1 Topic by scruffybob

  • scruffybob
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Topic: Press wonkiness

won·ky  (wŏng′kē)
adj. won·ki·er, won·ki·est Chiefly British
1. Shaky or unsteady: a wonky table.
2. Out of alignment; crooked: "The door itself looked wonky somehow, not quite square with the building" (Steve Augarde).
3. Not functioning properly or normally: wonky digestion; a wonky phone connection.
4. Mentally unbalanced; crazy.

Choose whichever definition you feel appropriate for this post, but I'm seeing a new behavior out of my press after upgrading to Soliprint 1.2.2.

At seemingly random times, the first layers of a print come out completely wrong.  All the lines are crooked and curvy, like the Press has developed a tremor.   As soon as it moves to the second layer, all the "wonkiness" disappears and the lines seem to go back to normal.

http://soliforum.com/i/?IDp6kBc.jpg

As you can see from the picture, the first layer is all wavy.    I can turn everything off, restart it and I may or not be able to reproduce the problem.   I seems to be completely random when this occurs.

I'm using the stock settings for the printer.   The trimpots are all adjusted correctly (1.0v, 1.0v, 1.5v, 1.5v), I have no idea what's causing the problem.   

I never saw this prior to upgrading to Soliprint 1.2.2.

Any ideas?   Has anyone else seen something like this?

2 Reply by trayracing

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Re: Press wonkiness

I don't know about your tremor, but the first layer looks like it was printed too high off of (wait - what on earth is that, um, scruffy surface, scruffybob?!!!)  smile  It might not be autoleveling correctly due to the uneveness.

3 Reply by scruffybob (edited by scruffybob 2015-06-01 22:38:48)

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Re: Press wonkiness

LOL, I just hadn't cleaned the glass from the last 10 prints.  That's not the issue here, although I'll admit, it looks pretty terrible.

I actually get great adhesion, in spite of how awful it looks.

I rebooted the machine and with exactly the same surface, I got a perfect print the next time.   I don't understand how it can print as wobbly as this, then 20 minutes later (that's how long it takes to reheat my hotbed now), it prints just fine.

4 Reply by trayracing

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Re: Press wonkiness

Yeah, mine went slow too, and when I went to put on a replacement, I found the old one came off too easily. I suspect the plate wasn't properly cleaned before they put the pad on on, or not enough pressure was appplied to the pad. If it's the latter, you might try rubbing your pad with back of serving spoon to see if you can press it back in place. (Don't mess with the thermistor.)  If that doesn't work, the next option would be to carefully pull it off, clean it and restick with 3M 467MP tape (what the replacement came with) or something. Dunno if cleaning would ruin the pad though. (I used acetone to clean the underside of the bed - softened the glue to sort of rubber cement like mess.)

5 Reply by H_Alex

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Re: Press wonkiness

I'll be honest, I've avoided using Soliprint since 1.1.3 or whenever: I use Repetier Host for everything except adjusting the z-offset, which I haven't done in a while because I fine-tuned it ages ago.

Frustration is part of the process.

6 Reply by scruffybob (edited by scruffybob 2015-06-04 14:43:35)

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Re: Press wonkiness

Okay, it was just a bad Z-offset.   I wasn't even thinking that since I was getting such good adhesion, but re-running the Z-offset solved all the problem.    Ok, I guess I was the wonk, not the printer.