MakerFarm 10" i3v build

[cliffgi]

Definitely understand the rational, but don't agree. I feel that if f they can't produce quality parts for the extruder, MakerFarm should sub out to an injecion mold service, and adjust their price upward. The buyer has to foot the bill for the reproduction now anyway, and when you account for frustration and time, I think they would come out well ahead. It is nice to be able to build replacement parts, but it shouldn't be a means to quality operation from the get go. I bought it to build other stuff. That being said, I'm sure like you and so many others, I know I'll get beyond this initial disappointment. I absolutely love your your paint job, and thought about doing it myself, but got too excited about the output phase. Perhaps I'll retro in the future, but for sure, I'm using wire sleeves now. Also going to install a pwr switch for the 12v30A power supply. I don't think this power supply (recommended) comes with one built in. I could be wrong.

[dacb]

I bought this one from amazon. I'm happy with it, so far. I neglected a power switch for the PS which is something I will remedy soon. Get yourself some 10mm M4 nuts for mounting the PS before you get started with wiring.

[Drone]

Definitely understand the rational, but don't agree. I feel that if f they can't produce quality parts for the extruder, MakerFarm should sub out to an injecion mold service, and adjust their price upward. The buyer has to foot the bill for the reproduction now anyway, and when you account for frustration and time, I think they would come out well ahead. It is nice to be able to build replacement parts, but it shouldn't be a means to quality operation from the get go. I bought it to build other stuff. That being said, I'm sure like you and so many others, I know I'll get beyond this initial disappointment. I absolutely love your your paint job, and thought about doing it myself, but got too excited about the output phase. Perhaps I'll retro in the future, but for sure, I'm using wire sleeves now. Also going to install a pwr switch for the 12v30A power supply. I don't think this power supply (recommended) comes with one built in. I could be wrong.

I just got my 10" kit built this week and had the same concerns as you about the fit of the gears. Turned out to be a non issue. While I thought the gear mesh was extremely tight (could barely get the motor bolts in, very difficult) by the time I had finished a couple of test boxes it was running very smooth. After thinking about it a bit I'm thinking it will allow for a 0 lash (which is important) adjustment as the gears wear over time for a longer period with that much adjustment room available. I would think just build it as is and enjoy for a bit before making changes. It may seem like there is no way to bolt the motor in at first, at least it did for me, just start the one bolt farthest from the center of the extruder and hold enough pressure to get the others started. I agree that the adjustment holes could have been a bit longer out of the box, but it did work just fine after assembled. I'm not saying the extruder parts are quality 3D printing since my replacements came out much better, but they do work well after the difficult assembly.

A couple things I did find that were a bit irritating to me. One was the software link for the drivers would not work for me on Win 8.1. Could not communicate with Pronterface, would not connect, access denied. Went to an Arduino site to get drivers for the Mega 2560 v3 and these work great. This driver is the 1.0.5 release version, although they have a 1.5.7 beta available which I haven't tried. Here is the link from Arduino.cc if you have the same issue I did installing the drivers in the build PDF link. Wasted about 2 hours of perfectly good drinking time on this one that I will never get back : )

http://arduino.googlecode.com/files/...r2-windows.exe

Another issue is the spool holder. Not great and was too narrow to fit the ABS spool I purchased from Makerfarm with my kit. Poorly done IMO, I could understand if I bought the ABS elsewhere, but this came with my kit and should have worked. My PLA spool fits, but even then it does not work smoothly it jerks a bit at a time and I can't help thinking this is detrimental to good print quality. I have made my own holder with bearings, but this really needs to be addressed.

The Z endstop is much too fiddly to get fine adjustment on the Z axis without a lot of perseverance and luck. I printed the MiniMadRyan endstop from Thingiverse and problem solved. Why isn't this or something like it in the kit? The original design is a fail I think and should have been addressed long ago. I had to use the stock endstop before I could print the MiniMadRyan version which gave me a really good perspective on how good the new endstop is and how bad the original endstop was. This would not be hard or expensive to fix by Makerfarm, and they need to.

No control knob for the LCD? Why? Too expensive? I don't think so and it should have been part of the kit since it makes navigating the menu system so much easier. Get one from Thingiverse pronto.

A couple of the build videos Colin does something wrong and then later has to undo it. Well I was following the video and pausing to do the build only to later find out I had made the same mistake and had to undo it too. WTF? Why not at least put a text edit in to warn not to do this in the video. Not a big deal, and I understand not wanting to reshoot the video, but would have been nice to note it.

The build deck information is wrong in my firmware I guess. I tried to print out my spool holder which is a length of 6.75" and it could not print it with the X and Y bed values set at 250x250mm in Slic3r. It would only print to the 200x200mm borders. After resetting to a 200x200mm bed in Slic3r it re-centered the print and it printed fine. I haven't addressed this yet, but it is next on my project list. I don't know for sure, but I think this is probably a firmware issue. Maybe this just didn't get updated from a i3V 8" firmware before sending out and is a unique issue, I would be interested to hear if anyone else has run across this.

I am not unhappy with the i3V at all, and am very impressed with how it is operating. I just think the above items could have been easily resolved and made for a much better build out of the box.

