Learning to build a 3D printer

So it begins... I couldn't change the title of my other thread, so thought I start a new one, if that's okay. Will be posting all printers that require assembly or possibly some scratch build? Right now working on the Hypercube Evolution, next one will be Tronxy X5S, then the RepRap Helios and Snappy V2.0 when they get released, then maybe the RepRap Simpson :D
https://i.imgur.com/XHCLaIQl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kOeai6ul.jpg
oddly enough, the angles are pretty much 90 degrees on one side, but like 89.2 on the other two sides. I don't think that should make a huge difference in print quality?

Next up, find the correct settings for PETG for all 3 printers xD

If I may be so self centered as to ask if you'd be interested in building my revision of the gus simpson? I've just finished the arms for the design and the rest should soon follow. I'm hoping to launch a crowdfunding campaign soonish for the printer to help bring it to market and finalize it.

Wow i somehow missed your post again Trakyan so sorry xD. Yeah sure but probaly won't have time until winter holidays. since i'm busy with the Hypercube Evo right now (having small troubles), then the Tronxy X5S later this month/early next month, then the Wanhao D7 and another one more resin printer in December. So probably not only then, but yes I am definitely very interested.

Meanwhile the build is going somewhat well, here's some new pics. Some small issues regarding one of the Z axis mounts, as you can see it's making the leadscrew turn in a little too much for my liking, but we'll see if it causes any problems on Z axis. Turned the part a little too hard and cracked one small side, the other side is fine and since it's PETG, hopefully it also won't cause any problems.


Gonna post a small problem that I have with my newly arrived TEVO, it prints great, but having some wierd issues with layer shifts, I'm wondering if it's the SD card that came with the TEVO Tornado, but I don't have an octoprint to test out, think I can do it with repetier through my laptop that way? Already increased the voltage of the Y motor to 0.999 volts (it's an issue with the Tornado their Y axis motor is a bigger one but they gave it lower voltage than the other ones lol)


Pictures galore:
https://i.imgur.com/c8Uupk9l.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/xBdvU29l.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/haOef8Ol.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/l9e44BIl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ViZh1O1l.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/7KFf8X1l.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/FVcnMWhl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/yE2qnNnl.jpg

I would suspect that the cracked z-axis support is going to cause and issue and should be replaced. Even if it doesn't, any small issue you have while testing the printer will result in 'umm, I wonder if it is caused by the z-axis support' type of thinking. I would replace it now.

On the benchy, is it a repeatable shift ( i.e happens at the same point )? If so, I would think on close observation of the movement of the print head thru this height you could see the shift. Try a simple rectangle print and see if the issue appears.

I would not think that it is the SD card. You could always copy the gcode back off the card and compare with the original.

Octoprint - just installed it on my RPi and connected to my K200. Love it.

Side note, I am envious of all the printers you have. Just out of curiosity, what do you do with them all?

Collector's OCD xD must collect one of every type. so cartesian (corexy, Cube shaped and Cr-10 T shaped), Delta type (Normal and inverted), Scara type (RepRap Helios), Straight Line Type (the Kappa 3d printer), and well Polar type, which I'm probably will not get because no headed bed is a big minus for me.

on more serious note, even though I am a full time teacher, I have time (since I'm single >.>) I will probably have some of them be on 3dHubs or Makexyz, for extra income, that way I can have some printing what I need for my own business and also for others for that extra income, and also because I enjoy it.

I forgot to mention, the layer shift was happening at a different point but always the same point before I reformatted, and now it happens at a different height but same thing, so yes repeatable layer shift. Here's a calibration cube I've printed out and as you can see no layer shift, but there seems to be quite a big over extrusion on the top near the height where the layer shift happened on the benchy, so I'm wondering if too much flow causing nozzle to shift. Nevertheless I've got the heatsinks for the stepper drivers and a new microsd card coming today so we shall see :D

