My 3 Color Mixing Printer

[Nicos.s]

looks amazing, expecting more prints

[AutoWiz]

Well, The e3d v6 hotend solved the jamming issue. But I am now having this other issue. The printer seems to be doing it's job right, that is all axes are tight with no freeplay anywhere. with the belts off x and y move smoothly and freely. And my supports have stopped the creaking of the frame. But now my printer is doing this..



So I reprinted this a bunch of times making adjustments to the temp and extruder steps per mm..



I went as high as 5120 and as low as 3620 without correcting the problem. And it is a lot of steps per mm by design. I have drv8825 1/32 stepping driver boards and a gear reduction wade extruder. In the beginning of all this I thought I was chasing high precision. so the more steps for a given distance of movement the better. I must now believe my problem lies either with the wade extruder, its calibrations / settings, or the ptfe tubing (maybe too long?) So in anticipation of less than stellar performance from this setup, I have already ordered and received a mk8 extruder identical to what came on my geeetech prusa i3 that has been a workhorse for me. So we gotta swap some more parts on the printer..



I am keeping all these hotends and extruders and parts and as soon as I establish a reliable good quality printing machine, I will work my way back to some of the features I have steered away from.

[AutoWiz]

I am a Sucessful auto tech 15 years deep into my trade and usually build and chase power in corvettes. This tool is the culmination of all those years of dedicated hard work in my trade and buying and paying off and trading up scantools that were never meant for an individual to purchase. Without the euro software and updates, the purchase price of the snap-on verus edge is $10,400. And that number is subject to snap-ons 18-22% front loaded interest. My whole point here is that I am not building to be cheap or frugal. I am picking everything diy and beyond so I can learn more and I am not oppose to spending money for this effort I just don't want an easy button where I can go straight to high quality prints without even understanding why or how.



Overnight I designed and printed out this new filament holder to mount to the top of the frame just like I did for my ebay printer. Though I designed this one to work with the spools with a smaller diameter hole in the center.



And here we are all back together and looking a lot like the geeetech printer. But that is ok because it prints pretty darn well. Just that 200x200x180 that is it's limitation.

[techinout]

<a href="https://youtu.be/TXpJW1RhCA4" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/TXpJW1RhCA4https://youtu.be/TXpJW1RhCA4

[AutoWiz]

I have at this point realized a mistake I made with the single e3d v6 hotend. When I was trying to calibrate the extruder in marlin under default steps per unit (xxx, xxx, xxxx, xxxx) I was playing with the third number which was really the z axis and not the extruder. I made this mistake for 2 reasons. First I am weak with the Arduino software. Not a retard, but far from good with it. And also because I had already bought the mk8 extruder and convinced myself at the first sign of trouble this is what I was doing. So to be fair, in truth, I never gave the e3d v6 hotend the chance it deserved. It is very important I identify these problems for what they are just to keep things objective and the data as correct as possible. I am working on getting a print with the mk8 extruder right now.

[AutoWiz]

And the mk8 extruder is a hit. Not just because of the specific extruder I feel but also because I have a known good printer with an mk8 extruder and known good marlin values that I have more or less copied over. I made this thin wall cup..




The cup on the left the home made printer made and the cup on the right was made by the geeetech i3 pro b..



Now I am off to find and print a little boat named benchy

[AutoWiz]

First print of benchy..






Not bad, but not good, either. Making progress but I can see I still have some work to do to.

[AutoWiz]

I have printed this 3dbenchy boat a fistful of times across all of my build platforms..



My homemade printer used the black PLA, The geeetech acrylic i3 pro b printed in transparent PLA, and the monoprice select mini printed in grey PLA. The monoprice for $200 and printing within 20 minutes of opening the box is by far the best printing machine of the 3. I mean look at this boat..






The 3 prints in black are from me trying different extruder temps and feedrates but sadly to no avail. One noticeable difference between the monoprice and the other 2 printers is cooling. I now feel I need to setup a cooling fan blowing on filament on the 2 printers with mk8 extruders and retest.

[AutoWiz]

It pains me to share this here. This is just one of those things that hurts a man's pride. As soon as I saw it I stopped the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHjyk6FqYN8

[AutoWiz]

I have all the parts I need and an idea of what i'm trying to accomplish. Here is my next project..



I want to setup auto bed leveling / height adjustment and for that to happen the glass has to go in favor of aluminum. And I want to setup a cooling solution for the mk8 extruder to blow air on the filament as it leaves the nozzle. I think this is the big difference in print quality between the monoprice mini and the other printers. It is because of this belief that I think I am going to convert back to the single e3d v6 hotend and maybe I might take the hotend off the mk8 and use it's direct drive extruder instead of the wade extruders.