Heaven help me - I've just bought a delta kit :-)

[BoozeKashi]

I'm still hoping Wendy will chime in and say you received a defective extruder or something. That just doesn't sound right that they would even ship a kit like that.

[curious aardvark]

well, apparently if you can force the filament feed tube all the way through the extruder so it actually stops flush against the top of the nozzle. It will work.
Now I'm not a wimp and I pushed that tube as far as it would go - and it was nowhere near the top of the nozzle.

I just feel for the sake of a couple of cents, why not ship the extruder with the ptfe tube in place and be 100% certain it's going to work.

Now, my next problem.

You cannot calibrate the heated bed with the z probe.
why ? I'm glad you asked. :-)

The heated bed is mounted on long bolts to - presumably - stop it from frying the motherboard and stepper motors. This reduces your print height by about 30mm (which I don't have an issue with, as at some point I will extend the print height quite considerably anyway). But more importantly, it's spring loaded.
So when the z probe presses down on the plate, the springs compress and the bed tilts and dips quite a lot before the z-probe registers it's hit a solid object. The probe is not a sensitive bit of equipment, it's cheap and cheerful and on a solid, unmoving glass bed - perfectly adequate.
The standard calibration process (which makes no sense to me anyway) cannot work with a sprig loaded printbed.
And even if it did, it would be registering a point somewhat below the actual surface of the print bed.

On the other hand, adjusting the levelness of the bed is very easy. It just screws up and down.

So I now have to try and find an easy to follow guide on how to calibrate a delta without a z-probe.

I did contemplate removing the hot bed and trying it with just the glass bed, but I don't intend to print anything with this machine without a heated bed - so that's a non-starter.

And no, as far as I can see there isn't a tutorial video on how to calibrate the k200 with the heated bed installed.

I still like the kit, and for the money it's really good value. But under no circumstances would I recommend it to anyone as a first printer.

Just too many little issues that would frustrate a beginner to 3d printing.
For me this was always as much about learning as getting another printer, and it's been ideal for that lol

If it were me, I would add another $10 to the price of the kit and get the extruder carriage injection moulded, throw in some feet and a base cover and include mounting brackets with the psu upgrade kit and a strut mounted filament holder (all of which I will upload to thingiverse at some point).
And stick the tube in the hotend so you know it will work all the time for everyone.

Do that and you'll have one really really nice delta. And as soon as I work out how to calibrate the thing, I'll prove it :-)

[Davo]

Why would someone spring-load a build surface?

[curious aardvark]

to be fair I actually like that aspect of it.
Particularly with a new type of printer I have no idea how to calibrate. It does mean that any head crashes, shouldn't damage either the print nozzle or the bed.
And it does make it easy to actually level the plate.
I presume it was the easiest way to keep it a decent distance above the motherboard.
It does take a fair bit of pressure to move it. so under normal printing conditions, it'll be plenty solid enough.

And I could screw it down a bit more to make it firmer if necessary.

My main issue is how do I set the three x,y and z zero positions. I can use the head position to level the bed, but how do I tell the printer where the bed is in relation to where the three carrigaes are.

I could really do with z-height and z-stepper motor. Given that the three towers are designated x,y &
z, but that z is also used for the relative height of the head as well.
Maybe they should have been labelled: w x y and just use z for relative height above the board.
Anyway people have been doing it for a few years, so there'll be a procedure somewhere :-)



Hmm, that is NOT what happens on mine. maybe I just need to fettle the z probe thing a bit. The one in the video is way, way, way more sensitive than mine. When mine pushes down the bed goes down about 5 mm before it registers the probe contact.
You can see the heated bed setup though davo.

Gives a nice air gap above all the electrickery things that are generating heat.
And coming from a pc building background, I'm all about air flow :-)

[curious aardvark]

Well it gets weird.
2 days ago when i was trying to get my head around calibration. the G29 command moved the head down and it pushed down at 3 points round the bed.
yesterday and today - it no longer does that. At the moment all g29 does is cause the printhead to move slowly to the centre of the print bed, touch with the probe and then return to the top of the printer. It does that 3 times and then stops.

