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

[mjf55]

I started making a few low layer count prints and they are coming out very nice. I started a Benchy today and around layer 30, (.2 mm height ) the bed had an some slight movement / shifting. the glass to aluminum bed is not moving, but the spring adjustment mechanism is. What would cause that. How tight is your bed on the springs, and do you guys have any modes to secure it better. Seems like a problem.
I have attached a photo of the x and y springs. The seem like they are fairly far inserted.
Also, my cura engine settings are
print speed:50
outer perimiter speed :45
infill speed: 80

I do need to connect my nozzle fan...
The bed is level according to the output from a G29 command.
11:33:15.580 : Z-probe:59.96 X:-66.00 Y:-38.00
11:33:20.881 : Z-probe:59.91 X:66.00 Y:-38.00
11:33:26.066 : Z-probe:60.01 X:0.00 Y:66.00
11:33:28.072 : Z-probe average height:59.96

How accurate is the stock z-probe. Should I use the extra z-stop switch

I also know that my glass is somewhat wavy near the edges. number40fan replaced his glass. What is a good source of new glass?

Any help is appreciated

[mjf55]

CA, how is your design / build of your giant delta printer going. Any updates?

[curious aardvark]

first off - your bed is not that level.

Ideally you need all three to be the same, or at least within 1 or 2 100th's of a mm.
Not that hard, just takes a few g29s and some patience :-)
Running the first layer at 150-200% thicknss gets round that and doubles as a non-destructive raft.

Second make sure the little plastic bed mounts are really tight to the corner pieces. At some point I'll design a better mount that can't move and bolts directly onto the aluminium extrusion.
Then screw the springs down till they are really tight. This will help and also make sure your bed stays level longer.

No idea on the glass, never used glass.
Mirrors are supposed to be pretty good.
The heatbed itself should be properly flat, so use that rather than the glass. My printbite is stuck directly to the heatbed.

As far as the BB goes. Still waiting for some bits from china. Had a really good look at all the big and medium sized deltas (WASP make one large enough to print a couch or small garden shed).

So I'm definitely going for a flying extruder, probably even with a nema17 rather than my 14. There were some half the size of bb with that setup and no issues. The weird thing was they used stretchy rubber/silicon tubing to attach the extruder to the carriages. Possibly to act as shock absorbers in case the extruder motion effects the carriage movement. So I'll have a think about that. Might print some connectors out of filaflex.
Also, now changed the way I'll be making the magnetic arms and attachments.
Instead of the balls on the ends of the arms, you mount the magnets on the arms and the balls on the effector and carriages. Given my balls have threaded sockets (lmao, just reread that statement) that is actually very easy to do.
It gives you a much wider range of movement on the arms and considerably less chance of one detaching.

Also considering getting a more expensive arm based motherboard. Still no sign of eeprom on the gen base 1.5.
Worth going to the show for those few things alone.

My printbite is on it's way, still need to pop over to jsk and get the base plate and aluminium bed made. Might need to make the bed mounts first so I know where the holes need to be drilled.

Currently got some actual paying work - wahey !
So bb not a current priority.
But, yep the final design is almost there in my head :-)

[mjf55]

Re-leveling my bed. Got these numbers:
15:07:54.370 : Z-probe:71.90 X:-66.00 Y:-38.00
15:08:02.066 : Z-probe:71.90 X:66.00 Y:-38.00
15:08:09.656 : Z-probe:71.89 X:0.00 Y:66.00
15:08:12.848 : Z-probe average height:71.90
15:08:12.848 : X:0.00 Y:66.00 Z:40.000 E:0.0000

If I rotate the glass, they change. I am sure the glass is uneven. It also moves a little. Put one of those big paper clip on it to hold it. Need to make a better clamp than I have. Trying another test print.....

Layer height = 0.2
First layer height = 0.3
First layer extrusion width = 100%

The heatbed itself should be properly flat, so use that rather than the glass.

If this does not work, I'll just try tape on the heatbed.

Currently got some actual paying work - wahey !

:-)

[mjf55]

The big paper clamps did not work, maybe too small. I have bigger clamps that I am using and they appear to work fine for holding. The Benchy turned out crappy. 200*c, 50*c bed, 50 mm/s print speed, NO cooling fan.
20170927_183005_crop_492x604.jpg20170927_182932_crop_756x836.jpg

Time to install your cooling fan.

