Heaven help me - I've just bought a delta kit :-)

[curious aardvark]

pla is vastly underrated, I've had bird feeders and poop bag dispensers outside all year round for at least 3 years, with no noticeable degradation.

It's also the hardest of the currently available materials, so better suited for most printer parts than abs.

I still find it hard to believe that cheap decent desktop printers have only been around for 5 years (when the replicator clones started to flood out of china). When you look at how fast the industry has grown and the plethora of new materials coming out every month, it's amazing.

One of the cutest printers I saw at tct was the new mini-delta from monoprice. Only 120x110 volume, but full featured and small enough to take with you anywhere. You could probably rig it to run from a decent sized power bank or 12volt lithium battery. 90% of the stuff I print regularly would fit in that build volume.

monopriceminidelta_411x480.jpg

They reckon it'll retail in the uk for around £160.
Not even sure it's worth building one for that :-)

[mjf55]

So I accidentally purchased a roll of ABS (Glow in the dark for some halloween items ) eSun. It has good reviews. Is it going to require an enclosure or will small items print ok? Not sure if I should return it..................... Have to stop buying ABS.
Pay more attention while ordering
Pay more attention while ordering
Pay more attention while ordering
... 996 lines later
Pay more attention while ordering

[curious aardvark]

Try it.
bed at 90c, fan off for first 3 layers, print 240.
Calibrate really tight as well.
It should work, and ideal for halloween :-)

Got three 300gm rolls of abs fusion at the tct. Prints fine, but is soft and incrediblt weak. No clue what i can use it for.

Reminds me, probably got some on the shelf - wonder if it still glows

[mjf55]

Ok, Tried for the first time today. Used your settings, 240/90, fan off until layer 4. Skirt and initial outline failed to stick. Aborted. Cleaned green tape ( gotta change it out, its been on there too long (~ 140 M of pure printing fun ) with isopropyl alcohol and tried again. Still some skirt adhesion issues, but kept going........ Outline sticking, interior sticking.... looks like a go.

18 minutes later, my first ABS print. ( small skeleton ) pictures in a minute.

Observations:
Takes a long time time for the heat bed to get up to temperature.
As you previously observed, it really creeps up to the target temp, last 5 degrees really slowly.
Heatbed cools off quickly. Most of the print it was running at 87.5*. Could not keep up. Ambient temp in house about 75*F (~24*C). Might try your foil tape insulation, or a small partial enclosure (removable ) in plexiglass. Maybe a firmware setting to help?
I preset temp to 100. When it got to 91* ( got there faster then when set to 90 ( but you already noted this ), then started print, which overrode the preset value
Smell of ABS is there, but not too bad.

EDIT: here are 2 pictures of my first ABS print. I'm very happy with them.
Front:
ABS-skeleton-front.jpg

Back: You can see in the feet that my bed is not level. I have to correct that.
ABS-skeleton-back.jpg

The eSun ABS glow in the dark filament was a good choice.

EDIT2: Started using Octoprint as I moved the printer to it's home in my office. I like it. Easy to slice in S3D on my laptop, and then in Octoprint ( on my RPi ) upload and print file and monitor the print job. Have to get a webcam to watch it live. Very nice.

[curious aardvark]

you have to remember I use printbite, so no stick or unstick issues - tend not to think about it these days.

so what does octoprint actually do ?

[mjf55]

so what does octoprint actually do ?

It allows remote control (network) of your printer. Alot like the S3D control panel while on USB; you can upload and print, store file on sd card or server, temperature graphs and setpoints, manual control like ponterface, terminal access ( i.e. send gcode commands to printer ), print status, webcam support to watch print.

It's pretty kool. If you like, I can provide screen shots while in action. Here is there site. Spend a few minutes http://octoprint.org/

[mjf55]

Did I mention that the ABS prints are a #$@! to pull off the green tape. Hot bed, cold bed, does not matter. wind up cutting / ripping, unsticking , all of the above , the tape. Time to seriously consider printbite. About 45 usd delivered. Probably going to do that.

[curious aardvark]

try pva stick glue - think I used abs with it. works well for pla.
Gave up on tape quite early on, was always leaving blue marks on prints.

so octoprint is just software ?
I had the impression it was a box you plugged into the printer.

And would it work with a raspberry pi b ? Got one I've never found a use for.
Though I don't think it's wireless. But I do have some tiny usb wifi dongles around

[mjf55]

try pva stick glue - think I used abs with it. works well for pla.
Gave up on tape quite early on, was always leaving blue marks on prints.

so octoprint is just software ?
I had the impression it was a box you plugged into the printer.

And would it work with a raspberry pi b ? Got one I've never found a use for.
Though I don't think it's wireless. But I do have some tiny usb wifi dongles around

I'll look for the pva glue stick. Never had issues with bits of tape sticking to the part. But I use the green frog tape, sticks to the bed better, at least until ABS
Yes Octoprint is just open source software. It will run on Raspberry Pi A, B, A+, B+, B2, 3, Zero and Zero W..
here is a straight download image for Octopi, https://octopi.octoprint.org/
Astroprint, an earlier fork of octoprint, customized for user friendliness, and they offer a hardware / software solution.

[iamthebest22]

I would strongly suggest octopi over Astroprint. Don't get me wrong, Astroprint works and is easier to set up than Octopi, but in my opinion, Astroprint is like Apple, in the sense that it's easy to setup and it just works, while Octoprint is sorta like Android? Not the best comparison, but Octoprint will allow you to do so much more than Astroprint, like right now I have both, but I am liking octo more because of filament sensor, which astroprint can't do. However, I believe Autowiz has a Repetier Server? I want to try that because having one octopi for each printer (4 raspberry pis already) is fine but money consuming, and I want to try using just one Raspberry pi 3 model B to control both my TEVO tornado and upcoming Hypercube EVO, but I can't quite find the instructions to do so (sorry if I've sorta off-topic this, think I'll post this in my own thread). But yeah that's my take on Octoprint vs Astroprint. Astro to start off, but Octoprint in the long run.