for those wondering the Robo's printing capabilities

I have just successfully printed a 15 mm hollow pyramid at 25 microns and I am currently doing one at 10 microns now the tip of the pyramid is deformed somewhat because the nozzles simply stayed in the same place too long and I tried to adjust it subsequent prints the most successful was when I speed it up but then I saw the beginning of a twist as filament was trying to follow the nozzle tip.




this is my 10 micron print just starting out same print different resolution

 

First of each printer will be different so I am not sure if they all will pertain to you but I will discuss what I have done. About 3-4 weeks ago all of my prints went through a major metamorphosis in the quality and for the what the printer was now able to do and it all started with the bed being as close to perfectly level as it could be made to be I made a mod awhile back that helps me do this it is my bed leveler mod it is here on thingiverse

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:125626

It is actually quite simple but also quite effective. It basically lets you move each corner up or down to make them all level with the rails it is on. The one draw back is that it only works on teh old style bed with the birch teh pcb bed and glass or the new bed which is all glass with a kapton heater attached below. that is because those two beds use the same holes the bed witht he clips changes it up a bit and the adjuster can be made to work but it requires a custom built clip to replace the one taht came with the robo and a different bolt. In the configuration the use a flat head bolt going down to the bed while the other two use a bolt from below. swapping out just this bolt is trick because the current clips passes over it the top of that area when it opens and closes so you would have to create an arching slot that match teh position of the head of the new screw so it could exists while the clip opened and shut from what I have heard is the the exact postioning of the holes is not that exact thus the need for customization.

now back to the the setup
once the bed is level it makes getting the axis level to it very easy it can be done in a general fashion and fine tuned by see what the skirts look like when they printout

MY RULE:Look at the skirt if it lloks bad stop adjust and restart the print if it looks good continue.

So getting the bed level allows you to get the z height pretty close and subsequent adjustments to the nozzle height tend to be have teh same results all over the bed so if a print does well in one spot it does well alot of spots. Thus if a part of a print gets laid doen on teh bed in one area it will get laid down very close to the same way in other parts of the print so it improves all of it.

I learned what to look for in the skirts and it seems to work well and I have showed it to many people here and they understand it and also see that it works well for them.
Here is that pic
The outside line on this print is the skirt and it is two loops the minimum I use on every print
2 things to notice in this picture
1 how flat the skirt is. It is not completely flat but it is significantly flattened so flat the the two loops like like one
that is my perfect skirt.
2 the single line in the middle and going around once that seems to be raised up that line in my opinion is too high. that bad part about that is that several of those next to each other look very good but in my experience the line is not adhered to the bed properly and eventually if the print is left to run and the base is made up of just those types of lines it will pop off and fail. It may work but most of the times I see that it doesn't.

So before you say hey my print isn't stick to the bed or the nozzle is dragging my print around because it is too low it is most likely just the opposite and it is too high and simply letting filament drop out of the nozzle and happen to hit the bed.

So try for the flat skirt and your prints will be much better

now back to the low micron prints

when ll that is in place the only thing I do is to lower the layer height and the first layer height. I have learned that the first layer height should be between 80-100% of the layer height I usually do 100%

After doing that one step I simply go back to the rule and try and get the first layer and skirt to look like the one in the picture by adjusting the z height screw up or down to adjust the initial bed level and that is really it.

Normally when I print I print at 200 microns it is a good mix between time and quality. when I adjusted thing to go to the 50 the biggest step downward I had to restart bout 6 times before it got the layer to look right once I did I let it go and it worked going down from there was not actually all the different I think I got it in two and it worked for the last one as well.

Those are the trickiest things I also run my printer slower and I will list those settings here

Perimeters 30
Small perimeters 25
External perimeters 60%
Infill 40
solid infill 30
top solid infill 30
support material 30
Bridges 40
Gap fill 35

Travel is a bit faster the is 140

first layer speed is 30%

all the rest are 0

 

Epic Jeff.