Solved Problems out of the box...

Hi,

Just got the R1 today, it's my first 3d printer. At first, the Y axis wasn't moving at all, but then I found a broken part connecting the drive cable to the frame... kind of strange that a broken part would also happen to have a spare included with the machine, but I expect every aspect of 3-D printing to be difficult so no biggie.

once I got that working, I tried printing the calibration circle from the library. The printer does the auto calibration first, stopping at 9 points on the bed. Only instead of getting the print head close to the bed on each point, it raises up about an inch each time. It's almost at the top of the z-axis by the time it's done, then it goes down to about 5 inches off the bed and starts crapping out goo.

I'm using the latest version of mattercontrol on Windows 7, I set the printer up following the intro video. the settings are all the defaults for the R1, which I assume should be good enough for a basic print. Any ideas?

Thanks,
David

 

Sounds like the autolevel switches are not being activated correctly. Make sure the carriage is seated on the switches

 

http://guide.robo3d.com/Guide/Homing+Your+Extruder/7

 

Thanks Mike, that fixed it. I printed out the calibration circle from the library, and it looks pretty good. A couple of questions:

1. is it normal to have it print a single layer outline about half an inch around the perimeter of the actual item it's printing?
2. I printed a couple of things, and there are some flaws around the edges where maybe too much stuff was deposited or something else is going on...are there guides or other docs I can read about dealing with these issues?

Thanks,
David

 

Edges are usually because of cooling. Though it might be worth calibrating your esteps.

Here's the visual troubleshooting guides mark was mentioning:
http://community.robo3d.com/index.php?threads/visual-troubleshooting-guide.3017/

and here's a guide on calibrating esteps: