Gadroc's ORD Bot Hadron

[Gadroc]

The first parts have started to arrive for my Hadron build!

Here is the kit I ended up ordering.

• Hardon partially assembled kit from rep rap discount
• Reprapdiscount Rumba electronics.
• Makergear stepper plastruder.
• Rerapdiscount MK2B
• 24V 360Watt power supply

So far the experience with reprapdiscount has been good. They have been responsive to PMs and shipping was really quick, especially in light of just finishing and shipping a run of +150 plus rumba boards over the last few days. The Rumba deal was to good to pass up, can't wait to try it out.

Since this is my first 3D printer I wanted to get a known working extruder, as I can't print parts to fix a printer that's not working. The kit came with a 40mm fan but no mount for it. Not sure if it's meant for material cooling or I should mount it to cool the extruder.

[SystemsGuy]

Post up some pictures of the Rumba - I still have a couple of Ramps, so I've stuck with those..

What color did you go with, and did yours ship with the thicker Z-Axis motor mounts?

[Gadroc]

Yea. Got my first prints last night! I have everything assembled, and mostly wired. I'm only missing the PTFE tubing for the heatbed thermister, which I've got on order.

Here is the kit I got from reprapdiscount... this is a Rumba package deal along with the parts from their partially assembled ord bot package.

All Parts

Parts Closeup 1

Parts Closeup 2

You can see the 3mm z motor mounts came as a separate part including the longer screws necessary for it. I just had to swap out the old ones which was easy. In the next shot you can see the assembled unit. You can see I haven't fully dressed all the wires in back yet. I need to run the permanent power wires tonight and get connectors for the two fan wires running to the hot end carriage. I also need to design and print some clips to hold all the wires in place.

Assembled

I'm using the Rumba for electronics, and I'm happy so far. The Rumba has 6 stepper drivers on it so I modified Repetier to support dual stepper drivers for z instead of wiring them to the same driver. I used the E2 driver for this. I still have E1 open should I want to go dual extruders. I'm also using reprapdiscounts hall effect limit switches. I have them mounted on the back of the X carriage and bottom of the Y carriage. I then have a T slot nut with magnets on it that I can move to adjust the position. I will print out a holder for the Z axis and mount the magnets on one of the X end plates.

Rumba

Limit Switch

Magnet Mount

The makergear plastruder worked perfect first time out! I've jammed it twice, but that was due to mis-configured firmware. I used the E steps per mm listed in the ORD Bot wiki to start with, unfortunately this is for the 13.6:1 gear ratio makergear head end. They now sell a 5:1 version which is what I have. If you get one of them please start with 471.5 steps per mm instead of the 1387 listed on the ORD Bot wiki. The original 1387 was extruding way to much plastic, but even with that I got a decent albeit fat 0.5mm calibration print.

Fat Print

Also for those getting the reprapdiscount kit they use 18 tooth gears and not the 20 tooth listed in the ORD Bot wiki calculations. Once I fixed the steps per mm settings here are the last two test prints. They are the 0.5mm thin wall and 20mm calibration cubes from the reprap wiki calibration page.

Good Test Prints

I'm pretty happy so far, and I'm glad I opted to spend the extra on the hot end/extruder rather than deal with the QU-BD frustrations I've seen online. The 20mm calibration cube was printed with 1.0 infill solidity using Slic3r 0.9.8 via Repetier Host V0.83. The corners have a few little blobs in them. Here are my current print settings:

0.2mm layer height
0.3mm first layer height
100% first layer width
185 first layer he temp with 180 after that
1mm retratct with 20mm/s speed

Everything else was defaults from the wizard using 0.35mm nozzle and 1.75mm filament. Prints where done on a non-heated bed of blue tape over glass. I'm getting little voids in the 0.5mm thin wall print where the layer starts/ends. Not sure what setting to tweak on that.

I got barts new Z lift stabilizers today. I will print out new lift plates to mount on top of them (don't want to drill out the metal ones my kit came with) and try them out after I get the rest of the setup dialed in.

[SystemsGuy]

Awesome work - and quick assembly!!

Voids in thin wall are hard to diagnose - I filmed mine and watched it in slow motion. In my case it was too aggressive retraction..

[Gadroc]

ORD Bot seems to be performing great. I expected a lot more fiddling before I got acceptable prints. I think I got rid of most of the voids in printing. I needed to tighten up the belts just a little bit. I also got my 24V power supply and hooked it up along with getting the heated bed running. My makergear natural PLA stick's like crazy to the heated sheet of class. Hard to get the prints off and then I have to scrap a few filaments off with knife. Here is an action shot with the printer running. It's printing the stands for my spindle holder.

Heat Bed

I'm currently working a ring fan duct to help with my bridging. It's based off this fan and this fan. I started from scratch using both of those for inspiration. You can here is a picture of the current cad for it and a print out of the first size test. I've got the ord bot carriage in cad now and I'm working on final placement and mounting bracket.

Test Fan Print

I'll probably try and print the obligatory yoda tonight after my spool holder is done printing. Depends on if I finish the design for the fan mount and want to print it first. I doubled all the print speed setting in slic3r today from the defaults. How fast do other have their ORD Bot printing? You can see my current settings below.

Perimeters: 60mm/s
Small Perimeters: 60mm/s
External Perimeters: 100%
Infill: 120mm/s
Solid Infill: 120mm/s
Top Solid Infill: 100mm/2
Support material: 120mm/s
Bridges: 120mm/s
Gap Fill: 40mm/s
Travel: 240mm/s

[SystemsGuy]

Those speeds are pretty close to mine - what firmware are you running, and what do you have your jerk and acceleration set to?

Also - RepRapDiscount tossed one of those dual voltage beds to me as well - what do you think so far? If you have some "time to temp" measurements at 24volts I'd be interested in your experience. My 24v supply is tied up on my router at the moment.

[Gadroc]

I'll time it on my next print, but I only do PLA so it's only to 60C. Also I'm using Repetier right now.

I've also noticed that the corners on my square towers bulge out a little... have to figure out what's causing that. What steps per mm are you using? There was no documentation on which kind of threaded rod came with these kits. I assumed 8mm and I'm using 2560 steps per mm.

Here are my acceleration settings:

Code: Select all

#define MAX_ACCELERATION_UNITS_PER_SQ_SECOND_X 1500
#define MAX_ACCELERATION_UNITS_PER_SQ_SECOND_Y 1500
#define MAX_ACCELERATION_UNITS_PER_SQ_SECOND_Z 1500

#define MAX_TRAVEL_ACCELERATION_UNITS_PER_SQ_SECOND_X 3000
#define MAX_TRAVEL_ACCELERATION_UNITS_PER_SQ_SECOND_Y 3000
#define MAX_TRAVEL_ACCELERATION_UNITS_PER_SQ_SECOND_Z 100

#define MAX_JERK 20.0
#define MAX_ZJERK 0.4


[SystemsGuy]

2560 is what I'm using with 1/16 microsteps on a RAMPS 1.4, and mine seems to be spot on. I'm printing mostly PLA as well, so need of the heatbed so far as well.

[Gadroc]

Just timed the heat bed warm up. 2 Minutes from 25C to 60C.