General 3D Printing Thread


 
I ran budasnozzles for a long time. They were good but I have had zero issues my e3d or my kraken. I have run all kinds of plastic through them and they just keep performing. Skip the jhead.
 
A friend at Autodesk just sent this to me

http://inthefold.autodesk.com/in_the_fold/2014/05/accelerating-the-future-of-3d-printing.html

Autodesk is announcing two contributions to help make things better. First is an open software platform for 3D printing called Spark, which will make it more reliable yet simpler to print 3D models, and easier to control how that model is actually printed. Second, we will be introducing our own 3D printer that will serve as a reference implementation for Spark.
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Spark will be open and freely licensable to hardware manufacturers and others who are interested. Same for our 3D printer – the design of the printer will be made publicly available to allow for further development and experimentation.
 
So far I've been printing exclusively with ABS filament 'cause it seemed like the best choice for my applications. The other day I decided to try a spool of PLA filament just for the experience and to compare to ABS, having never printer PLA before I am interested in tips from those who have printed a lot of PLA. This filament I have is the translucent type...

I am wondering what you find is a good temp range for the extruder with PLA? Also wondering what bed materials have worked well? I know a lot of people print on that blue tape with a non-heated bed, I've read some posts saying they have had success printing on plain glass that has been heated but I am wondering what temp? I have on hand plain glass, kapton coated glass, and Ultem sheets.

So far I have tried printing on plain glass, extruder at 210-215C, bed at 90C. First print let go from the bed midway through, on the second print I turned off the heated bed after the first layer and it stuck for the duration, but the solid layers didn't go down on top of the fill as nice as the ABS does. On plain glass I have had spotty results getting the first layer to go down evenly....

This prompted me to check up on bed leveling, which led me to pull the whole bed apart and I ended up switching over from the linear bearings to nylon pillow block bearings I've had sitting here for a while. I noticed the linear bearings were wearing a groove in my smooth rods, and from time to time needed some cleaning/maintenance, it seems like the nylon pillow blocks might be kinder on my smooth rods and be a bit less finicky. I'm very happy with the result, the bed moves just as smooth as it did with the linear bearings, and the alignment was a breeze due to the swiveling nylon insert.... but I digress....

I would appreciate any tips for printing PLA that fellow forum members may have to offer... Thanks
 
Tom Kole said:
Ultem at 60C. Hotend from 185-215 depending on your hotend and filament. For an e3d I tend to be at 215C for most pla
Click to expand...

Thanks Tom. I am using the E3D hotend right now and did notice it seemed to run better at the higher end of the PLA range around 215C. I haven't given the Ultem a try with PLA yet, I guess that is my next stop. Seems like my shot in the dark bed temp of 90C was a bit high, the PLA did tend to remain quite elastic at that temp. I certainly don't miss the hot plastic smell of ABS!
 
I'm perfectly happy with the E3Dv5 I've got now, no regrets. I tried to watch the video about the new V6 but it said the video was private. The only issue I've run into with my v5 is while backing out some PLA it got jammed in there. Rather than freaking out or ripping apart the hotend like I would have had to do with the J-head I just cranked the temp up on the hotend and then extruded a bit while squeezing the part that grips the filament to put extra pressure so it wouldn't slip, the filament started to extrude and then I backed it out more rapidly than before, tragedy averted.... I've been printing with my .6mm nozzle and all my prints have come out excellent, so far I have printed from .2mm to .5mm layers with great results from the .6mm nozzle. I've also got a .4mm nozzle (that came with the hotend) but so far I haven't had a need to print thinner layers than .2mm so I haven't had a need to use the .4mm nozzle. I really like having the large nozzle so I have the option to print thicker layers and get prints done quick. I would recommend you grab a larger nozzle when you order, only cost like $7 bucks, I'm glad I did.
 
I had done exclusively ABS for a long time, just recently got some PLA. The fumes from PLA are much less than the ABS, and not so plastic smelling, almost more like a burnt smell, but so much less smell overall that it is hard to notice..
I still am a fan of ABS, I get better prints from it, better bridging and smoother layers, but I've got my ABS technique down pretty good and am just learning about PLA...
 
The V6 seems like a small improvement over the V5, though I do like the heat block and may upgrade that in the future. The big bonus I see is for people that use 1.75mm filament because the direct and bowden versions are the same. As someone who is currently in 3mm bowden hell and now tinkering with a DIY version of this instead, I wish my second e3d was a direct version.

