my i3v 10" build

I'll be starting my build of a MakerFarm i3v 10" tonight. I'm very excited about it! I've always liked to tinker with stuff and I have a good bit of experience with wood working and general DIY but this will be my most ambitious electronic build. I found, as I did my research that led to purchasing this kit, that the most useful forum posts were the ones where a build was documented from beginning to end. So I'm going to try to do the same, maybe this will help out the next person. BTW, thanks to all the generous posters here who share their wealth of knowledge, I am far better informed than I ever would be because of all of you.

I ordered my kit on December 2nd.I opted for the standard 0.5mm J head for the 3mm filament. I ordered a roll of PLA to start with. Attached are some pics from when I unpacked. Everything was well packed and padded, in addition to the styrofoam peanuts, everything was wrapped in bubble wrap. A quick inspection showed everything was intact and in place. One reason I went with MakerFarm was the reports I'd read with horrifying pics of crushed boxes, missing pieces and broken stuff. Everything looked great so far!

Daniel

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psc758292a.jpg

[IMG]http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psa6128a97.jpg[/IMG]

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9qu6nznf.jpg

Hey danrodz! I hope you enjoy the build! Building the makerfarm kit has really helped me understand how my machine works and I know I had a blast doing it! Welcome to the forum and if you have any questions during your build let us know! :D

Welcome to the board..

I finished my build recently. I will pass along some wisdom that was gained the hard way ;-)

1. My kit included 2 X-idler brackets. One of them was the old style. The second one was the new style and had the cutout needed for the improved Z-stop adjust system. 50/50 chance, and I installed the wrong one! So watch out for this.

2. There are 2 M5 nuts that fasten the large gear in the extruder to the hobbed bolt. Both of them were half-height jam nuts in my kit. You will have better success if the nut that fits into the trap on the gear is a full-height, standard M5 nut. The half-height nut doesn't stick out of the trap, so the jam nut did not ride up snug to it. This will make more sense when you get to that spot.

I think you will love your printer, and the whole build experience!

Jim

mine arrives this week! can't wait!

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Originally Posted by JimG

I finished my build recently. I will pass along some wisdom that was gained the hard way ;-)

1. My kit included 2 X-idler brackets. One of them was the old style. The second one was the new style and had the cutout needed for the improved Z-stop adjust system. 50/50 chance, and I installed the wrong one! So watch out for this.

2. There are 2 M5 nuts that fasten the large gear in the extruder to the hobbed bolt. Both of them were half-height jam nuts in my kit. You will have better success if the nut that fits into the trap on the gear is a full-height, standard M5 nut. The half-height nut doesn't stick out of the trap, so the jam nut did not ride up snug to it. This will make more sense when you get to that spot.

I think you will love your printer, and the whole build experience!

Jim

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Thanks for the good tips, I'm keeping a list of these little tips so when I get to them I know what to do. You guys are awesome.

Daniel

There are a bunch of great build threads you should check out. I'm too tired to pull up the URLs, but look for printbus page for an 8in. Most of it relevant to the larger size. Also consider lacquer before build (maybe clough42's idea?). Definitely get some cable sleeving and take your time. Invite your friends and family over. Get your kids involved. Imagine, the PC in the late 70s early 80s: this is where you are in the 3D print revolution.

Enjoy your new tool!

Once you are settled, definitely investigate Roxy's ABL code. There are several physical implementations including printbus and clough42. Everyone has their own cooling fan solution. While you are running wires to the extruder head, take the time to put in a few extra +/- (red/black) sets that are not connected to use for fans and three wire for the ABL servo. You will want one eventually. So nice to have the wires in a bundle already.

Congrats! You're going to have a blast with the printer! Take your time and enjoy the build, it goes together very easily and straight forward. When assembling the extruder make sure everything aligns correctly and rotates freely. You may find you will have to do some trimming and sanding to get parts on the extruder to fit just right, but it will save you a lot of trouble down the road.

Also too, take your time and plan your wiring. It's a simple enough system to wire up, but there can be quite a few pairs, and spending some time to route them effectively and cleanly will give you an even better looking and performing system.

Oh, and lastly, pick up some cork board or some sort of insulation to put between the bed and heating element.

