test block one

well, today I had my first (test) print! I ended up actually breaking my extruder yesterday (stripping the the threads on the PTFE insulator) when I tried to improve that barrel-insulator gap. It is really good that I actually have two sets of heater barrels/nozzle/nichrome and I was able to swap it pretty easily. In my recent rebuild I've made the extruder system more compartmentalized. The extruder motor assembly can be taken off quite easily from the heater/nozzle assembly without any rewiring. My cable harness is easily detachable, both from the hapsrap system as a whole and even between the main body of the extruder and the heater section. This will really help as I begin printing experimental parts, such as a stepper/pinch-wheel assembly. I'll be able to swap parts to test each iteration pretty quickly.

That actually brings me to one of the negatives of my set up. I've managed to work through many of the issues associated with this kind of DC motor screw thread extruder. But it is just that the flowrate is simply very slow. I'm able to extrude at about 10.6 mm/sec, which is pretty low compared to other systems. My cartesian system can certainly be pushed a bit more than it currently is. In any event, I'm too excited by printing at all to make too huge of an issue about it.

One other thing that is pretty obvious from this build is that my scales are way off, especially on my x and y axis. The box I built is actually supposed to be a 2cm cube. right now the measurements are 2.89x3.10x1.80. I was wondering why my print was coming out so sparse, the top and bottom surfaces are supposed to be water tight, but are definitely not. It actually took me a few layers to realize that it was much bigger than I expected it to be (mostly due to my excitement to be printing at all.)

There was some warping and my raft actually lifted from the bed on one corner. Also, probably due to the warping, there was one layer that simply over-hung on the right hand side, creating a lip about 5 layers up the print. I'll have to adjust the raft, but I should probably fix my scaling first, as the extruder/time shouldn't be affected, and I'll have much more (~30%) material per cm. Both on my raft and on my print.

Also, in the background you can see my little extrudate mountain from when I was dialing in this new extruder set-up.

Last but not least I'll leave you with a quick video of the machine running. Kind of obligatory and unnecessary, but as I mentioned before, I am kind of excited. A year is kind of along time to bang your head against problem after problem.