NopHead Mendel90 Build (KISSlicer and PVA)
Just thought I’d let you guys know how I was getting on with my Mendel90 build and what I’ve learnt so far, hopefully it can help other first timers like myself building the kit…
Firstly the kit is fantastic, my congratulation to @nop_head for a great kit with excellent instructions. The build all went according to plan and it worked first time, I recommend the kit to any beginners looking to construct a printer themselves as everything you need is included and it “just works”. Just one quick note on the build, I didn’t have a dial gauge to level the bed so I used a standard set of car spark-plug feeler gauges under the nozzle. It took a while to get right but worked out in the end.
At first I had real big problems with my PLA prints. I just couldn’t get any bed adhesion (to the glass) and it almost always resulted in the material getting caught up and dragged around by the extruder. I solved this using the PVA method, I just brush on a little dilute PVA before the build, switch on the bed heaters using pronterface/printrun and wait for the PVA to dry to a fine mist. Using this technique I now get pretty much a 100% success rate. You can adjust how much “stick” you want by how dilute you make the PVA.
For my slicer, at first I used Skeinforge as configured by nop head and although I got good results with it, I found it very slow to slice, and some STL files I downloaded wouldn’t slice at all. This combined with the fact I found the interface quite unintuitive caused me to look around at other slicers and eventually I settled on KISSlicer. This was a turning point for me, whilst it took a while to get KISSlicer right for my printer (if people think it would be useful to have my config files let me know and I will post them) I found the interface much more intuitive and nicer to use than Skeinforge and I have achieved great results with it.
Overall its been many many hours sometimes even a little frustrating, but now I have a working solution I’m looking forward to producing some great things
Did you try heating your bed to around 60c before putting pva? You can also use blue painters tape. Also be sure to clean any surface with alcohol before printing, except for the pva of course. I used to print on kapton at 60c but now use a PVA glue stick with no heat. It works really well and doesn’t take as long to start printing
Yeah that’s what I was trying at first. At the moment I’m using 70 degrees (actually 55 once you account for the 15 degree drop through the glass) and PVA.
The printed pieces come out very well when the bed is cold. The hairspray a bit of acetone or alcohol does a good job leaving the work surface nice and clean.
Hmmm may have spoken too soon. One print worked but I can’t get one to work since. I might have to try a different brand. I think the other half has some fancy stuff which may be the problem.
I use cheapest extra strong hair spray I can find and 99% success rate. Well very high. The bed temperature for abs is 80. If you find that it doesn’t adhere too well, give is a second spray layer. I normally spray before heating the bed.
Whenever I read about people’s extrusions not sticking, I wonder what I’m doing differently. I’m printing pla on bare glass and have never had a problem with sticking. When hot, prints stick so well I could never pull them off. But when the glass cools, they pop off like magic.
I’ve literally just gone out and bought some acetone so I’m gonna try cleaning the glass with that first and see how it goes bare. @Max_Tepermeister what PLA and bed temps are you running?
The Faberdashery filament provided with the kit should stick to bare glass. I have never used glue or anything sticky for PLA, just squeaky clean glass free of any grease or contaminant.
For me I’m using @nop_head recommendations for Faberdashery. Bed sensor reads 70 but in reality its 55 (as the sensor is below the glass), extruder is at 185. It seems to work really well with those settings as you can see here, just the print isn’t sticking to the bed too well: https://plus.google.com/109352235257103413028/posts/D4xvPobmtwm
