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Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 2:26 am
by orcinus
Unstuck the LCD, hotglued the wires, restuck it.
Now it's back to trying to get the white PLA to print right. I've also updated to latest Marlin (had an oldish version).

Oh, BTW, in case anyone's interested, this is what my wiring looks like:

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Not that neat, but very easy to tear down and reconnect.

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Everything's color coded. X, Y and Z axes are Red, Green and Blue.
Extruder is White. Hotbed is Yellow. The same colors apply to all the hookups - endstops, servos, heaters, thermistors, power...

The only thing not following the color scheme is the LCD, because i ran out of colors :lol:
This is what the LCD connection looks like:

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Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:43 pm
by orcinus
Don't have an encoder (actually, i do, somewhere, but it's not the push-click type), so feedrate percentage is useless to me on the display. So i've edited Marlin's ultralcd.pde and replaced it with fan speed. While i was there, did some other tiny mods like custom characters for bed and fan, reordered the second and third row and made the SD percentage show "SD present" if not printing from SD and SD is inserted, but SD percentage when print from SD is in progress.

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Yes, i'd do anything to avoid dealing with the real problem, which is getting consistent flow on perimeter walls :mrgreen:

Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 5:52 pm
by orcinus
As it turns out, my problems with flow and consistent printing was a combination of things (as always):

    - the E steps/mm were indeed knocked pretty far off the value i've originally measured and calculated - no idea how that happend, the value was nonsensical (456.456)
    - the glass plate on the bed somehow ended up pushed against the SMD LED and was raised slightly on one side
    - one of the Y axis eccentric nuts needed tightening
    - X axis stepper was needlessly set to a high current and seems to have been inducing some interference in the nearby E axis stepper cable
    - as mentioned before, the UM PLA is much much more viscous and has a *very* noticeable hysteresis when extruding and retracting
    - probably most importantly, though, i've had the Z axis set to disable when inactive - as it turns out, when the Y axis was doing sharp jerks, it would sometimes cause the Z axis to slip a little (0.05 mm, probably less, but the effect was cumulative)

That last item only popped up recently, because i've reduced the wobble by quite a bit (managed to straighten one of the rods, switched to different couplers) and oiled/greased the threaded rods, drastically reducing the Z axis friction. In fact, if i spin a coupler on one side with my hand, the other one often spins in sync now.

I've reverted Slic3r to mostly vanilla settings, fixed all of the above and switched back to 2printbeta PLA. The results aren't perfect, but are pretty nice:

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Solid fills turn out VERY nicely with this PLA. This is 4 layers:

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Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:03 pm
by Liberty4Ever
That's looking a lot better! Congratulations!

Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:12 pm
by orcinus
Did a little torture test with orange PLA.

Single perimeter, 2 solid layers, 20% infill.
Very little material, lots of things that can go wrong, good to iron out any kinks in the flow.

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The hole in the middle of the topmost layer is due to my fudging with the extrusion multiplier. I've reduced it too much. I was fooling around with it to see if i can get neater walls.

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Although nominally not translucent, orange PLA can be pretty transparent when 2 (0.25mm) layers thin.
Also, it has a rather weird texture - rough and bumpy. Looks kinda cool, although i'm not too happy with it. Not sure if it's inherent to that PLA or is caused by too low a temperature. The bottom 3 layers (nearest to heated bed and least affected by the fan) or so don't exhibit the texture as much, so it could be the temperature.

Edit: Ignore my ugly fingernails :mrgreen:

Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:15 pm
by orcinus
Liberty4Ever wrote:That's looking a lot better! Congratulations!


Thanks! :)
And i haven't even switched to ACME rods and the new hotend yet ;)

Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:51 pm
by orcinus
It's the e-bay hotend. It's simply not extruding reliably.
It finally broke down today. There were simply too many leaks and the extruder started skipping steps.

I've ramped up the current, it worked for a while, then started skipping again.
Finally, i've installed the repaired arcol hotend and - to my surprise, got perfect results on the first print.

No leaks, no smearing of PLA across the already printed surfaces, no skipping, no curling filament, no strings...
Holes turning out perfectly with barely any tweaks to default vanilla Slic3r settings. Just wow...

Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:59 am
by orcinus
Orange is the ebay hotend with the PTFE shield and a countersunk nozzle.
Red is the Arcol.hu v4.

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Note the difference in holes:

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The M3 set screw fit perfectly in the hole.
I had to press-fit the nut.

Edit: Probably because i was an idiot and i've pressed it in at the wrong angle :lol:
Just noticed that in the photo. I'm a bit slow today.

Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2012 1:09 am
by orcinus
Finally managed to print a large gear without discovering a new mode of catastrophic failure :lol:

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The first 2/3 went BRILLIANTLY. And then i ran across a weird part of the filament - it was printing out with a silverish sheen and very rough texture (clearly visible on top of the gear). If you look closely, you can clearly see the transition to "weirdness" in the back of the gear and the central column. It's lighter and refracts light in a different way.

I took a closer look at the filament, and yes, there's something weird about it on that section. If you look at it almost parallel, you can see weird striations. Not in texture, but the refractive index. It goes all the way to the bit with a little lump at which the filament diameter suddenly swells up to 3.36mm, then stops after the bump. I'm guessing something happened during the filament extrusion process at the point of the bump, continued "tainting" the filament for a while, then got cleared out of the system.

Anyhoo... Here's a random vid of my bot:


Re: Orcinus' Build Log (was: Thermistor insanity)

PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:28 am
by Medel
So previously we were promised some falcons... Just sayin.. :D