ianmcmill

Hi,I am glad you like this build and that you choose it for an assignment. I'm a teacher myself and I'm happy to help you with that. I am from Germany and as you, I had the same issue with different size standards when I built this extruder because most of the parts from different instructions (Lyman extruder) were US. There is also a difference between British and German pipe fittings. 1" British fitting =! 1" German fitting. That is something that triggers my everytime. Metrics and (ancient) Imperial. Same with cooking recipes. Gramm vs. Cups. When I read measurements like 1 3/4" or 0 5/64" (2mm) the hairs on my neck stand up.Let's start with the obvious. The electronics from China. You cannot get around those electronics from China when it comes to the price. So i...

Hi,I am glad you like this build and that you choose it for an assignment. I'm a teacher myself and I'm happy to help you with that. I am from Germany and as you, I had the same issue with different size standards when I built this extruder because most of the parts from different instructions (Lyman extruder) were US. There is also a difference between British and German pipe fittings. 1" British fitting =! 1" German fitting. That is something that triggers my everytime. Metrics and (ancient) Imperial. Same with cooking recipes. Gramm vs. Cups. When I read measurements like 1 3/4" or 0 5/64" (2mm) the hairs on my neck stand up.Let's start with the obvious. The electronics from China. You cannot get around those electronics from China when it comes to the price. So if you have a deadline, order the PID controller right now instead of tomorrow. Or maybe there are some resellers in the US who stocked up on chinese electronics. This is what we have here in Germany. Resellers that specialized on keeping a stock of those often ordered chinese electronics. They might be slightly more expensive but the delivery is much quicker.Faucet-mounted filter / water tap: I realized from the comments that these two parts seem to be typical for the German/EU plumbing sector. So I cannot help you with that. Sorry. Now for the all the other materials/dimensions/length like angle, fitting, auger bit: When I started this build, I had no material list but just the pictures from some of those pricey Extruder kits. Basically what I did was to source the parts that I thought I would need and of what was available to me. I started with the auger and a pipe fitting and build the rest around those two parts. Most of the material I got from my local hardware store. I guess that is Lowes or home depot in the US.Does the auger easily slide into the fitting? Check.How much space does the auger have? Roughly 1 mm. Check. Should work.The water tap extension can be anything that could be used to have the heater wrapped around. I just went with that because it was made out of brass and the surface was very smooth (compared to those cast steel pipings). You could source anything that has similar properties or grind and sand a standard pipe fitting to make it smooth. In general, the whole extruder is sourced-by-availability project. It is not important if the auger is 17 or 18". At least I cannot tell the difference. We are not doing rocket science here. The same with those angles. Grab what you think will work. Don't rely too much on instructions. Replace parts with what you think could work better. Most of the time it will work better.Good luck and show some pictures when you'r done. I would like to hear what your lecturer/teacher says about it.

1) Constant thicknessA constant diameter is best achieved when the plastic has sufficient time to be continuously and uniformly melted and extruded.What that means: The heating tape heats the metal pipe. The metal pipe transfers the heat to the plastic. This is then melted. In the melting process, heat is "transferred" from the metal tube to the plastic. Simply said, this heat is then no longer "in the metal" and must first be replenished. If the extrusion process is too fast, the heating tape may not be able to follow. This can change the melt flow and the filament becomes thinner. Worst case: clog the nozzle or even the screw/auger bit.It is therefore important to find out the correct speed/temperature ratio.2) DIY device to process to 1.75mmAs I have just answered...

1) Constant thicknessA constant diameter is best achieved when the plastic has sufficient time to be continuously and uniformly melted and extruded.What that means: The heating tape heats the metal pipe. The metal pipe transfers the heat to the plastic. This is then melted. In the melting process, heat is "transferred" from the metal tube to the plastic. Simply said, this heat is then no longer "in the metal" and must first be replenished. If the extrusion process is too fast, the heating tape may not be able to follow. This can change the melt flow and the filament becomes thinner. Worst case: clog the nozzle or even the screw/auger bit.It is therefore important to find out the correct speed/temperature ratio.2) DIY device to process to 1.75mmAs I have just answered in the question below, it is not necessarily needed to have a perfect 1.75mm filament. Modern firmwares can compensate such deviations. If I recall correctly.Anyways, if you know your printer and the filament and have your extrustion rate calibrated niceley, you should not be able to notice the difference in deviation. Most commercial filament has a deviation of +/- 0.05.P.S.:Another take on this "two demicals" issue is what Ultimaker did. They produced 2.8mm filament. Their statement is that it is easier to get a larger diameter constant. So has 2.8mm nozzle are weird IMHO but 3mm nozzles are not, it would be really worth a try to extrude to 3mm. But I have no experience with 3mm filament whatsoever. There is a chance that a larger diameter could lead to new problems during extrusion. See "Temperature/Speed Ratio". I cannot judge whether or how the heating tape will follow. But that's a completley different topic. Or is it not?

Hi, most filament you can buy is not exactly and constantly 1.75mm. The standard deviation is commonly around +/- 0.05mm. If the extrusion rate in your 3D printer is calibrated well and you are familiar with the filament batch, such a deviation is neglectable. You won't notice in this in your prints. Also some printer firmwares (Marlin/Repetier) can "somehow" deal with this fluctuating filament diameter.

ABS for extruding on home extruders like this can be order online at several shops. You could also find out about local vendors that sell plastics and write them an email, telling them what you are up to. It maybe possible that they find interest in your plans and can help you get ABS material for extrusion. This is what I did and I caught someones ear resulting in taking a big bag of pellets home :)Once you get your hands on suitable ABS or PETG you should store it at a dry place and before extruding you should dry it. This is because plastic will absorb moisture over time. Moisture in your finished filament has an impact on it's strength. You can tell if your material has absorbed moisture by the fact that there are small air inclusions in the filament. And sometimes you can hear thos...

ABS for extruding on home extruders like this can be order online at several shops. You could also find out about local vendors that sell plastics and write them an email, telling them what you are up to. It maybe possible that they find interest in your plans and can help you get ABS material for extrusion. This is what I did and I caught someones ear resulting in taking a big bag of pellets home :)Once you get your hands on suitable ABS or PETG you should store it at a dry place and before extruding you should dry it. This is because plastic will absorb moisture over time. Moisture in your finished filament has an impact on it's strength. You can tell if your material has absorbed moisture by the fact that there are small air inclusions in the filament. And sometimes you can hear those small "bubble" pop during extruding.If it is a material like PLA you could dry it in the oven at very low temperatures (50-70°C) but be sure to do this only in a room with good ventilation. I would NOT do this with ABS in an oven that is used to prepare food as there will transpire hazardous fumes from the material.

Nice instructable. I made a laser engraver myself and used the laser from a DVD writer which I thought to have tuned to 300mW. But I never managed to cut paper. Especially not white paper. Also I could only engrave specific wood like balsa made from cherry trees or that cheap stuff which is sometimes used in packaging. I could not engrave ordinary popplar. Black plastic was no problem. Also vinyl. But keep in mind that burning vinyl releases carcinogenic fumes. They smell really bad.

How about Aeon coin? Ment for limited storage devices. I think the complete node is 5-10 MB. Still too much for a single ESP8266 but is it possible get a USB stick connected to this device? Or are there too few IOs for extra magic-circuit-stuff-ish stuff?

The smaller the slot is, the lesser is the surface/edge where pellets can jam.

The feeding slot is very big. The bigger it is, the more likely pellets are going to jam. Try making a feeding slot smaller so that it is "above" the pivot point of the curvature of the the pipe. This would be my suggestion.

If you are able to get the bottles into pellet size easily you are good to go.However filament isn't that expensive anymore in my humble opinion. Where I live, which is in Germany, I pay for a 800gr roll around 20€. This is made in Germany by a small company which specialzed on making filament only. But I have also seen 1kg no-name rolls on ebay for around 17€. For a really long time I used this cheaper no-name filament and the quality was very nice. Also the diameter was (with both, the cheap and the "more" expensive" filament) absolutely constant at 1.73mm +- 0.01mm.Speaking of which. Getting the correct diameter on self-extruded filament and maintaining that specific diameter is a science in itself. This is a lot of trail and error. A lot of. And time is mone...

If you are able to get the bottles into pellet size easily you are good to go.However filament isn't that expensive anymore in my humble opinion. Where I live, which is in Germany, I pay for a 800gr roll around 20€. This is made in Germany by a small company which specialzed on making filament only. But I have also seen 1kg no-name rolls on ebay for around 17€. For a really long time I used this cheaper no-name filament and the quality was very nice. Also the diameter was (with both, the cheap and the "more" expensive" filament) absolutely constant at 1.73mm +- 0.01mm.Speaking of which. Getting the correct diameter on self-extruded filament and maintaining that specific diameter is a science in itself. This is a lot of trail and error. A lot of. And time is money and when considering it from the economic stance I fear that buying ready made filament is a bit more economically than making it yourself. All the more if you realize that getting PET bottles into pinhead sized pellets requieres a machine (or at least some manual laborious handywork) and buying pellets might be easier in the end. Because, you know, 3d printer shops sell pellets for hilarious high prices.

