SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — New SD4, questions, concerns

Re: New SD4, questions, concerns

null@example.com (veehoo) — Sun, 03 May 2015 19:43:30 +0000

Thanks for your reply for my post that I must admit was an epic fail. Too much enthusiasm and too little knowledge. And a desire to build a well working printer out of this.

Anyways, the problem with the walls of my calibration cube was the stl I had downloaded. It apparently had two nested cubes as far as I can tell, when I made my own solid cube and exported it as stl, it printed fine. I'm now @0.48mm with 103.4 steps / mm and extruder multiplier 0.88 with layer height 0.293. The dimensions of the cube are 20x19.5mm base with 19.6mm height. I'm printing perimeters @30mm/sec, don't really know if that is high or low.

Regarding the belts, my carriages were not moving when I received the printer so I've played with them from the get go. When the pulleys are loose, the gantry wiggles alot, and I needed some skill to get then straight and non-binding. Now I've gotten them better at least.

Thanks again

Re: New SD4, questions, concerns

null@example.com (wardjr) — Sat, 02 May 2015 22:47:20 +0000

Anything can be repaired given you have the desire.
You should start with the two sides of the Y axis not being parallel. As it is the right side carriage runs on Teflon Blocks. You need to align the belts so they are both running fairly parallel. Just loosen the set screw on the drive pulley that is located on the right rear drive rod. Then move that gantry back and forth stopping in the middle and the right side in a nice neutral position. Then tighten the set screw with out moving or rotating the drive rod.
As far as you slice settings once you save the settings you need to select that saved profile in RH before you slice.

New SD4, questions, concerns

null@example.com (veehoo) — Sat, 02 May 2015 20:02:31 +0000

Hi, just got my SD4 after four months of waiting. Did the first calibrations as per suggestions from this awsome community, belts, vref with dmm, extruder steps/mm the usual. Also, repetier and slic3r configs shoud be in check. I do have a problem printing a single walled calibration cube, even if I setup 1 bottom layer, 1 perimeter, 0 top layer, I get n+1 layers of everything. So two layers on walls and 1 on top. How do I tell slic3r to really use just one wall? Any other suggestions on next calibration steps, I'm new to this...

A few things on the printer I'm a little worried/confused about. One is, if I home my x-axis, the carrige hits the end stop when the nozzle is 2cm to the right of the plate, and when I move the extruder to the left, I'm still 2cm from the edge. Is this normal for SD4 or some setting I'm missing?

The thing I'm most worried about is, my x-axis and y-axis are not perpendicular. If I drive the extruder all the way to the front, my right side is still around 10mm from the end when the left side hits the limit. And I can see the same difference in the nozzle position vs edge of bed when its left vs right. I intend to upgarade to lawsy or pirvans carriages asap, but I'm worried that can I print the parts straight enough with this printer. Sending the printer back to solidoodle is another option, but time already waisted and the fact that I'm in europe (slow and expensive), i'm not too enthusiastic. But what do you think, can this be repaired?

thanks, veehoo