As for PLA, fumes are minimal to nonexistent. It sort of has a sweet smell to it. Ralph, once you get the settings down I think you'll like the results.
 
The PLA seems to stick down easier and still release better when the print is done with less worry about warping, that I like... And I like the texture and feel of the part when the print is done. The problems I have been having is poor layer adhesion on the upper layers (on top of loose fill) and poor bridging. I think it's hotend temperature related but I haven't done enough PLA printing to iron it out.....
 
So my printer issues seem to continue. For a while I've been printing fine after removing the polyfuse from the RAMPS board for the heat bed and powering the arduino board via USB. All of a sudden I started having issues with my extruder not working during the prints. For a minute I was thinking that maybe my E3D was jamming like my J-Head did but there didn't seem to be any issues there as I was able to push filament through without issue, etc. Once I started to investigate further it seems that my extruder stepper motor just stopped working. I was trying to control it from the LCD panel and it would not move. Troubleshooting the issue I swapped where it was plugged in on the board with the X axis and it was able to control the motor. Ok, so I think my pololu is fried, swap the pololu drivers from E0 with X and still no motor control with swapped pololu, and the one that was suspect of being fried was able to move the X without issue. Any suggestions? I have a RAMBo board that I ordered when I thought I fried my RAMPS, just haven't got around to swapping them out yet, mainly because I don't have the LCD adapter yet.
 
Sounds like something is screwy with the signals coming to the e0 driver header. Have you checked the step and dir leads to see if anything is being transmitted? Also check the solder points of the e0 header, maybe one of the junctions went bad. You can always just switch to using the e1 header by changing the e0 pin assignments to the e1 pins.
 
Extruder and hotend problems can be notoriously difficult to diagnose - so many things can go wrong.

First things first. Strip the extruder down to bare parts. I know this sucks to do, but it'll track the problem down. first verify the wiring connections between the hotend and ramps are good between ramps. Really jiggle them around to ensure that you still have a good electrical connection. Then move on to the stepper. Make sure everything is de-energized, then check the connections. Be meticulous here.

Next look at the bearing that applies pressure to the filament. I've had bearings sieze before, causing the small gear to come loose/break.

Pull your small gear. It may have come loose or broken. Verify operation with the gear off. If you have a replacement swap it out. If not take a long hard look at that small gear. Make sure its not broken.

Does your stepper shaft have a flat? If not, file one in. Just cover the hole into the stepper with some silly putty to keep the filings out.

Let us know how you make out.

Oh, and lube your gears with some synthetic grease.
 
If I read his post correctly, he has already verified that the stepper, driver, and connections are ok. It seems to be that the e0 header is not sending step signals.
 
Yeah, all the individual components seem to work if not plugged in to e0. How does one go about changing the pin assignments?
 
Open your firmware pins.h file and swap the pins for e0 and e1 under the ramps section. Just make sure you do it for whatever ramps version you have selected in the config.h. Then just plug your driver and motor into e1
 
I had a very similar issue with my RAMPS board, actually several. When I first fired it up I got "min temp" error for the extruder, turned out that the pin for the hotend thermistor wasn't soldered well. I contacted the merchant and told them I could probably fix it by re-flowing solder but I didn't want to void the warranty, he told me to go ahead and so I re-soldered the pins and its been good ever since...
However, from time to time my X-axis would just stop moving exactly like your extruder motor. I figured it was a bad pololu so I replaced it, seemed to work a while then it happened again. So I swapped around pololu's each time it worked a while then at random it would quit. It seemed if I re-seated the pololu it would come back to life so I wasn't sure exactly what the issue was. At first it only happened occasionally, eventually it was happening all the time so I was about to replace the ramps board. So I decided to pull the RAMPS board off first and reflow solder on those pololu headers and a whole bunch of the board in general before I ordered a new one.... Ever since that day I have not had one problem with the RAMPS board...
So it seems to me there may be some RAMPS boards floating around with shoddy solder work, and with the way the pololu's are connected on those headers it seems a likely spot for bad solder to cause a problem... Since you already have a RAMBO board I would recommend you pull the RAMPS board and do some solder touch-up and see if that cures your issue.....
 
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