First Layer Printing

Always design around failure situations, not ideal situations

 

My side mount design allows fast, easy, safe spool swaps. It transports easily and sets up fast.

"My issue has always been avoiding having the filament drag against the very poorly cut slot in the top of the printer."​

A simple filament guide eliminates this problem: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:255541. Bearings are unnecessary and in some cases can cause the spool to unwind excessively and tangle. From my observations anything more than this, especially including an auto feed control system is over engineering the problem.

BTW - I have had a lot of luck with kids using the browser based Tinkercad for simple designs and 123D for more complex ones. The biggest problem is with them fighting over printer time and coming up with unprintable designs.

 

Thomas, I posted this update on a different post, but I though you would want to see my solution to the offset printing I mentioned above.
Update on First layer printing:
We are back to printing when we first got the Robo R1 with enclosed bottom.
We have had Hexagon hot end problems, we have had to season the hot end and make a oiler for the hot end.
We have tried to figure out how the bed leveling works on the Robo R1
We have had bed problems with the Y axis and problem with the Z axis and throwing it's nuts.
We have had problems with how the cable lays under the bed and feed under the robo.
We have had to replace the fan on hot end.
We fix the hexagon hot, tighten everything down, and stop the oozing out of filament.
Now the last problem that has hopefully put us back to where we started is, we had to replace a 2 of the bearing on one side of the Y axis rods.
I'm printing a spool holder for the top of the Robo R1 and it looks really good.
Now I can start to really tune up the Robo.
I would like to thank everyone on the forum who has answer my trouble calls, without you I would be in deep dudu, please keep up the good work.
I hope soon I can become more of a answer person instead of a question one.

 

Thomas, I'm still having a problem understanding how you can twist the threaded Z rods to get a better first layer.
Do you move them when you are printing the first layer.
When I start to print, the threaded Z rods are constantly moving.
I tried to move them but the motor is constantly moving them and I'm not sure what direction to move them

 

Robert,
With your firmware and autoleveling you can't turn the threaded rods by hand while it is printing. The steppers are always driving the rods while printing and will fight your turning of them.

Since you have the XXL LCD you can use Ziggy's "babystepping" firmware modification. It adds a menu item that lets you to adjust the threaded rods on-the-fly with the XXL's knob. It is a simple modification and well worth it.
http://forums.robo3dprinter.com/index.php?threads/z-axis-marlin-baby-stepping.2755/#post-32825

 

Thanks Steve, that makes sense. Know I don't feel so stupid for asking the question again.

 

"Robert,
With your firmware and autoleveling you can't turn the threaded rods by hand while it is printing. The steppers are always driving the rods while printing and will fight your turning of them."

Not in my world and I have an R1 with enclosed bottom. Sometimes my rods turn, telling me they are indeed working to make things properly level but a lot of the time, while printing, I can twist them all I want. For me, only after the printer does its 9 point probe do they twist. Id like to see it do the 9 point probe all the time but its not happening, seems to do it when it wants to.

As for direction. Clockwise raises the hot end.

 

Don't use mattercontrol then.

 

I need to get a bit more info for setting up Repeater for Mac OS X. Still not sure how to get it set up initially, working on it as I would love to try it. I did get Slic3r running properly and I do prefer it so far, seems good.

 

It's easy to setup, just input the bed size and copy the slicer settings from mattercontrol.

Though I'd recommend bootcamping into windows to get repetier1.0 to have access to Cura slicer as well.

 

Cool. That I can do for sure. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I really need to tighten my hot end and have no clue what I should be lightning and how? Maybe a video? Seems i'm lacking in the proper terminology but in reading a bunch of posts on it I'm lost.

In my code startup it got the g29 (is that right, I'm going from memory here) command to do hardware levelling but it rarely does it? is that normal?

 

In what way is it loose? There's 2 screws that hold the extruder to the carriage, these are on the side of the wade extruder body.

Assuming you're running the hexagon:
There's another set screw on the hexagon portion for tightening the heat break.

Finally you can tighten the nozzle by gripping the heater block with an adjustable wrench, then with another wrench tighten down the nozzle. This needs to be done hot for best effect.

 

OK, yes hexagon, says so right on it. Forgot that part.

Well, Im not sure what I should be lightning but I keep reading that a leaky extruder, when up to temp, is usually caused by it being loose. The square rubber end that says hexagon is loose, I can turn it by barley touching it?

"There's 2 screws that hold the extruder to the carriage" whats the carriage? the main black plastic that the rods go through and everything connects to?

"There's another set screw on the hexagon portion for tightening the heat break." I have no idea what that means? Heat break? where is the hexagon portion? I only see a black square?