Have a look at print bus' thread for some good pointers: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...ld-by-Printbus



Ryan

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Originally Posted by MiniMadRyan

Have a look at print bus' thread for some good pointers

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Ryan - thanks for the plug, but there are others with great ideas too. What's great about forums like this is that it brings to the table different people with different experience and goals. The more that gets shared, the easier it is for others to selectively leverage the thinking someone else has already done, sometimes being able to save the trial and error phase.

Actually printbus's thread was what pushed me to pick the makerfarm over the other printers i had been looking at. I can't think of how you could get more in depth! I'm open to all suggestions and thanks for all the advice and encouragement. I had seen the friendliness of the community and that's why I decided to post here.

I got in a few hours last night and got up to the last part of the X carriage. At that point I needed to measure and cut the belt and I decided that I was far too tired to risk making an oops. Good progress though. The videos are clear and very easy to understand. So far this has been far easier than I expected it to be.

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Originally Posted by printbus

Ryan - thanks for the plug, but there are others with great ideas too. What's great about forums like this is that it brings to the table different people with different experience and goals. The more that gets shared, the easier it is for others to selectively leverage the thinking someone else has already done, sometimes being able to save the trial and error phase.

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I agree! I should have added originally that there were a lot more threads of interest. I would, like you say, read though the entire forum, and even other areas of the forum here too, as much of it is helpful for all of us. This forum, and it's users were the reason I picked up a MakerFarm, and it's this forum that continues to spur me towards upgrading, tweaking and continuing to develop my printers to this day!

I've put in about 7 hours so far, 3 hours last night and 4 today (had the day off). I've completed the frame up to the step where the threaded rods are put in. Nothing difficult so far, it's been a pretty smooth ride.http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...pspvufjbf9.jpg

Now I did run into one issue. I haven't really looked into it yet. After placing the Y bed in place and running the belt, I noticed that if i lightly grab the rear right hand corner it shifts up and to the right. The same thing happen on the rear left hand corner. Nothing happens to the corners in the front. What needs to be adjusted?

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Originally Posted by danrodz

Now I did run into one issue. I haven't really looked into it yet. After placing the Y bed in place and running the belt, I noticed that if i lightly grab the rear right hand corner it shifts up and to the right. The same thing happen on the rear left hand corner. Nothing happens to the corners in the front. What needs to be adjusted?

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Are you referring to the rear corners of the Y-bed? If so, it sounds like the rearward eccentric spacer on the Y-bed might need some adjusting.

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Originally Posted by printbus

Are you referring to the rear corners of the Y-bed? If so, it sounds like the rearward eccentric spacer on the Y-bed might need some adjusting.

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Yes, that's it. I will try adjusting that then and see if that tightens up things. Thanks!

With those spacers you should be able to get it pretty tight! For me, without the belt in place I could set the spacer so that the bed would not move freely on its own.....of course that's a bit too tight but you do want to get rid of whatever play you can. Nows the perfect time to get everything just right too.

Put in another couple of hours and got the LCD put in, the Z motors and the threaded rods. Ran into a bit of a roadblock, none of the last 3 nuts would thread onto the rod smoothly. I almost gave up for the evening but ran down to the basement and pulled a nut off a bicycle that fit perfectly! I wasn't able to make the spool holder because somehow I ran out of regular nuts. A quick trip to home depot tomorrow should take care of that.

The last roadblock I hit before calling it a day was looking all over for the thermistor kit (the 2 thermistors and heat shrink tubing) and not finding it. I watched the whole video in dismay, realizing that I hadn't seen anything that looked like those pieces. Then at the very end, when Colin put the completed part in front of the camera, I remembered seeing something that looked like it...YES! The thermistors had already been soldered up! One less thing to do tomorrow.

I'm hoping I can get most of this tomorrow (I'm off again) because Thursday is a double shift for me and I want to play with my new toy this weekend.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MiniMadRyan

With those spacers you should be able to get it pretty tight! For me, without the belt in place I could set the spacer so that the bed would not move freely on its own.....of course that's a bit too tight but you do want to get rid of whatever play you can. Nows the perfect time to get everything just right too.

