1 Topic by ShadowWizard

  • ShadowWizard
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2014-10-20
  • Posts: 33

Topic: My Da Vinci experience, and some questions.

I do say my Di Vinci is a curse and a blessing.  I have had the thing 5 days, and it took my 3D printing virginity, I had never done any 3D printing before this. Right out of the box the X axis was crooked.  I didn't know it at the time, but one quick call to support and they had me up and running in a couple of seconds.  I have also had it stop printing in the middle of a print with a cartridge error that would not go away.  So I ended up placing a folded up piece of paper under the clip that holds the cartridge in place, and that seemed to fix it, because restating the cartridge was not.  Then my bed chipped.  I was doing a rather large print and when I finally got to it to take it off the bed, it was already loose, and attached to the bottom of it was a 1 1/2" by 1/2" piece of the bed glass.
I have heard a lot of people complain about there tech support; no replies, etc.  But I honestly have nothing but good things to say.  As I said, I called them when I got the printer because it would grind and error out (Because X was crooked) and they right away told me how to fix it.  Was on the phone less then 10 min.  I receive replies to my e-mail very quickly, and even in the middle of the night.  I have support e-mails from them times at 10:30 PM and midnight, as well as several during the day.  So the only thing I can think of is that they have fixed there tech support issues; something I am very glad for.
On the plus side, these errors have caused me to go allot of Googling, and the tech support is allows you to be very hands on.  To fix the X problem, there solution was to grab the bar, and pull it forward, basically jumping the gears until it was correctly lined up.  Most companies would tell you that you need to sent the device in (from my experience) and have thus learned a lot with there do it yourself fixes, and all the time I spent on Google.
In any event, I still have a few questions I was hoping someone could help me with.  I have asked on another forum, but have not received any useful replies as of yet, and during my Googling found this forum!
First off, obviously I want to start using 3rd party filament.  I have heard that firmware 1.0E allows that in one place, but have only ever seen once reference to it.  Does anyone here have experience with that?
Second is this Repetier firmware.  This in itself looks very tempting, and almost did it today except for realizing the printer often needs to be calibrated, and if not calibrated correctly could (I assume) push the bed up into the extruder and potentially break the glass.  Does the Repetier firmware have a calibration feature, and if not, how do I calibrate the printer?  Not only to be sure the bed is level, but to be sure I have the correct Z offset?

Thanks in advance, I look forward to the advice and suggestions those of you with experience have to offer.

2 Reply by Weekend Avenger

  • Weekend Avenger
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2014-06-17
  • Posts: 181

Re: My Da Vinci experience, and some questions.

I can't tell you anything about repetier, but using 3rd party filament is easy. You can get a cartridge resetter from wctek.com (fr333n3rgy) and then use most of the older stock firmwares and any slicer you wish if you combine it with w34's modded XYZware. Cost goes from $30 to $94.50 depending on how good you want your resetter option to be.

If you go the repetier route there is no additional cost, but you will have to get everything "dialed in" yourself.

I've heard that you can use the "E" firmware and change the filament amount in the gcode to 0 and the cartridge doesn't change it's number as an alternative, but I've never needed to do that so I can't comment on it.

I kept my firmware stock on "G" and have a resetter. I use Cura to slice with and the only "change" that I've done to the machine was to put the SDCard on a cable so I could copy files to it directly. I saw the Flashair's on sale so I'll be adding that soon so I don't even have to carry the SDCard back and forth. The only thing I do with Cura's gcode output is set the name to be "SAMPLE01.gcode" (01-03 work) change all the G0 commands to G1 (notepad ++ does this easily) and add this line right below where it drops the bed 15mm.

G1 Z15.0 F2700 ;move the platform down 15mm <-- already in output
G1 Z14.10 F2700 ;added line to -0.9mm to z offset
G92 Z15.00 ;sets the z offset from current position to Z15

This is due to me wanting the first layer to be a bit lower than where it would normally start. Everything beyond the ; is just a comment, it doesn't do anything. I could have also changed Cura's first layer move command to one that is .9 closer but I prefer consistency should I ever decide to use Cura's "multiple item" ability. Though with as close as the belt is to the glass on a DaVinci the feature would be hard to make work.

Just like all of the other 3D printers, this one is expandable and moddable. This might not have been XYZ's intention, but if you decide you want it to do things a bit differently than a "stock" machine, you should be able to find some advice on this forum to get you started.

3 Reply by ShadowWizard

  • ShadowWizard
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2014-10-20
  • Posts: 33

Re: My Da Vinci experience, and some questions.

Thank you so much for the input.  When you talk about the fact I need to dial everything in myself, what are you referring to exactly?  The extruder and bed temperature?  I would rather set those myself so I can change, adjust and play with them.  I have heard that ABS works better at 220 then the machines 210 anyway.  As I said, the only thing that is stopping me is my fear of the incorrect value in the Z offset.  In my mind, if I change to custom firmware it no longer has any idea how high or low to place the bed when it starts printing unless I tell it, and thus will either (And likely) start printing above the bed, or try and push the extruder into the bed.  Either one would be bad.  So, how, and where do you set this Z offset?  In the printing software? Slic3r, Cura, or XYZware?  Does it still store it on the printer?  These are the unknowns I really would rather become known before I start modding firmware.

4 Reply by Weekend Avenger

  • Weekend Avenger
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2014-06-17
  • Posts: 181

Re: My Da Vinci experience, and some questions.

Like I said, I don't use Repetier, but I did research it a bit so I can mention of few of the things you'll need to set correctly.  First up is the movement, exactly how far does the bed move when the motor turns one step? Same for the other two axis and the extruder itself.

After that is the temperature. I realize you want to set the temps yourself, but you need to understand that the firmware doesn't get a "bed is 100C" response from the thermistor, it gets a value that you must set the meaning for.

The good news is that you are not the first doing this, so you can start with values that have worked for others. But the "fine tuning" will need to be done by you if you want good looking prints.