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Post by highcooley on Jan 7, 2013 5:38:34 GMT -5
Pics are coming soon :-) I was busy visiting my family and cutting a glass sheet for Rostock's heated bed at my dad's workshop over the weekend. The supplied PC plate may work with ABS but PLA sticks like hell and doesn't pop off as both materials have a similar temperature expansion.
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Post by highcooley on Jan 4, 2013 9:18:29 GMT -5
...huh, I just got promoted to an admin without knowing anything about it in advance :-) well, ok then...
Back to the hot-end discussion. Same with me...results with the sumpod peek hotend sometimes turned out brilliant but the next print had to be aborted (actually the same with the "original original" hot-end with the heat sink). Good to know about the frosted glass. As I am using clear borosilicate, this won't happen, but after a few crashes, the tip would probably be smashed as well.
In the meantime, I invested into the Rostock Max campaign against all advises. It turns out, the kit is brilliant, well constructed with heaps of well-engineered details. So far, the single delta specific issue is some kind of stutter/jerk on carriage movement into the X direction, due to too tight sitting joints. The tricky thing is to figure out, which joints to sand without breaking or wearing off anything in the process, as everything fits together so nicely atm (and that's probably the main risk with delta printers) :-) Besides that, I am currently facing the old hot-end configuration situation with hours of trial and error laying ahead. What I still don't get is why faberdashery PLA was so easy to get along with, as Ultimachine stuff almost freaks me out during configuration. Somehow, it seems much more forgiving, as the sumpod hot-end almost worked reliable with faberdashery village green.
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Post by highcooley on Jan 4, 2013 4:42:15 GMT -5
Hey Mike
All the best for 2013 also from my side.
Although I just finished the build of my brand new Rostock Max (which I purchased against all reservations regarding the Rostock construction) and am going to fiddle with it for a while, I will still be available for sumpod questions on this forum. After all, it is all the same with reprap 3D printing and I am looking forward to see the progress of others with their sumpods.
I am also looking forward to read about your progress with your other projects.
Andy
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Post by highcooley on Jan 4, 2013 4:01:36 GMT -5
Hey Jam
Hmm, I don't see any reason for a change to RAMPS 1.4. As far as I am aware of, the functions are 100% identical. The 1.4 is merely a SMD version of the 1.3, nothing else. It's more a decision at first, if you want to solder or not. Richard decided for the 1.3, the reason being the cheaper price as it doesn't come assembled. When building a new printer, I would definitely go for a RAMPS 1.4 or for the brand new, next generation RAMBO board (http://reprap.org/wiki/Rambo). It has tons of new features, but you probably won't need them with your sumpod unless you plan to heavily alter the whole printer.
I hope, my sum up helps a little bit to get along in the reprap driver board jungle.
Andy
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Post by highcooley on Dec 27, 2012 3:09:44 GMT -5
Thanks for your detailed description of your extruder findings. I had about the same experience, when I changed to MK7 as well. However, since the hot-end situation is not fixed yet, I still get the jams. I'll keep you posted, when I start tinkering with the Sumpod the next time.
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Post by highcooley on Dec 20, 2012 9:12:45 GMT -5
Hmm, the ole jamming & swelling again... I changed to MK7 drive gear as well and it definitely makes a big difference in terms of abrasion and subsequent slipping or jamming of the filament. However, I don't see why this would cause jamming & swelling in the hot end? Is it because the plastic stays in the hot end for a long time without being extruded? Thank you for your clarification.
I am looking forward to the pictures of the mounting bracket.
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Post by highcooley on Dec 20, 2012 5:31:13 GMT -5
Hmm, these Hot Ends are a real bargain. I would also be interested in the details about ordered PTFE length and diameter and how you mounted them to your sumpod.
Cheers
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Post by highcooley on Dec 19, 2012 12:26:04 GMT -5
Hey aerospaceboy
I think you just gave the answer to your question by yourself by telling that you bought another printer. I know of a couple of guys who where the main drivers to push the sumpod further. They invested a lot of time into the wiki and their blogs, wrote manuals and supported community members in their build, but finally gave in for several reasons. Be it, that they figured out, that they would have to spend more money and effort to make the sumpod (original) work than buying another printer or that they where fed up with the empty promises and the whole communication issues. B
In my case, I still have the original sumpod sitting on my desk. And I took another approach to make it work with the hot end upgrade just recently and I failed again. Additionally, the bed leveling is still not very stable and the bed is put off level very easily. I invested more money into spare parts and upgrades than I spent for the printer itself, only to try to make it work at all. You can imagine, that my motivation to buy another hot end, to build a custom mount and to try to fix the bed leveling is pretty low.
