Challenge the sphere again

So far I haven't finished any sphere printing yet, therefore I tried to print again this time. 

Test print 19, fail agian. The side of the sphere warp and cause the nozzle ran into it.

Test print 20, the bottom of the sphere shrank, I'm not sure what's the problem. Could it because of the over hang problem? Temperature of the plastic no even? Size of the sphere too small? But at least I got a sphere looking object, although it looks more like a mushroom.

Test print 21, again the nozzle ran into it. Failed.

Test print 22, the size of the sphere is bigger than Test print 19, I give it a wall to keep the temperature the same I hope i works, and also drive away the nozzle by printing the wall instead of keep moving on top of the sphere, so that it have some time to cool down.

Compare of 2 spheres. I know it can't be compared as they are different size. Just for a record so far what I've tested.

Filament not feeding

Currently I'm still using the filament that came with the Makerbot TOM. It have no spool, so I just lied the entire row of filament beside the machine, it'll get hair wired once in a while and I need to untied them.

there was one time they really too hard to fix with no choice I just cut the filament and feed it again, and then there was where I face another problem, the filament was not feeding, it just stuck there and I can hear the clicked jamming sound from the driver pulley.

I found some possibility problem from Makerbot Wiki on When Things Go Wrong

I dissembled the stepstruder clean the driver pulley teeth in case some plastic clogged in between them.
Removed the crooked filament that block the entrence of the thermal barrier.
After making sure there wasn't anything clogged in the plastruder, then I put them back and test. It still jam.

I repeated a few times on the above action and I decided to try press and push the filament into it, and it actually can come out from the stepstruder but when I stop pushing it stop. I have to keep pushing and let it run for some time and then it solve the problem, but after this incidence it'll still jam a little bit whenever the beginning of new print.




Below are what I copied from the site:

Damaged Plastic Filament 

Rarely, the toothed drive pulley manages to etch an indentation into the plastic filament. As a consequence, there is nothing for the drive pulley to push against, and the filament doesn't advance.
One way to fix this condition is to apply some physical pressure, pushing the filament into the Plastruder. Eventually, the filament will advance past the damaged section, and the drive pulley will start grabbing the filament again.
Alternatively, you can put the Plastruder into reverse, and gently pull the filament back up and out of the plastruder. You should be able to physically inspect the filament to confirm the problem. Then, use a pair of scissors to snip off the damaged section of filament, and feed it back into the Plastruder.
This can also be a symptom of the idler wheel being too loose to adequately grip the filament. If the teeth of the pulley do not sufficiently indent the filament, the teeth created will have insufficient strength and be striped away, creating a 'flat spot' where it will be unable to advance. Try adjusting the idler wheel slightly tighter than the 2mm guide rod, or even as tight as possible as it will not adversely affect its operation.


Misadjusted Idler Wheel Tension

It's easy to get the tension in the Idler Wheel wrong. If the Idler Wheel is too loose, the drive pulley won't grab and push the filament. We had difficulty with our Idler Wheel tension because we tried to adjust the tension after fully assembling our Plastruder, with the Plastruder electronics in place. It turns out that it's hard to get a wrench in the right place if the Plastruder is fully assembled. Instead, it was useful to adjust the Idler Wheel tension with the Plastruder on a benchtop, with the electronics off to the side. Initially, our team was concerned that making the Idler Wheel too tight might be problematic. We found that we were able to fix the Idler Wheel at its closes position to the drive pulley, and everything worked great. The plastic filament was crushed between the pulley and idler wheel, but this turned out to be a good thing. The pulley applied good, constant pressure to the filament. One word to the wise: do be careful when tightening down the nuts holding the Idler Wheel in place: acrylic cracks easily under pressure. Using washers to properly fill the space along the Idler Wheel bearing is crucial to having a snug fit without breaking the acrylic.


Filament Slipping Off Idler Wheel


On one Plastruder, we observed the plastic filament slipping to the side of the Idler Wheel. The filament would then be pushed against the wall of the Plastruder, where it would jam. Some customers were able to adjust the position of the Idler Wheel by moving washers from one side of the wheel to the other. However, my team resolved this problem by taking two Idler Wheels and super-gluing them together, creating a two-panel-thick Idler Wheel. This Idler Wheel was easier to position and worked perfectly the first time. Note: we don't recommend using this technique on mk4 or later extruders! See a more detailed discussion of this technique here: DoubleIdlerWheelDiscussion


Filament not going through the nozzle

If you find that your filament is blocked somewhere inside the white thermal barrier, it may well be that it got blocked at the entrance of the heater barrel: the thermal barrier hole may be larger than the heater barrel hole, creating a thing edge around. First, make sure that you have heated the plastruder well (a good 2 minutes at working temperature) before inserting the filament. That should help soften it to negotiate the opening. Second, if you still are having problems, before inserting the filament take some sanding paper and sand the edge of the filament into a point. That should make the filament properly align itself in the hole.