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Playing with the eccentric spacers I was able to see exactly what you guys were telling me and I was able to get rid of all the play. I also adjusted the other carriages and everything is moving very smooth right now. This has been very entertaining :)

So several hours later I've made quite a bit more progress. Well over a foot of snow and work have kept me from doing much. I've made it to the extruder assembly. That is all done and taped up. All I need at this point is to mount it to the frame and then do the electronics. I did run into a couple of issues so far that have slowed things down (and I document so that those who might glance this over before they make their own can know what is coming):

1. ran out of regular m3 nuts. Not really a big deal, 10 at home depot were $1.50

2. should have gotten a piece of glass while i was there. i had a slightly bigger piece of glass but trying (more like failing) to trim it down didn't really work, now i've got an uneven edge that is about an inch short. I will get a piece soon, however i think there is enough glass there to keep it moving for now

3. there was some confusion assembling the extruder. the videos are somewhat outdated. i opted for the standard j-head but it now come with a ceramic catridge heater so to install it i needed to watch the magma video. now, it didn't seem that much different but this is the first time I've done this sort of thing so it kind of threw me off. i'm pretty sure i did everything right though.

4. in my kit the thermistors were already assembled. some of the wood parts were upgraded parts so they didn't quite match up with the instructions in the video. Something to keep in mind when you are looking for parts and can't find them

These are pretty minor gripes compared to the comments I've read of people building other kits. The instructions are very clear, the videos are very instructive, the parts are of good quality. I also appreciate the engineering, it's almost immediately apparent what each piece does once you assemble it and slot it into place and you can spot pretty quickly when something is not right. I'm very pleased so far.

Pictures have been a bit sparse die to phone issues. I finally finished up the printer build after about 15 hours put in. A couple of little issues cropped up in the end run:

The cheap 12v power supply didn't come with mounting screws. Another trip to home depot is in the works. I also realized I only had red wire for the power connections. So all those will be re-done after the home depot trip.

I should have followed Ryan's advice with the extruder build. It was the only video that I felt was a little rushed and when it was done I didn't feel 100% confident about it. Of course, when the assembly was complete filament wouldn't feed, it wouldn't even load into the slot. So I removed it, took everything apart and watched a different video that went more in detail about aligning all the pieces, how loose to keep the hobbed bolt, etc. I popped it back on and set up for the 1st print!

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psknz9nda0.jpg

The Y axis belt was too loose which led the belt to skip, shifting the print after the 1st layer. Most of the cube printed well except at the last layer where the loose belt skipped again. The next picture shows that. I removed the belt and shortened it by making the loops longer. The problem seems to be gone.

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psyqqrujke.jpg

Now cubes are all well and good but I wanted to do something fun. Make magazine recently released their 3d printer issue and there is a load of good tests in there to pick from. But why not be ambitious? I decided to go for the MakerFaire robot (www.thingiverse.com/thing:331035/). It's a printed in place articulated robot (joints at feet, knees, hips, shoulders and neck). I loaded up the code from slic3r and then went grocery shopping. When I got home:

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...pshbpakmyt.jpg

95% done. The print finished in 2:40. I had lowered the feed rate to 84% thinking that the slower feed would make the details smoother. Here is the robot next to the cube for comparison (I did the 65% version)

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psvkdq2uba.jpg

It looked great when the print ended. Now, I've been using Elmer's glue stick for adhesion and it is a bit of a bear getting stuff off. The robot had no intentions of coming off, it too a bit of doing. Looked nice but would the articulations work?

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psifxm0ylz.jpg

They did! Now, to be completely honest, I snapped one of the legs off at the hip. I was a little too vigorous when I was trying to loosen up the joint and it broke off (I may have also damaged it trying to get the robot off the glass). Nonetheless, it's impressive considering this is my 2nd print on this machine, I've done no calibrations (all I did was load the file Colin provides for slic3r) and machines that cost $2-3,000 had trouble completing this print. I followed dacb's suggestion and had my family come over to see what the printer can do and everyone is extremely impressed. My kids especially. I have a feeling the machine will be busy.

Nice job..

Now that I've built the printer and successfully printed something I'm ready to clean up all the wiring mess, mount the power supply where it ought to be and do all the other little things to make this a nice clean machine. This is where the fun starts for all those who love to tinker. I can't wait!

I have to say that I'm very impressed and pleased with the quality of Makerfarms kit. It went far smoother than I imagined and the end result is quality that I can brag about. Wait until I've got it tuned in! I will be writing Colin a few kind words very soon. I would highly, enthusiastically recommend anyone get a hold of one of Colin's kits and get making.

