MakerFarm 10" i3v build

[dacb]

Congratulations on your new printer!

Yes, I had a lot of frustration with the printed parts of the extruder. I remember having to grind down the inside of the hinged idler to be able to seat the bearing without damaging it. The filament hole in the extruder body did not align with the hob in the bolt so we filed down one of the washers that go on the outside of the bearings. Lots of other bits of shaving and filing. There was a ton of cleanup to do on the pieces and some of the screw holes and nut traps had sagged and had to be drilled, shaved or otherwise reamed.

When assembled, the gears were ragged on their surface and very tight even with the stepper at the farthest spot on the extruder. The gears didn't rotate smoothly and the steps of the stepper motor were amplified by the tightness. I was concerned enough to put the stepper on a stepper motor tester to play with it. It ran smoothly so I installed it and it worked perfectly. Now the gears are worn down and mesh better. Unfortunately, the printer has a fine dust of ground plastic all over it from the extruder gears as they "burned in."

[cliffgi]

Thanks for the quick response. Nice to know it is not just me. No sense having slots in the extruder bracket if the only way to mount the motor is HARD against the outside limit. It is obvious that the either the top slot is misplaced or the quality of the gears provided in the MakerFarm kit is very low. Kind of ironic that they are gears made by 3d for 3d. Hope this is not a sign. Not willing to deal with feed issues until gears wear in... pulling apart to file and clean the gears. Job one after my first good test print will be to make and replace all kit parts. Not happy. MTF

[dacb]

I was disappointed also, but when my prints started coming out of the machine, that all melted away. My own prints of the extruder parts are beautiful (if I do say so myself). So, I was thinking for a while, why weren't the ones in my kit this nice? Then I realized that I spent 6 hours printing all my pieces for one extruder. That isn't going to work for MakerFarm which has to turn out a bunch of these a week. In a way, t doesn't make sense for MakerFarm to go crazy with making perfect pieces as the ones I received with my kit that I was so frustrated with worked great after I cleaned them up.