3D printing can be treated as an art.
It?s a matter of what suits the artist, the selection easel and brushes and paints (filament) in art maybe have been OK for Rembrandt but possibly not the same mix for Picasso.
Naturally design of prints is fundamental and avoid printing overhangs or the need to use rafts, bridges etc.
I admire the work of Michelengelo who painted the Sistene chapel, possibly more pait on the floor tan stuck to the celing, again avoid overhangs, a nice slope if you can does the job.
I have a Geeetech Prusa I3 printer, aluminum frame now 4 yars old, and with many mods I can almost garantee, well almost perfecrt prints, I even print through the night.
Why watch it screw up, when you can sleep, if it does screw up, then there is nothing you can do about it anyway and spending hours watching chages nothing.
This printer has a Sanguinlou board, no defunct in preference to the Geeetech GT 2560 and even to find the software to upgrade is a real nightmare.
You first need to install Arduino 1.0,01, this contains the board for Sanguinolou, all latest version of Arduino IDE do not.
It is possible to attach a 3D probe but very difficult to update the firmware.
Reading Richard?s post I tend to agree that 3D probes can be horses for different courses, again it?s all an art.
if you do not have a solid bed and glass to work from, then leveling and setting initial Z heights can be intimidating.
I removed the IMHO the stupid 4 x spring leveling adjusters, very "heath robinson" and replaced with 4 x Delrin blocks., now permanent.
Naturally the varoious heights are crucial in each corner and Red Bull cans cut up make perfect shim material.
So I devised a DTI that hangs from the top X axis rod and this serves several functions.?
Calibration of the Z axis stepper motor, setting zero? 0 off the glass and in my case a 60 mm build of slip blocks to check and calbrate the movement.
The DTI also seves to guarantee that the glass is flat and level, some shim under the riser blocks worked a treat.
I did these mods and made tooling 3 years ago and haves never an issue of bed levelling. see photos 1 thru 4
Photo 5 a new design blower using 2 x fans, it clips onto the end of the extruder stepper motor.
The heater glass I glass beaded one side, as I use ABS very frequently, and the roughened surface really helps in stopping the corner lift, a common problem whn printing with ABS.
The nozzle from the glass height, I replaced. that IMHO the spring loaded switch for a Honeywell micro switch and fitted a new adjuster for fine tuning.
I never use the thickness of a piece of paper but a slice of Red Bull can as my shim to adjust the height.
Again depending on variations of my workshop temp, from -10C to 40C I rareley need to adjust, but only if I change nozzles. see photo 6 of the
new height adjuster and switch. The as supplied 3 mm screw IMHO was a NO NO.
Between the heater plate and the aluminum bed, I slipped in a piece of 180 mm x 180 mm cork.see photo 7 Ikea cork table mat, milled down from 20 mm to 17 mm thick.?I have 1 mm of air gap only, this prevents the bed heat convecting into air.? Saves on the bed heater and power usage.
Photo 8 printer inside a Hood, with clock, temp, and humidity gauges.
This will do for now on 3D mods, hope of interest, and any
questions please ask.
Cheers
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John
John Lindo