The CTC "How To" Mini Guide -- Or, How I Turned My CTC Into a Printing Beast.

[Geoff]

Nice, thanks for this - I am going through all of this now with this steaming pile I bought off Ebay - I should add none of this needed to be done to the flashforge.. thousands of hours printing, not one single modification - everything I added, I took off because it worked better without. Glass bed? well that's great but you lose 3-5mm of print height - and when your max is 15cm, which is really 14.5 realistically, then that .5 takes you down to 14cm.. I found believe it or not, I needed that .5 alot.

One thing I have added to the CTC is the spring loaded extruders. Now you can print these yourself, but the ones on thingiverse (sorry Mjolinor ) just didn't fit properly, the filament didn't grab tight enough. So I bought some cheap ones off ebay, as i've bought some before and they are really really good compared to the CTC stock ones.

The Flashforge original came with the same extruders as CTC, but when my dual head died, and I bought a replacement from FF, they gave me the new creator pro spring loaded ones, I never ever will go back to standard UNLESS its flex filament or wood I'm printing.

I got these for $10, essential CTC upgrade.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/131622631...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[cjalas]

Nice, thanks for this - I am going through all of this now with this steaming pile I bought off Ebay - I should add none of this needed to be done to the flashforge.. thousands of hours printing, not one single modification - everything I added, I took off because it worked better without. Glass bed? well that's great but you lose 3-5mm of print height - and when your max is 15cm, which is really 14.5 realistically, then that .5 takes you down to 14cm.. I found believe it or not, I needed that .5 alot.

One thing I have added to the CTC is the spring loaded extruders. Now you can print these yourself, but the ones on thingiverse (sorry Mjolinor ) just didn't fit properly, the filament didn't grab tight enough. So I bought some cheap ones off ebay, as i've bought some before and they are really really good compared to the CTC stock ones.

The Flashforge original came with the same extruders as CTC, but when my dual head died, and I bought a replacement from FF, they gave me the new creator pro spring loaded ones, I never ever will go back to standard UNLESS its flex filament or wood I'm printing.

I got these for $10, essential CTC upgrade.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/131622631...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Yea I understand some may need that extra space on the print bed... me, I never had it to begin with so it's not that big of a deal. I find that with a 5-6mm glass bed, and longer extruder tubes, the bed springs are more compressed which helps keep the bed level and less "bounce" or less prone to losing position.

I have a spring load extruder on the left side, but as I mentioned in the post, unfortunately it has slightly tighter tolerances in the space between the nozzle and the extruder block.. slightly moreso than the default extruder block on the right-hand side, so I have uneven extruder tubes (I have to slide the right one down further to make up for this).

I'm contemplating going back to both original extruder blocks on mine, since I think I have some filament leak during printing out the back-end of my nozzle.

[Geoff]

Yea I understand some may need that extra space on the print bed... me, I never had it to begin with so it's not that big of a deal. I find that with a 5-6mm glass bed, and longer extruder tubes, the bed springs are more compressed which helps keep the bed level and less "bounce" or less prone to losing position.

I have a spring load extruder on the left side, but as I mentioned in the post, unfortunately it has slightly tighter tolerances in the space between the nozzle and the extruder block.. slightly moreso than the default extruder block on the right-hand side, so I have uneven extruder tubes (I have to slide the right one down further to make up for this).

I'm contemplating going back to both original extruder blocks on mine, since I think I have some filament leak during printing out the back-end of my nozzle.

I read some time back to use thermal paste (like you use for your CPU) and thread the nozzle on with that, as you don't want to use thread lock, but I found it actually worked, obviously the thermal paste likes the high temperature, and it eventually cakes itself and seals any seams so you don't get that dribble back up around the nozzle neck.

Glass beds do have the flat advantage I'll give them that, I'm yet to get a perfectly flat aluminum bed on any printer.