"Finally you can tighten the nozzle by gripping the heater block with an adjustable wrench, then with another wrench tighten down the nozzle. This needs to be done hot for best effect." OK what is the heater block? I'm sure the final tip must be the nozzle.

Thanks for helping.

 

If it leaks filament out the top then it's a loose nozzle.

The black part is a high temperature silicone sleeve. It's used to keep the heater block clean and hold in the thermistor.

The carriage is the black part injection molded parts that hold the Extruder. Sometimes called the extruder carriage or the X carriage.

Some call outs for the hexagon nozzle:


Your tool kit may have come with a 4.5mm wrench. This can be used as well to tighten the nozzle if you don't want to move the black sleeve.



Grip the flat portions on the heat break with the 4.5mm and then use a wrench to tighten down the nozzle with the extruder hot. Be super careful not to twist on the heat break portion as it's very thin metal.

If the heatbreak itself is loose then there should be a set screw on the hex portion in the picture above. Instead of a small fin near the heatbreak, it leaves that gap open and they put in a m3 set screw for securing the heat break to the heat sink.

 

Still not sure on this one. But I do notice mine is different, My nozzle has no place to grab and turn like that one in the picture. From the bottom of the heater block mine is a cone shape, no flat parts to grab and turn? My printer only got here a couple of weeks ago so I was assuming it to have the newest parts.

Well, after a careful look it has flat sides but only sticking out of the heat block maybe 1 mm tops. to small to grab and turn.

 

Tried setting up Repeater, WOW. IT tried moving the print head below the bed, the threaded rods kept turning twisting the levelling sensor wires up, had to switch it off fast but looks like I saved them. Must have something wrong. Back to MatterControl till I get this sorted out. That was almost a bad mistake.

 

Did they ship the printer with a wrench that fits the nozzle? I thought I read that somewhere in the forums.

 

I'm still not clear on what you think is loose. You probably need to take off the silicone insulator to get a good enough grip on the nozzle if you really think it's loose.

I believe they do, but I can't know for certain.

I don't see a software sending controls without your permission, so just be careful to not let it go negative.

You can disable "Allow negative movements" in the firmware but I don't know how that would affect Z probing. Better just to use common sense and keep it positive

 

I received a wrench that fits the little spot above the heat block and below the heat break but thats it. I have lots of tools so no big deal but I'm leaving this one alone for now, after reading some more it would seem that lightning it up only helps if leaking from the top and mine is oozing from the nozzle so I think I'm chasing the wrong solution.

My nozzle oozes a lot as it heats up. Starts to ooze at about 185c and I would end up with a sizeable little pile if I didn't catch it just before print starts. the ooze is thin, not like when its extruding but it builds up fast. Its like a melted wire mesh blob and if I don't remove it, it gets dragged around and ruins the first layer every time.

As for Repeater, I'm going to get into it again today (just having morning coffee here now) and see what I can get to happen. I watched a video about adjusting Z offset: I like what I see, this is what I'm after. I'd like the printers hardware levelling to map the bed and control levelling and then use z offset to get height just right. I was playing with this last night in MatterControl. I turned on MC's auto levelling (my z rods are staying loose and free to turn as I print telling me my printers hardware auto leveling isn't being used) and did the calibration and started a print, of course it was too high from the bed but armed with my new Z Offset information from the video I linked to above, I found that setting in MC and started to adjust it and was getting very good results but not perfect. In the video he is using GCode to make these changes and when Ihad Repetier connected to my printer I couldn't make it do what he was, Code: M501 wasn't bringing up a 212 value for me, no 212 at all. So I ditched Repetier and went back to MatterControl as I'm more familiar with it and wanted to test out this Z Offset more. Again, I couldn't get GCode commands to bring up what I was in that video but I found Z Offset and was able to get it working.

So, My mission is to get Repetier working properly with my Mac and Robo, then get Robo firmware auto levelling working and adjust Z offset to perfection. Any tips from the more experienced?

I'm going into Repetier to see if I can stop the madness, haha. Here we go.

"I don't see a software sending controls without your permission, so just be careful to not let it go negative." I think you nailed it, I was a bit tired and probably clicked 100 instead of 10 for movement in Repetier

 

OK - oozing from the nozzle hole is completely normal. You have a reservoir of melted plastic and gravity just pulls it down. It usually oozes a lot if you use the heated bed because the hot end heats much faster than the bed. So the melted plastic has a while to flow downward. At the start of each print I grab the ooze with a needle nose just before it starts printing the skirt. Any small amount usually is just left behind on the skirt. Also one reason for the skirt is that all the oozing drains the nozzle and causes a delay in extrusion. The skirt loops give the extruder time to prime the plastic up to the nozzle.