On the other hand, printers and the suppliers have evolved a lot since the original sumpod came out. You get proven to work hot ends (hopefully with standardised mounts soon), ready-made cable sets, modular packages, intelligent designs to reliably adjust all sorts of hardware parameters (angles, distances, tensions, etc.) and the build volume got larger as well.
I am now holding a Rostock Max Set in my hands (two weeks after my pledge). I cannot say, if it will work reliably in the end or not. But so far, I got all the parts it needs for the build (incl. additional amounts for the often used parts), everything is nicely packed in zip-locks and heat-sealed bags, all the machined parts seem to be of a high and precise standard and last but not least, the guys have two proven to work printers on the market with their own hot-end and feeder designs. What shall I say...when I decided to buy the Rostock Max by seemecnc, I promised to myself to learn from the design and make the sumpod work afterwards. But meanwhile, I am not so sure anymore, if this will happen, as all the little details which caused me a lot of trouble with the sumpod, seem to be solved with the Rostock (getting access to all the electronics for example).
Looking forward to build my new printer and find out, if it serves my turn.
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Post by highcooley on Dec 11, 2012 7:04:20 GMT -5
A topic discussed many times already. And almost every time something happened...a reaction by Richard or whatsoever, that I couldn't comprehend.
I fully agree with airtripper, that Richard probably didn't want things to happen as they did. And yes, considering what you get for the price you pay (remember, it's made in the UK and not in the US), the Sumpod is much under priced to make a living from it. The order batch size would have to be much larger to get parts cheep enough and draw a proper margin to sell the complete Sumpods for this price.
However, the latest developments on Sumpod.com don't make sense to me once again. Why cutting off the people who can help making the product as well as the whole business work? As stated by Richard in the beginning of the venture, it was part of the business plan to build the product around a community. And the decision was wise as this is one of the few options you have as a newcomer on the market, to sell products in this price range b2c online. I also remember a criticizer on the Reprap forum long before any machine was shipped who's critics where much severe than any on Richards forum. So, just why?
Meanwhile, the shipping issues are well known in the RepRap community. Why ignore and conceal this fact, instead of providing confidence on the own forum and dealing with the people's concerns? Gosh and why announcing a a new delta printer which can be preordered without a picture of a design. As long as the other available options are not working properly and there are these huge delivery problems, I would not even think about increasing the product range. This time and money should be invested in making the current business work.
In conclusion, I gave up hope that I could get the support I needed by the sumpod company and found very nice people in the community to further work on our sumpods...be it on this forum or on the wiki.
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Post by highcooley on Dec 5, 2012 9:42:06 GMT -5
Hi William
Interesting hotend, you mentioned. Do you have any links to eBay where I can find the seller? THX
Andy
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Post by highcooley on Nov 14, 2012 5:31:03 GMT -5
I just had a complete jam again. The bowden tube burst inside the hot end due to a cavity between the PEEK and the nozzle. First, the bowden tube must have expanded which formed like a bubble in the tube diameter. Then the bubble filled with PLA causing the jam. After the burst, the PLA started flowing in between the tube and the nozzle, filling everything out. On closer inspection, I figured out that the PEEK part is flat as the nozzle has the usual bevel of the drill bit. I really start thinking about alternatives, as it is just not worth the effort.
I even started looking around for an alternative to the sumpod, as the MDF design definitely has its flaws. Can anybody recommend a complete Mendel Max hardware kit? So far, all the kits I found are quite pricey or are far from complete which would cause additional shipping costs as the shops don't offer the missing parts (Shipping costs and customs duties are cruel for Switzerland). Another interesting solution could be the Rostock Max. What do you think about the indiegogo campaign? Should I give it a try or do you think a lot of trouble could lay ahead with this new product? After all, the price is convincing and the delta arms design a real beauty.
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Post by highcooley on Nov 12, 2012 4:40:28 GMT -5
Nice design. I'm working with a dial gauge as well.
