Printrbot Talk Forum

New Printrbot Plus. 32 hours build time from box opening to this print (a couple of hideously failed attempts preceded this.) After many hours of extruder grief, I managed to get a legit first print. Getting the filament to feed without stripping was a mess and I had to do a _lot_ of hob bolt cleani...

Tuning largely complete! Primary problem was that my X axis motor mounting was trapezoidal rather than square. See Step 142 in the PB+ assembly instructions (sorry, system won't let me add an actual link offsite). The bolt attaching 220 to 232 needed a nut INSIDE to keep the belt from pulling the mo...

I'd been having a lot of trouble with circles all printing on my Printrbot Plus with corners, the term 'lemon' and 'football' circles are used by folks with similar problems. This appeared to be an X backlash problem since it seemed that the system was lagging when adding X vector to the Y motion. M...

I've searched the forum for 'corners, lifting, curling' but haven't found anything that sounds like this. Apologies if I've missed a previous entry on this topic. My first level lays down well and sticks (as does the skirt.) Subsequent layers go down nicely. However, on the corners of prints that ar...

Thanks!! I felt confident that it was tempo related and not confident of much after that :-) I've been using hairspray on glass as my sticking agent. I'd tried kapton and blue tape, but neither worked half as well as my experience to date with hairspray on the glass. I'll try ABS juice next and the ...

Just received the aluminum z axis upgrade blocks I ordered from Printrbot.com. After reading "If you want to upgrade your v1 LC or Plus, they will make your Z axis extremely rigid for even better prints." I foolishly thought the blocks would fit my V1. There aren't any instructions for the...

Excellent points. I was very frustrated when I wrote the above note. I will contact Printrbot, but wanted a sanity check. I've had zero luck understanding what the various dependencies between versions and parts are. In this case the problem is that the aluminum block has top and short side mounting...

Thanks! That's a super-helpful offer! But I should be able to find the DXFs of the V2 laser cut pieces and pull the measures from there. I think the answer to my problem will be to: a) give up on the blocks b) get on the mill and fabricate a component to replace or extend the Printrbot blocks c) thr...

Yep. They don't fit the V1 (aargh). Sure would have been nice if the website text made this clear. And I'm not eager to start compromising the rigidity (which I love,) of the unit by removing parts of the existing cross-piece structure. Unfortunately drilling the existing wood isn't really a good op...

Thank you so much! It's really helpful to have someone else looking at this. The blocks have 4 set screw holes but the set only came with 2 set screws per block (which should be fine.) The image I'm playing with in my mind right now is replacing the two wood perpendicular cross pieces with pieces of...

I started a support ticket, but found all tech questions directed here. This is one of those situations where I just couldn't believe my lying eyes. But now my Plus V1 is torn down on the bench and the truth is staring me in the eyes. Keep us in the loop on how your ticket is resolved (unless you ge...

The blocks fit the 12mm Z rod, so I'm pretty confident it's the Plus blocks. However, maaaaybe it's possible that there are V1 and V2 _versions_ of the blocks (I'm actively fantasizing here...) and I got sent the wrong version.

Looking at the PDF on the Printrbot site, the new V2 laser cut wood has the perfect mounting holes for the blocks. Here's a comparison of the old and new frame components:
compare.jpg

the image of the blocks on the Printrbot site is pretty clearly the ones I got: http://printrbot.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Z-block-12mm-Plus.jpg So the blocks are clearly only for the new wood set. Looks like I was letting my imagination run away with me thinking there might be two versions (V1...

The core problems are: 1) PROBLEM: The block won't sit flush in the bracket of the cross pieces without removing the bottom set of nuts holding the horz. cross piece to the vert. cross piece (see picture above.) The screws that hold the top to the vertical cross piece aren't in the way at all. ISSUE...

No response yet from Printrbot. I decided to go ahead and roll my own stabilizers. Printrbot Plus V1 Z bar stabilizers: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:100883 They are rock solid. Very big improvement, I don't think I'll miss the aluminum blocks. The 12mm shaft is not evenly spaced between the scre...

Here's the dimensions of the Printrbot Plus V1 (1.5?) Z-Axis hole layout that I used with the Z-Axis stabilizers I mentioned above ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:100883 ) Note that the horizontal dimensions are the same for the front and back screw holes, it's the vertical dimensions that vary. ...

I had a similar problem that related to the mount for the X-axis motor. See

I know this post is old, but it's still useful! I used the dimensions at the top to create an OpenSCAD model of the Ubis at .

