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Print postmortem


reeper

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Posted · Print postmortem

I had seen the link concerning belt tension and infill issues. I made sure the motor timing belts are quite taut, and from the beginning I had replaced the 2 nut-10mm bolt setup on the belt clamps with 3 nut-12 mm bolts. The tension is perhaps not perfect, but I think it’s alright for the moment. As for the alignment of the axes, I spent a fair amount of time trying to minimise resistance and measuring gaps. They seem to be ok, but I have nothing to compare with resistance wise. Everything is lubed up.

After battling with my phone's camera to get focus to work, I managed to get some isometric photos of my prints. I took Taylor’s sage advice of uploading everything to an online gallery, here’s the link

https://picasaweb.google.com/1121852438 ... directlink

Given the amount of plastic that leaked between the aluminum block and the nozzle, I should probably address that first. Then I’ll have a go at printing the calibration cube with both skeinforge and netfabb, and see which problems persist.

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    Posted · Print postmortem

    Finally got around to tightening the nozzle to try and eliminate the leak. Sadly, it’s better but not completely gone. I guess I will have to take the nozzle off and seal everything up with some plumbers tape.

    I had a go at slicing the calibration cube using netfabb and the standard profile, unmodified. The result can be seen here

    https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/a ... directlink

    The underlying spacing is visible through the top surface of the cube(I suppose sagging is to be expected with relatively sparse spacing) but I’m not entirely certain that the top surface is as it should be(I have nothing else to compare it with). So I’m posting the result here to inquire if netfabb has demonstrated that the printer extrusion is working as it should.

    Thanks.

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    Posted · Print postmortem

    Your latest test cube looks good to me. To add to the discussion on Marlin or 5D, I'll also say go with Marlin right away. There is no need for you to setup and mess with firmware which you won't be using in the end anyway. My experience was that I haven't had a single decent print with 5d EVER. But when I switched to Marlin and netfabb most of my problems just disappeared.

    Also, I use hatching instead of contours almost all the time. I found it is much easier to dial in to get great results, and it produces stronger up and down skins, at least in my experience. Also I think the sagging issue wont be a problem with hatching, I used 2.5 mm infill spacing with three upskins successfully with a great finish and no sagging. Try it and see if it works better for you too.

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    • 1 month later...
    Posted · Print postmortem

    I’m back once more.

    I finally got around to fixing my printer’s nozzle leak this weekend. A bit of teflon tape around the brass tube before replacing the nozzle head seemed to do the trick.

    Previous prints suggested that the y stepper motor belt wasn’t taut enough, I increased the tension and the issue seems to have been remedied.

    I’ve printed the companion cube from portal, overall it turned out alright. I used netfabb to slice, using the high quality profile after having set the down and up skins to hatching(now looking at the cube I’m not sure I properly selected my modified profile, I generated the gcode some time ago)

    I have noticed two issues with the print. Firstly the top of the cube has turned out rather poorly, partly due to stringing it seems. I would appreciate some advice on where things might have gone wrong if it appears evident.

    https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/d ... directlink

    https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/n ... directlink

    The other issue I noticed was a strange ridging that formed on only one side of the cube, I’m at a loss as to what might have caused this given that the opposite side is smoother.

    https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/l ... directlink

    https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/h ... directlink

    A few other pictures can be found here

    https://picasaweb.google.com/1121852438 ... directlink

    Thanks in advance for any analyses/suggestions.

    Richard.

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    Posted · Print postmortem

    (Google+ photos doesn't seem to like hot linking)

    The stringing is always a bit of a problem, but retraction and proper temperature can solve it.

    One of your sides shows something which to me looks a bit like a belt tension problem, my companion cube has it even worse, and was printed before I added tensioners to my machine. Could also be strings, not sure, kind hard to see on the photo. And NetFabb has a generates more strings then Skeinforge.

    What color PLA is that? Is it gold from Faberdashery? Because it looks like a cool color, but even worse for flaws then black PLA.

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    Posted · Print postmortem

    I would have thought that a belt tension issue would produce a problem on two sides of the cube, both being opposite one another. Only one side is ridged like that.

    Could be an odd stringing that is very close to the cube surface due to unoptimised path planning in netfabb.

    The PLA colour is Gold/Brass, I ordered it with my ultimaker kit. I think it’s the same colour that bluebot/Paul uses for most of his prints(that I’ve seen anyway)

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