Archive for March 11th, 2014

Frank-O-Squid Calibration

Posted by Ed in Machine Shop on 2014-03-11

The saga of rebuilding and reconfiguring my old Thing-O-Matic around an Azteeg X3 controller and Marlin software at Squidwrench continues apace:

TOM286 - with calibration scrap

TOM286 – with calibration scrap

A major benefit of doing this at the group meetings has been showing everybody that 3D printing isn’t a mass-production process. The pile of calibration objects includes an inordinate number of those thinwall open boxes that take about five minutes each:

3D printed calibration scrap

3D printed calibration scrap

But it’s producing reasonable quality stuff again:

TOM286 - First Dodecahedron

TOM286 – First Dodecahedron

The loose threads on the outward sloping sides of that dodecahedron show that I forgot to lower the temperature after a bit of trouble with adhesion to the platform; the problem turned out to be an interaction between Slic3r’s minimum layer time and minimum printing speed settings that I didn’t notice.

A disadvantage of doing this at the group meetings is that two or three hours of tweaking and printing, once a week, draws the whole process out far longer than anyone else expected… [grin]

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