Good news, bad news. Bad news: Still no word back from Printrbot on my support ticket regarding this issue (6 days.) Good News: I received my Y-axis bed stabilizers from Printrbot. They should work with my new V1 Z-Axis stabilizers (see above & http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:100883 ) The bed s...

I had a (shockingly obvious in retrospect) insight last night while printing. I was printing ABS with ABS juice and a 5mm brim. I'd forgotten that I'd previously applied hair spray (having just switched back to ABS from PLA printing.) The print started curling aggressively (ABS juice does not stick ...

On ABS prints where I had really tight corners (e.g gears and other edges with small angle direction changes or tight pointy things such as the working micro heart http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:24675 ,) the fan made a really significant positive difference. Without the fan, the ABS would curl up ...

There are some really good ideas in that thread. De-lamination is a really frustrating experience that keeps coming back. I am _very_ interested in techniques that overcome it!

That's a great insight! It makes me wonder how small the breaks can be. I'm starting to fantasize about a setting in Slic3r that adds single step (or double or whatever,) breaks in some useful pattern. We could have choices for wall patterns like we do for infill. (Wow. I really need to get out of m...

I was just installing the Y-Axis bed stabilizers from Printrbot. The fit on the LM8UUs was _very_ tight. I added compression from the 4 screws, but the wood warped enough for the pressure not to be even. When I attempted to re-insert the Y-axis rod, the back bearing wasn't truly aligned and as the r...

Ouch! I'm skeptical for the following reasons: 1. You'd actually have to drill 6 holes per side (2 for the top plate, 2 front and 2 back.) These would need to be drilled with very good precision not to put the Z-axis out of true. The top ones on the front and back would leave a very fragile piece of...

I love my V1 Printrbot Plus. But I am dazzled by the allure of Dual Extruders. I haven't found any concise descriptions of how to make this happen and I've spent a lot of time researching it. I still have a lot of questions, but I've started down the path very aggressively. This post is an attempt t...

Follow up on my post-of-shame above. I received new LM8UU's from Ultimachine (great purchase, good price, fast shipping, some bonus PLA and a sticker thrown in the box!) The Bed Stabilizer brackets are much tighter than the top plate cutouts for the LM8UUs. Screwing them down so that the distance eq...

Nice! Positioning the extruders on the cross bar is definitely the way I want to go. It adds stiffness to the Z shafts, it gives good position for the tube bends and it allows for a pretty optimal tube length.

Wow! Great Blog ! I am totally jealous of the sweet stand/case you've built for your Printrbot. I read through the link to the creation of your extruder, are you now using the one he describes, the Modified RepRapPro Huxley Extruder ? I need to print a second extruder and was looking at the Greg's W...

Excellent news! Thanks for that confirmation, I was loathe to tear it that far down again if the result was going to be disappointment. Did you leave either or both of the cross pieces in place (lwalkera notes that Printrbot suggested that at least the horizontal bottom piece would go and I found th...

I'm building out a second extruder and beginning my quest for another hobbed bolt. Alas, Printrbot is out of stock. As I began shopping, I realized that these bolts vary in significant ways and I couldn't find a reference for the stock bolt from Printrbot. This post is an attempt to document the dim...

Sweet! That means I can order my bolt, Kysan and Ubis all at once (I'm a shipping miser.)

Last night I printed the from sponnet and it assembled nicely. I tried it with the hobbed bolt from my stock wooden Wade's Extruder and it worked great.

Last night I printed the ExtrudrPlate - Printrbot Extruder Tray ( v1.7 ) from sponnet and it assembled nicely. I tried it with the hobbed bolt from my stock wooden Wade's Extruder and it worked great. I will note that it was my first encounter with KISSlicer's bridging (which made me miss Slic3r,) a...

Quick change is rapidly rising on my 'must-have' list. The more I print with the Bowden setup the more I realize that I'd really like to have the the stock extruder available for 'high-quality' prints. I've been considering the Printrbot Plus Quick-Fit Upgrade . My ideal setup would be the dual-extr...

Follow up to the thread, Printrbot has reached out to me on my support ticket and is being their normal, extremely helpful, selves.

Ramps 1.4 kit was waiting for me at the house

All parts accounted for in the kit. Let me know what I can look at (photograph, whatever,) on whichever of the boards; Ramps 1.4, Arduino Mega, Smart LCD.

