obscurereality

Since I have more registered domains than I can shake a stick at, I’ve decided to put tentacle5.com to use. This will serve as a RepRap specific blog, and a store to sell my stuff. At the moment, it’s just all the RepRap posts from here (Which will be cross posted of course), and hopefully some posts from AdamK now and then.

The store isn’t functional just yet, so don’t get all excited about the super cheap mendel kits ;)

Following the suggestion of a commenter yesterday (Thanks!), I used this info to calibrate the axises, some math help from Adam, and had some great success.

Using a printed ruler, the process is pretty straight forward. There’s some trial and error involved, and it’s probably not 100% accurate just yet, but I’m happy with a percentage in the high 90′s.

Here are the results:

The one on the right was printed extruded Monday night before calibration. It’s all kinds of wrong. Y Z weren’t  moving enough, and X was moving way too much.

The one on the Left was printed last night after calibration. The results are quite obvious.

There’s still some extrusion work to be done. Since I’m not sure what this PLA is exactly (It was an engagement gift from MakerBot, all I know is that it’s ‘Prototype’),  a lot of trial and error going on.

As it is now, once extrusion stops, it wont start extruding again right away. There’s a 30-60 gap between stopping and decent flow. Once it’s going, it goes pretty well. Since Jordan built this extruder, I’m also not sure what diameter the nozzle it is, but I suspect it’s smaller than the 0.5mm I’m used too. Easy enough to figure out once I get a mic. I just need to adjust for that and see if I can produce better results.

My machines.xml entry and some photos are below the cut

Continue Reading »

From the shakycam!

Some things I’ve run into:

• If the carriage belt clamps are too tight, it restricts the carriage from moving on the X. I suspect a better carriage would fix this (Stronger material for sure)
• Trying to print a square, and get a rectangle. Not sure what that’s about yet. I’m guessing it’s a change in machines.xml and/or skeinforge
• Skeinforge is trying to print down in the negative on Z, causing the extruder to punch holes in the print area. Easily fixed, but strange. I thought skeinforge started from the bottom of the model, that doesn’t seem to be the case always. huh.
• My X drive pulley was loose, causing lots of skipping steps. I wish I had noticed that sooner.
• I’m not sure the PLA I’m using is worth a damn. I can’t get a consistent extrusion at all. Once it starts, it seems to do ok, but that isn’t kicking in until around layer 2. That wont do. I think I’ll get some ‘know to work very well’ PLA.

All that said, I think I’m pretty close to having something that works well.

I got a little unmotivated getting my Mendel printing. All the problems I was having with the extruder, and a lack of time to do much with it… it just kinda fell to the side.

My buddy Jordan decided he wanted it printing more than I did, and made it happen. That’s pretty awesome. It’s put a spark under my ass to get it going.

Here are his results:

That’s the Printruder II from Thingiverse printing some Black PLA. Looks like I might need to order a new tube, as Jordan reports there’s no way it’s coming unglued from the ABS.

This is a pretty novel idea… and if they pull it off, this should be a kickass game. It’s not often a game trailer is worth posting, but this one is. The Blair Witch Project is one of my favorite movies… anyway, enjoy.