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Mike's Printer is in!

Discussion in 'Show and Tell' started by Michael DiFilippo, Jun 25, 2013.

  1. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    So picked my printer up this morning from the post office. First HUGE thanks to the Robo guys for getting it out to me. I have an ABS/PLA fully assembled unit. First impressions WOW. This thing is clean looking and pretty solid. Opened the box which was a little dented but nothing major, found some packing material and the machine well wrapped in bubble wrap. A power cable and a USB cable along with some filament.

    A few things I noticed right away, the wires are loose, I am probably going to quickly get some wire loom and clean them up a bit since the casing just looks so nice. There is no "power" light. So at first I wasn't sure if the unit was actually on but once I configured it in repetier all was good!

    I started to follow the directions on leveling the bed and noticed the pcb wasn't sitting flush. Then I noticed 4 screw holes but no screws. So I found a few small screws and attached the PCB to the wood platform and now I could level. Did a quick leveling using a business card and loaded up an STL of a 15mm cube. I was so excited just to see it working! The base of the cube wasn't right though, it was more rounded and not the full width. So i let it print a few layers, killed the print job and tried leveling one more time. Second cube was a much better success!

    I'll get some pictures up shortly (sorry all my photo gear is at my studio right now not at my house so theres are all Iphone) I also have some video of the first print that I'll put together when I get a chance.
     
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  2. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Just talked to harry who cleared something up, the screws are suppose to be missing and binder clips used instead.
     
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  3. pclabtech

    pclabtech Active Member

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    First rule of Robo Club, don't discuss Robo Club ;)

    Grats on getting your printer, I finally got mine to do 100 micron prints last night, and tried getting the ViKi board to work, only to find out there is firmware patching involved in order for the LCD screen to work.
     
  4. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Haven't purchased the viki board yet. I've been messing around with the speeds and flow multiply rates in repetier other then that not much yet. What settings would change to get a 200 or 100 micron print?
     
  5. pclabtech

    pclabtech Active Member

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    The setting they say to set to .3 and for the first layer .35 change those to .1 and .11
     
  6. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    ahh okay! thank you
     
  7. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    So some general things I am noticing after my first few prints. I like to use the flow and speed multiply options in repetier to work on quality and speed. I start at a lower multiply like 50-80% and work it up slowly to 100% and then beyond 100% depending on the print going back down again seems to work well too (so say 60-150 and back down to 60) of course as of right now this means sitting in front and watching it the entire time. Haven't done any tests to see if this is actually faster/ better than just setting it at 100% and walking away.
     
  8. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    Congrats Mike, glad your's made it safe. Enjoy the printing. Now we don't have that excuse anymore. You know the one ...Yeah it looks good on the computer screen but I need to print it but I can't . Well now we can. Yeahh Looking forward to seeing some cool things.
     
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  9. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Thanks Jeff. Had some issues last night and this morning with filament just globbing up and getting caught on the hot end. It would start to make the perimeter and then one strand would get stuck and that would be the end of it. A bit confusing since I made prints no problem prior. So today I pulled off the case (very easy to do thanks Robo!) pulled off the hot end carriage and tried to get off all the dried up pla reset the z-stop switch a few times and now it seems to be back up and running. Printing up clips right now so i can attach my 1/4" boro glass to the heat bed. If they work I'll put the STL up for you guys.

    One thing; bed leveling and setting the z-stop are two different things. I am not sure how we go about bed leveling with Robo, from what I can tell it is in a fixed position, there are no leveling screws with springs like some printers I have seen.
     
  10. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    Well setting the z axis height on using the rods will level the axis to the bed along the x axis but will do nothing if the bed is bowed. There may be a way to level along the Y axis but I haven't played with it yet but again the bowing concept also comes into play hope the boro glass or aluminium can alleviate those if they exist.
     
  11. CAMBO3D

    CAMBO3D New Member

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    Micheal your correct about the z height. they are two different things. z height should be set once you have your bed leveled. there are some options on thingiverse i linked one of them that i think would work on the robo www.thingiverse.com/thing:90127

    1.png 2.png 3.png
     
  12. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Cambo that certainly could work, but would involve having to totally remount the wood and pcb onto those corners correct?
     
  13. CAMBO3D

    CAMBO3D New Member

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    since our build surface is inside the birch wood, i dont think you would have to remove the birch, just drill some holes for the anchor nut and then mount these to the wood and place your boro heatbed combo on top of it.

    im gonna print a couple of these levelers out of nylon to try out. but now that i think about it the robo uses those slides for the y axis so yeah prolly have to remove the birch to install these..hmm
     
  14. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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  15. Seshan

    Seshan Active Member

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    Cambo, that one looks good, but it may cause problems with clearance with the base plate. I was originally thinking of doing something with Chicago bolts, but realized that probably wouldn't work out. Now I am thinking of doing something with a long nut and two bolts, I'm not sure if I will be able to find a long nut for M3 bolts, So I might have to make one by epoxying a couple nuts together, Or tap something my self.
     
  16. JDM_

    JDM_ New Member

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  17. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    I have to say the lack of leveling option is a bit upsetting. It is something I need to be able to do because my print surface isn't level and its causing the bulk of my issues
     
  18. JDM_

    JDM_ New Member

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    Yep. I will be looking into leveling solutions later this week. When I get my boro glass I want to be able to level the bed. Cambo has a nice solution above but Im going to try to save as much print volume as possible. Print volume was one of the main reasons to picked this printer and that has already been reduced.

    I'm thinking it's possible to replace the white spacers mounts with spring mounts. We just need to find the right materials to use. I saw a video of a guy that used these "hand nuts"... They were designed to be turned by hand. I can't seem to find that video anywhere though. If we find something like that to use we would not need tools to level the bed.
     
  19. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    I agree i don't want to give up the printer volume. My issue right now seems to be front to back level, side to side seems great but front to back is off. Its like when the bed is all the way back there is too much force on it
     
  20. JDM_

    JDM_ New Member

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    Same with mine. I level the center like the instructions say be the corners have a larger gap. It's like the board is slightly bowed.

    I think we can just replace the those mounts with spring mounts. I'll do some research on the best way to do it and see what we can find.
     
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