I got header pins that I'll need to solder in place for the LCD & aux3. The smart lcd board includes and SD card slot so it apparently makes the sdramps daughter board redundant. I'll inspect carefully for solder bridges, I noticed that a couple of the thru-holes for the LCD are soldered over. T...

There was a 1x18 SIP (for AUX4) and 2x4 DIP (for AUX3) set of pin headers included in the kit. I'll be soldering those onto the board tonight. They're standard 0.1" breakaway style ( SIP ). Oddly enough, I can't find links on adafruit or sparkfun for the dual row headers. I also didn't find lin...

Last night I found that; ⋅ once I covered up the Ramps 1.4 board with a fan, the plugs were a pain to get to ⋅ the end stops on the Printrboard use a 3pin plug (with only the two outside pins in use,) whereas the Ramps board uses a 2 pin plug ⋅ I really need to look at ...

Thanks! I just ordered an extra set from them. The new ones I bought are already making truly horrid clacking sounds! I think one or more of them dropped a ball bearing along the way.

In the course of attempting my Printrbot Plus Dual Extruder upgrade, I've purchased a Ramps 1.4 board (assembled complete with smart LCD board and arduino mega.) I've spent the much of the last 48 hours attempting to get it to do my bidding. Wow! This is vastly more complex than plugging in the Prin...

Hours more troubleshooting has narrowed down the LCD problem to digital pin 27 on the arduino mega. Connecting the LCD directly with the Ramps removed and then sequentially moving the pins around narrowed it down. It's locked high and unfortunately there is no rational way to use an alternate pin. I...

woo hoo! I built a single wire logic probe and determined that the ever so tiny pin 27 on the processor chip (aka pin 73) was fine. Careful inspection of the traces discovered a scratch in the varnish, sure enough, it had broken the trace to pin 27! I (carefully) scratched the varnish back (close to...

The mod I've done that has given me the most straightforward satisfaction has been swapping the Z threaded rods for metric rods. It's not a critical mod by any means, but it does two things very well and without fuss. First, it makes the selection of the Z steps per mm very simple. The exact number ...

Lotsa progress. :) - I learned how to create new ReplicatorG machine definitions, so it's working well, but more happily for me; - I finally read enough to learn that the pull-ups for the Ramps endstops are internal to the processor and not part of the circuitry I see on the set of endstops that cam...

The beast;
image.jpg
image.jpg

Experimentation will have to show if it's the best of both worlds, or the worst

It's a 60mm ring I got from Amazon: . They're also referred to as 'Angel Eyes'.

2 for $9.05, Amazon Prime (aka free two day shipping.)

I'd love to find smaller ones as well.

Woohoo, the planets aligned and I got a successful dual extrusion print from my hybrid Pinrtrbot Plus V1 printer! Ramps 1.4 electronics with SmartLCD Extruder 1 = Stock Wade's extruder mounted on X carriage driving directly into 3mm Ubis hotend, Black ABS Extruder 2 = Printed Wade's extruder mounted...

Thanks! I've still got a long way to go. I've trashed another dozen prints after that one as I work through the requisite tuning. So far: - Getting the two hotends dead level. Absolutely critical and very frustrating. - Getting the correct offset between the two hotends correct. Harder than it seems...

Getting there!
image.jpg

First reaction to dual extrusion printing. Take every frustration you've ever had with slicing, filament feeding, and general printing grief and square it.

Thanks! Chasing this stuff down has forced me out into a lot of other 3D printing forums. It's really brought home how much I like the Printrbottalk community. This forum has a confidence inspiring vibe that is not as tangible in a lot of other forums. I hope I can return enough in useful documentat...

Wow! They only sold 10. It looks pretty interesting. If they're really going to sell it for $230 (not just as a beta price,) it's a phenomenal bargain. Controller, 2 motors, 2 hotends, 2 thermistors, 2 fans, cables, a mount, vitamins and a 350W power supply! That's more like a $500 (at least) packag...

Holy moley! The Extrudrboard is a great deal as well . $65 for support of 2 more extruders! That makes the Printrboard amazing!

[Note: I unwittingly began this quest just before Printrbot released the Extrudrboard . That release makes the use of Ramps 1.4 unnecessary . I'll go ahead and document my effort for completeness sake, but Part 3 (slicing & printing,) will become the most relevant section of dual extrusion info...

