Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Actually this is my "Hello"!

Hello everyone. I didnt end up on here until after i built my machine, got it calibrated, and got 25 hours worth of prints done. Wish I would have read these posts before I started.

I got started in 3D printing a couple years ago with a buddy when I determined I wanted in on the action, but didnt like any of the printers on the market. So we decided to start designing our own. At some point I realized I needed to put theory to practice before I turned ideas into prototypes. Eventually I scrapped all my cartesian ideas and when with something that seemed a little less limiting, a Delta. I've really been wanting to print a specific set of items without the need for post assembly, so i was looking for a large printer. the Rostock Max doesnt quite fit my requirements, but one cant beat the value!

With that settled I decided to visit Matter Hackers and discuss the disadvantages of the printer i was about to buy. Unfortunately the guy that came to help me didnt seem to know much about the printers, but pretended he did. I ended up leaving with a Black Rostock Max v2 and since I was told it didnt matter if I used PLA or ABS, I went with PLA. and with that, I was told I had everything i needed; off i went.

I started going through the contents, checking to make sure i had everything. I was plesently surprised to find one extra piece of hardware of every type! My build then got postponed when i discovered that I needed to go buy more materials. I started setting up the printer that night when i discovered that my motor mounting brackets not only didnt look like the picture in the instructions, but seemed to be way too big to fit in the base. I went back down to the two days later (they were closed the next day) I got replacement parts. got the build done and then calibrated friday night. I had two leftover fans that were in the build materials, but not in the instructions anywhere! so i decided to press on. thats when i discovered that I needed ABS. So the next morning i ran back down to MH's where I got to speak to the director for the second time. He actually took the time to explain the limitations and the upgrades that i may eventually consider along with showing me his personal rig and the modifications hes added. very nice experience.

The next day i was back at the machine. with the extruder calibrated i was ready to print my first part. To my surprise everything went perfect and i got a very nice print. shroud 2 took two prints as the first one had some glass adhesion issues.

When I first started, I loved the sound the machine makes. It reminded me of Tron. Others said the novelty would soon wear off, but for a guy like me, i knew i'd never tire of it. Then I started hearing the sound all the time. even when the machine wasnt running, even when i wasnt home. eventually i realized that i had been spending way too much time in front of the machine with it printing... I've got my web cam set up and will be working on setting up a remote desktop over the weekend. Im so glad that the dampeners are already on their way. I ordered them long before i tired of the sound.

For those of you who have a Rostock that runs well, is it normal to get good prints right off the bat? i mean i did spend almost 4 hours calibrating and re-calibrating everything until my paper "feeler gauge" seemed perfect.

Also, it seems like everything wants to spend a day printing... i mean 12-36 hours. is this normal?

and Slic3r.... it does all the math, gets about 90% done and then it can hang on exporting the g-code for hours. is there a fix for this?

Thanks for the help!

Welcome onboard.

The sound thing happens. I could hear my printer all the time. While driving, while shopping etc...

If you do everything in the manual precisely there is no reason for it not to work. I did not get a perfect print the first time but the issues were all in the manual. I thought that i had read it but when you are building the kit at some point things become obvious and you do not read carefully and then you miss things.

I would try mattercontrol instead of repetier and slic3r.

Prints can take a long time. Depends on what you print.

SoCalSteve wrote: For those of you who have a Rostock that runs well, is it normal to get good prints right off the bat? i mean i did spend almost 4 hours calibrating and re-calibrating everything until my paper "feeler gauge" seemed perfect.

Also, it seems like everything wants to spend a day printing... i mean 12-36 hours. is this normal?

and Slic3r.... it does all the math, gets about 90% done and then it can hang on exporting the g-code for hours. is there a fix for this?

Getting good first prints is a bonus, pretty much anyone who has set up a printer before will get really close first time, people without that experience, it depends, but with attention to detail it's not unusual.

Print time is a function of size and speed, depends a lot on what you want to print, the bulk of the stuff I print is 2-8 hrs, I occasionally run 12-24hr prints.

The fix for all of Slic3r's little foibles is to not use it, I commonly use 3 different slicers (Cura, KissSlicer and Simplify3D) and Slic3r is not one of them. It's not a bad piece of software and at one point it looked like it would dominate in the space, but QC has never been one of it's strengths.

