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  #111  
Old 29th January 2019, 07:45 PM
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tc4332 tc4332 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MikkiJayne View Post
New preferred supplier of extrusion: https://ooznest.co.uk/

The anodising is better, the ends are cut much cleaner with no burrs, and custom lengths turned up next day Better in every way than Ratrig.

Only downside is that they don't have 3030 so no good for building an Evo, but they do have 4040 for building a monster

Thanks MJ.
But why is there always a downside?
We are looking at various dual extruders.
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  #112  
Old 5th February 2019, 09:31 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Current state of the CR-10S:







Fully self-contained now with all the electronics in the base, including a Raspberry Pi 3 which was supposed to be running Octoprint. More on that later.

The X carriage broke again. Turns out its actually from the nozzle running over blobs of filament when its messed up a bridge etc. The hard plastic simply pushes the nozzle out of the way, and the X carriage is the weak link so it breaks the studs off. This is my temporary repair from last time which has now worked loose again:







Enough of that. I made a new piece from 4mm aircraft-grade 7075 aluminium plate:



I also made a support bracket / spacer thingy which spaces the hotend off the plate and supports its base. The groove is for a cable tie. I made this in the mill.





Installed





This is so much more stable than the original! The belt is cable tied to a bolt for now. Not ideal, but it got the printer running again.

I'm currently printing this to hold the belt properly:



The part cooling fang is held on with a cable tie. I was going to do something fancy bolting the fan right through in to the X carriage, but actually it doesn't need it. The cable tie holds it all still just fine. I might tidy it up in the future when I'm at a loose end...



Printing again! Much better quality than it has been doing for a while too.



I also had a cunning plan to solve the Z height misalignment issue I've been having. I homed the Z axis and straightened the Z couplers up so the slot is parallel with X. This took about an hour to get right! But, once I had both couplers parallel and the X carriage perfectly level with the frame I levelled the bed and did a test print.

The couplers were set like this before printing:





Re-homing after a print the right hand coupler ended up like this:



All I have to do now is home the printer before a print and then manually straighten the right hand Z coupler, then I know its in the right place and I can start the print
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  #113  
Old 5th February 2019, 09:39 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Hypercube pic dump. I'm doing dual Z screws and four Z rods so its actually a mini Hevo! I'm using the original Hypercube as inspiration, but pretty much making it up as I go along Print something, don't like it, design a new one, print that, bolt it together















Difference in quality between Ooznest (left) and Ratrig (right)

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  #114  
Old 6th February 2019, 07:00 PM
gninnam gninnam is offline
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Like your idea with the CR10 making sure that the Z couplers being aligned. Will look at doing that myself.
So far the last few prints have come out good so I am happy the bed is staying level (what I have done is put some masking tape in the middle of the plate as I know the glass bed is flat yet when setting up the leveling, no matter what I did the centre was always off.
Since adding the tape all is good

The Hypercube looks like it will be keeping you busy for a while.
Still getting to used to the CR10 (still happy with it also) before Ieven think of building something like that!

Cheers
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1972 T2 Bay Window Camper (Slow)

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  #115  
Old 6th February 2019, 09:14 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Finished the belt clamps.

Angry robot



Out of focus as usual but you get the idea. These hold the belt very firmly and the movement is nice and smooth. Better in fact than when it was new





Back to printing Hypercube parts
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  #116  
Old 6th February 2019, 09:28 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Oh I was going to mention Octoprint...

Part of the point of making the printer self-contained was to also include a Raspberry Pi to run Octoprint which is basically a 3D printer server. It has a nice web UI and you can send prints to it directly from Cura, run a web cam etc. All very useful.

Unfortunately, it is not useful and has left my printer less good than before I started

The first few prints were great, but I soon found that when printing from Octoprint (rather than SD card) that the printer would slow down and stall when printing small curves. It can't effectively print a circle smaller than 5mm, and with the Hypercube held together with mostly M3 hardware, thats a big problem. As is par for the course, the software developer blamed the hardware, but I didn't see this problem with Cura. Basically Octoprint can't feed the Gcode to the printer fast enough on USB for doing small curves, and so it just slows down to a crawl. Its a well documented problem on Github but the developer just blames everything other than their own code.

