My Prusa i3v 10" Build === Photos, Comments & Questions

[jtice]

After looking into 3D Printers for over a year now, I finally took the plunge and bought one.
I went with the Prusa i3V 10" due to its large build volume, large following, and pricing.
The instructions and videos that Makerfarm have for the printer are excellent, they make it quite easy, just follow along and take your time.
I lost track of the time it took to build it, I worked on it all afternoon after work, and on the third afternoon I was printer. But I would guess a solid 12 hours.

Comments
For the most part the printer is very well designed and goes together well. I had to do very little adjustment to the wooden parts at all.
The plastic printed parts for the extruder did require some clean up, filing and sanding here and there, but weren't horrible.

As others have mentioned, the extruder motor can be tough to get bolted on, the gears are VERY tight.
I highly suggest once you have the extruder assembly built, before you mount it on the printer, rotate the gears back and forth by hand for a while.
I had the extruder motor jam on me twice on my first print, I then worked the gears by hand back and forth for a while and tried again, its been fine once the gears wore in a bit.

I would highly recommend that you have someone print you out the bracket to move the Z end stop !!!!!
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:437330
I know that a big part of this is being able to print things for yourself, like printer mods, and it did feel great that I could print my own.
But you will save ALOT of headache if you have one when you goto build your printer. The stock design is just horrible.

I am using the stock firmware that came on the RAMPS, but did notice its NOT for a 10". Its for the 8"
As far as I have heard, its exactly the same, its just the max travel distances are different.
You can change them manually, or install the 10" firmware.
Download Link for 10" Firmware

Build Photos
You can see photos of the build here.
http://jtice.smugmug.com/3D-Printing...g-Prusa-i3v-10

Timelapse of the build.
http://youtu.be/hfYOq0PZ1qQ

My First Prints
You can see photos of my prints here.
http://jtice.smugmug.com/3D-Printing/Misc-3D-Prints/
The first prints I did were 1cm cubes. I was pretty amazed that they actually worked.
I expected my first few prints to be completely messed up and useless, but thats not been the case.
Next was the Z end stop bracket, thumb knobs for bed level adjustment bolts, and a control knob for the RAMPS.
I have only done ABS so far, with a glass bed and hair spray.
I have had no lifting, parts are stock to the glass really well, almost hard to pop off at times.

I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions you have on my prints, and how to make them better.
I know that I need to still get the nozzle to start closer to the glass on the first layer.
Seems the middle of the glass is sliiiiiiiiiightly lower than the edges. I need to level and adjust the Z stop to suit the middle of the glass better.

Questions
1. What is the proper procedure for changing filament? (without a connected PC)
I could not find anything on the RAMPS menu like I have seen in vids of the Makerbots, where you can tell it you want to change filament, and it walks you through it.
What I did was, used the Preheat for ABS feature in the RAMPS menu. Once hot, I pulled out the black filament, and inserted the blue filament.
I then rotated the large extruder gear by hand until blue filament was coming out of the nozzle.

2. I notice that when my printer starts a print, it goes to home like I see other printers do, it raises up a bit, then moves to the center of the bed to start the print.
It does not extrude any filament during that operation, the extruder gears do not turn.
It then prints what I think is called the rim? around the part first, when it starts this process the extruder gears are turning.
But. it does not start extruding filament till its at least half way done making the rim.
Once it starts the print it seems ok, but shouldnt this start sooner? Sometimes it barely starts extruding before it starts the actual printing of the part.

3. What do you think caused the open parts on my blue control knob?
I think it might have been printing a bit too hot at the top layer? Or maybe I need a fan blowing on the part as it prints? (though I thought that wasnt needed for ABS)

4. Is there a way (without a connected PC) to raise the extruder?
There have been a few times where it would have been nice to have a way to tell the printer to raise up on the Z axis so that I can access the print bed better.

5. When I add a second fan to blow on the part as its printed, I know where to hook it to the RAMPS, but how do you actually control it?
I use Cura as my slicer, hope to stick with it, it seems nice and I find it easy to use. Is there a way in Cura to tell it how to operate that second fan?
Such as not running the fan while the first layer or two prints, or leaving it off completely when printing ABS?

[printbus]

1. You're using the same procedure I do, except I'm usually controlling the extrusion from Repetier-Host.

2. How soon it starts to extrude depends on how much filament might have oozed out the nozzle since you extruded last. A lot of that can improved on in your slicer start g-code, as far as where the nozzle is x-y-z, how much it extrudes in free-air to "prime" the extruder, etc.