How did you construct the mechanism to adjust the platform? I use push-in nuts and screws and find it very hard to adjust the bed level properly. A turn of about 10° already makes a huge difference as well as the tension of the corner brackets which squeeze the insulation material between the glass surface and the MDF plate together. Please post a picture. Thanks.
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Post by highcooley on Nov 6, 2012 13:46:56 GMT -5
Thanks guys for all the helpful tips, analyses and last but not least the mental support. Concerning the too fast print speed: I am aware of the fact, that I urgently need a fan to get better results. As soon as I am able to successfully print my fan nozzle, I can start working on that (it's actually quite complicated to design a suitable support for the sumpod). And I am looking forward to further improve the quality with that. However, the spikes in the picture with the aborted print was caused by the jamming. If the print runs through, I only have the ooze problems on the side and on top of the surfaces of the prints. I am currently already able to print very slow, but I felt it was time to improve to a more suitable speed, as I would like to be able to print more than only a single small part per evening. Hmm, maybe I really have to get over the $ 120.- I payed for the two hotend upgrades and start looking around for an alternative. I already checked out the j-heads. And the qu-bd ones really do have a very good price. Another one I am thinking about is this: grrf.de/de/catalog/hot-end. It's quite modular but not exactly cheap in price. But first I got one more thing I maybe want to try. If I can find somebody who can mill cnc, I'll produce a full block aluminium mounting part which tightly envelop the PEEK parts and should help keeping them and the pneufit parts cold. Oh well...or maybe it is time to move on and go for a completely new printer. The mechanical parts shouldn't be that expensive if I can reuse the electronics. Thanks again...I'll keep you guys updated. Andy
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Post by highcooley on Nov 5, 2012 15:48:26 GMT -5
All right, looking forward to hearing your news. I rate it sort of a bad habit of Richard just answering any questions with "use my firmware" or "set it like this and it works" which doesn't help a lot to understand the actual problem and the right solution. Good luck!
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Post by highcooley on Nov 5, 2012 5:32:21 GMT -5
Hey everybody What a pity, I did not get any reply on this question so far. Unfortunately, I am still fighting the same problems and really don't know what to try next. In the meantime, I upgraded my extruder to the design kindly provided by stohn (similar to the one airtripper shares on thingiverse) and changed to a MK7 drive gear. So there shouldn't be any issues with the extruders anymore. It is working perfectly. I further investigated the pimple problem and I do believe that it is related to other issues I am facing. Maybe this rings a bell what the reason for this mess could be. 1. How much I ever retract, I still get the same ooze. I set it to 3mm right now, but already tried 4mm which didn't change anything. As I don't like "scratch" marks of the nozzle over a nice finished surface, I set the Z-Axis to move away 0.1mm during travel over perimeters. This leads to ooze trails all over the place. picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/RY_E45yqJMGdohV0fHQitkGVwBuUrXs5SDwV6OeE8vA?feat=directlink2. If I manually extract without retracting, the nozzle keeps oozing for about 10-20 seconds. 3. When printing parts with a lot of single small dots on a layer (a lot of retracting and moving), the filament thread gets smaller and smaller and finally the nozzle jams. However I can counteract this by pushing the filament manually with quite some force as long as the couple of layers with the single dots print. However this is extremely annoying, having to sit next to the printer and "helping" it to print. picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Cq45s0SqILXmB2K40Vulx0_evk_V6C-NpdtkxzRglKk?feat=directlinkCurrently I am printing Ultimachine's white. I have to print at 210°C to get a constant filament flow at 60mm/s XY speed. Maybe this is too hot and causes the oozing issues. On the other hand, I can print fabberdashery green at 195°C and still get the same results. Another thought is, if it could have something to do with Richard's new nozzle design. I still had to sand down the outer diameter of the bowden tube to stick it right to the bottom of the nozzle. Maybe there are irregularities with the inner diameter of the hot end which could cause a filament reservoir or bottlenecks respectively. Or is this too far-fetched? Richard mentioned something on his page: sumpod.com/forum/post/peek-and-nozzle-part-revisionMaybe I have to make this change...however this will be hard to reassemble the nozzle once more without breaking the bowden tube which is already almost too short. Thanks for your thoughts! Cheers, Andy
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