First print from my Mendel90 kit from @nop_head This was printing the g-code included in the kit after leveling the bed. It was very nice to have pre-sliced g-code to try so I could print something before getting slicing figured out. The kit is excellent and I think it is a great way to get started with 3d printing. Having skeinforge profiles provided with the kit was a great help as well.
I am.just getting to this point. However I decided to ditch skeinforge and pronterface. I am using slicer/cura and repeiter
@Camerin_hahn I am interested in trying the other options as well. Since pronterface/skeinforge are working, I’m learning more about those for now. When you get your mendel90 config for those worked out, can you post them someplace? I’m still quite lost in all of the skeinforge settings, and I’m not sure if I will ever care about a good number of them.
I really recomend Slic3r or cura. You will get G-code out of it, makes life easier
I like Slic3r on my Mendel 90, never got cura working (although I didn’t try to hard.) @Camerin_hahn , care to share your setup procedure / config files (if applicable) for cura?
Working on Getting cura to work. I am having problems with every time I home my z the printer dives too far, like presses against the glass. I.have adjusted the z height several times (now at 195) each time or seems to be different
yeah I had the same issue. From what I understand, unless you redo @nop_head 's design to do the more typical z limit switch at bottom, cura won’t work. I hope they’ve updated the software to accommodate this design choice, as I agree with the Mendel 90 design.
@Anthony_White What is good about the z stop on the top.
Looking at the printer, it would be really easy to make it a standard z stop
Whether the limit is at the top or the bottom makes no difference whatsoever to the slicer. It is handle by the firmware during homing. After that Z=0 is on the glass. The slicer should start at Z = the layer height.
I have printed with Cura and had no problems with Z. The only problem is the dimensions of the objects come out wrong.
There are some big prices you are paying however. For instance adding a minute or so to low z height prints. the head crashes into the bed more often. leveling the bed is really painful. I i would ague that you are more likely to have a mishap homing at the top then at the bottom. By homing at the top you must have the firmware set perfectly, by homing at the bottom the only time you should have a problem is if the Zmax is set improperly and you are running a print that is larger then the print volume.
@nop_head I am only having problems getting my z working. Cura is working fine with the my machine. Once i get the Z set properly i will be good to go
(edit: repetier doesn’t like 0,0 being the center however.)
There is no time lost because the bed heats while Z lowers and cools while it rises at the end.
A crash at the top will break things. A crash into the bed is harmless as it lifts the carriage off the nuts. Also it never happens if you follow the calibration procedure because the soft limit stops it going below 0 when the correct axis length is entered into the firmware.
All slicers work with 0,0 in the middle. You have to configure that and many other things before you can use them.
@nop_head assuming you actually are using the heated be fore every print you do not loose time. However if you are printing pla and do not need the heated bed for many things, then you are loosing time, i would argue that if you were to make the threaded rods shorter then you rail by 3-5mm there is no risk of a crash at the top, the nut would just unthread similar to things happening at the bottom. No risk for damage
And hosts. There are examples in the manual.
the repetier problem is not at all a design issue, they are not placing the object properly (i set the printer up properly and it doesn’t adjust the location of 0,0 properly.)
Once you set your Z properly it shouldn’t change. Once there you can set a ‘Z offset’ in Slic3r. When I switch from PLA to ABS my bed height changes by the thickness of the painters tape … Store a printer profile in Slic3r for each material and you are done