Just Another RepRap

First off, Happy Holidays everyone! And although I hope to post before then, Happy New Year!

No pics today, as my iPhone is actually full (3000+ pics – it won’t let me take any more), and my linux box is giving me problems (which is where I need to dump those photos before I can take more).  Doh.

So I ran out of white ABS, and started printing with the supply of black ABS I’d purchased. I’d agree with similar posts I’ve seen online that it seems to have different properties.

I need a lazy susan for the ABS supply. When ABS comes off of the top of a coil, it twists too much and causes problems.

I have, in my possession, a supply of PLA that I want to use to print out some of the more difficult warping pieces. Now my problem is that I can’t get x-carriage-upper_1off (rotated) to fit on the bed. Before using the PLA, I wanted to try black ABS one more time, and for some reason the raft prints 7mm too close to me on the Y axis; there’s 7mm of space at the top of the bed, and the raft goes over the edge of the bed on the bottom by 7mm, even if I try starting the bed off-center before the print. That part has me confused. I tried adjusting the raft size down in skeinforge a bit (% of length and some other attribute), but that didn’t help. I’d actually let a black ABS run go when it did this, and it almost worked, but the part that ran over the edge had nothing to hold it down so it curled up and ruined the print.

I’d started building a heated bed but once the PLA came in I put that on hold, but I don’t want to try the PLA (at least for that piece) until I can get the piece to fit on the bed! Maybe I’ll try the extruder piece again, in PLA.

More later. Happy Holidays again everyone!

[UPDATE: After careful examination I’ve just verified that my MakerBot’s Y axis physically can’t go back far enough for the extruder to reach the last 6.9mm, and it can come forward enough that the extruder is 6.9mm past the front. I rechecked the build instructions (which are all based on a different batch of lasercut parts than mine, with different screw holes visible in the pics, etc), and it’s assembled correctly. I think there’s a design flaw in the lasercut parts for whatever batch my Makerbot is from. Sent mail to Zach. Meanwhile I’ll try rotating the part around the z axis.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 2:34 pm and is filed under MyRepRap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.