Flossing the teeth 

If you get repeated jams that seem to go away if you push on the filament from the top or if you back the filament out and cut off the stripped piece and put it back in, then you probably have clogged driver pulley teeth. The only effective way to fix this is to take apart the plastruder and pick the plastic out. If you find yourself doing this frequently, it might be helpful to leave out the first screw on the motor (the inside one) so you can easily remove the motor by taking out the other three instead of disassembling the whole plastruder. If, however, pressing down on the filament only helps a little and it just gets more stuck and stops, then you probably have a clog in your nozzle (possibly caused by Burning Plastic).

Model warping problem

This photo shows the warping problem. I'm using ABP with the heated platform in default setting 110º c, interior temperature about 26º c and the air-con was blowing to the printer.



The warping is quite serious causing that corner height about 0.5 cm shorter.

The ABP is working after I update to the 3.1 firmware.

I found the solution at Makerbot blog, I clear the ABP surface to make sure no dust on top of it, download the ReplicatorG 0029_r2, the default setting infill is lesser it's different with ReplicatorG 0028, turn off the air-con. And I realized that the model now stick firmly to the platform and no warping at all.



http://www.makerbot.com/blog/tag/warping/ 


Copy from the blog for my own records:

As printed plastic parts cool the different areas of the object can cool at different rates. ¹  Depending upon the parts being printed, this effect can lead to warping and curling.  Although PLA has a much lower shrinkage factor than ABS, both can warp and curl, potentially ruining a print.  There are some very common ways to deal with this potential problem, the most notable being a heated build platform.  However, sometimes that might not be enough.

1. Use a heated build platform.  A heated build platform helps keep the lowest levels of a print warm as the higher layers are printed.  This allows the overall print to cool more evenly.  A heated build platform, sometimes abbreviated as HBP, helps tremendously with just about any ABS print and large PLA prints.
2. Print with a raft.  Rafts are a printing option in ReplicatorG and Skeinforge.  They’re basically a large flat lattice work of printed material underneath the lower-most layer of your printed object.  They’ll also help reduce warping and curling by allowing your printed object to adhere better to your flat build surface.  Other variations on this are to print with a larger raft and/or a thicker raft comprised of more layers.
3. Calibrate your starting Z height.  A good first layer makes all the difference.  If your starting Z axis height is too high, the extruded filament won’t be able to make a good bond with the platform.  If you think your Z axis starting height is too high, try lowering it by 0.05mm increments until you find a good first layer.
4. Get the right build surface.  Some people have experimented with different surfaces such as steel, titanium, glass, different kinds of plastic, different kinds of tape, and foam board.  However, I find both ABS and PLA seem to stick really well to hot or warm Kapton tape.
5. Clean your build surface.  ABS and PLA stick better to a clean build surface.  Keep it clean of dust, pieces of old prints, and any other debris.
6. Print slower.  Printing slower allows finer detail, better adhesion to the build surface and lower layers, and gives the printed part more time to cool evenly.
7. Print cooler.  Printing at a lower temperature isn’t always an option.  Ideally, you should be printing at the lowest temperature required for extrusion and that allows good interlayer adhesion.  However, trying lower temperatures isn’t for the faint of heart.  Printing at a too low a temperature could cause harm to your extruder motor or extruder.
8. Eliminate drafts or enclose your robot.  Forrest Higgs found that having his 3D printer too close to an open window caused very uneven heating across his build surface.  This in turn caused the side of his prints closest to the window to curl.  Since keeping the window closed wasn’t an option for him, he compensated for the window drafts by adding a heat lamp.  Cupcake and Thing-O-Matic owners might have an easier time of eliminating drafts by simply enclosing two or three of the sides of their robots.  It will also have a fortunate side effect of helping to control fumes.
9. Design with mouse ears.  Zach Smith’s solution was to add little discs to corners of an object to help those corners stick to the platform.  These essentially serve as “mini-rafts” to give those corners more surface area and better adhesion without having to print an entire raft.
10. Design with aprons to hold down corners.  Forrest Higgs suggested adding “aprons” around an object to be printed, while that object was being printed on a raft.  These low thick pieces of plastic help keep the raft flat and help prevent any curling or warping from affecting the desired printed object itself.
11. Design with surrounding thermal walls.  While Forrest Higgs’ apron approach provides a mechanical advantage of essentially holding down corners with a chunk of plastic, Nophead has added thin surrounding walls to his designs to act as baffles to keep warm air around the printed object as it moves around.  He’s postulated that a very thin surrounding wall could have the same beneficial effect as printing inside an enclosed build chamber.  Interestingly, it seems that Nophead suggests that designing objects with more rounded corners might also help avoid curling and warping at those corners.
12. Reduce infill.  When printing a model you can chose to print it hollow, completely solid, or some percentage between zero and 100.  However, as Nophead points out even the plastic inside a model exerts a force on the entire printed object as it cools.  It stands to reason that the more plastic you have, the more those pieces of plastic will pull against themselves and the build surface as they cool.  By reducing infill there will a reduced amount of internal tension as the object cools.  Reducing these internal forces by printing with a lower infill ratio can help reduce curling and warping as well.
13. EDIT:  Sand the Kapton.  Charles Pax has suggested that sanding a Kapton tape build surface will increase the surface area, making it easier for the molten plastic to stick.
14. EDIT:  ABS surface.  Some have suggested essentially painting the build surface with liquid ABS.²  This is has the same effect of laying down a big flat raft.

