knotted spool & printed two parts within each other :(

So far it was running really good. I tweaked the settings to thinner and thinner layers. But then I started a bigger projects with more than 24 h printing time and ended up with a knotted spool. It took some time to remove around 40 meters and put them back on.

Also I realized that in redsnapper I added one stl-file two times with a small offset. During G-Code generation I havent realized the mistake. And the print ran for about 10 hours adding up double material in many areas.

The output looked like this:

You can see the brown color of the material in the upper and lower area of the part, where the stls overlapped the most. I was supprised, that I did not ruin the nozzle that way.

Getting things done

I am still playing around with vaious parameters to get the best results. A big help was the heated bed. With the 150 Watt I can reach around 130 degree. At this temperature I print the first layer and then get down to 110 degree. I was able to print the first flat parts withour any wraping issue.

The easiest way to remove the parts is to wait until the bed cooled down to 60 degree and then use a knife to start lifting the corners. It pops off pretty easy. So far the ABS sticks well to the kapton tape.

getting crazy

After tuneing the redsnapper setting the prints went better.

I use 245 deg celsius extruding temp. 0.65 mm extrude material width. 0.41 layer thickness and 0.8 mm infill distance.

I am still printing the meshball. www.thingiverse.com
The total time at 275 mm / min is 7 hours! INCREDIBLE SLOW! I need to print a mendel or huxley.  So hopefully tomorrow I will upload the pictures of the complete model.

Here is a video of me waiting for the print to finish. Feel my impatience?

Anyhow: IT IS WORKING! Now comes the real challange: designing usefull parts...

The maximum build volume is around 200x150x65 mm. More than enough with the current speed.

IT PRINTS!!!

The first parts came out. So fare so good. But still a long way to go. The E_STEPS_PER_MM is still not set very well and I have a lot of issues with wraping. The ATX power supply stopped working after 5 minutes and I needed to print all parts cold on painter's tape and glue.

Still I am very happy. No smoke just unlimited possiblities.

final steps

cooling the ehated bed from below to prevent any melting of plastic parts.

Here we are after 2 weeks of work. Ready for the first test print...

rewireing the extruder - classical way

 Due to a shortcut cased by the nut on the heater barrel, which squeezed the wired too much and damaged them, I had to replace the heater wire. This time I chosse the classical method, but with a longer wire due to the 24 V. I think 20 Watt should be enough for the speed I plan to print with.

lifting up the X-axis

 Due to the big extruder parts I needed to move up the complete x/z-stage around 70 mm. This way I can use the limited Z movement to it's maximum.

Also I mounted the power supply for the heated bed.