{"id":357,"date":"2019-08-23T01:13:42","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T01:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.protowrxs.com\/?page_id=357"},"modified":"2019-08-23T01:15:51","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T01:15:51","slug":"prusa-i2-printer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.protowrxs.com\/index.php\/other-hobbies-and-projects\/3d-printing-and-printers\/prusa-i2-printer\/","title":{"rendered":"Prusa i2 Printer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

October 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off – Tips from a Noob<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
  1. Clean your taped bed with alcohol\n<\/li>
  2. Double check belts after breaking in\n<\/li>
  3. Lock down bed nuts with nail polish or similar\n<\/li>
  4. Clean hot end with paper towel, etc to wipe the plastic snot off\n<\/li>
  5. Do a “Pre-Flight” first of the day and MUST DO after any changes\n<\/li>
  6. Keep bare fingers away from hot end – it does burn skin quite well\n<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    \n\nYeah, those are all already out there but seems I have to learn the hard way.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Printing Parts – One Month<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \nDon\u2019t worry, I\u2019m not going to post a new entry every month or so from \nnow on. Just thought maybe it would be worth talking about the first \nmonth of owning and using a 3d printer. Like anything the first \ndays\/weeks\/months are the most exciting and likely after a while things \nsettle down to reality. What I am happy about is the first week was not \ntorture but was a pleasant surprise so far. The first month has helped \nme learn the fine tunings needed and opened my mind to some simple uses \nfor the printer.  I\u2019m sure there will be some issues to deal with later \nthat will make me lose some hair, but so far, so good as they say.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \nI have no doubt the the first weeks and months success is from the help \nreceived here at LMR from the smart printer heads like jinx, ossipee, \nhoff70, birdmun, Jerz and the others that helped clarify things during \nthe muddy waters. Without their input, critic and questions\/answers I \nwould likely have been \u201cout there\u201d still trying to get things working \nbetter.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Things Learned<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \nListen, read, learn\u2026 and then do it all over again. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Like anything new it\u2019s all confusing at first, so listen to other \nexperts, read all you can about the subject, and then give it some time \nto absorb. Then start all over again. Likely it\u2019s just me but I \nliterally had to run through the various resources found online several \ntimes for it all to \u201cstick\u201d in my brain. Slowly the bits and pieces, \nconfiguration information, processes, etc starting hooking up together \nand making sense. I still know very little of the best practice but I \nknow the basics now so the rest can slowly fill in the blanks.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Measure Twice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \nOr three or four or twenty times. When calibrating it takes precise \nmeasurements and the understanding of what you are measuring. When \nadjusting my X\/Y scaling I would print\/measure\/adjust and get some \nresults, but until I actually did a measured calibration on the extruder\n setup it was all wasted as pushing too much plastic was distorting the \noutput. Yes, I thought I had do it right but until birdmun provided his \ncalibration tool and I then went online to understand it more, I wasn\u2019t \ncoming up with the right number. In my case, the hobbed bolt was cut \npretty shallow, thus the \u201cnormal\u201d 7mm diameter hobbed bolt value was off\n enough to create some issues.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Clean Your Bed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \nAlthough the first several prints seemed to hook up to the blue tape \nrather well, I noticed that was not always the case, even after \nre-applying new tape. As mentioned by many online, I broke out the \nrubbing alcohol, did a bed cleaning between prints and it hooked up \ngreat. Of course my blue tape was from our garage and we do a lot of car\n stuff there so it could be contaminated from that environment but \nstill, cleaning it up seemed to insure a good first layer stick. Still a\n couple smaller prints having some issues but I think the bed is still a\n bit off level which is the other rule, level your bed\u2026 and Lock it \ndown. \n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Check Your Z<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \nJinx wasn’t happy with my Z layers, inconsistent, etc. The scale was \nperfect but layers just didn’t look consistent. He immediately knew what\n it was, Z spring capture was not tight enough. I re-loaded the mount \nand compressed the springs as much as I could and the issue really \ncleared up. I may need to get some stiffer Z springs someday to insure \nit’s tight enough to work well but not too tight to blow up the bed if, \nno, likely WHEN I drive into the bed again (you’ll understand shortly). \nBut thanks to jinx that issue seems mostly resovled.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Problems Resolved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \nThere are a few things that I am still trying to clean up to get better long term prints.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Overhangs