If you’ve got some suggestions, tips, or tricks that you use to fight warping and curling, please leave a comment below!

Nozzle keep running into the model

With the nice cube printed, but i can't show how good the printer can do on the carve printing, so I decided to print a sphere, I tried to print 2 spheres but both screw up halfway as the nozzle keep running into the model.



At first I thought it might because of the sphere object got some over hang area then I tried to print a 1.5cm height cylinder, turns out ok. I keep on printing a 5cm cube and it happened again.




I found the solution of this issue at the makerbot forum:
http://wiki.makerbot.com/forum/t-349353

Answer from the forum:
Chances are that you're putting down a little too much plastic. You'll probably want to either:
 - move the platform faster (feed rate)
 - put out less plastic (flow rate)

both are in the 'speed' tab in skeinforge…


some useful link:
Feedrate or flowrate

Frist test print

The TOM was completely built up, testing was the following task to accomplish. I was panicking on how to feed the ASB coil to the stepstruder and by trial and error I managed to get it in.

28 minutes later the first Makerbot test print, a cube, both side of 2 cm and 1 cm height. I was very satisfy on the result, but I also found out the a few layers at the bottom are smaller.

When watching at the video you'll realized that the filling in the model is rather tight, I follow the  setting from "How to print" the infill is 40.

Assembling my Makerbot

5 days after getting my Makerbot TOM (Thing-O-Matic), finally I got time to start assembling it.
With help from Robin on the soldering part as I've totally no idea how to do it.

As a designer, I'd say it's still not too tough for me to assembly it, the online instruction is pretty clear, just that I use quite some time to do it. Totally the Tom took me around 20 hours to build from scratch to complete.

Reason of starting this blog

Before I ordered Makerbot TOM, I've done some research and found out some other printer like Reprap, Rapman, 3D touch and Up! printer. Basically they're all base on the open source Repap 3D printer just that somebody did some modification on the structure design. I choose Makerbot because I feel their support is better and it looks much easier for non engineer person to build it.

When the time I open this blog I've finally get my first successful printed 3D model from my Makerbot TOM Stepstruder Mk7.

I feel that there might be a good idea to just record down the documents or solutions of those problem that I encountered, I don't want to lost it again.

The spec of the machine I bought:

* The lasercut parts to assemble a Thing-O-Matic® CNC machine.
* Makerbot StepStruder® MK7 Complete (standard with 0.4mm nozzle)
* MakerBot® Automated Build Platform v.2.0
* 3 x NEMA 17 motors
* 1 High Torque NEMA 17
* The hardware to assemble it.
* Belts and pulleys
* Smooth Rods and Drive system components
* Pre-assembled 4th Generation Electronics
* a USB cable to talk to it
* cat5e and rainbow cables to wire things up
* a standard ATX power supply, 115V/230V switchable.
* a tools kit with all the hex keys, wrenches, and other bits you need to construct it.
* SD card to buffer your prints
* 1lb of 1.75 mm MakerBot ABS Plastic to print with



Some tech specs on the Thing-O-Matic®:

* Interface: Print through USB or print from SD card
* Size: 300 x 300 x 410 mm (12″ W x 12″ D x 16″ H)
* Build Area: 96 x 108 mm
* Build Height: 115 mm
* Generation 4 Electronics
* Supports up to 5 stepper drivers (XYZ + A/B)
* Connect over USB (no more FTDI cable)
* Optional LCD interface support (Not included)
* Full mechanical endstop support
* High current mosfets to drive heated build platform and extruder heater
* Thermocouple support for more accurate temperature sensing
* Upgraded, extra strength ATX power supply
* Works with both 110v and 220v power
* Theoretical XY Positioning resolution of 0.02mm (20 microns or 0.0008″)
* Theoretical XY Maximum Feedrate of up to 5000mm/minute (roughly 200 IPM)
* Theoretical Z Positioning resolution of 0.005mm (5 microns / or 0.0002″)
* Theoretical Z Positioning Feedrate of up to 1000mm/minutes (roughly 40 IPM)
* Capable of printing with ABS and PLA