hmm, icic, because im thinking to modify my earphone, to fit in other eartip. so the modification need to be very small, because i just add on to the earphone

I Wonder is there anyone did try or test the RepRap Mendel Prusa i2 b4. I am new in with this as my printer will be arrive within this few days.

anyone doing 3d printing service here? looking to print one or two keycaps to test out the durability of the end product.

Welcome to the reprap club, I have not tried out the prusa but its has been around for a long while and has been continuously improved on by many users. I assume you are getting an unassembled kit so you might want to go online and read up on assembling it and also follow some YouTube tutorials on 3d printing.

I don't want to sound discouraging but getting a reprap is a frustrating journey unless you find joy spending countless of hours tinkering with it just to get a decent print.

If you need help assembling or advice, you can pm me anytime.

Good luck tinkering.

Hello guys, late into the game but they say better late then nothing got my mendelmax kits from blomker full build log is on my blog

http://mylinux.net.my/blog/2014/05/26/blom...uildlog-part-1/

This post has been edited by DarkTenno: Jun 5 2014, 02:50 PM

Nice blog and congrats on your first build! I am surprised there are more vendors in Malaysia providing kits for the Mendel and Prusa.

the more the merrier they said, still playing around with mine, print ok but some stringing/ozzing issues after updated my ramps to the latest marlin, need to do some calibration on the extruder

btw any tips to switch bettween PLA and ABS for printing? need to print some ABS part for my printer

There are a few ways to solve stringing and oozing problems during prints.

First of all, you have to find the optimum set temp during print of the nozzle for your hotend which allows continuous uninterrupted extrusion and low oozing problems. For mine, I have set the initial first layer temp to 220 Deg C so I have reliable adhesion to the bed (non heated bed), then bring down the temp to 190 Deg after the first layer. For your case , you might try to warm the bed to 50 deg and print 190 through out the print.

Secondly, after having another look at the the pictures of your hotend setup, if not mistaken, I can guess you have the fan pointing towards the PEEK section of your J-Head hotend. To solve the stringing issue/oozing issue, you might want to get another 12v fan or try to lower and tilt the existing fan towards the nozzle end. This is to allow rapid cooling of the extruded PLA when it is in contact with the print. Also, this helps with bridging, i.e. forming a bridge or mid air crossover between two section of a print. You might want to get a fan shroud from thingiverse, http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:fan_shroud to focus the air flow towards the nozzle.

Oozing normally occurs when warming up the hotend but if its happening during prints then another way is to adjust the retraction rate in the slicer to minimize oozing. Stringing between gaps in prints is also affected by the retraction rate but these strings can be easily removed after the prints have complete.

As for ABS, I have not tried ABS yet but from what I know, it is going to stink up your whole house with the smell of burning plastic. The hotbed temp has to be higher, about 100 deg and hotend should be about 220 deg for ABS but there are values recommended by ABS filament suppliers and you may have to adjust them around those values to work with your printer. Warping for ABS is a really big issue if your hotbed isn't set correctly but you can solve warping by turning on Brim support in your slicer.

Its good that there are people who can thinker and play around with their 3D printers as this is one of the ways to learn and master the technology.

mine not Jhead it a Mk7 + metal magma not using PEEK it have a alu heatshink, try to find a suitable fans shroud but most of them can't fit mine hotend, seem mine a bit short compare to normal Jhead

currently I'm printing PLA only and I'm printing at 180c now (was 190c befoe) and I keep my bed at 55c all the time + PVA glue solution, maybe I can go lower but haven't tested it yet, with 180c stringing still quite visible, but so far I don't see any problem with bridging as I just printed a kossel mini part yesterday came out great just the oozing problem kinda annoy me

I will try lowering the temp more and increase the retract speed of my extruder

My bad, in part 2 of your blog the picture showing the washer placed on the hotend inlet looks like a J-head with a PEEK insulator from the back, there wasn't an pic of the hotend for my reference. You may have to custom model a shroud that fits your system and likely make an attachment for the shroud.

Your current set temperature of 180 is very low for PLA, anymore lower can cause your extruder drive to slip or eat into your filament because the PLA filament can't melt lower than 170 and can lead to more problems. Also, having the nozzle temp too low will cause delamination issues as the extruded PLA does not stick to the previous layer. I recommend changing the retraction speed instead as the first solution then implement a cooling fan for the extrusion.

This post has been edited by altan: Jun 11 2014, 05:26 PM

ok this what it look like when printing with 40mm/s retract speed on slic3r

10% infill 0.3 layer 2 perimeter



but at least bridging are perfect from my eye , will try to increase the speed until i can't increase it anymore

This post has been edited by DarkTenno: Jun 11 2014, 10:52 PM

Try increasing retraction length to about 3 mm or so. The speed and length are two important parameters which complements one another. The speed tells the extruder how fast to pull it back while the length tells it how far to pull the filament back.My settings for retraction are, speed 40 mm/s and length 3.5 mm. Hope this helps.

Here is one of my recent prints with... well... no stringing . p.s. there it one string at the very top most layer.


This post has been edited by altan: Jun 11 2014, 11:39 PM

finally!

magic number was 100mm/s speed with 3mm retract length




I need a new x-carriage but I don't have ABS and never try to print abs before lol

This post has been edited by DarkTenno: Jun 12 2014, 12:50 PM

Congrats, you can now get very nice prints.

You could try printing replacement parts in PLA for now but you might have to reinforce the joints or thicken certain parts to make it mechanically strong. I recommend printing at 0.1 mm for better lamination strength and at 50% or more fill to strengthen the part. I have printed gears and chains using PLA and so far it is mechanically strong. I don't recommend heavy loads or anything that an create a strong shock to the part. An example is a Z axis coupler I made for my printer in thingiversebecause my printer came with a broken aluminum coupler so have to design and print on another printer using PLA. I am still using it till today and also slowly improving on the design as well.

If you don't mind mixing different materials with your existing hotend then you could get an ABS reel and try it out and let us know more about it.

PLA is strong only problem is not sure it can stand the heat for long period of time , plus my current x-carriage make my servo poking outward and can't really cover wide bed surface for auto leveling , but at least it work for now no longer need to do bed adjustment , now just need more stuff to print

Looks like you are printing either Kossel or Rostock part. I have a completed printing all the parts for a mini Rostock but don't have the non-palastic bits to complete the build.

If heat is your concern for PLA then you could also look into new materials like Proto-pasta high temperature PLA. I know a supplier who suggested me this material but heat isn't an issue for me so far. I have not tried this material yet but from what I understand is normal PLA would soften and may deform when placed in a car under a hot sun but this material claims it should not soften or deform at all.

I'm printing kossel and combination of rostock part for my 20x20 kossel mini build, I just wanted to finish up my 1st spool of PLA I have 3 spool ordered already

Even if you have finished printing the plastic bits for the Kossel, I am sure enough you have to complete the build with the non printable parts. Do you know any vendor that provides extruded aluminum frame and linear rods? I seem to be having a hard time finding any supplier in KL or PJ area.

I can source some in puchong 20x20 not sure they have 15x15 or not but my plastic part are for 20x20 aluminium extrusion compare to the original kossel mini that use 15x15 openbeam

or can refer to this guy listing

http://cetak3d.blogspot.de/p/s.html

I'm building his Kossel alt btw

Thanks for the link, he has a good list of suppliers. Its a good decision to go for the 20x20 aluminium frame as its a more common size and the extra weight can help in the long run. I may want to try making that one day and a few others too.