Another thing, I am not sure if it's the motor that my BOM seller gave or something, but when screwing them in, they were too long and popped the motors off. so I had to use M3 x10's instead, and even then that seemed still a little too long. However because of that I'm short on M3 x 10's, so currently using some Nylon M3 x 10's and x8's. Hopefully that won't cause an issue.

https://i.imgur.com/20qlRdEl.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/gfkzw58l.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lfkDpHml.jpg

Im not a fan of nylon screws when holding down a motor ( esp when it is a step motor, produces forward and backward torque. )

I think on the benchy it is a definite layer shift. Look at the bow section, you can see the shift to the starboard (right) side of the boat. Over extrusion would be on both sides of the hull . https://www.simplify3d.com/support/p...r-misalignment

yeah I decided to burn my walled even more and bought this https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 stainless steel, will be arriving tomorrow. but gonna hafta wait. hopefully I can get the carriages all installed by tomorrow, and then the wiring on Monday (thanksgiving in Canada). Yeah I think it's a layer shift, and the fact it happened on a different height after reformat sd card and cube is okay, I think it's the sd card. Again will know later today if Amazon even ships it! (says it's arriving today by 9pm but hasn't even been shipped yet :P)

My version of the gus is still unfinished, and then i still need to find the cash to build and test it, so no rush. If youre ready to build before i can release jfriesen did a revision a while ago that improved on the original.

i can wait, I don't have much time to tinker really anymore, I can say almost for sure in December, but before than highly unlikely. Mind if you link to the jfriesen version?

Meanwhile, build coming along nicely, tightened the X axis carriage so much that apparently it cause it to stutter. Mostly smooth motions, though the middle carriage seems to be a little stiff towards the last 1 cm or so of the right side, which shouldn't affect much and I'll grease it or something to see if that helps.

Tomorrow, hopefully the belts and the bed assembly and then finally the wiring. If all goes well maybe finish it up this week.
What the room looks like now, gonna need to move my electric piano out and get a new table for the new printers, don't like having my new TEVO Tornado on the floor.

https://i.imgur.com/HI0nLhel.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/CZY4Zyal.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/TDWD43Rl.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/w84wIUtl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/kVyityzl.jpg

wow a whole room just for your printers - now that's a luxury :-)

Mine have to share a small converted garage with all the accumulated crap from my job, plus other interests.
No idea where the Big delta will live when it's built.

Bed is built which I'll show later. In the meantime, I think I need to clean my soldering iron or something, it's not melting it at the tip anymore only near the middle. Hopefully this is good enough, pretty tight hopefully won't try anything :P

https://i.imgur.com/nOxJZWGl.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/PaOrgKRl.jpg

Sorry, but I would not be happy with that soldering job. Too much current flowing in those wires. Clean your tip, maybe heatsink the wire so the insulation does not melt and lay the tip there until it melts.

Yeah I found the issue, cheap soldering iron not reaching 400C, also it's oxidized (black tip) and I didn't know how to clean it, basically improper soldering. Got a new 60W kit that'll go to 500C, and got flux and also cleaning sponge with it, so that should work..... If not, I might just get a wired silicone heated bed, stick it underneath the mk2a and call it that. like $200 overbudget now >.<

silicone heatpads are very cheap from aliexpress. My 350mm 12v 270watt was £30.
I don't do soldering. No idea why, just never got round to learning.

Could you possibly link me to one? I'm just hoping my 24V 400W power supply can handle that and the system together.

https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale...ad+3d+printing

Quote:

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Originally Posted by iamthebest22

Yeah I found the issue, cheap soldering iron not reaching 400C, also it's oxidized (black tip) and I didn't know how to clean it, basically improper soldering. Got a new 60W kit that'll go to 500C, and got flux and also cleaning sponge with it, so that should work..... If not, I might just get a wired silicone heated bed, stick it underneath the mk2a and call it that. like $200 overbudget now >.<

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If the tip goes black, you can sand it until you get to bright metal. (Let it cool first). Keep the sponge damp, and wipe the tip on it occasionally as you're soldering (this can be done when it's hot). Dip the hot tip in flux when it's clean and hot, and tin the tip with solder. For electronics, use the thin rosin-core solder that doesn't require extra flux. Heat the part you're soldering, and if it needs more solder, feed it into the junction between the tip and the hot metal part.

