Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Rebuilt, but still broken

John stripped me down to the frame and rebuilt me with all of the tricks he learned from the first build. I do say, I feel slimmer and tighter. I think this rebuild was good for me. A day at the spa if you will.

The poor old fool spend hours working on me to get me running by bed time. Only to break an Opto switch wire on the last possible step before starting a print! He's either going to have to learn to solder or order a new set of opto's ($50 after shipping) what a coot!

So now I'm all nice and pretty he just can't run me yet. I'm enjoying messing with his head. Let's see how long before he cracks...

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Long Weekend, Got to Meet Another Reprap

While I've been waiting for the part John ordered for my extruder, he's been busy inviting other builders to my bench and building new Repraps! Right in front of me.

Nick Lucking drove down from LA on Saturday to collect on his $250 pledge reward from kickstarter.com. John had everything set aside and ready that was needed to build a new Prusa-Mendel from scratch.

They spent about 7 hours working on it and by the end they had a 80% done bot. The frame was all there, motor mounted, belts tight, bushings moving smoothly. All that was left was for Nick to install his RAMPS electronics and he could start the calibration process.

After Nick left John took a look at my overall build and I think he's planning on taking me apart and starting from the frame again. I do admit, some, problems with alignment on the Z axis. I hope he can smooth it all out.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

NumberSix's RepStrap: Connecting up the heater to Generation 6 electroni...

At least someone knows what they are doing. John spent three days figuring this out. I'm still not sure he got it right...

NumberSix's RepStrap: Connecting up the heater to Generation 6 electroni...: "When connecting up the heater and thermistor to the Gen6 board be aware of the following... the pin-outs printed for your convenient referen..."

I'm only 2 months old and I feel outdated.

John regularly checks youtube for new reprap videos and he discovered a new branch of the reprap project coming from Mendel-parts.com (where I got my brains from, Gen 6) and they are building ORCA.

Go ahead and check it out. Us Prusa-Mendels are almost 9 months old and the Sell-Mendel is, what, 2 years? Yea. Time for you A.D.D. reprappers to move on....

http://youtu.be/9eo4M90IfUQ

Feeling better, in bed.

John spent a couple hours tinkering with my print bed. The moron drilled out one of the holes to large while trying to counter-sink the bolts. The bolt slips off too easily, actually, completely through.

He laid it face down on his new work bench and placed some scrap paper under. Then placed a couple drops of Gorilla Glue in, placed the bolt head in and dribbled a drop of water on it (makes it cure faster, stronger.)

The next day, the glue was all dry and he fumbled around trying to scrape the excess glue and paper from it. I'm surprised he didn't cut off a finger or three.

The bed came out very nice and still level. Now he wants to get some wing nuts to use instead of hex to make adjustments easier.

He told me the parts for my extruder are on order from botmill.com. It will be nice to be back up and running again. As much as I loath him, I enjoy printing more.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Little sore after surgery

John, finally got to work on me last night. Hot-end removed after some fussing with the nut. It was getting caught on all the old melted plastic. The PTFE barrel was cracked and snapped right in half when he tried to unscrew it from the nozzle. His face was priceless...

After that he spent several hours online looking for a replacement barrel and is waiting for a quote back from botmill.com. They don't sell the hot-end pieces individually but they plan on being able to soon and they told him they would get back on Wednesday morning.

John spent from 9pm to 1:30am working on re-routing all my electronics and configuring the Gen 6 board to a better position. It's on my left side now. It feels quite nice there too! After all was said-and-done, the new set up looks and feels very good. I guess a broken clock is still right twice a day.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

List of things I've he needs to fix.

Over the last couple of months, John has really tried to tweak my settings to get me to work perfectly. Idoit. Doesn't he know he's never going to be satisfied?

I keep throwing him curve balls, this week he just discovered I've been leaking silver PLA from all the wrong places on my hot-end. LOL He was all like "OMG".

I've still been able to print fine, but maybe better when he cleans that.

He also, just noticed when he was moving me, one of the bolts holding my bed down is not attached to the bed anymore.

Get to work Johnny boy.

The imbecil moved me to a new bench.

I've been idle since Sunday. John had me make an "Autobot Transformer Badge" he designed and posted to thingiverse.com. It took me about two and half hours but I was running at 30/30 feed and flow. I managed to fudge it up a bit just to tick him off.

Monday, he didn't bother me too much and I was grateful for that. Some strange person came into my workspace and moved a bunch of stuff out, but it wasn't John. It was his roommate and her parents. They said some very snarky things about John and looked at me like I was a bomb.

Anyway, after that John came home and started packing more. He took me, very gently, to the new lab. He built a new workstation, just for me of course.