[RaySuave]

The build deck information is wrong in my firmware I guess. I tried to print out my spool holder which is a length of 6.75" and it could not print it with the X and Y bed values set at 250x250mm in Slic3r. It would only print to the 200x200mm borders. After resetting to a 200x200mm bed in Slic3r it re-centered the print and it printed fine. I haven't addressed this yet, but it is next on my project list. I don't know for sure, but I think this is probably a firmware issue. Maybe this just didn't get updated from a i3V 8" firmware before sending out and is a unique issue, I would be interested to hear if anyone else has run across this.

I had this same issue, couldnt get the printer to use the full 250mm X 250mm bed. Emailed Colin about it and he said I most likely have the 8" i3v firmware and he gave me a link to download the 10" firmware to update the printer. After doing this, problem solved. This is the link he gave me https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B80A...p=docslist_api and the tutorial on how to do it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOoj...ature=youtu.be

Not sure why the 10" i3v download isnt available on his site.

[printbus]

I had this same issue, couldnt get the printer to use the full 250mm X 250mm bed. Emailed Colin about it and he said I most likely have the 8" i3v firmware and he gave me a link to download the 10" firmware to update the printer. After doing this, problem solved. This is the link he gave me https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B80A...p=docslist_api

Not sure why the 10" i3v download isnt available on his site.

Do you mean why isn't it hosted at the makerfarm web site? I think all the MakerFarm downloads are google docs. That's actually not a bad idea from a small business standpoint. That way MakerFarm doesn't have to pay for the download traffic.

If you mean why doesn't the 10-inch build guide link to the 10-inch firmware instead of the 8-inch, yeah, that's a good question. On a related note, don't follow the download instructions in the RAMPS firmware video either. The download path discussed in the video will get you firmware for the i3, not the i3v. I learned that one the hard way.

IIRC, three people have now posted about the bed size issue. This is likely something to check on every 10-inch printer. To test, use the LCD interface to Auto Home and then Move Axis for either X or Y as far as you can. If you can't go past 200, you're running the 8-inch firmware.

To verify whether you have the right source code, use the Arduino IDE or any text editor to look at the configuration.h file. If the #define statements for X_MAX_POS, Y_MAX_POS, and Z_MAX_POS set them to 200, you have source code for the 8-inch. Editing those values is likely all you need to change to adapt the 8-inch source code for the 10-inch printer.

[RaySuave]

Do you mean why isn't it hosted at the makerfarm web site? I think all the MakerFarm downloads are google docs. That's actually not a bad idea from a small business standpoint. That way MakerFarm doesn't have to pay for the download traffic.

If you mean why doesn't the 10-inch build guide link to the 10-inch firmware instead of the 8-inch, yeah, that's a good question. On a related note, don't follow the download instructions in the RAMPS firmware video either. The download path discussed in the video will get you firmware for the i3, not the i3v. I learned that one the hard way.

I meant why the link isnt available on the site.... The video just serves the purpose of how to get the Arduino software to do the actual uploading of the 10" firmware downloaded from the link I gave.

[printbus]

Ray has his firmware straightened out, but for future readers let me elaborate the firmware confusion. The Downloads page in the build guides has a statement that reads: "...if you choose to change the firmware you can watch the RAMPS Firmware Video - i3V Firmware Download". At least in my case, the confusion started in my thinking that is one link, but it is actually two separate links.

If you watch the RAMPS Firmware Video, ten seconds in the video tells you to go to the MakerFarm Build Instructions area, scroll to the RAMPS board and click on the RAMPS download link there to obtain software. That will provide you a ZIP file that has the Arduino IDE, Mega2560 files, and firmware source for multiple MakerFarm printers. At about 1:20 in the video, Colin says to pick the RAMPS folder that is the closest for your printer. If you have an i3v, this latter part is wrong. You're actually supposed to get the firmware source code from the i3V Firmware Download link in the build guide. Unfortunately, as of today the build guide for the 10-inch i3v appears to point to the same ZIP file as for the 8-inch.

So, the Arduino IDE and Mega2560 files come from the MakerFarm Build Instructions - RAMPS area. Source for the 8-inch i3v comes from the firmware download link in the build guide for the 8-inch printer. Firmware source for the 10-inch printer either comes from the link Ray provided or by using the source for the 8-inch except modified for the three #define statements mentioned earlier.

[Drone]

Thanks for the timely replies Ray and Printbus. You have both saved me a ton of confusion and most likely mistakes. So this seems like a good day to jump into the firmware to get my bed size configured and maybe get my auto leveling system done. Since both the firmware and the driver links seem to be incorrect for the 10", I think the build instructions need some serious updating, and the firmware as shipped should already be correct on the 10". It would really help guys just starting out (like me) to have the links for software produce the correct version for the printer and the preinstalled firmware be correct for the kit. I'll send some feedback to Colin about this.

[dacb]

I just went through this yesterday for adding EEPROM support. After finding links for three different Marlin firmware but none of them 10" on the makerfarm site, I gave up and cloned the most recent Marlin from GitHub. Once I had a firmware that supported auto bed leveling I decided to add that hardware to my rig. I had to make a small number of changes beyond what Zennmaster outlines. I can provide diffs the next time I'm by the machine. Two that I recall were that some sled code was included in the auto bed leveling but not wrapped in a sled specific #define which resulted in build errors and I opted to keep the software limits on x and y axis travel and disabled them only on z (for the final, not during auto bed level setup).

[usarmyaircav]

I am glad I saw this thread also. I got my kit on Friday, and am hoping to have the least problems as possible.