Yeah I did that after but the soldering iron can't reach 400 C really it's only 25 Watt which isn't enough. Yep the full kit is coming tomorrow with the flux and such, almost bought the wrong flux, almost bought the one for plumbing xD. Thanks aardvark, but oomph it's showing 88 bucks CAD for a 300mm one for me >.<

Okay need a little help here. I'm really not too comfortable with having to mod the RAMPS 1.4 to work with the 24 Volt power supply. I'm honestly thinking since i"m overbudget and my bank account resets next week that maybe I'll get the duet wifi board instead? I believe it works directly with 24 V without any modification, and the only things I then have to change is to get 24V 5015 blower fans (which is what the thing uses), the E3D V6 titan 24Volt genuine version(not getting Aero cause mods needed and I just want the damn thing working) and that's it? Since believe the motors don't care what Volt since that's supplied by the drivers, and the MK2a heated bed doesn't care either right? Thanks.

EDIT: Option two would be to just get this https://www.amazon.ca/LETOUR-Voltage...WNJ52BJYN7KFRF it's cheaper? and no modding needed either and just have to be careful on how I wire it?

Sorry for the long delay, been busy but didn't do much until last two days. I seriously have bad luck with electronics, first PC's where I often bought defective units lol, now this, all my 5 printers came with 1 somewhat major problem that I had to fix, delaying its use, this HEVO is no exception. I spent over 4-5 hours trying to get the BLtouch working (2 hours wasted because of me being stupid and naming a file wrong) on the Duet Wifi, only find out that my BLtouch has the magnetic flux loss issue, where it loses it's magnetic field or something, in short it doesn't retract anymore, no matter how much I clean it (and the fact I've only used it a couple of time back when trying to calibrate my Delta), yeah it's defective. So I have to resort to well a Z endstop, which took me another hour because well learning reprapfirmware. I have two TriangleLabs BLtouch clones and I'm really tempted to just go with my MKS Gen 1.4 cause it doesn't require modification to the BLtouch (on Duet wifi, you need to cut logic board 3.3V on BLtouch) for the HEVO, but we'll see. so the endstops are done, next up will be installing the bed, waiting also for the TL e3d V6 nozzle and titan extruder, and yeah, hopefully get a print this week!

Finally, It's alive!!!!! Now just waiting for E3d V6 nozzle and titan extruder and good to go. Going to be busy starting later this week as I've accepted a full time offer. https://www.facebook.com/Iamthebest2...9683020150500/

Congratulations :-)

The mks boards all accept either 12 or 24v input. Just saying :-)

Most non RAMPS boards can work with 12-24V power, RAMPS was early days, unfortunately it's still cheapest by a mile so some of us are stuck with it. Besides... 12V is just as good... right? Yeah I'll keep telling myself that.

Sorry for the long no update, was sick, and then was having issues with my BLtouch not working on the Duet Wifi but working on the TEVO tornado and Cr-10 test. Finally *fingers crossed* seem to have found the problem and.... defective board -.- $229 bucks and so lucky lol. Basically first problem is despite my multimeter saying my Power supply is supplying 24V, the Duet wifi says it's 29V, so I turn it down to 20V and then it says 24V. OKay, then Bltouch wouldn't work so tested the rails on the board.... all the 5V, when tested using meter, says only 2.8-2.9V max, while the 3.3V rails say 2.7-2.8V, way lower than doable, so basically.. Yeah. The options I have are hopefully spool3d (who I bought it from) would replace it for me (which they did for the first BLtouch that we thought was defective but was the board) or get an arduino Uno (20 bucks) and have that solely power the 5V on the BLtouch, or something to singlely power the BLtouch. Any ideas?

A bit hackey but cell phone chargers that you plug into the wall supply 5v, solder a few wires and it should work. That or use a voltage divider/buck converter running of V+ of your power supply to power it. A real bummer to have such an expensive board fail on you, and I'd be really gutted to hear they wont replace it, that's just poor service.

or just plug it into the usb port on a computer.
Or a portable power bank with usb ports, even a cheap one would power a bltouch for some hours.