My suggestion is just get in and get dirty! The kit is not as complicated as it may seem and the experience you gain putting it all together is invaluable. Now that I actually know what everything is and does and where it all goes and how it's all supposed to work, I have a better idea of what changes I want to make. I think I could easily strip the whole thing down and build it back up in a few hours now. I'm planning on collecting a list of mods and then breaking the machine down partway to straighten up all the wiring. I'm glad I didn't make a fuss over it before, I really have a good feel for the machine now.

Thanks for looking over my posts and special thanks to the kind, generous souls on this forum who encourage and guide newbies like myself!

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...pszeetp6iw.jpg

One thing I forgot: cheap power supplies. Terrible! I picked up a 12v power supply of an ebay seller I get arduino's from. It does what it's supposed to, I haven't verified voltage supplied under load but everything seemed to be smooth. The fan, however, sounds like an 18 wheeler stuck in low gear. Replacing that fan is very high on the list of things to do.

Also, I did a quick check of the stepper motors during the 2+ hour print. The X motor was tepid as was the extruder. The Z motors were cold to the touch, the Y was warm but nowhere close to hot. I slid a sheet of cardboard under the heat bed and it has been taking about 4 minutes to get to 80C. I have a few fans that I've salvaged from ancient PCs, I'm planning on getting one blowing on the RAMPS.

Congrats on the first prints.

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Originally Posted by danrodz

... The fan, however, sounds like an 18 wheeler stuck in low gear. Replacing that fan is very high on the list of things to do...

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Is this one of the MeanWell knock-off supplies? AbuMaia went through a fan issue on his. Thread NEED REPLACEMENT POWER SUPPLY FAN might be of help.

Mine's been working well with the new fan, though I think the replacement fan is louder than the stock one. Also, my fan didn't start out bad, it took a few months to sound like a bearing was wearing out. I need to get new screws to mount mine, too. The ones I have seem just a fraction too small, the threads don't catch, so the power supply is just kinda hanging on them right now.

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Originally Posted by printbus

Congrats on the first prints.



Is this one of the MeanWell knock-off supplies? AbuMaia went through a fan issue on his. Thread NEED REPLACEMENT POWER SUPPLY FAN might be of help.

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That thread was actually very helpful, thanks! I dismounted the fan and looked it over and remounted, the grinding noise seems to be gone now but I don't trust it. It will be replaced soon.

danrodz, fantastic job!! You did good with your build and also with debugging the y axis belt tension issues on your own! I think we can expect some great things to come from you, seeing that one of your first prints was the articulated robot and it actually articulates! :)

*jumps on soapbox*
As much as I don't want to, one thing I feel obliged to mention for your safety's sake is to be cautious about leaving the printer running while you are running errands. It can easily malfunction and break itself or worse go up in flames at a worst possible case. The sooner you or someone else can catch a malfunction the better! I'm sure you know all this, were being cautious, and didn't need to hear it from me.
*backflips off soapbox*

Keep up the great work! :D

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Originally Posted by gmay3

danrodz, fantastic job!! You did good with your build and also with debugging the y axis belt tension issues on your own! I think we can expect some great things to come from you, seeing that one of your first prints was the articulated robot and it actually articulates! :)

*jumps on soapbox*
As much as I don't want to, one thing I feel obliged to mention for your safety's sake is to be cautious about leaving the printer running while you are running errands. It can easily malfunction and break itself or worse go up in flames at a worst possible case. The sooner you or someone else can catch a malfunction the better! I'm sure you know all this, were being cautious, and didn't need to hear it from me.
*backflips off soapbox*

Keep up the great work! :D

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Thanks for the kind words!

You are absolutely right of course. Once we left the house I thought of it and berated myself for such foolishness and half expected to see the FD hosing down my charred house when we got back. And just to reinforce the lesson, as I was printing later that evening, the filament got tangled in the spool. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't been there to guide it along but I was glad I was.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by danrodz

You are absolutely right of course. Once we left the house I thought of it and berated myself for such foolishness and half expected to see the FD hosing down my charred house when we got back. And just to reinforce the lesson, as I was printing later that evening, the filament got tangled in the spool. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't been there to guide it along but I was glad I was.

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Haha completely understand that. My thinking is that I trust something I built more than something China built, but I can't sue myself if my house goes up in flames ;)