Why does my printer suck.

[clough42]

Ok well I have been tweaking and upgrading my Makerfarm i3v 12" for almost 2 years..

[...]

what am i missing exactly?

I've been tweaking my Makerfarm printers for a while, and I'm getting great results. I have several coworkers, also with MakerFarm printers, who are not at all happy. I don't really think there's a fundamental problem with the printers, but there are lots of details that matter. Here are a few tips:

• Put your printer on a flat surface. I'm using Travertine tiles.
• Get real E3Dv6 hot ends. They really do make a difference.
• Spend the $150 and buy Simplify3D. (You already did.)
• Do everything you can to keep stray air off the bed. If you're using the standard MakerFarm X axis parts, the hot end fan blows right on the bed. Switch to a different extruder that vents out the top or tape foil, under the X carriage to redirect all spill air upwards. If you can feel air from the fans on the back of your hand held under the carriage, it will affect the print, causing warping. Even spill off the blade tips of the fan intakes will affect the print.
• Make sure the bottom ends of your Z screw rods are flat. Flatten them with a file, and then drop a 4mm steel BB in each coupler to give the rods a solid single-point bearing on the end of the motor shafts. This eliminates a very common problem with these printers that causes odd Z-banding.
• Use auto bed leveling and do everything you can to eliminate bowing in the glass. You can get Marlin to output a topology matrix after bed leveling, so you can see how much warping you have. Shim the corners to correct.
• Use the first layer height in Simplify3D to adjust bed adhesion.
• Use Garnier Fructis Extreme Hold #5 hairspray on glass for ABS. There are other solutions, but if you get the airflow off the bed, this works great.
• Try underfilling your parts slightly (turn down the extrusion or e-steps). I find that slightly underfilled parts, while they have a little bit of open mesh you can see under magnification, look better and fit together better. A lot of fit problems are caused by extra filament squishing out.
• Use a geared or belted extruder. A 4:1 belt drive extruder (cough, Itty Bitty, cough) has something like 8X the resolution of a direct drive one, both because of the drive reduction and the smaller diameter bolt.
• Make sure your drive bolt is sharp and clean. When I started milling my own bolts, I was shocked at the print improvement. I didn't think it would matter.
• Use 1.75mm filament. This also significantly increases the volumetric resolution of the extruder.
• Temperatures are everything. I'm running 255C with ESun 1.75mm ABS.

All of this advice is good (probably), but without seeing the results you're getting, it's hard to guess what your problems might be.

Can you upload photos showing the issues?

[adamfilip]

I dont have a good example to show. the printer prints fine. just not great.. maybe my expectations are too high

[uncle_bob]

I dont have a good example to show. the printer prints fine. just not great.. maybe my expectations are too high

Hi

There is such a thing as an unreasonable expectation. I can show you some pictures of prints from this direction or that. They look superb. If I grab similar parts and shoot pictures from other directions with different lighting, they look a bit worse. If I'm posting a picture of "look what I did", guess which picture I'm going to post.

I see a lot of this at work. We have a couple different printers running around. This one gets compared to that one on a regular basis. The "bragging rights" parts are *never* representative of the normal output of the printer. Give me some "clean up time" with a bit of sandpaper and some acetone and they will look even better ....

Bob

[clough42]

I actually have both a 12" I3V and a 12" Pegasus, both with stock machine screws.

I have found them to print at the same quality except for the Z banding. I am having some banding issues with the Pegasus. But I figure those will be resolved with a little more tinkering.

After spending a lot of time on my I3V and getting it squared away, it is a solid machine.

Check that the bottoms of the Z screws are flat and file them flat if they're not. The axes are always a little misaligned, and when the non-flat cut surface rotates with the motor shaft, it rises and falls, causing Z banding. If you file the screw ends flat and drop a BB in each tube or coupler, this goes away completely.

