I’ve been working on printing a chess set today.
Yesterday I was troubleshooting my automated build platform. I could use it reasonably well as a heated build platform, but the automated part was not working so well. The main issues I was having were the thermistor only registered 255, the automated build platform only ran backwards1 , and the extrusion would not stick to the conveyor belt.
Believe me, some of these issues were incredibly dumb. No worries, I’ll fill you in on the extent of my ignorance soon enough. It’s not like I’ve got a finite supply, right?
I took out the automated build platform conveyor belt – and lost one of the little plastic bushings in the process. I’m pretty sure I can rig a serviceable facsimile, but my printer has been down so much lately that I just want to actually PRINT things. I’ll work on fixing up the automated build platform and troubleshooting it later.
So far I have, in black ABS, 8x pawns, 2x knights, 2x rooks, and am in the process of printing a bishop right now. (I know that’s more than 1/4 of the way done – but I was 1/4 of the way when I started this post).
Default Series Title- WTF? [↩]
Let me guess…
1. Thermistor’s connection is faulty–it’s either a bad solder connection or you connected it wrong.
2. You switched the positive and negative motor leads. If you did, switch them and it’ll be fixed. Or you could just turn your MakerBot around. Whichever you prefer. ;)
3. The extrusion doesn’t stick because either:
– The bed isn’t heating
– The extruder head isn’t close enough to the belt
– or both
– or your extruder is upside-down (unlikely) O_o
ABP running in reverse:
Flip your motor cable power connection, if it was green/black switch it so the orientation is now black/green or vice versa. (Don’t switch your connection on the C terminals on the extruder board, it’ll cancel out what you changed on you ABP)
ABS not sticking:
Same issue with mine, nothing will stick to the damn thing. Blue painters tape is my suggestion to you. Grab a 3″ roll and you should be set with small to medium sized prints. If you really want to step it up, hop on eBay and grab some rolls of 3″ or 4″ Kapton on there. Works wonders! Here is a link
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180429144410&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_655wt_907
Shipping is a little on the high-end, so you might want to grab an extra or a 4″ roll (one for an HBP and one for the ABP)
pictures or it didn’t happen ;-)
Et tu NYCDesigner?! I would expect this kinda snark from David Durant – but you!
@Cyrozap: I’m in the process of writing up the issues, but a preview – I thought the Thermistor wires were actually the motor wires. So, when I flipped the “motor wires” on the extrude board the thermistor registered 255 and the motor wasn’t affected. Once I put the “motor wires” back, the thermistor was fine. I then found the REAL motor wires and flipped those – now it’s working fine. The extrusion I’m still wrestling with. It *is* heating and I’ve tried printing from a variety of heights. I tried various things here too. More in a dedicated blog post. :)
@Anderson Ta: Thanks! I got the ABP running correctly now – too much time had passed between assembly and attempted operation. I tried several things with my conveyor belt – printing at various heights, various temperatures, sanding the belt lightly, sanding the belt more than lightly, and finally wrapping it all in Kapton. The ABP came with a wide roll of Kapton, so I just ran several strips around it.
Hey, what??
I, for one, welcome our new Snarky overlords.
When you finish the last chess piece, you really MUST do some sort of Dr Evil move.. “Checkmate, Mr Bot. Muhahahaha!!!” or some such.