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.