Hi Steve,

I was the one who helped you out the 2nd time.

Glad it's up and running.

No one prints great right off the bat. It's more art than science and the only way to get better is to print and print and print some more.

The more scientific you are with the approach, the faster you'll get better results. By that I mean, if you are unsure of 3-4 variables, only change 1 at a time. Print, observe, adjust. Repeat.

As for slicing, give MatterSlice a shot. It's much simpler than Slicer and better than Cura (it's the Cura engine with a bunch of improvements).

If you have specific questions, shoot me an email with your settings file and I can take a look and give you some more suggestions.

Happy printing.

Its been a 3 weeks since i've been on the forum... I've been printing like crazy! Almost something every day. I've gotten a few failed prints and figured out how to improve these things. Todays failure was a little different. I checked up on it at 1pm and everything was going well. I checked back at 4 and i had 40 minutes left but the hot end was considerably above the parts. It appears it had been printing for hours, but not actually extruding anything. I killed the print, cleaned everything up, got the filament rolling again. then it clogged again. I decided i'd need to fully disassemble the hot end and clean it out. thats when i looked down and realized my screen was blank. I've verified the PSU fan and the RAMbo fan are both working, the fuse looks good still. I can get REP to connect to the printer, but its not getting any info. It doesnt detect the bed warmer and it thinks the extruder is at 0 degrees Celsius.

What just happened? Any help is welcomed.

Didn't know that you were local, that's great!

Come check out The MakerHive sometime. We meet in Elkhart on Thursday's.

themakerhive.com
facebook.com/themakerhive
twitter.com/themakerhive
meetup.com/themakerhive

Jimustanguitar wrote:Didn't know that you were local, that's great!

You aren't in SoCal... are you?

I ordered 3 new fuses from Newerk since SeeMeCNC said I'd have to order them from their site, but then didnt have them. Without paying $60+ in shipping, Friday is the best I could do... But I have prints that have to be ready for Saturday morning, so I was a little stressed. Luckily Matter Hackers said they would just post me one, so I paid them a visit since I wanted new filament as well. Got the new fuse, installed the motor silencers, and got back to work.

Still having a significant amount if issues with the filament. my print ended up printing less than 100% filament. Then it jammed again. Again I couldnt get the filament out of the hot end. The difference this time is that the hot end was actually hot! Then it became clear as to what my issue was... My gold PLA is from Maker Geeks and was their $20 surprise filament. well surprise, it has sections that are too thick to fit through the bowden tube couplers.

I'm printing with black PLA I picked up from Matter Hackers a month ago and this print is coming out so much better! It occurred to me that the extra force put out by the extruder motor could have been the reason the fuse popped. Makes me feel so much better!

I purchased some Pro PLA yesterday from MH as well... It'll be interesting to see how differently that prints.

So the Pro PLA was doing significantly better, but I still had issues. I turned down the heat and added a fan. Both helped, but I still ended up having several clogging issues even when using the Pro PLA. I decide that maybe upgrading to the E3D v6 might be the smart way to go. I took the opportunity to replace all my soldiered connections and replace them with quick connectors. There are a few things the folks at MatterHackers left out (they seem to be good at that) when they sold me the E3D and their printed holder. First off, its much larger than the stock risers and you need new hardware. This also means completely re-calibrating your printer and losing your layer fan, or buying a different mount (which is the route i went). Also to utilize the higher temperatures, you'll need to change some coding... I havent figured that part out yet, hoping to find something on these forums...

SoCalSteve wrote:So the Pro PLA was doing significantly better, but I still had issues. I turned down the heat and added a fan. Both helped, but I still ended up having several clogging issues even when using the Pro PLA. I decide that maybe upgrading to the E3D v6 might be the smart way to go. I took the opportunity to replace all my soldiered connections and replace them with quick connectors. There are a few things the folks at MatterHackers left out (they seem to be good at that) when they sold me the E3D and their printed holder. First off, its much larger than the stock risers and you need new hardware. This also means completely re-calibrating your printer and losing your layer fan, or buying a different mount (which is the route i went). Also to utilize the higher temperatures, you'll need to change some coding... I havent figured that part out yet, hoping to find something on these forums...

