat.
At 243g, and with the addition of the heated bed and glass, doesn't it
end up adding quite a bit of inertia to it all?
The Y axis build table on ours is the same basic geometry as yours
with 3 bearings but no cutouts (it's just a square of probably 1.5mm
thick ally). In each corner is a upstanding bolt and on those bolts
support the fibreglass heated bed (with thumb wheel adjusters under
the bed and nylocks nuts above). Clipped to that (4 bulldog clips) is
the mirrored glass build surface.
The only issue I can say we have had with that is not running the bed
quite hot enough and experiencing some end / corner lifting on some
bigger objects.
Cheers, T i m
p.s. Seeing this closeup picture of the bed and the Y axis belt idler
with it's cable-tie 'reinforcement (
http://imgur.com/dawwInv ) makes
me realise even further how well designed the MendelMax is (the
equivalent bearing mount is both vernier tension adjustable and
supported on both sides).
https://cdn.thingiverse.com/renders/...w_featured.jpg