[mjf55]

Now this is interesting. The side facing the cooling fan is MUCH better, almost perfect. The side away from the fan, a little better.
20170927_185252_crop_436x320.jpg

Lowering temp to 190. I am open to suggestions.................

EDIT1: 190* did not look good.

EDIT2: noticed fan min speed was set to 50% and that was what it was running at. Bumped it to min 75 and re-trying at 200* Also noticed bed is running 5* hotter than set point. So I lowered bed to 45 , expecting ~ 50* actual. ( actual is 51)
Here is the result. Better, but still messy on the leeward side.
20170927_192748_crop_398x424.jpg

EDIT3: All this editing is not doing my post count any good ;-)
This will be at 195*, bed at 44* (actual is still 51*) and min fan speed at 95%

[mjf55]

So the final tests at at 195* 50* bed, fan at 95% and like all good skippers, heading into the wind (fan). Now the front looks good, and the stern is bad,
Attachment 11082Attachment 11083

So, any advice? CA?

[curious aardvark]

always found anything below 200 is too cool for pla.
go back to 210, make sure the fan is on 100% - it's not really got enough power to bother running at anything less.
1st layer - 0, 2nd layer onwards 100%

which size fan nozzle are you using ?

I've defaulted to the 9mm with holes.

Temp stability is not perfect, don't worry about it.

have found that the hotend doesn't like running hotter than 250. Been playing with some new filament types I got at the tct show.

New type of abs from innofill. Still smells, but less shrinkage. However they seem to have achieved this by making it super weak.
printed trolley keys in three materials. innofil abs fusion +. Prints okay but is too weak for anything that needs any strength or rigidity, or flex.
Also did some in colorfabbs ngen - pretty good. Took a while to snap it in two.
flashforge pla as control. Snapped cleanly, but took at least twice as much effort to do so than the ngen.

Both the ngen and fusion plus run at high bed temps and high nozzle temps. Alexa was not happy. Could not maintain 255c hot end and 90c bed temp.
Lost 10c on both.

Don't have that trouble at 210c and 50c, or 225 and 60 (pet-g).

But the point is that a few degress either way is not an issue, it'll never be perfect all the time :-)

Oh yeah, stop wasting time and plastic printing bloody benchies.
Use one of these instead:

testcube.JPG

Tests everything a benchy does, but with a lot less plastic and a much faster print time.
openscad script:

$fn=100;
difference() {
cube(25,center=true);
sphere(d=33);
}

Adjust the sphere size to get thicker or thinner struts.

Attached stl is for a large cube. just resize in slicer to 25mm cube.

haven't tried one of these on alexa yet.
see how a 25mm comes out. 1.23grams of real bastard print :-)

I'll try my usual 75mm/s first.

Going to do a video review of the k200 in the near future.
suggestions for what to include welcome :-)

Not really a youtube type person. Can't stand all the idiots who invariably just swear in the comments sections.
So comments will be disabled.

[mjf55]

In my hot end, there is ptfe tube in there. Doesn't that limit the filament types. I thought 255 would melt it?

I am going to check which fan nozzle I am using. I know it at least is the 'super charged' ones.

I'll go back to 210, but to be honest 195 looked ok.

Interestingly, I printed the 'he3d cooling fan' and they came out very nice. Maybe the boat really does stress the printer.

[mjf55]

Ok, So I have your sc-nozzle-16x9x10.stl on there. At your suggestion I will use:
-- sc-nozzle-9x9x10.stl at
-- 210*/50*
-- 0% fan first level, 100% for the rest

EDIT: So like a knucklehead, I changed 2 things at a time.
The round nozzel and I sliced in Cura2.7 ( as opposed to the cura engine in Repetier Host V2.0.5.

So the results are MUCH better. Will have to retest with the cura engine / repetier Host to see what made the improvement.
200-50-roundnozzel-newCura.jpg

200-50-roundnozzel-newCura-1.jpg
EDIT2:
Found what I believe to be the issue, well maybe a few.
Main issue is the cura engine (15.0) in Repetier host has a single switch called Enable Cooling.
When I look at the gcode, the M106 values range all over the place. So the cooling was not what I thought it would be.
In cura 2.7, I can set Layer 0 cooling and then the rest (layer 1-xxx). That works as I expected it.

So that is why the print looks as good as it does.

I also think that my little fan could be a little stronger.

Thanks for your help on this.
Now I am trying your stl above.