GeraldO's Build

[Eaglezsoar]

And after all the taxes you have to pay for them to deliver to Canada and they do this?
I would be POed beyond words.

[GeraldO]

Oh yeah, I have to pay duties in excess of 50% of the price I paid on top of this bullshit!

[GeraldO]

Told UPS to go f**ck themselves and have to pick the parcel up from the airport. Construction resumes next week!

[GeraldO]

Alrighty! Back to the build! I didn't have much time today however, I *DID* get the carriages and trick laser arms attached. I also bought the "add an inch" plates for the tower carriages because who doesn't like an extra inch?

Here she is! The bearings are all setup and tensioned with the carriages moving freely up and down but in no other direction. Hopefully I'll be printing this weekend!

[Eaglezsoar]

I really like the way that orange pops! Quite nice and a very good job!

[GeraldO]

Success! Machine has been built and powers on! Vrefs were set way WAYYY too high on my DRV8825s but I think I'm in a good spot w/ theri trimpots. Tested heating and it maintains a stable temperature! Motion is still a bit weird but I haven't calibrated end-stops or z-height yet.

Pics will be up once it gets cleaned up a bit-- but it looks great!

[GeraldO]

Well, I don't have pics of the frame but I'm fast calibrating this thing and after a few days it's starting to look like I can get good prints out of it. I didn't even need to adjust the delta radius!

Until I get more exterior pics, I took a lot of time to organize cables in the electronics bay. It needs a fan to cool the DRV8825s but it's nice and clean!

[Eaglezsoar]

I do like those heatsinks you are using. They look great and I bet they work good.

[GeraldO]

They're doing a pretty good job. Keeping the steppers warm to the touch, but not hot. My extruder is cranked up a little higher and is uncomfortable to the touch but not super hot.

That being said, I'm running into some problems right now with my layer alignment. I seem to have my retraction dialed in but my layers are all over the place. Take a look at the pic below of the hollow calibration pyramid:

Retraction looks great but the layers rarely align. Here's what I've checked so far to try to resolve the problem:
= Retension belts (they're very firmly tight now)
= Double checked vrefs aren't set too high (heatsinks are warm but not overly hot, no thunking audible for missed steps)
= Using trick laser arms so I'm pretty sure I don't have the delta arms blues (no arm binding and the effector plate moves freely in all directions) I'm also using their zero-lash straps (rubber bands)
= Ensured freedom of motion for the carriages (eccentric cam adjustments) and ensured that the carriages can only move up/down and not side-side or rotate at all

Any help or insight into the problem would be greatly appreciated -- it's so close to being 100% awesome!!

[GeraldO]

I almost forgot to include my slic3r config and eeprom:

Code: Select all

; generated by Slic3r 1.0.0RC2 on 2014-03-09 at 13:31:48

; layer_height = 0.25
; perimeters = 2
; top_solid_layers = 3
; bottom_solid_layers = 3
; fill_density = 0.2
; perimeter_speed = 30
; infill_speed = 80
; travel_speed = 120
; nozzle_diameter = 0.5
; filament_diameter = 1.75
; extrusion_multiplier = 1.1
; perimeters extrusion width = 0.50mm
; infill extrusion width = 0.84mm
; solid infill extrusion width = 0.84mm
; top infill extrusion width = 0.84mm
; first layer extrusion width = 0.70mm

[AndThenSome09]

You may want to check this post out:

http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4440

[GeraldO]

That's a good point. I noticed that the spool was binding against the holder quite a bit and may just be the source of the problems. I'll head to the hardware store after work tomorrow and try it out! I have an idea for a ball bearing based holder but first thing's first, it needs to print!

[GeraldO]

You may want to check this post out:

http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4440

Thanks for the tips- I went to the hardware store and purchase similar parts (couldn't find the bearings and in canadian harware stores you'll never find an employee to help you). I set it up and it seemed to solve a few of the problems but not all of them.

I spent a day or so thinking about what could possibly be the problem since I had thought that I'd checked everything however, I never thought to try setting the Vrefs HIGHER than what I'd had

I cranked up the Vrefs on the XYZ steppers to just under what I had my extruder set to. And lo' and behold, magic started happening!

You'll see some of the failures on the left, but the crowning achievment is the beautiful PLA blower which I modified to fit onto my effector with the trick laser arms. I'm on the fence onto whether I should go higher or take the Vrefs a bit lower but time will tell I guess. It's kind of funny that somehow I managed to get the Vrefs just high enough to get acceptable motion without comprising its broad strokes positional accuracy too much. Oh well, lesson learned!

Onto the real fun! Thanks guys!

[GeraldO]

I've been happily printing away since my last post and have been curious to see where printer electronics are headed with newer, faster boards.

I picked up a smoothie enabled board, the Azteeg X5 Mini and am going to be doing a conversion shortly. I've seen a lot of positive reviews of it both on this board and elsewhere. I also really like the IRC community and its dev environment is extremely easy to setup, with easy to comprehend and modify code. Couldn't ask for much more!

I also designed a mount converter for my Arduino holes for the X5, which includes under-board cooling. It's been noted that the heat of the DRV8825s are directed to the bottom of the board and passing air over it is recommended to help keep things cool. Check it out!

I'll be making the mount available on thingiverse once I'm satisfied with it

[Eaglezsoar]

You'll see some of the failures on the left, but the crowning achievment is the beautiful PLA blower which I modified to fit onto my effector with the trick laser arms.

Would you happen to have the .stl or gcode for this modified pla blower, I have the same problem.
I can understand if you don't have them anymore.

[GeraldO]

Sure do! Here you go (see attached).

[Eaglezsoar]

Thanks so much!

[GeraldO]

Success!

I also changed my heatsinks so that they lay on the bottom of the board. The folks in #smoothieware pointed out that the PCB is designed to direct the DRV8825's heat to the bottom of the PCB. I modified my mounting bracket to support this as well.