Pretty sure I'm going to hav to abandon this auto (thought not really) calibration process.
But why has the g29 command changed ?

***

well if I send g28 and then g29 - it works again.
ll three results are within 1/100th of a mm.

So is that it ?
I have no idea.

[curious aardvark]

And then i thought: sod it.
Levelled the bed with a sheet of paper. Set z=0 at the centre of the plate.
And currently printing a small stamp for putting words into clay sling bullets - yes it's a thing lol
Pretty sure the text won't come out as it's thin for a 0,4 nozzle and I'm using a 0.5.

Turned out better than i thought. Anyone know the gcode for Home all ?
M105 it looks like.
Give that a go :-)

Bearing in mind I don't have a print area cooling fan - it's looking pretty good.
Sometimes a little common sense works better than wading through reams of calculations that make no sense :-)

Next job, cooling fan for print area.

***
G28 ;
if anyone is interested. Added that to my end script and works a treat.
So printed a couple small things - now going for a full hour and a half print.
Same print at full speed would be about 2.5 hours on the replicaotr clone.

Curious to see how well this orints at speed.

***

lol she's going like the clappers !
75mm/s at 0.3mm layer height with a 0.5mm nozzle.
With a cooling fan - should be able to do 0.4mm layer at same speed.

Wonder how fast she can actually go.
75 just looks like relaxed cruising speed. :-)

Oh yeah I also ordered some belt tensioners.

[curious aardvark]

Well hot damn and colour me Impressed !

90mm/s and she just looks casual.
Started print again, not her fault I had 'don't cross model' switched off and a ridge was building up.
Turned that on and the new print is as smooth as a babys backside. A lot smoother than the one from the flashforge.
Dimensionally it's at least as accurate as the flashforge too.
Printbite is working a treat. Got it on 50c - usually have it on 60. Extruder 210, bowden system working a treat.
I'm wondering just how fast she can go.
I'm saving over an hour on this particular print versus the creator clone, and it's much better quality to boot !


https://www.facebook.com/alex.aardva...3651470403721/

I'm a very happy Aardvark :-)

Good job I know how to level a build plate the 'old fashioned' way lol

Now I just need to work out just how much taller I can make her.
Now I've got tensioners belt length isn't much of an issue and the timing belt is cheap enough.
Very little vibration - so that's not going to be an issue.
I'm tempted to try and take her up to about a metre print height.
Got a bunch more testing first :-)

See how she handles pet-g - as the flashforge is just blobbing all over the shop with it.

[curious aardvark]

Cheers for that.
have to say that wendy at reprapmall.com has been extremely helpful. Both in answering questions quickly and accurately and in supplying me with the .stl file for the single extruder carriage.
From what i can work out - reprapmall are the actual manufacturers of the kits. So she didn't mind that I bought it from someone else, lol
So one thing you do get with this kit is excellent support and customer service - can't fault that in any way. :-)
Very helpful and very fast response times to any questions.

Right I'm off to see just how fast Alexa can print pet-g and work out what the maximum speed for pla actually is !

[curious aardvark]

Pet-g currently running very nicely at 70mm/s, 240 extruder temp and 60c bed.
I think this roll of pet-g was from e-sun before they found new uk distributors and practically trebled their prices.
Not sure what they were thinking of there.

Given just how little vibration this machine produces and with no print area fan at the moment. There's almost no chance of a print detaching before it's finished.
be interesting to see how this compares to the 90mm/s pla print.

So next test will be to see if she can print with polyflex.
It's that bit stiffer than ninjaflex. have to slow right down, but might work at low speeds. We will see :-)

I just love how fast she can rip these moulds out though :-)

[curious aardvark]

Added belt tensioners.
2 to each belt. Get them from china and they're crazy cheap. Feeling Impatient and get them from england, they're a whole 30 pence each. So I splashed out for the expensive ones. lol

doubletension_292x480.jpg

Belts are at least as tight as the ones on the flashforge now. It all helps ramp up the quality and precision.

Next job, get some little cable ties and lock the springs in place on the carriage arms. They have a tendency to walk up the arms. Just looks untidy :-)