You do have to chop it off at the pointy end anyways.

switch motor cables. left <> right OR(!)change wire-couples -> if red+blue is on the top connectors and black+green is on the bottom connectors, switch both pairs. Put red+blue down and black+green up.

I think this "almost nothing" movement is intended. "Set home" just sets the current position of the pen as "home". It does not rotate the motors at all just sets them "high" so you cannot move them by hand.

nevermind. see this :http://www.polargraph.co.uk/forum/polargraphs-group2/troubleshooting-forum5/cant-get-my-settings-calibrated-thread530/

When I set my 200step motor to 400steps and a multiplier of 1 the movement is totally messed up. Approximately a 1cm move downwards moves the gondolo more like 10cm. So I don't understand why you recommend to set the stepper motors to these values (doubled steps) that do not work. And as they don't work for me, they will not work for anybody else. No just kidding. Is there some math behind it or why is this?

Oh wait! My bad. 500mm/sec is way to fast.100mm/sec might be a good point if you machine is rigid enough. Sorry.

Does your servo move properly? Does it lower and raise the pen correctly?Getting the servo to move how you want it to move is a laborious task in the beginning. The turnkey laser export plugin modification from misan for example uses G4 code which is not recognized by grbl 0.9i. At least it throws errors when trying to run the gcode.

I guess you mean 500mm/sec. 5000mm/min converts to 83mm/sec which is pretty slow.

You get "g'schabde Spätzle" (scraped Spätzle) if you use a small cutting board, put the dough on it and use a knife to scrape a small amount of dough into the boiling water. This is the traditional way. Like in this pictur. http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/rezepte/beilage...In Germany you can also buy special Spätzle Schaber :)

Don't forget! Extruding speed depends also heavily on the material you use. The higher the MFR (melt flow rate) the faster. The plastic used in this instructable is an ABS/PC compound with a higher MFR than pure "default" ABS. However there are plenty of ABS types with different MFR. You need to check out their datasheet.

It basically is glass wool with an aluminum shell wrapped around. It's a brand called isover.You can check out this link http://www.hornbach.de/shop/Rohrschale-ISOVER-Protect-1000-S-Alu-22x20-mm-L1200-mm/200486/artikel.htmlto find a substitue in your area.

Preasure in the barrel fitting being built up by pushing pellets to the front keeps the auger from moving forward. When you drill a hole into a wall you need to apply preasure on the drill first. As long as the wall acts force against the drill, the drill is "pushed back". If you drill all the way through the wall, there is no more force that pushed against the drill/auger and the drill pulls itself "into the wall". But as the pellets come down in a constant stream there is always enough preasure that applies force against the drill so that it never pulls itself to the front but pushes itself constantly to the back.

I have question about the servo. Using this blue MicroServo 9G.I printed the linear acutator from erivelton over on thingiverse but I guess this also applies in principal to your servo setup.When moving the servo with the command M03 Sxxx it crashes (obviously) into the gantry of the linear actuator. How can I change the overall maximum amplitude the servo is allowed to do? i.E. from minimum 0° to maximum 45°?My second questions is about a humming noise I hear from my servo when I sent an M03 S40 command. It moves and stops but then there is a relatively loud humming noise comming from the servo. How can I solve this? Does this have something to do with PWM and Hz ?

Nice packaging!

Sure sure. As I wrote this I also wondered if I had ever killed a driver. Computer says no. :)I am now really thinking about getting such a sbase board. Looks rad and seducing. Arrrr

Why did you switch to the Sbase board? I could imagine the connectors could come in handy compared to the pin headers on the ramps. Oh and as I am reading the description it also has 8825 drivers. Have some of these laying around here, too. To bad the drivers are soldered to the board in case of magic smoke. But I couldn't see the potentiometers for the drivers on the board. They say "the stepper motor current is directly set, without the need to worry about the adjustment of the current damage to drive or potentiometer" Does this mean what I think it means. That the current is set automatically or what?I really would like to read about your experience with the new board.

Ah yes! Of course. The drivers only produce heat when they control the steppers and the controller cooler only turns on when heat needs to be dissipated. Smart. Thanks!

Hey there,thanks for putting this up since every other source on the internet is really a kind of bs.So let me clarify this: If I want to use two fans whereas one fan cools the print dynamically via the slicer and one fan cools the extruder body from keeping it getting jammed I need to use this RRD fan extender as the RAMPS board is else not able to control the extruder fan without a inserted MOSFET mod?So in summary I connect the extender to RAMPS. Connect the extruder fan thats starts at 50c to D4 or D5 or D6 and the print cooling fan to D9?And what is meant with this "Simply move one of your axes and see how the fan starts up" in the last step? I haven't figured out why a/the/(which????) fan should start spinning when the steppers are running?!?