Saturday 4 September 2010

My First Print

In a desperate attempt to get the printer working I dismantled the acrylic bed and stuck it in the oven at 150C for 30 minutes. I know its a crazy idea by it worked!!

I prepared the printer and the linux machine all setup and ready to print. Using oven gloves, I mounted the hot bed on the Reprap, quickly levelled it and hit print and there it goes.

The downside to this is that the bed surface was quite soft and when the ABS was deposited on it, it leaves marks and even dents in the corner. On the plus side I know that the printer works and that there are no mechanical issues. I just need to figure out what to use as a heated bed.

Ooh but hang on! the extruder stepper motor stopped working.... I stopped the build (after around 12 layers), reset everything and tested the extruder again. Funny, its works. There is nothing wrong with the electronics or the hardware. It simply stopped extruding.

Another point to note is that the lower left hand bolt that hold the bed is being hit by the extruder every time the printer zeros its self  and starts printing again. This needs to be taken care of in the design of the heated bed.

I guess its back to the forums again. Meanwhile here's an image of my Mendel with the partially build part in the bottom left corner.

My Mendel running off an EEE PC Ubuntu Linux

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