Ross Printer

So, I have not been able to print anything yet...
Here is a video of the trouble so far.

 

Sounds like something is jammed. Can you slide the bed freely by moving it with your hand?

 

I can slide the bed freely.

It appears to not stop when it hits the end.

 

I have uploaded a more complete video.

Free movement of the bed.
Motor function of the software setting the print head and the bed to home positions.

It may be a configuration of the home settings, though I pulled all the settings from the user manual.

 

I get a similar sounding noise when the bed moves too far in the Y direction. Look underneath your printer's bed, and you should see a little switch that looks like the z stop - the right side of the little bit of black plastic that holds the belt should be hitting the stop when your Y is homed (when the bed slides all the way back)

While you don't want to let it keep doing that grinding any longer than you have to, I'd try zeroing the Y and then use a pointy tool to try hitting the Y stop manually, see if that stops it making that grinding noise.

 

From that video it looks like your bed is not making all the way to the Y-Stop.​

Check the rails to see if something is in there jamming it. Also, reversing the bed screws (screw on bottom, nut on top) allows for a flatter bed and less issues with loose bed nuts.​

My guess is one of the stand off nuts is floating in the rail or is loose enough that it is jamming against something and stopping the bed. No matter how much I tightened them they would eventually loosen until I flipped them.​

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Once you get it working and printing, I recommend looking into Tesseract's Stand-offs - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:125626​

After printing and installing those, no more bed problems.​

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It's definitely hitting something. Or your belt might be REALLY loose and it's skipping like crazy but I doubt that

You didn't do it in the video, are you able to push the plate to the y stop?

 

Can one of you send a photo of what I may be looking for?

I had to adjust the Z Stop screw as it appeared to be too high out of the box.
So the print head would hit the glass bed.

 

I have already modified my bed with the bed leveller so I really don't have a pic.

You want to look inside the two silver rails that your boro-glass bed is mounted to for anything that might be floating around in them.

If you notice, your bed has a plastic mount on the front and back that the Y-belt is attached to. If you look under the bed from the front you will see a switch. That's your Y-Stop. The front plastic mount has to be able to hit that switch to register Y-Home.
Your bed does not appear to be going back far enough for it to hit that switch.

Something is either inside those silver rails stopping it...or the screws that are mounted between them and the bed are hitting something.

I would cut power, turn the printer on it's side and gently move the bed back and forth to see where it stops and you can see what may be stopping it.

Note: Z-Stop adjustment is normal. You want to do this after you have both X and Y functioning and your bed properly level. The Robo manual should give you instructions for proper Z-Stop adjustments. Start with those and then you will see how to tweak it from there.

 

Right, so there was another loose nut in the works.
This one I have just put back on which was the culprit causing the bed to grind to a halt.


I still have this little nut which I do not know where it is from.


Now, the problem I have at the moment.
There does not appear to be filament coming out of the nozzle.
Sigh.

So I have checked and tried heating the print head to 190 degrees.
I have tried pushing it through, but it appears it may be clogged.....
Sigh..

 

That second nut looks like it is probably from that same post. it goes on top of the rail between the rail and the bed. You can look at the other sides to see how it lines up.
I would highly suggest flipping those screws around so that the screw head is on the bottom of the rail and the lock nut is on top of the bed. I had noticed that those nuts work their way loose rubbing against the rail. The screw head has a smaller footprint and doesn't have the same issue. It's also much easier to adjust the bed with the nuts on top.

As for the filament, heat the extruder to something like 200 and try pulling it out first. Then you should be able to tell if it's clogged or not. If it comes out melted, it's probably ok and you can clip and reinsert the filament and try pushing it through a little. Otherwise, your PTFE tube might be damaged and there are instructions on fixing/replacing that.

 

Ross could we chat on skype maybe? I'd like to help you get up and running.

 

Yeah Mike, that would be good.

I have managed to pull the the filament out of the print head.
I was able to cut the filament and push a little through the print head.

I then successfully printed a pile of mess.
The PLA filament does not want to stick to the glass.
It could also be that the glass is not level.
I unscrewed the bolts and nuts on the rails to find that the little pieces of plastic which have been cut and used as spacers are all different lengths.. Pretty dodgy.

It looks like the print head may be catching the print and pulling it off the glass, but it is sliding around too easily.
I thought the plastic would stick to the glass a little better.

 

Ross, are you using anything as an adhesive surface on the glass? Or just glass and nothing else?

You'll find that hairspray (with VERY specific "magic" ingredients) works great.

 

Ross, also in addition Melody's suggestion to use an adhesive like Aquanet or hair gel (http://forums.robo3dprinter.com/index.php?threads/hairspray-survey.1532/) make sure your slicer settings specify 5 or so loops of a skirt. I can't tell what you skit looks like in the photo. As the skirt starts printing each loop you can gently and slightly manually adjust the left and right leadscrews to make sure the extrusion is sticking and has a "slightly squished hot dog" cross section. A counterclockwise turn will lower the extruder. Only turn them less than 1/8 turn at a time. You may need to specify more than 5 skirts if the item is small to give your self enough time to make the adjustment. I forget who made this suggestion originally but it really helps me. We should call this the "quick hands dynamic manual Z-axis adjustment maneuver"!

Try not to make the Z axis too low or the extrusion will squish out the edges and make a rough mess of the first layer.

Also you might want to specify a thicker first layer.

 

Might've been me, SteveC. I don't do skirts, but I do a very wide brim and just keep twiddling till it looks right, and if there's a couple blobs from getting started, I yank 'em off sharply and they -usually- come away cleanly without lifting anything else. By the time it gets to actual printing, it's doing just fine. Ever so slightly too low is better than slightly too high, unless you need exact precision for that first layer.

Also, if you can get things so that you are sure you have the whole thing level on the X axis, then if you turn both threaded rods the same amount with one hand on each, you can be sure it's going to stay level as you lower it and you don't have to twiddle the left, then twiddle the right, etc., can just do them both a quarter turn or whatever you need to, and it'll be right on both sides.

With proper bed levelling and a better z-stop, this shouldn't be necessary, but I get -great- prints out of my crappily-levelled and annoying-z-stop unmodded Robo this way.

 

Yarg, so using some hairspray, I managed to print this mess.

I am trying to figure out what setting seems to cause each layer to print out of alignment.

 

Your belts are loose it appears