Me and Bone are both working on a e3d mount with layer fan.http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 1&start=75 Also, if you do a search there are a couple of different versions outside of ours for you to try. There are plenty of posts that will walk you through the switchover to e3d and the settings you need to change to allow higher temps and how to do it(configuration .h tab in arduino). Also, if you notice most people have a horrible time printing pla with an e3d and actually switch back to the original j-head. That being said my humble opinion is that pla is garbage and only suitable for trinkets to put on your desk. There are more and more options becoming available to us everyday. The whole reason people upgrade their hot-ends is to take advantage of this. Do a search on trimmer line...... at just over $20 for 3lbs you can make indestructible parts.

SoCalSteve wrote:I decide that maybe upgrading to the E3D v6 might be the smart way to go.

This is my E3D setup, with layer cooling:

[img]http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazon ... atured.jpg[/img]

E3D mount
Blower ducts
LED ring snap mount

You lose 2-3 inches of print height, but it's way easier to see the actual printing because the effector isn't in the way. The blower ducts have given me reliable unsupported overhangs of 75 degrees.

Bonus: This makes your printer look like you stole it from space aliens.

Wow Pilot, that looks wicked! I dont really see the need to print 14.5 inches tall, so loosing 2 inches wouldn't kill me.

SoCalSteve wrote:When I first started, I loved the sound the machine makes. It reminded me of Tron. Others said the novelty would soon wear off, but for a guy like me, i knew i'd never tire of it. Then I started hearing the sound all the time. even when the machine wasnt running, even when i wasnt home. eventually i realized that i had been spending way too much time in front of the machine with it printing... I've got my web cam set up and will be working on setting up a remote desktop over the weekend. Im so glad that the dampeners are already on their way. I ordered them long before i tired of the sound.

For those of you who have a Rostock that runs well, is it normal to get good prints right off the bat? i mean i did spend almost 4 hours calibrating and re-calibrating everything until my paper "feeler gauge" seemed perfect.

Also, it seems like everything wants to spend a day printing... i mean 12-36 hours. is this normal?

and Slic3r.... it does all the math, gets about 90% done and then it can hang on exporting the g-code for hours. is there a fix for this?

Thanks for the help!

Howdy! Ran into same problem, used a registry utility to shape up my computer, so far I have done a dozen or more good sized prints using Slic3r and have slicing done in about a minute. Me, I am running a Quad AMD with SSD and 8 gigs. The registry cleaner cleared out the bad addresses in registry, that is all I know or cared about, the registry utilities cost about 30 dollars and well worth the time to install and use.

K.E.N. wrote:

SoCalSteve wrote:When I first started, I loved the sound the machine makes. It reminded me of Tron. Others said the novelty would soon wear off, but for a guy like me, i knew i'd never tire of it. Then I started hearing the sound all the time. even when the machine wasnt running, even when i wasnt home. eventually i realized that i had been spending way too much time in front of the machine with it printing... I've got my web cam set up and will be working on setting up a remote desktop over the weekend. Im so glad that the dampeners are already on their way. I ordered them long before i tired of the sound.

For those of you who have a Rostock that runs well, is it normal to get good prints right off the bat? i mean i did spend almost 4 hours calibrating and re-calibrating everything until my paper "feeler gauge" seemed perfect.

Also, it seems like everything wants to spend a day printing... i mean 12-36 hours. is this normal?

and Slic3r.... it does all the math, gets about 90% done and then it can hang on exporting the g-code for hours. is there a fix for this?

Thanks for the help!

Howdy! Ran into same problem, used a registry utility to shape up my computer, so far I have done a dozen or more good sized prints using Slic3r and have slicing done in about a minute. Me, I am running a Quad AMD with SSD and 8 gigs. The registry cleaner cleared out the bad addresses in registry, that is all I know or cared about, the registry utilities cost about 30 dollars and well worth the time to install and use.

I updated Slic3r with the newest stable version and it seems to have solved this issue.

Howdy, found another cause for the slowww, slowww, performance issue for slicing using Slick3r, in the configuration setting under Layers and Perimeters, the (Avoid crossing perimeters), well, it does say (slow): well, it will slows processes, so do not check that box, (leave it unchecked for sure, or slowing down will happen over time to a point that Slic3r will not work anymore. I did that myself, unchecked the box and everything went back into hyper slicing again. I tried the CuraEngine, did not meet my needs, thanks for the idea though.