1 Topic by JohnnyV

  • JohnnyV
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  • Registered: 2014-10-14
  • Posts: 1

Topic: Newbie Question on best set up to begin with (Day One)

I recently purchased a busted up, but very cheap DaVinci.  The purchase is an attempt to get my feet wet in the 3D printing arena without a huge cost and will for the most part be a "self-taught", learn as I go endevor.

So far, I have only just received the printer and got it to print one of the sample parts from the start menu.  I have not installed the software or gone any further than that.  The printer came to me with a busted heat bead and the Y-Axis out, etc.  I have been reading through the forum and was able to repair the bed, set the Y-Axis and  get the bed to calibrate.  I am fairly comfortable with the mechanical side of things. 

I have also done some 3D CAD modeling and I would consider myself to be fairly comfortable with that part of it as well.  But that is where my comfort and experience end. 

I have read through a lot of the posts here on this board and thought I would ask opinions on the best way to proceed?  Obviously, I do not have to worry about voiding the warrenty on my machine, so I am probably leaning towards the SD Card extension Hack right now from what I can tell.  I really want to know some opinions from people who have been where I am now on what the easiest path will be for me to start printing up some models with this thing?  Thanks for any help that anyone may offer.

2 Reply by wjflier2

  • wjflier2
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  • Registered: 2014-09-16
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Re: Newbie Question on best set up to begin with (Day One)

Johnny, what exactly are you trying to accomplish?  If it's just to use 3rd party filament, you can downgrade the firmware to 1.1E and the filament counter won't advance.  For me this has worked fine,  I do use the xyzsoftware mod. but it's not nesessary.  I suggest reading through the forums to get all the insite possible.

Bill G.

3 Reply by Weekend Avenger

  • Weekend Avenger
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  • Registered: 2014-06-17
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Re: Newbie Question on best set up to begin with (Day One)

w34's mod gives you the level of control that repetier would (or close enough). Putting the SDcard on a cable was the option I took, but it was more from not having to move my laptop over to the printer and just print to the card from my desktop than for any other reason.

I'm also pulling from a spool that's mounted to the back of the printer. Top mounted spools that feed from the gap where the lid closes put a lot less drag on the hotend, but the spool I'm running from the back has less drag than the cartridges do so I can't see that being an issue.

I'm slicing with Cura 14.07 because I like the features it has and it has never choked on a complex STL on me. There are many free slicers available that you should try and if none of those work there is at least one "paid" slicer that has more than a few users on the Soliforum say good things about, so you really can use whatever you wish. If you use w34's software mod, you can cleanly import gcode from most anything and try printing from them all without needing to make any hardware mods.