tl;dr -- Kapton needs judicious replacement, Thor needs help cleaning
the tip.
The tape does indeed need replacing. There are a couple tracks
through the kapton from the head sliding while pressed down, but they do
not interfere with objects printed at the center of the print bed. As there
appears to be only one or two strips worth of kapton left on the roll they
may be of better use to us to do emergency fixes there until new supplies
arrive.
I was in tonight and did several test prints. The head was running
quite high above the print bed. Extrusions from it were showing gaps where
the material was waving and warping as it was being layed down. I have not
seen many prints with PLA but I did see some parts printed successfully by
Stef. The prints at the 174.6mm mark did not show the same defined edges
and indeed some of the edges were so soft and uncontrolled when being laid
down that they folded under and over each other or piled up in clumps to be
pushed around by the print head as it passed over.
I moved the print head Z axis measurement in the G-Code preamble in
increments of .1 from the original 174.??mm to 175.5mm. If the print was
failing I paused the print, moved the Z axis up 30mm, and On each
successive pass, the first layer got closer and closer to being evenly
printed and subsequent layers were more defined. After setting the Z axis
height to 175.5mm, the PLA did not stick to the kapton, and instead swirled
around the hot end. I don't know if this is a result of the Z axis setting
being too high, or if the PLA did not stick to the bed for other reasons.
175.4mm was still producing a very poor quality result that was much too
thick.
I stopped the print, moved the head upward on the Z axis by 20mm or
30mm, then tried to remove as much of the PLA from the head as possible. I
sent a reverse command of 5mm, and released the PLA feed line, pulling it
out of the machine. After doing some further cleaning of the print head I
snipped off melt on the PLA feed line, re-inserted it into the print head,
and let it warm up for a minute or so.
Attempting to extrude 2mm got nothing, a further 2mm failed to extrude
any material. I do not know if acetone is the right thing to be using to
clean out the PLA so I did not attempt to use it. I am also not sure how to
go about properly cleaning the extruder from the outside without risking
damage to the thermistor or other components. If someone can point me in
the right direction I will clean it up properly.
On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Stefan H.A <stefan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I reduced the height by .1mm because I was having issues with prints
> releasing from the bed half way through. I did a number of prints
> successfully after that though. As Brian said the height changed after we
> changed the z axis end stop and the command is g92 not g2. We did that to
> give the operator more time to react if the z endstop fails again.
>
> I tested it and pulling the usb cable is not an effective emergeny stop
> because the arduino seems to get power from both the usb and ac power
> supply. This means to power off the arduino you need to unplug the the usb
> and turn of the ac power. We should fix this.
>
> Does the tape need replacing? We are almost out of kapton tape so I think
> we should order some more. I would do it but deliveries often go missing
> from my mailbox. If anyone is willing to place an order please check with
> me before purchasing as some options are better than others. Also I think
> the printer has earned enough money to buy itself some tape.
>
> I think that's too large of a number, the correct height is now (after
> installing the mechanical switch) something like 174.6. The exact value can
> be found by looking at the custom gcode settings in slider.
>
> You should not have to be entering this code manually, did you reuse a
> gcode file, that was created before? Doing so is probably a bad idea.
> On Oct 10, 2013 11:07 PM, "Ric Lim" <riclim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> yeah they did. I did the emergency switch off (i.e. pulling the usb
>> cable) but not before the head touched the bed. It did start from top
>> though so maybe the point at which it prints needs tweaking? Tried g2
>> z184 (?) also but still the same result.
>>
>> On 10/10/13, Alex Weber <alexw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Has Stef, Brian, or Thor shown you how to use it? There's quite a bit
>> that
>> > goes into operating the printer correctly.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 7:42 PM, Ric Lim <riclim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I've tried printing on the 3D printer tonight and the head keeps
>> touching
>> >> the bed so the strips were scratch in the lower left part.
>> >>
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