3. Have you ran through calibration of your esteps and compensated for actual filament diameter? If not, you really need to get that done before judging quality of your prints. Looks like your bed isn't very level, based on the different first layer appearance on two of the thumbwheels.

4. You can raise the extruder (Z-axis) from the LCD, but only up to 1mm increments. For some reason the menu doesn't allow Z to be adjusted from the 10mm setting.

5. Cura can control the fan. You can tell it whether it should be dealing with cooling at all, at what height you want the fan to turn on, and what min and max speed settings you want it to adjust between.

[jtice]

Thanks for the help.
I will look into the "priming" settings in the start code, its not a huge deal, but could be better.

I have checked the filament dia and entered that into Cura, but I have not done any tests yet where you tell it to extrude a certain length of filament, and then check what it actually did.
I will do that tonight before I do another print.

The bed is actually pretty level, those thumb wheel pics are misleading.
I let the first layer of the first knob print, then when it started the second knob, I actually pressed down on the extruder assembly slightly.
Yea, probably not the best idea, but I wanted to see what effect it would have and if I needed to go even lower on my Z stop, which I do.

I noticed the section on the RAMPS for moving the axis by certain amounts, but didnt see where I told it WHAT axis I wanted to move, probably just missed it, I will look at that again.

[gmay3]

jtice, congrats on your build!

1. I do the same process as my home boy printbus does with a connected pc. If you want to do it without a pc, you are going about it the right way. The only thing I can suggest is to disable the steppers in your ramps menu before turning the extruder gears by hand.

2. I believe this is known as a "skirt". In addition to what printbus said (which sounds exactly like the case you describe), sometimes you will find that the skirt (or first layer) doesn't print completely because the leveling of your bed could be off on one or all sides and the nozzle is too close or touching the glass.

3. I looked at your prints and I think they look great except for those gaps which will probably go away after you calibrate the extrusion. Calibrate using this thread: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...nd-Proportions then give yourself an internet high-five!

4. You'll make your life a lot easier with a laptop or pc next to your printer for print control. I wonder if there's a way to send gcode commands over wifi to something you plug into the the usb port on the RAMPS board or by using a wifi sd card. If anyone has any ideas, I'd definitely be interested in trying to figure it out together!

5. I believe slic3r also has this option under advanced options, just FYI.

[AbuMaia]

I wonder if there's a way to send gcode commands over wifi to something you plug into the the usb port on the RAMPS board or by using a wifi sd card. If anyone has any ideas, I'd definitely be interested in trying to figure it out together!

I've heard of someone trying one of those WIFI SD cards in their printer. They found out they're made for accessing photos on the card from a computer to download, you can't upload files to the card. At least, the guy I read said he couldn't get any gcode files to upload to the card.

[gmay3]

Ah ok, well that's definitely good to know!

I bet there has got to be a way to move the axes in a more user friendly way via the firmware already build in to the RAMPS board. I haven't tinkered much in the firmware yet but I might soon!

[printbus]

It's off topic, but one proven approach to going wireless to add a Raspberry Pi microcontroller on the printer running OctiPi/Octiprint. I think it's dacb that has most recently done this.

[dacb]

Congrats.

1. As you describe. I use octopi on a raspberry pi connected to the printer so about half the time I run it via an ipad and half I manually extrude.
2. Before each print, after preheat and before the lay down of any plastic, I clean any ooze of the head. If it look likes there is a lot, I will occasionally manually prime the head. More often than not, however, I'll just let the skirt lines do that. If you switch to Cura (I did) make sure you turn on the skirt, probably good to go for a double line just to make sure you not only get the head primed but also get the skirt fully printed.
3. Definitely calibrate the E-steps. Looks like there is too little material coming out. IIRC, the default makerfarm firmware had the E-steps set to 843 and I had to bring mine up quite a bit.
4. I definitely recommend getting something plugged into the printer. As I mentioned, I have a Raspberry Pi running OctoPi. This means I can access the printer from a web page anywhere in my house (and via a VPN at work). OctoPi also supports a web cam and it will make movies during the print. It offers a G-code terminal in addition to a set of buttons and pull downs for doing normal xyz navigation, extruder control, fans, tool changes, etc. It is really nice to be able to control the printer from an iPad anywhere in the house and beyond.
5. As printbus said, Cura offers full control for this, though I have found great success with just the defaults (start height and 100% duty cycle).

[usarmyaircav]

dacb, could you share an ebay link to a comparable raspberry pi setup? I won't be ready for a while, but I can see myself wanting this.

[dacb]

Here are some instructions I whipped up: Using a Raspberry Pi + Octopi to manage your printer

I'll post a list of hardware in the second post of that thread.