Solidoodle 2 upgrades (Page 3 of 5)

Sorry for confusion.  the bed seems to heat up about twice as fast now which is good. the question should have read "could my OLD firmware been causing slow heating?"  I ran it through a few more cycles and it definitely seems to be heating in about 10 minutes (vs 20 minutes from my PSU up-voltage to 13.5 v improvement)

For heating in general:   Looking at the curves, I'm guessing the old firmware tried to feather the heater power to prevent overshoots, but was too aggressive.  The new firmware looks like it opens everything up full not bothering with a temporary overshoot.  The bed temp does wobble quite a bit (+- 4 deg. which it has always done), but i though i read somewhere marlin only has extruder auto-tune?

As for the bearing, I went ahead and replaced the main body with my backup print and it clears for now.  There is still less than half a mm clearance though.  I manually ran filament at several speeds and it SEEMS to be working better.  Unfortunately, I ran out of time to try my print again (e3d v6 lawsy mods)  Here are some pictures with the backup lawsy parts(green):

grr.  I printed another backup lawsy and by the end of that print, the tension arm has collapsed again and is brushing the base.

i printed at 75% fill, 3mm brim (to make sure the accessory attachment prongs stay stable.)

I am not sure what I'm doing wrong.  the problem location is in the second picture i posted.  I am trying to get one more lawsy at 90% fill printed before having to replace the body again. Ill take pictures when that finishes or fails.

Pictures straight from phone..hope they are acceptable.

edit:  focus is off .  ill try to edit this with better pictures later if needed.

I am also wondering why your filament guide is not aligned with the rest of the assembly.

the guide is aligned  The filament is just pulled to the side because i have the metal lid  on.  it kind of wobbles back and forth during the print.

...at least i think it is .. I'll try to find someone else's to see what your talking about.  the left screw on the guide is a little loose (maybe 0.1mm wobble) the wobble doesn't seem to make much difference.

I'm currently assembling the materials for the acrylic enclosure mod to help ease the tension on the filament.  The "party tray" domed top is no longer available at the links I've found so I'm looking for alternatives.

i printed the lime green and black parts at 75% fill.  i dropped them directly from the zip file into repetier host and printed them as they landed. The arm is 1.0 scaled.

ill try printing another body at 100% to see if it is more stable.

edit: in response to x/y calibration.  the calibration cube i printed post firmware update was perfect.  it was the model from thingiverse that was 20mm^2 with a 10mm^ hole centered and was 5 mm high.  My calipers says it was less than 0.05 mm off on x/y. z was slightly more, but i didnt sand the blobs off the top.  the flex of the plastic made precision at this level hard but it was crazy good.  It best print i ever did   ( i mentioned it here or my other thread, which I've accidently crossed with this one)

Here is mine too.  The only thing I can think of is that your tension arm is stretched, and therefore the wrong shape.  For example, if your Z-axis were skipping, then the bearing would sit further to the right than it should, and then maybe find it's way down into the collapsed position.  Or perhaps the tension arm is shorter (from pivot to tip), again making the bearing prone to collapsing its way down.

In fact, comparing mine and yours, I see that the extruder motor axel is aligned horizontally with the bearing, but yours didn't look that way in the non-collapsed position.

Upon second glance I see your filament looks guide.

Looks nice! Should also keep my cat off the printer   I cant really tell what you did though.  Is that 4 trapezoidal pieces of acrylic glued (solvent welded, caulked? ) into a pyramid with a printed part at top?  Do you have much stack effect airflow? (like hot air in chimneys) 

It seems that if i have any draft at all my ABS twists like Chubby Checker in 1960.  Also, I am afraid it would suck in a lot of dust (remember cats )

Anyway. back to the immediate problem...

I stared at my extruder assembly for quite a while last night.  I cannot spot for the life of me why the tension arm seems too short. assuming .3mm layers in all the examples you guys posted, then it should be the same length (6 print layers on the angled bit).

I might have a couple of theories:

1: Maybe my Z depth calibration is a little off and making the bearing "horn" too short.  This seems like this part specifically needs very high precision.  X/Y calibration seem fine since the pieces that connect to stepper align with the screw holes just fine.

2: Maybe my stepper motor is a different size? it seems unlikely that i have an odd stepper motor and the vanilla prints are exactly the same amount off, but should be easy enough to test.

Unfortunately, the batteries in my caliper died at the worst time.  If I can verify the problem geometry, ill try to edit the model a little.  Eyeballing it, I think if i elongate the horn by about 3-5mm it should be "better".

Yep, 4 pieces (the front is on hinges) but no glue just a couple aluminum tabs on the side sticking up to catch the acrylic.  The rear panel is held in place by the filament holder and the front panel was removed at the time of the picture.  It just hung by two cheap hardware store hinges that fit the holes that were already on the frame.  Same for the front side panel, the left and right side panels are held with magnets.  It is nice to be able to quickly remove all panels for maintenance.

I think I have the same thought as Ward Jr. It looks as though the hole where you filament enters is even with the hole into the hot end, but there should not be the pronounced kink in the middle. Looks like your motor is not sitting in the right place. It looks like the tension arm is pushing against it, just at the height of the bend. Might be that the gear on the motor is too big for the piece you printed. But whatever is causing the filament bend may solve your problem.

print a modified version (see mk5 remixes) before installing e3d.  normal mk5 is too small and i spent 45 min melting pieces of it away to get the e3d in there.

lots of ground up green filament. tension needs adjusted or filament is too thick not feeding good like my bad roll of Octave I had measured average 2mm instead of 1.75mm and it never got moisture being sealed with desiccant. so dont bet too much on expensive being better ;^)

So, my theory of a loose m5 bolt was wrong, while trying to see if it wobbled, the loops snapped off.  In the force direction that matters it was firm and perpendicular to the arms. I had to remove it so i could acetone weld it back together.

The following pictures show:

1: filament alignment without the metal case pressing on stuff.
2: lateral filament alignment.
3: the main body mounting point to tension arm.

Every bit of the geometry for the printed parts seem spot on (compared to stl files).

Everything looks good to me... It seems the hobbed shaft is the only variable left. I will try to take measurements of that when i get home.

here are the pics: