Peppercorn Problem

Always found it annoying filling up the pepper mill, and a normal funnel has a too small opening.

Two cylinders, a cone and the shell tool later:

Download and 3D view here: Pepper-Mill-Funnel

Hot Off The Press

Working Well

Clothes Basket Fix

Clothes baskets can be poorly designed and crumple when held with one hand.  This reinforces the problem area, simply held on with zip-ties.

Download and 3D view here: Clothes-Basket-Fix

Used a honeycomb fill pattern for extra strength.

Basket Fixed.

Filament Spool Holder

Got some cheap PLA filament on eBay...

...so now I need to make a spool holder.

Version 1

 I found this design on Thingiverse:

I found cheap roller-door rollers with bearings at Bunnings for $5.14 each.  I wanted real bearings, rather than 3D printing a solution.  You don't want filament feeding problems.

Printed a copy:

Problems:

• Side walls too thin. cracked on a slight flex.
• Had some warping from uneven cooling.
• My roller wheels were 1mm to wide (oops).

Researching warping, best preventative strategies are:

• Avoid cold draughts.
• Clean all surfaces with Isopropyl Alcohol to remove grease.  It also makes the blue painter's tape super-adhesive to the plastic.
• Can slice up the object using skirt and brim settings to attach the skirt to the object.

Version 2

Decided to make my own.  Removed most of the vertical wall material, and made the vertical walls much thicker.  I had some perfect sized M5 bolts.  I printed some bushings because The bearing diameter is 6mm, and this way I can tighten up the nut onto the bushing and not the bearing.

Download and 3D View Here: Spool-Holder

Print number two resulted in a fail half way through.

Investigation found my first 3D printer jam.  If only I had some device to help feed the filament in smoothly...  I also adjusted the extruder spring tension off a little bit in case there was too much force applied.

Print number 3 finally working and assembled.

Printrboard Mount

The control board for the Printrbot just screws into the plywood frame, and ends up sitting on a bunch of zip-ties.  A fairly terrible design, and there are cables going everywhere.  To fix this a Printrboard mount and cable management solution is required.

Part 1 - Printrboard Mount

Design in Autodesk 123D Design, and model the height of all the plugs so we can print something for the cable management too.

Start with 2D layout.

Extrude.

Added plug height.

Mount with riser for cable ties.

Dividing up for printing.

Printed.

 

Fan Shroud

The second thing to print is the Printrbot Fan Shroud, to improve the cooling efficiency of the fan.

After the previous failure, I decided to use the pre-sliced version to see if that was the problem.  The first few attempts had print nozzle crashes into the bed, and calibration wasn't working.

On a thorough examination, I found that one of the bolts holding down the aluminium print bed had not threaded properly through both pieces of plywood.  As a result the wood had separated with a 5mm gap.

Problem Fixed, recalibrate, reprint, success.

Installed On Fan

Calibration & Test Print

Need to calibrate the Z-Axis before I print.

Here is the Official Guide, but Tom's guide describes it perfectly.

Didn't want to fiddle with slicer settings for the first print, so I downloaded the provided 'First Cube' object which is already in G-Code

Thought I would have to kill the first few prints to trim up the Z-Axis height with a M212 command, but the cube came out great.

Encouraged, I decided to jump straight into the fan shroud upgrade next, and do my own slicing to mix things up.

The print failed at about 10mm height, so I killed the job, and that's it for the night.

Software Install & Setup

USB Setup

So it looks like the print software uses a serial connection to talk to the printer, which means we have to install a driver to emulate a serial port over USB.

Serial USB Driver http://pjrc.com/ teensy/serial_install.exe

It seems I had to change the com port number to 4 in device manager to get it working.

Adafruit has an excellent guide: Device Manager Com Ports

Printer Settings

The recommended printer control software is Repetier Host http://www.repetier.com/

Add a printer, configure settings:

You must change the Reset on Connect to Disabled otherwise commands queue up and don't get sent.

Don't think I changed any default settings on this Tab.

Default settings here too.

Using the manual controls I determined that my printer couldn't get the full 100 x 100 mm print area because it hits the belt tensioner at the end of the X direction.

I'm not worried about 3mm, so I can just set the print area here to avoid an axis over-run.

Slicer Settings

I find that a 0.4mm resolution is a good option for prototypes and 0.2mm is usually the way to go for a nicer finished product.  0.1mm can be tried if you think you need it for special parts.

Print Settings

Adjust the layer height per print to suit.  

First layer height is bigger to help adhesion.

Avoid crossing perimeters hen help avoid oozing problems.

Random seam position doesn't seem to help on round objects.

Can lower the fill density or change the pattern for different applications. See the Infill Guide.

Adjust settings here for a solid object.

Adjust retraction crossing perimeters to help oozing or rubbing problems.

Slower speeds mean better quality generally.

These settings are working pretty well at the moment.

Higher loops on small prints. 

Use distance 0 on large prints, can help prevent warping.

Only generate support material if needed.  PLA can do extreme overhangs.

Pillars might be easiest to clean up afterwards.

Complete individual objects seems to be getting ignored?

First layer 200% can help adhesion on fine resolution prints.

 

Filament Settings

Every guide says to measure filament and adjust here.

I saw another guide that had increased temperature on first layer.

Currently have fan on auto.  I saw another guide on the reprap wiki that says crisper edges can be obtained with PLA with more cooling.

Would want more cooling with filament like NinjaFlex because it's softer.

 

Printer Settings

Set bed size and center correctly.

Setting Start G-Code of
  G28 X0 Y0
  G29
triggers the auto bed leveling.

Retraction length and Lift Z help everything.