      \nOverhangs were a major issue at first. You can see from the comparison \nbelow, the first print on the left had a little bit of a problem with \noverhangs or sags\u2026 ok a LOT of problems. After that print I rounded up \nthe overhang test object and began the research. The two things I found \nthe most useful was to lower the layer height to .20mm, slow the \nextruder slightly, and insure there is good cooling flow form a good fan\n duct on the part. What was happening is the overhang was apparently not\n cooling enough, the hot end comes back around and heats up the thin \narea and \u201clifts\u201d it during each layer. The fan cools the part faster and\n the slower extruder lowered the flow rate to keep it from lifting so \nbad. \n<\/li>
    2. Bridging
      \nBridging isn\u2019t quite as bad of the overhang issue but it is there. The \nfirst layer of a bridge just droops down from apparently similar issues \nwith the overhangs. I did adjust the bridging speed a bit in slic3r and \ncombined it has helped the situation. Additionally the changes for \noverhangs obviously helped the bridging issue.\n<\/li>
    3. Oozing
      \nEvery printer will ooze a bit I guess when sitting still from what I\u2019ve \nread and hot end temps play a big role in that. Some have said to lower \nthe temp to keep it working clean but anything below 180 on my printer \nbegins to create other issues such as rough fills and possible extruder \njams. I do not have something to precisely measure hot end temps so the \nthermistor may be slightly off.\n<\/li>
    4. Kapton Glue Gunk
      \nFor some reason the kapton tape glue appears to be slowly seeping out of\n the hotend wrap and messing with my long prints. I have to \u201cwipe it\u2019s \nnose\u201d between prints, which is smart anyhow I imagine. Resolution will \nbe to buy some new, hopefully better tape, and clean \/ retape the \nhotend.\n<\/li>
    5. Slic3r Errors Beware
      \nIf you have a part that has a load of slicing errors or \u201cfixes\u201d beware. \nIt is very possible that the part is not going to print right. Some do, \nsome don\u2019t. I like the newest version of slic3r that lets you view the \nmodel to slice as you can generally see the errors from my experience. \nRepetier has a nice visual as well.\n<\/li>
    6. Do a \u201cPre-Flight\u201d check after making any changes
      \n<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      \nAfter waiting for a while, I finally decided to add an adjustable Z \nstop. It wasn\u2019t really needed but I figured it would make things much \neasier to keep the bed height setting correct over time. So I printed a \ncouple different versions and finally picked one out to use. Actually \nthe one I wanted to use keep having slicing errors which continued to \nshow up in the print so I used my second favorite one. But after \nmounting it up, changing out the end stop mount to work better with my \nswitches, etc and making sure I was way high for the first Z homing I \nhit the Z home button but had NOT done a complete once over on the \nprinter.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The head lowered just fine\u2026 and kept lowering, and lowering even \nafter hitting the end stop, WTH? I killed the power on the ATX supply, \nwhich didn\u2019t really help as the power supply has ample buffering to keep\n running the printer for several seconds so the print head drives itself\n into the bed until it finally runs out of power. Ugh. I had failed to \nactually hook the Z end stop switch back up so yeah, it hit the switch \nbut it didn\u2019t know it hit the switch. It moved enough into the bed to \nknock the lower Z nut out of the holder and when I did move it back up I\n lost all Z settings on both sides and had to go back to ground \u201cZ\u201dero \nfor setup and bed leveling.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

      Fortunately nothing damaged and lesson learned. Do a GOOD once \nover after major changes or adjustments, check wires and then double \ncheck if you don\u2019t want to start over.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Printer Improvements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      \nSo enough learning and basking in the glow and smell of a working \nprinter. What have I printed? LOTS of calibration stuff mainly as \nexpected but I have managed to add some \u201cenhancements\u201d to the printer \nwhich were the first things I wanted to output anyhow. Mostly simple \nstuff like this:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n