A beginner's guide/problems of my first build, and a request for help.
I though for the sake of a new printer i might chronicle some of the trials and tribulations ive encountered while building and using my new Geeetech Prusa i3 Pro C kit. It's their new Dual extruder with the GT2560 board, "The perfect blend between an Audrino Mega2560 and Ramps 1.4" using a Repetier Host interface.
I have zero experience with Audrino or any of the rest of it.
I've been a "Maker" all my life before i knew that was a "thing." I'm what you would consider an engineering/build it guy. Soft ware has NEVER been my thing, so this was quite the leap but one that needed to be made. Despite the incorrect instructions i managed to build the printer from nuts and bolts iun about 5 actual hours of work spread out between," Dad dad, dad, dad, dad..." you get the idea. Anyway, I built the printer, turned it on and then had no idea where to go from there... so starts the journey.
I know many of the veterans in here will read my "problems" and just brush them off as "newb mistakes," and they'd be right. This is for the people that don't know, and the avenues i used to fix them. As well as maybe some of you guys with much experience can give me some pointers on how to do this better.
#1 My first issue was enstops. whiole the instructions stated to place the connections in the Max position, they needed to be in the Min. the other thing i learned after about an hour is the need to "home" all axises before the axises would respond. and an M999 command was necessary after errors and process needs to be repeated.
#2 I was having issues with the extruder overheating and erroring and shutting down. I checked the diagram and everything was plugged in according to instruction. Turns out they weren't accurate. Thermistor 1 was plugged into Extruder 2. Switch thermistor, problem solved.
#3 Bed sticking with ABS. ABS slurry hasnt worked yet as my Kapton isnt due here until tomorrow.
Strangely, the Avery brand "permanent glue stick" ive had the most constant success with but im pretty sure ive figure out why that is... Its thicker... which leads me to my next problem.
#4 Bed not staying level. This is a two fold issue. a.) the bed seemed to become un-level during the prints with, what i guess, is the vibrations causing the wing nuts to rotate with the oscilations of the bed. I fixed thes by tightening them up all the way, adding some glue from the stick to the threads and letting it dry. I went his route because it will not act as a "loctyte" but more just add friction. It was worked beautifully and they stay put. It also seem that my Z endstop adjustment screw was changing positon mid print, so i added a touch of hot glue to the top of the threads. this is new, ill let you know how it works.
#5 The last thing is bed height in realtion to the extruder during a print in progress. At first i added a -0.4 offset to the Z in the G-code. The place was still to too despite it being calibrated to a sheet of paper in all 4 corners and center.... I fixed this(and I'd like some better techniques please) but running a print with no filament, pausing the print, and recalibrating bed to extruder from that working height. With this, a very thin layer of Elmers school glue stick holds firm after a proper warm up, and by that i mean letting the bed come to temp and letting it sit another 10 minutes to make sure glass is the same temp.
Currently, with the ABS that came with the printer, my extruder is set at 230C and Bed at 115C. this has given me the best result.
No i need help> I have yet to be able to calibrate extruder 2 to printer on top of 1.. I'm off by about 100 microns.
Hope some of this helps you newbs, and i hope some of you vets can help my find better ways of doing things.
Cheers Gents,
Zan
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