Tuesday, December 08, 2009

 

Got it!



I'd heard that people printing Mendel were having trouble printing the largest pieces of Mendel in anything but PLA. Since PLA filament is hard to acquire in the US at this point I thought it would be nice if those hard-to-print parts could be printed in some other plastic. Since I am working with HDPE right now, I decided to have a go with HDPE.

The trial part I've begun with is x-carriage-lower_1off. I've discovered that a segmented apron positioned 0.5 mm away from the perimeter of the part does the job of successfully suppressing warping. Here you can see the spacing between apron and part.




Do you want to read more?

Comments:
Interesting... although, not possible for people printing on a MakerBot. I had a hell of a time with my carriages. Heated platform is a best solution we've come up with.
 
I'm still waiting for somebody who has used a heated platform successfully to blog a detailed account of how it is put together and what parts are needed. My friend Bogdan tried to make one a few days ago and wound up warping some good acrylic for his troubles. Till then, I've got a way that works and I've shared how to duplicate what I've done.
 
Forrest: Do you mind to put online the modified .stl file?

I would like to give it a go with ABS.

I would be most happy with x-carriage-upper_1off.stl because I feared of too much warping, and didnt printed it (yet).

The x-carriage-lower_1off.stl is warped too much for me...

Best regards,
Laszlo
 
> The x-carriage-lower_1off.stl is
> warped too much for me...

Aham, I see, you have put online that one. I will give it a try after my current build. And will report back.

However I would be really happy to try out the x-carriage-UPPER_1off.stl too ....

Best regards,
Laszlo
 
LOL! It looks as if I am going to wind up developing no-sweat print STL files for the Mendel parts set.

No problem, though it will take me some time. Some people have tried to print the x-carriage-lower_1off part that I put an apron on in ABS and are having some trouble. I will probably be switching my Rapman 3 over to ABS this afternoon and seeing what the problem is with x-carriage-lower_1off in ABS.
 
Funny, I print the x-carriage-lower_1off.stl in this very moment on my MakerBot :)
I'm using black ABS and a heated build platform. I never saw a black ABS Mendel before, so this might be the first one!?
So far I printed all parts without raft. That not only saves a lot of time and plastic, but the parts look also nicer since you don't have to rip the raft off after printing...
So far the x-carriage-lower_1off.stl is the largest (widest) part I printed for the Mendel. I'm running the 3rd print of this part right now, the first two prints failed (one because of a weird shift in the x axis half way during the print, so I greased the whole mechanics, the second fail was due to a filament jam (outside the MakerBot)...
The current print looks good so far but there are still 50 minutes to print on this :)
I'll write a more detailed report on my "Raftless Printing a Mendel on a MakerBot" project soon on my blog on my blog (http://pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/)
 
Zaggo, sorry, I beat you to it ;)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fynflood/4140714413/

I printed my carriage before we had the heated build platform finished... it worked, but it's not very pretty.

Here's how it turned out.. there's quite a bot of warping here, but it still works nicely: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fynflood/4073529275/
 
OH NO!

Well, at least I now know, that a Mendel looks beautyful in black :)
 
prusajr has been using a heated bed with much success. He is even able to print parts without a raft. Looks like this is the way to go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9EkzYWtJEI
 
After 1 hour 42 minutes, my MakerBot finished printing the x-carriage-lower_1off.stl part.

No raft and no warping. Looks good:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleasantsoftware/4172607738
 
Looking good, Zaggo!
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]