Tag: hot end

RepRap Prusa i3 First Print Analysis, Adjustments & Second Print

Well after the failure of the first print I was kind of pleased!!! Until it failed it was printing way better than I had expected for a first print.

There were a few issues, as well as the failure of course, to take care of. So I had a close look at what didn’t work, print quality and the cause of the failure.

  • The Heated Bed is heating up very slowly and struggles to maintain temperature
  • When the G Code is loaded from Slic3r and the print button is pressed, nothing happens.
  • There were a few sections of a couple of layers missing – and of course it ended missing layer(s) altogether which led to the failure

I come up with fixes to all these issues and try to print 3D Benchy for a second time….

Reprap / Prusa 3D Printer – Complete Initial Setup & Configuration – Step by Step

Bit of a monster video, for me, at nearly an hour. It is compacted as much as possible but there is a lot to fit in!

You can use these links to jump to specific steps in the video:-

Step 1 – Limit Switches
Step 2 – Motor Direction
Step 3 – Homing & XYZ Zeroing
Step 4 – Maximum Endstops
Step 5 – Bed Levelling
Step 6 – Z Probe/Bed Sensor
Step 7 – Extruder Calibration

I power on the printer for the first time and set up the Limit Switches, Axis Movement, End Stops, Bed Extents, Bed Levelling, Z Probe/Bed Sensor and do the Extruder Calibration!

I spent quite some time going through the Marlin documentation to see what each possible configuration instruction could do. I had already done a very basic run through of the Configuration.h file in this video/post but now it was time to get it spot on.

One side benefit of the exercise is that I can see I will need to change the way I mount the heated bed. Most importantly the nyloc nuts sitting on top reduce the Y axis extents by nearly 25%!!!!. But secondly the ply wood under the bed allows the nuts to squash the edges down too much, resulting in the opposite bed bend to that I had before! Still, good enough for a first print 😉

How to Build a Cheap Prusa I3 MK2 3D Printer – Temporary Wiring for First Print

As I am not sure yet exactly where the RAMPS will end up, I am just going to wire everything long and hook it all up temporarily to get the printer up and running. I will revisit the wiring once everything is working and tidy it all up. But this is good enough for now!

I cover a few little things that I needed to look up, pin outs etc. The rest was an easy job… so long as you have the right crimps to hand!!!

If you have a Z probe that needs more than 5v to operate, then you can run it directly from the 12v supply and run the signal wire (usually black) through a voltage divider and from there into the RAMP Z Min Endstop connector.

The values for the voltage divider are R1=10kOhm and R2= 6.8kOhm. This will drop the 12v to 4.9 and result in a power loss of only 85mW.

I didn’t end up needing to do this – although the probe was spec’d for 6-36 Volts (if I remember correctly) it worked fine with just 5v.

© 2023 Jules Gilson

 

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