WHAT A FANTASTIC PRINTER!!!
My new MK3 kit came two days before Christmas, a present from me to me. I spent about the next four days doing family Christmas things and slow assembly of the printer.
Things went well with the self test and test printing of a Prusa sign and Benchy. Now the big project started. I began the dome and sphere for a T&M copy of the Star Wars droid BB-8 ( http://bb8builders.club/forum/ ).
The dome came out well. You can see my progress with the inner sphere of the ball. It will be made of 24 almost triangular pieces bolted together. Each triangle takes about 8 to ten hours of printing. After dialing everything in, they are coming out perfectly. The machine continues to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
My maintenance schedule is (and I'm not saying this is the best or should be copied): after the first day and once each week after that, I check the tightness of the belt pulley set screws for tightness. With a clean cloth I wipe each of the axis rods. I also put a single drop of light machine oil on my finger and wipe this on each of the rods and a drop on each of the screws of the Z axis. Extreme care is used to make sure I don't drop oil on the heating bed (Nothing would stick to it if that happened) or belts.
To Josef Prusa and his elves: The printer is working great! Thank you. Now that I have Josef's attention I have a couple of comments and questions.
1) The assembly went well. While I was waiting for the printer kit to come I read all the instructions and comments on the forum. Seeing other peoples comments and problems made me more aware of areas that need my undivided attention during the build so I didn't repeat other's mistakes.
2) I would like to see a list of parts and prices for replacement parts. This list could be parts that I can buy from Prusa or from a third party. I am going to wear out or mistakenly break something and it's important to me that I fix it with “approved” Prusa parts. There is no need for me to reinvent any of his parts.
3) The rails that the bearings ride on are showing wear. I will need to replace them with hardened, accurately center-less ground rods.
4) As a Mechanical Engineer, your “Printer Farm” intrigues me and I would love to know more about it.
1. Are these machines identical to the ones we receive? If not..what are the differences?
2. What maintenance is performed each day to keep everything running properly?
3. What wears out or shows distress first, second and third? And after how many hours of printing?
4. Does the “filament out” and “power lost” features work on your machines?
5. When things settle down, what features are you thinking about for the next machines?
6. Most importantly.... THANK YOU VERY MUCH. You have produced the industry standard.
Re: WHAT A FANTASTIC PRINTER!!!
I guess I spoke too soon 😉 .
After a long time of round the clock printing with no problems I went out for an hour. When I came back the printer had stopped at about 8 hours of an eleven hour print with the display reading fan error. Everything else seemed correct. Restarting the print was impossible because the nozzle was way too high.
I cleaned the bed off and started two small 55 minute prints. Both printed with no problem.
I notice now that the nozzle temperature is varying. The target temp is 210 but the actual is reading 207 to 211. Originally the actual would be dead on the required temp.
Your thoughts? A failing wire? How to test for it? Wiggling (a scientific test) the wire does not cause the reading to change.
Re: WHAT A FANTASTIC PRINTER!!!
Your thoughts? A failing wire? How to test for it? Wiggling (a scientific test) the wire does not cause the reading to change.
i just had my first fan error happen right now. the part cooling fan seems to work, for me, it paused, moved up 20mm and i selected resume print in the menu, it resumed, and went back to printing just fine after it heated back up.
Re: WHAT A FANTASTIC PRINTER!!!
Thanks Matthew, I didn't think of resuming because the nozzle was not just moved to the side, it was also raised up. Perhaps thats my mistake for not trying resume.
Were your nozzle temperatures varying a lot (more than a degree or two)?
Re: WHAT A FANTASTIC PRINTER!!!
When i got to it, it was cooled off, assumed it canceled, but the x axis was still locked so i tried resume. mine went to the same position as yours, left and up 20mm. i noticed the prusa PET profile i loaded had auto cooling checked. maybe caused my issue? my temps seem steady.