[BLKKROW]

Check that the bottoms of the Z screws are flat and file them flat if they're not. The axes are always a little misaligned, and when the non-flat cut surface rotates with the motor shaft, it rises and falls, causing Z banding. If you file the screw ends flat and drop a BB in each tube or coupler, this goes away completely.

My machine and threaded rods are square. I found the issue to be slicing as I was trying to find the best retraction. I recently printed a fan setup and have no banding.

To me both machines have the same quality, that is because I have tweaked my Prusa until it printed well. I used this knowledge immediately with the Pegasus. This means they both print the same quality.

However, the setup on the Pegasus is a lot less, you don't have to build motor mounts and multiple layers of plywood to create a frame.

[uncle_bob]

.......

However, the setup on the Pegasus is a lot less, you don't have to build motor mounts and multiple layers of plywood to create a frame.

Hi

At least in my experience, the "plywood" based machines had a hard time holding adjustments over time spans in months or years. That seems (so far) to be less of an issue with the Pegasus versions.

No matter which printer you dig into, you will find people that have slicing issues. We all are using basically the same set of programs and seeing the same issues with them. Since most of us like *free* software (I certainly do), that's all a little bit silly. This is indeed a world where free does not encourage people to keep working on the code base. Bugs hang around for a long time. Getting an un-paid team organized and working together over a period of years is a very tough proposition. Much of the free software (Apache, Linux etc) that is successful is actually paid software that is given away. We don't have the kind of money in the 3d printer space to fund at those sort of levels.

Bob

[clough42]

Hi

At least in my experience, the "plywood" based machines had a hard time holding adjustments over time spans in months or years. That seems (so far) to be less of an issue with the Pegasus versions.

That very well could be. The one really critical adjustment is the Z height, and if that drifts, printing will suffer considerably. Using auto bed leveling mostly solves that problem.

I say "mostly" because if your bed is warping with temperature changes, the Z height can change after the leveling process finishes, and can even create banding in the parts as the bed cycles.

This was a big problem with the i3 because the third bearing was near the center of the wooden bed. I put a dial indicator on mine and it moved down to about -0.5mm during the initial heatup, and then moved up to about +0.2mm as the heat soaked through the wooden part. Colin told me this only happens if you paint the wood. All of my printers are lacquered, so I can't confirm or deny.

The i3v has the wheels out closer to the corners, so it's not as bad.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

My early efforts on ABL were driven by the wood parts moving around. It was pretty much the only way I could keep things running. My experience was that the humidity mattered a lot. Let the gizmo sit for a month and fire it up .... it's all over the place. Let it run for a day, it settles down.

Up until about 30 minutes ago I was doing fine with manual bed leveling on the Pegasus. That's when the glass broke in the middle of printing a fairly large ABS part. I guess you *can* get the part to tight down to the glass

Actually a *far* more likely culprit is getting a bit over aggressive on the pad in the center of the bed.

Bob

[clough42]

I have split a piece of glass with ABS before. I had eight parts lined up so as they warped, they all pulled up in the center of the bed, and they yanked out a chunk partway through the print. I ultimately modified the part slightly to allow a little warping in a non-critical area so I could continue printing full beds of parts.

Hi

My early efforts on ABL were driven by the wood parts moving around. It was pretty much the only way I could keep things running. My experience was that the humidity mattered a lot. Let the gizmo sit for a month and fire it up .... it's all over the place. Let it run for a day, it settles down.

Up until about 30 minutes ago I was doing fine with manual bed leveling on the Pegasus. That's when the glass broke in the middle of printing a fairly large ABS part. I guess you *can* get the part to tight down to the glass

Actually a *far* more likely culprit is getting a bit over aggressive on the pad in the center of the bed.

Bob

[uncle_bob]

Hi

This was the fourth or fifth time I've printed basically the same part. My guess is that the part did not help things at all. It was certainly not the only reason the glass broke.

I'm currently printing a much larger version of the same thing in PETG with far fewer issues .....

Now, what to do with that inventory of ABS spools

Bob