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Aluminum tube does have the advantage of being anodize-able or powder coat-able! I decided against painting the carbon composite tubes, too messy.

OK, you talked me into it. I'll give it a try if I get down to NextFab tomorrow. The collet stop we have is 3/8 I think, so that should work fine for 1/2" balls.

- dan

Ah, yes, an advantage of larger balls My collet stop is just a hair over 3/8" so it didn't work.

You want to use a straight flute carbide bit like this if you have it. The are made for C60 materials and they are short and stiff so you won't need to spot drill. Othewise, use the shortest, stiffest drill you can find and pre-spot before drilling.

Dan, did you move to Philly? I thought NextLab was based in Philly only.

Well, I moved here, but not recently. Been here almost 20 years. Yes, NextFab is in Philly, about an hour away from me.

- dan

Ah, I have you confused with another member of the board I met in person about a year ago at YouDoIt Elecrtronics in Boston. I thought you were he!

cheers,
Michael

One other drilling/tapping hard material tip: use a drill bit to give 50% thread rather than the typical 75%. You don't need deep threads in this material and for this application.

mhackney wrote:another member of the board I met in person about a year ago at YouDoIt Elecrtronics in Boston. I thought you were he!

That was me, hi Michael!

I used the JB Weld to attach screws to bearings when I did this several months ago. No issues there, although the arms do pop off mid-print occasionally. I also had a few screws come out of my original ABS carriage mounts and effectors. I recommend printing that stuff using nylon or at least gluing in the screws. The ABS was too brittle.

My favorite part of this mod is being able to switch between a j-head and an e3d in about 3 min.

Ah yes, Hello!

What type of magnets did you use? Thanks for the tips.

Cheers,
Michael

I was following xnaron's instructions, so I bought 3/8" cylinder magnets just like the ones he linked to, although I think I got mine on Amazon. I wrote up my experience here.

Reading that old post now, I should say I no longer line the inside of the effector w/foil & kapton & my current effector/jhead combo has a holder for a peek fan. I also got some larger calipers to measure the rod lengths.

I've noticed that every print I slice with Slic3r 1.0.0R2 starts off with a very odd skirt. See this photo:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v12 ... 8683-4.jpg[/img]

See those little dots in the upper left that start to get closer together and then become a solid skirt? That's what I'm talking about. I've printed at least 50 items of all sorts and have seen this on every one. At first I thought my nozzle needed priming. Then I recognized the absolutely consistent pattern! The dots typically cover about 8cm before becoming solid. You can even see that the actual solid part of the skirt is tapered too-getting thicker as it goes until it is full width.

Very odd indeed!

Maybe it's my imagination but it seems like every new release of Slic3r seems to introduce more "bugs" than the one preceding it. Sometimes I feel that I should just find an older
version that seems to work the best and just stick with the older version. The skirt that Michael points out is one of the weird problems.

does the tool path on the computer show the dots or is it a solid line?

That's really odd! Is the extruder doing a retract between those dots?

I've had this happen in KS and Cura. Question: Does the hotend actually stop and print a dot? or does it just have them rolling out as it travels? (which is what I see)

Normally I wouldn't care about the skirt but those little "dots" make a mess and come loose during a print and can "contaminate" the build.

I normally use Kiss but Slic3r has a circular fill feature that looks fantastic on my round fishing reel parts. Cura has this too I think, I might have to revisit it.

cheers,
Michael

The gcode tool path shows a complete circular path, no dots. The EZStruder is not retracting to make the dots although it is moving slowly and jerkily until it gets to where it prints nicely. It prints the dots as it travels.

Maybe it is an artifact of slow extrusion speeds with a direct drive extruder like the EZStruder? I can test that.

Meanwhile, I grabbed the latest Cura, it doesn't support circular fills. In fact, I can't find that it even gives you any options.

cheers,
Michael

Interesting, the Cura gcode is also causing the skirt to print dots before continuing with a solid line. I print my first layer pretty slow - 15mm/s.

mhackney wrote:Normally I wouldn't care about the skirt but those little "dots" make a mess and come loose during a print and can "contaminate" the build.

I normally use Kiss but Slic3r has a circular fill feature that looks fantastic on my round fishing reel parts. Cura has this too I think, I might have to revisit it.

cheers,
Michael

Slic3r has a "concentric" fill pattern option which I've used for some round objects. I don't know how it compares to Kiss/Cura, though.

dpmacri, that's exactly what I'm using. KISS does not have it and apparently neither does Cura. It is perfect for these round fly fishing reel parts that I am designing:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s10/v1 ... 3207-3.jpg[/img]

Meanwhile, check this bad boy out:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s4/v68 ... 1064-3.jpg[/img]

My new Azteeg X3 controller with 7 stepper drivers! Getting ready for the Kraken. This board is really well made. It also is much smaller footprint than the RAMBO. Nice piece of kit as our friends across the pond say. I didn't expect wiring harness and connectors to come with it, nice surprise.

I also got two new EZtruders delivered today so I have 4 in total. And some other goodies, a couple of the new squirrel cage fans and some T-Glase (clear) from SeeMeCNC. Looking forward to printing with that!

Oh, and my Viki display (black) was shipped today too!

cheers,
Michael

Have you found any documentation on how to wire the motors that attach to the top shield? There is a pdf for version 1.1 that shows the pinouts but it looks like you have to solder
male headers to the top shield and run that into a breakout board that contains the two driver modules. Looks like a small PCB would need to be created that has the two drivers and
the PCB plugs into the male headers that you soldered into the top shield. I could not find this documented anywhere. I am interested because someday I would like to use the
Kraken after you guys debug everything and if the funds are available.

Just the data sheets on their site - they have everything you need to know. Yes, soldering will be required. I'll also make a printed circuit oars for the two external stepper drivers that connect to the top shield - they need to be mounted somewhere!

As a few of us go down this path I'm sure we'll publish what we did so others can follow. I suspect someone will also sell a breakout board for the extra stepper drivers to make it easy.

cheers,
Michael

mhackney wrote:Just the data sheets on their site - they have everything you need to know. Yes, soldering will be required. I'll also make a printed circuit oars for the two external stepper drivers that connect to the top shield - they need to be mounted somewhere!

As a few of us go down this path I'm sure we'll publish what we did so others can follow. I suspect someone will also sell a breakout board for the extra stepper drivers to make it easy.

cheers,
Michael

I hope you are right about someone selling the breakout board. The board would be relatively simple but I got rid of all my board making stuff years ago.

This is an interesting development - Adobe yesterday released 3D printing additions to it's Photoshop Creative Cloud application. Photoshop can load and save STL files, render them, slice them and then generate gcode and/or control a printer. They have a new configuration profile to add new printers (this initial release is limited to just 4). Here's a screenshot:
[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v126/p321910745-5.jpg[/img]

And yes, I am working on a SeeMeCNC Rostock Max profile:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v122/p441845903-5.jpg[/img]

(click image for the full size version)

These profile are very tedious so it will take some time to sort out. I have it generating gcode but printer offsets are, well, way off. I also am not able to connect to RAMBo via USB although I have located the RAMBo VID and PID configuration values.

Stand by...

I tried drilling holes in 1/2" ball bearings last night, using a straight flute carbide bit, and chipped the bit on the first one.

Just as well, because a #25 is apparently too large for the 8-32 tap. Going to try again this weekend with a spot drill and a #29.

I was surprised at the nice mirror finish on the hole though. Sure is pretty.

- dan