Tag Archives: cooling fans

Patience

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As MakerBots and RepRaps proliferate, so do the websites and content concerning them.  Gian Pablo Villamil had a really great post about his adventures with Skeinforge.  As with BotHacker’s excellent post about the Skeinforge Cool setting and analysis about the benefits of cooling fans, Gian’s post takes us through each of his Skeinforge changes as well as documenting it’s effect on the print quality.

I wish I had more patience for that.  I tried for a while documenting each change…  but quickly became enamored with the idea of spinning dials and flipping switches in Skeinforge in the (sadly badly) mistaken belief I could make it better.

Documenting Skeinforge settings

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Uncool tower, cool tower

Uncool tower, cool tower

BotHacker recently documented his adventures in cooling fans and Skeinforge options – to amazing effect. 1  You should read the entire post, because there’s a lot of good info in there.  However, to summarize:

  1. Numerous permutations of cooling fan sizes and speeds offered some improvement.
  2. Using no cooling fans and putting the Skeinforge Cool setting at a minimum layer time of 10 seconds offered a dramatic improvement.

BotHacker’s post is what Skeinforge documentation should look like.

Update: Per BotHacker’s comment below, “Skeinforge must be told to ‘Slow Down’ for this to work. The other option is ‘Orbit’, and may lead to poorer results.”

  1. BotHacker – your photo to the right on Flickr says “all rights reserved” but I thought you might not mind me discussing your post and photos favorably.  If you don’t want me to link or post a copy of your photo, let me know and I’ll take it down. – MakerBlock [↩]