RepRap Huxley

25.06.12
It arrived today. I waited long enough. The package was smaller than I thought and not 30kg, like it was written on the outside:

First unpacking. The “M6 serrated washer” were already a little guessing game. At least I detected the stepper motors  = D The package with the white parts of the left-center-top is interesting, since the printed parts are inside. So I get already a taste of how the printed results will look like.

Of course I couldn’t keep my fingers still. The construction manual requires good English skills. But things like this are not easy to describe: “For the other top bar, you will need (starting from the middle of the M6 threaded bar): serrated washer, two M6 nuts, serrated washer, bar-clamp, serrated washer, two M6 nuts, serrated washer. Then do exactly the same in the other direction.“. That’s the result:

Finished for today. The frame is really annoying, even if a laser cut ruler was delivered for measures like 146mm and 207mm. It it’s very shaky and wobbly. The solution was for me, to solve all the nuts again and tighten them only hand – fixed millimeter by millimeter
Let’s see if tomorrow I already have the nerve to continue.
26.06.12
Continue. I could not keep my hands off. They hurt a little bit cause of the frequent tightening / loosening of the nuts. My tool does not match the nuts, I think, that this could well be the result of imperialist dimensions. The first motor was for the Y-axis.

Most difficult here was because of a photo from yesterday which was mirrored, so I had today dismantle still a huge part, a small piece (the quite central in the image) has shown in the wrong direction, so that the motor did not fit.

Then it went on, the X-axis, now. Now I knew that you can cut the belt in the middle (half for X and half for the Y-axis):

Somewhere now I realized why the first image was upside down. It dated back to a slightly older design, as now more and more images, so that it has sometimes been a guessing game here. And then all together to the Y-axis – quite a large tinkering. I think I will again have to readjust all the angles / distances at the end:

27.06.12
Today, the “Heatbed” was to be done. The area under the workpiece is heated to 150 ° C, as far as I’ve understood, to avoid warping. That was pretty easy. I had also a little thermally conductive paste spare and placed this – as recommended – between the board and aluminum plate. Here you can see it already installed:

After that I cared for the the extruder. This is the part which pushes the filament into the heating block. Here I first had trouble with the fit. A ball bearing (on the photo) just did not fit into the slot. I used a pocket knife to remove plastic until it fit. The flap that holds the tube was too thick, there I needed to remove quite a lot with a rasp. I had to screw a steel jacket on the tube . Since this somewhat compresses the tube, a hint is, to remove the PTFE supernatant with a 2mm dril. I didnt have this one. So I had to ask next day at work, if anyone happens to have one.

28.06.12
That day happened not much. The original plan was therefore to complete the nozzle. However, I still lacked the drill for the tube, so I could not really do anything, since it is screwed to the cooling block and I would had have to disassemble the whole again afterwards. Therefore, no pictures. The description of the assembly of the “hot end” has brought me again into a few difficulties regarding English. From the heatsink you should completely remove the adhesive film, not just the plastic cover. It is also written that you should save this adhesive film for later. For me, however, it was so clear that the removal should not be non-destructive. In the end I didnt need it anyways.
29.06.12
Then finally I could assemble everything-even the “hot end”. According to Wiki the hardware side assembly was finished. I’m still afraid that I literally screwed something or used the wrong dimensions. I take the risk and will assess it afterwards. It puzzles me that many screws / nuts / washers and a ball bearing are left. I just started the wiring.

Here again I have difficulties with mirrored-images. The power supply I had to install exactly at the diagonally opposite corner. In the end, you can also simply drag many lines as you feel like. They only ones you have to pay attention to are those for the moving parts. In addition, the wrong USB cord is provided. My face looked certainly funny when I tried to plug a Micro-A plug into a socket type B plug. I stopped then. My brain hummed and before I shorten the wrong cable, I will sleep over it.
30.06.12
Yesterday I completed the cabling. I think a correct crimping tool would have help much. So I had to bend every crimp connector individually with needle nose pliers and pipe wrench. Luckily some were spare, so I could afford breaking some. Shrink tubing, however, was far too few delivered, here I used from my own stock. In retrospect, I would have taken the cut cable from the stepper motors for the connection to the end stops, instead I also used cables from my stock. Here are three pictures of the babe:


Close-Up of the Sanguinololu Electronics Boards:

I would recommend this board. It takes less space than the Melzi, and so fits on top of the printer.

Then we went to the Commisioning, so adjust the bed height, adjusting the current limiter and the initial control of the stepper motors and heating elements. So far everything went as desired, i could start the homing in the interface, and the direction of the coordinate system is also right. A note: the extruder motor will not – as described in the wiki – switch on, because the printer prevents a “cold extrusion”. Afterwards, I also found the newest “.pronsolerc” in Git by RepRapPro (brings a few more buttons in pronterface interface – pron NO Typo !!). A click on Home Y generated the disaster – the piece I had mentioned at the beginning because it was on the photo in the wrong position, was still wrong. Actually, it should hold the Y end stop. The end stop is on the Y axis at the position 0 – Position 0 is the front of the unit, not the back. So I had to again dismantle the entire frame, and reroute the line. Very very annoying.
Well, then I introduced the filament manually. I made it pointy before so it could hang somewhere. The holes at the extruder were still to small, so I had to redrill those. I would have done this while assembling.

Well, slowly it got tingly. The first print. I wanted something simple, not designed by me, to make sure that it is at the printer, if it goes wrong. Then started printing with  pronterface. The printer also began to move. However. No filament was extruded . The extruder motor didn’t move. Manually it worked. The workaround was now to load the *.stl with slic3r and generate the gcode there. This worked finally. And now TADA:

my first 3D printing =D

I know it’s not perfect yet, but I am very proud and happy. The settings can be tuned in many places. What I was able to find out, that a bed temperature of 95 ° C is recommendable – differently than the default in slic3r / pronterface – and the nozzle temperature can be set to 205 ° C.

31.08.14
The printer is still working. I got a lot of experience in the last two years. At the moment I use solely ABS on a 105 degree bed, which is covered with a layer of hairspray, which makes the samples much more sticky to the ground. I printed some extensions, as well as adding a display for direct control without computer connection. The printer runs Repetier v0.91 as firmware, which was a bit complicated cause I couldn’t find the proper Hardware drivers for the sanguino (from ryanmsutton I believe), which were compatible with Arduino IDE v1.05. Regarding the hardware I also exchanged the gears of the extruder, by herringbone like (http://www.thingiverse.com/make:21674), cause the original ones made attempt to go off from time to time. I also added a guide for the heatbed power cable, cause I was afraid it could get ruptured otherwise.
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My best sample until now (treated with Acetone vapor after printing):