Holy moley! The Extrudrboard is a great deal as well http://printrbot.com/shop/printrbot-extrudrboard/ . $65 for support of 2 more extruders! That makes the Printrboard amazing! When I saw that - I immediately thought you'd either cheer or cry : ) Ha! I considered crying, but decided to cheer :roll...

My experience is that it can be frustrating to get engaged with their support (busy busy busy,) but once you do, they really make a concerted effort to make you a satisfied customer. I've always come away happy.

At this point I think you're right, flow rate is adjustable per extruder with a recommended value of .9-1.1 and that may well be the mechanism to adjust the Steps/mm. I've been trying to sniff through the code to really understand what the relationship between flow rate and feed rate is. They don't ...

Good description! Thanks!! The more I work with it , the more I want to mod the LCD menu. The FR setting is global (X,Y,Z,E), I'd _really_ like to have controls on the LCD/encoder to mod the flow rate of the Extruders individually (or even as a pair via steps/mm, but if I'm going to hack it, might a...

Wow, you folks with the clean shops make me nervous

image.jpg

How confident are you in your calibrations? The X axis shifting looks a lot like calibration issues and the globbing could be as well. has basic calibration instructions, holler if more would help.

I hated everything I tried until I started using . It's a lot easier to learn than it seems at first and you can do real work with only a few lines of code.

Try it, you'll like it!

NOTE: This article is the third in a series documenting the conversion of my Printrbot Plus V1 to Dual Extrusion. Along the way, Printrbot released their beta solution for Dual Extrusion, making some aspects of this effort (notably the Ramps 1.4 controller board,) redundant. This article is relevan...

Looks sweet!!!

I'm switching my rig back to the Printrboard + Extrudrboard with the new Printrbot LCD. It'll be interesting to see how the firmware issues aply.

My first guess would be inadequate current settings for the z steppers.

Wouldn't hurt to lube the lead screws (I use lithium grease.)

I only see shavings like this after I scrape them out of my hob. It looks like they're falling out of the hob (at least for the most part,) by themselves for you. The shavings may just be the hob biting into the filament. How much of the hob is staying filled with filament (as opposed to discharging...

Just to make sure we're on the same page, extruder calibration measures the filament going into the extruder, not the actual extruded filament itself. A delta of that much is certainly possible, I've been that much off before. I tend to measure it it 20mm or 30mm increments but 100 mm should be even...

I've been running a good bit of HIPS (purchased from Amazon ) through my Printrbot/Ubis. I've bought both 3mm and 1.75, running them through my 3mm stock Wade's extruder and my secondary 1.75mm Bowden extruder. I've been treating them just like ABS, heating the head to 235C. Slightly oozier than the...

Thanks! I found that the additional mass of the Bowden setup (hot end, adapter, extended carriage) really made no difference to the effective inertial mass (it's more, but not enough more to make a difference.) Dual bowdens is definitely the lightest/fastest approach. My concern, and it's turning ou...

The current adjustment should be easier than it sounds. Each of the motor drivers on the Printrboard has a tiny trim pot. http://d17kynu4zpq5hy.cloudfront.net/igi/printrbot/NLpQMUhoMrkZdjp4.medium Use a jewler's flathead screwdriver to turn it (in pretty small increments, say 30 degrees clockwise.) ...

If multiple machines and USB cables have all declined to connect, you're narrowing it down to the Printrboard. Just as a last review, do you feel really good about all the power connectors (and other connectors for than matter,) on the Printrboard? Is the ATX jumper correctly in place (you mention g...

Good catch on the troubleshooting. Bummer on the PSU. But, better it fails now than in the last 10 minutes of a three hour print

(been there.)
good luck!

Interesting! I've only used it as a support material so far. The physical properties don't seem to offer it much advantage over ABS as a primary material. The more I read about it, the more it seems like the big advantage is that it's cheap (which certainly isn't true about it in filament form!) I'm...

Wow! That's serious scorching. I know that one of the spools of ABS I bought is utter crap, so there can be variance. The amount of moisture that the spool has absorbed can make a huge difference. If it was stored badly before shipping, that can be a big issue. The water will boil in the plastic at ...

by the way, great quality photos!

I've just recently started using the hidden power of Pronterface macros. This is very clever and going to be added to my installation tonight!

my Plus V1 had this problem and it was the motor mount
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2684

Normally, it would be the set of things RetireeJay is describing, but...

Here's a Printrboard image from RetireeJay with the fan connector labelled: http://www.printrbottalk.com/forum/download/file.php?id=2745&t=1 (from this topic: http://www.printrbottalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3922) Most smaller 12V PC fans will work. 40-60mm fans are the most popular. T...