I can run the mks base and touch screen off a little power bank.
Not the sbase 32bit arm job. the board will run but not the board and screen at the same time.

Nice thanks guys, yeah I'm considering those options, since I'm good at soldering now. But if I just want to take the fast way out, I can just buy, as mentioned before, this Arduino Uno here https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01KZO8G3I/...id=FZR8FZOP3AK, power it up, and just plug the BLtouch's red wire (5V) into the 5V on the Uno right and the other four wires onto the Duet itself correct?

Yes, but you'll need a 5 v supply for the arduino to begin with, I'm a bit confused as to why you're putting an arduino in between your 5v supply and the bltouch. I'm sure you've got a spare USB cable and phone charger or some resistors/pot for a voltage divider.

Oh I do have lots of spare USB cable, just not quite sure how to wire it to BLtouch after I cut it.

well ausb cable has 4 wires. 2 for power and 2 for data.
Just check which are which with a multimeter and wire them to the wires on the bl touch.
Sensible thing would be to dismantal a usb extender and wire the socket up to the bltouch and you could then just plug a usb cable in when you wanted to use it.

Some USB cables even just have 2 wires, and even if it has four they are color coded. A quick google search should tell you which is which. Red/black are usually positive and negative while white/green are data. I believe the occasional USB cable will have a blue instead of a black and maybe a brown somewhere (from the ones I've taken apart). In any case, a quick google of USB cable wires (insert the colors you have here) should clear things up.

Thanks guys, appreciate the help, I knew red was power usually. The good thing is, and I strongly suggest you buy from Spool3d if you're in Canada, super fast shipping, and as long as you provide proof, like I did, no questions asked, replacement sent, got it today, then sent back the defective until, and so far *crosses fingers for the unknownth time now xD) it's working. Bltouch retracting and probing properly, hopefully will finish set up and start print this weekend! :D

And the problem continues.... Last time I buy from this guy. I solved my extruder issues (hopefully), which was causing partial jams, and it was me being an idiot. The clone came with also a 3.0 filament part and 2 1.75mm, and I didn't check and that was part of the problem xD installed the correct and adjusted the tension and I don't hear the clicking anymore, at least it's so silent I have to put my ear right onto the clone (literally) to hear like a barely audible click (almost non existent). and it's so far seem to be well. So hopefully that seems to be fine now, but I couldn't finish the print because of another issue, but it does seem to be hardware related.70% of the cube test print through when I noticed a weird smell, I thought it was the filament, but noticed the smell was coming out of my power supply. No smoke yet, but I immediately stopped the print and once it cooled down, unplugged the power supply. Power supplies shouldn't make a smell right? This is the last time I buy from that aliexpress supplier again....

So will this power supply do and be safe? From the reviews it seems like it (has to be amazon.ca since I live in Canada):

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01HTF1Q06/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1WG60CSCAVTUM&psc=1

What sort of smell was it? Burning or o zone? Both are bad but it helps diagnose the issue. It's concerning in any case, but that's the dice you roll with import components. That power supply seems like it will do, but check how much current your set up will draw and compare that to the max it can supply. Most printers only need 250-300 watts so this should be plenty. Also, that is likely just another import (from china) power supply, I couldn't find any reference to the company name by googling and it looks like the standard models that come out of china. Scrolling through the item description you'll start to see the broken English we all know and love from aliexpress listings. I'm not saying don't buy it, I think it'll do fine (what's the odd of two duds in a row?), but if you're buying it to avoid import parts then look somewhere else.

Hmm okay thanks Trakyan, it was my mother who smelled it and I went in to smell it, no burning, more like plastic smelling? yeah I would say ozone, so I'm wondering if my mother was overreacting and maybe it was just the new smell, however it did suddenly shut down mid print before so I'm not sure... Yeah i'll buy that and see how it goes, thanks.