3D printing noob here. Any tips and suggestions are appreciated.
Ok so for a long time I’ve wanted to get a 3d printer and I finally pulled the trigger. I didn’t get anything crazy just a cheap one from eBay (I generally buy cheap stuff first to see if it’s something I should invest money in) and I’m just starting to get to know it. I’ve tried printing stuff a couple times and ran into some issues but I currently have it printing something. I’ve had to increase the nozzle temp and slow down the speed just to get it to work at all. This of course makes this thing take forever. If anyone would be interested in giving some tips or asking questions, I’d really appreciate it. If you need any specs, please let me know and I’ll post them.
@Jonas_G That’s me! Lol. Yes I am using PLA (that’s what it came with). Currently I’m running the extruder at 220 and the bed at 60 but I’m still playing with temps as I’m not always getting a smooth bead. I tried to print a calibration cube last night and it started out ok but after a little while I came back and the plastic had stopped coming out so I upped it to 220 Instead of the 200 I had it on. As for speed I think it’s set for 60mm/s but that was obviously too fast. It was dragging the plastic all over the place so I reduced the speed to 50% and while working better, I still am not able to get a print out yet. Also, I can’t seem to figure out how to connect the printer directly to my PC. There is a setting somewhere that I must be missing and so I’ve just been printing via SD card.
While I’m on the subject, the GT2560 doesn’t have a bootloader so out of the box you can’t flash an updated firmware (which is annoying as also the firmware has write enable disabled for updating steps values etc), if you get to the point where you want to update the firmware you’ll need to do this: http://www.geeetech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27978
You can get away without flashing the firmware if you really don’t want to, but when you work out your step values etc, you’ll want to have those setting set in post gcode when you generate your gcode for the sdcard.
On mine, the only step values that were right were the X and the Z, the Y was slightly wrong and the extruder step value was wrong also.
Took me a while to realise that the nozzle wasn’t actually .4mm also, it was actually .45mm and until I set that correctly I kept getting weird over extrusion issues.
On mine the SDCard reader, doesn’t work. All the rest of the display board functionality works, but it won’t actually read SDCard contents.
It’s not an issue for me as I have a Raspberry Pi mounted behind the display board PCB running OctoPi as a 3d print server, (sits quite nicely).
Other than that, I’m frankly quite suprised at the quality I can get out of it, it’s really quite cheap, but actually gives a consistent print.
@Kevin_Danger_Powers hey buddy! Have a twitter by any chance? You can DM me there and I’ll get you on your feet. I owned a printer similar to yours, so any issues you are having Ive probably experienced and know a solution to. I also know how to get your printer working on computer, one of my favorite methods of printing. It’s a lot of information but if you can find me on twitter @DaJuicyMoose I can help you out. If you can’t DM then tweet at me so I can follow you. If you aren’t a twitter person let me know and I’ll just enter it all here.
@Kevin_Danger_Powers for tethering to a windows computer all you should need is a program called pronterface, when you have it installed you go to the COM port and select a port where your printer is. You can just guess it but if you use a lot of ports it may be of interest to go to your device manager and it will list its COM. Once you have that, hit the connect button right next to it. Now the buttons and all you may notice it becomes a bit clearer to see now and if you take a look at the window to the far right it should say “connected”. If at this step it fails maker sure your COM is correct, be sure your printer is connected via USB. Be sure your build plate is clear and now you can mess around with the buttons the speeds basically the printer is now enslaved to the computer and will follow whatever you tell it to. I think the rest is self explanatory, but if you want to print using pronterface then slice a gcode through your normal slicer and through pronterface load it. Now there should be a preview of the file and when you hit print it will begin the gcode. You can manually pause it too through pronterface which could help in some situations. Timing is sometimes a bit off, first layer will be way off for time, but after the third or fourth it will begin to be more accurate. This is caused because the first layer settings normally manually override the speed settings and pronterface looks at how fast the printer is printing and bases the time off of that. Did I lose you yet? Haha! Let me know if there’s anything you are confused or stuck on. It’s a journey!
@JuicyMoose_Productio that seems to make sense but to I need to use this pronterface? It just seems like an extra program and I haven’t heard of anyone else using it.
A lot of people use it, it’s purpose is to use your printer without needing the SD port. There’s also repetier host but I haven’t really used that as much.
@JuicyMoose_Productio So I followed your instructions and it’s not connecting. It keeps getting denied. The program only gave me 2 options and I tried all of them and all of the baud rates but none of them worked. idk what the issue is…
@Kevin_Danger_Powers does it get stuck? Or does it within a second fail? It could also be a driver issue, if you know how to, go to device manager and install/“update” drivers and it should pick up.