I'm kinda thrown off by the video spending 4 times as much time talking about the cute animal faces on the extruder front (and how they want folks to vote on them,) than the technical capabilities of the extruder itself. But I supppose they had to put something in the video without giving away all t...

Which Printrbot model are you working with? (that will help in giving specific advice.) In general, the problem with the extruder ending up off the front of the board has to do with how you've set the Y-End Stop screw. You should be able to give it a few turns and make it stop the Y motion such that...

There are several videos in their campaign info. One does a great job of explaining the technical features of the extrudes and how they work. You can find it under the "read more" section http://youtu.be/Ze8ygZSUL_Y Thanks, that helped a lot. But am I confused, or does this design not sup...

like all your setups, it looks great! (I especially like the micro-fire extinguisher!)

I'm trying to flash my Printrboard with the new Marlin unified firmware. I'm on a linux box and have failed trying either of two methods. First I verify through lsusb that I'm seeing the board in boot loader mode: Bus 005 Device 038: ID 03eb:2ffb Atmel Corp. at90usb AVR DFU bootloader 1. From Binary...

This looks to be the same problem as described in this thread .

I hope I don't have to buy a special programmer, but that may be what's next.

Thanks, I've had no problem getting into Bootloader mode. I verify with: Bus 005 Device 038: ID 03eb:2ffb Atmel Corp. at90usb AVR DFU bootloader from lsusb per docs. My problem is that the lock bits are set. But I've finally gotten the new firmware burned onto my Bus Pirate to let it talk to avrdude...

For the Rev. D, the normal operation mode is no jumper. To enter BootLoader, a jumper is placed across the two pins. This is the opposite of all prior boards and causes no end to the amount of documentation grief. It's pretty straightforward in Linux to see the difference with lsusb (Response reads ...

Wow. After 25+ hours of working at this, it appears that I've burned new firmware. I had to use my (phenomenal) Bus Pirate as an AVR programmer. Which was, of course, the new V4 Bus Pirate and needed a firmware upgrade to do avr programming. this unlocked the chip: avrdude -c buspirate -P com16 -p a...

Have you gotten anywhere with this? After upgrading my firmware on my Rev D. Printrbot Plus V1, I get the same behavior if I attach the Extrudrboard. It will home the axis, but anything else results in: Printer stopped due to errors. Fix the error and use M999 to restart. (Temperature is reset. Set ...

I went through 25+ hours of madness getting my firmware updated to the latest on my Printrboard Rev D. That's all working great. But when I plug in my Extrudrboard, I get the same problem as described in http://www.printrbottalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4063 . The bot will home the axis, b...

Interesting. A thermistor into the third extruder plug? I have my second extruder/heater/thermistor plugged into the first of the two connections (aka the second extruder connection set,) but nothing else but power and the ribbon cable. Are there docs that describe the additional thermistor you're n...

Thanks!! I watched most of the second video (the parts that seemed relevant to just the Extrudrboard and LCD, but not the Printrbot stock extruder kit.). But I didn't watch the other two. I get really impatient watching videos. They're so linear. My learning style betrays me with them. I can spend u...

I watched the videos (which was like chewing glass.) I burned the specific firmware (Printrbot-LCD-Extrudr-Firmware) in case the latest Marlin I was using was wrong. I'm still struggling with a critical work/no-work app note like the third thermistor thing being tacked onto the end of a video. I onl...

I whipped up a 100K Ohm resistor with the proper plug and plugged it into the third thermistor port. I still couldn't get the Extrudrboard to work. I compiled and flashed the latest Marlin firmware, it's more recent than the special LCD/Extrudrboard version, says it supports the LCD and I wanted sou...

Though I'm not exactly sure which part fixed this, I got it working and talked about the details in this thread:

I just traced every pin on the LCD and there aren't any shorts. It's a _very_ simple board and I'm really familiar with the standard 16x2 LCD. When I plug it in, the backlight comes on, Row 0 and Row 2 go solid black. The printrboard loses it's ability to provide a COM port. It's kinda acting like i...

I'm with you. Funny you should ask that, I just spent the last 7 hours making the spreadsheet below. This is based on the firmware at https://github.com/Printrbot/Marlin Google Doc Version pins.jpg I still see potential problems with the LCD Enable and LCD RS mappings. I'm thinking they should be to...

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