In a rather misguided attempt to improve the situation (and to prevent a bunch of CR-10 specific errors in Octoprint) I upgraded the printer firmware. Bad move Now print quality is worse than it was before, it struggles on most circles, and to add insult to injury, there is no option in Cura to save the existing firmware so I can't even go back to what worked.

So, the next step is Klipper firmware. This replaces the Creality-specific Marlin firmware on the board and couples it with a compute component running on the Pi. Rather than sending Gcode over the USB, Klipper on the Pi interprets the code and simply sends move instructions down the USB to the Klipper firmware on the control board which is supposedly much faster. I might buy a spare CR-10S control board before I try this!

The downside is that you still have to use Octoprint to control Klipper. I rather resent that since it was Octoprint that buggered the printer in the first place, but Klipper has a virtual SD card in the Pi's memory so it should (!) all be nice and slick. So I'm told anyway.

If it works then its a good alternative to an expensive Duet board. I can buy a cheap MKS Gen board for the controller, and do the compute on a Pi3 and control it from a browser using Octoprint.

To be continued...
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  #117  
Old 7th February 2019, 03:41 PM
gninnam gninnam is offline
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Shame about the OctoPrint as I was looking to go in that direction also.
Will hold off and see how your new tweaks go.
Keep the updates coming
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Current cars:

BMW i4 M-Sport

Peugeot 207 (the sons)

Triumph Daytona 675 (2017 reg)

===========================

Gone but not forgotten

Ford Focus ST-2 Mk3 (the wifes) (stolen Oct 2023)

1972 T2 Bay Window Camper (Slow)

Audi TT Mk1 225 - now with coil-overs and a 7inch touchscreen infotainment centre

2003 A8 Sport 4.2 (with ACC & LPG) (Feed up with all the issues so passed it on to a forum member)

2000 A8 FL QS 4.2 (with RNS-E - Nice) (Engine poorly so sold on to be brought back by someone who has the time)
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  #118  
Old 7th February 2019, 04:35 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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No more updates for a while as the firmware update has ruined the printer and the old (working) firmware isn't available. It is unable to print small circles effectively any more (or sometimes at all on the first layer) so it is completely useless for what I need it to do I've spent all day trying to get it to print a particular part for the Hypercube and no matter what I do it screws it up so I'm taking a break from it until I can afford to buy a new one. Klipper is too much faff.
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  #119  
Old 7th February 2019, 06:43 PM
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tc4332 tc4332 is offline
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Sad, very sad.
Craig and I are still pondering.
Basically an Evo but with as large a Z as we can manage.
We plan on the Duet boar, pretty definite that.
All the gubbins underneath so we will need some long extrusions.
Maybe twin nozzles.
Craig is currently searching 500mm heat beds.
Don't let him know but I'm thinking he wants to print an A8 4.7 TDI.
__________________
Ray at Wigan Pier

2014 A8L D4 4.0TFSI Gold (Sticker says "Beige") Can't leave you in a black smoke cloud anymore..
In progress, Nothing left to do.



Gone 2004 A8 D3 3.0 TDI. Ebony Pearl Black (with little bits of other colours and glitter)
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  #120  
Old 7th February 2019, 07:14 PM
gninnam gninnam is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MikkiJayne View Post
No more updates for a while as the firmware update has ruined the printer and the old (working) firmware isn't available. It is unable to print small circles effectively any more (or sometimes at all on the first layer) so it is completely useless for what I need it to do I've spent all day trying to get it to print a particular part for the Hypercube and no matter what I do it screws it up so I'm taking a break from it until I can afford to buy a new one. Klipper is too much faff.
Oh dear
If you send me the stl files I can print them for you (although I currently have grey filament.....) and post them soon after?
__________________
Andy.

Current cars:

BMW i4 M-Sport

Peugeot 207 (the sons)

Triumph Daytona 675 (2017 reg)

===========================

Gone but not forgotten

Ford Focus ST-2 Mk3 (the wifes) (stolen Oct 2023)

1972 T2 Bay Window Camper (Slow)

Audi TT Mk1 225 - now with coil-overs and a 7inch touchscreen infotainment centre

2003 A8 Sport 4.2 (with ACC & LPG) (Feed up with all the issues so passed it on to a forum member)

2000 A8 FL QS 4.2 (with RNS-E - Nice) (Engine poorly so sold on to be brought back by someone who has the time)
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