My experience so far was sending designs off for others to to print at places like Shapeways or Sculpteo or finding someone else who has a printer for hire through xyzmake. I have seen plenty of 3D printers at conferences and even had the privilege of being at Swanton Elementary School when the day they unpacked and tested their first 3D printer. My research lead me to understand that there was a lot of "adjusting" and "tweaking" necessary to end up with quality prints. So I was a bit nervous about the next steps.
Step 67 ended rather humorously and then sent me to a the next Getting Started Guide which suggested I download Repetier software and proceeded to offer screenshots of how to configure the software for your first print. Replicating each setting in the 5 pages of screenshots gave me a tour of the software, but also made me very aware of how much more there was to learn. A slight thrill came over me as the x, y, and z axis all moved when performing the initial test as directed in the guide. The temperature graph showed that the extruder was heating up on command. (smiling)
THIS DID NOT SEEM RIGHT! Seemed there had to be more than this. What about the print head? Where should it start? Surely there must be some directions about calibration somewhere. I reread the guide and found none. A sense of anxiety came over me. What was I thinking "trying such a project" in a 'bus' parked out in the middle of Texas. It's not like I could drag it into the local "genius" bar and ask for help. It was getting late and I didn't want to go to bed feeling anxious, so I decided to "go for it" and hit RUN as instructed. Yeah- filament started to squirt out! Boo - none of it stuck to the print bed and instead globbed up around the tip of the extruder. What to do? There were no instructions on what to do if that happened.. but looking around the software I found a "KILL JOB" button! Phew! The printer stopped! Exhausted by the long day of building filled with 'creative tension' of so much new learning, I decided that I could head to bed knowing that the day had been a success! The printer worked! And filament was coming out! And my hunch that their was a missing piece to these instructions was spot on! Tomorrow I would tackle that step!
...... next day
The first step was getting the blog of filament off the print head. Thankfully it came off easy enough. I did lots of poking around the Internet looking for answers. Armed with just enough knowledge to enter some key words into Google Search, I skimmed resource after resource picking up new terminology each time. RichRap's blog post on slicer offered lots of pointers, but felt a little over my head for this stage in the game. But I saved them for a later time when I have more experience and am ready to tackle the granular advice offered by Rich.
- Slic3r is Nicer - Part 3 - How low can you go?
- Slic3r is Nicer - Part 2 - filament and printing
- Slic3r is Nicer - Part 1 - Settings and Extruder C...
Just as the "I'm not smart enough for this" anxiety started to rise I discovered JOSH!
I followed his advice step by step, starting with adding blue painters tape to the print bed. When there were discrepancies in the Prntrbot documentation and his directions (i.e. 4800 for feedrate vs 500) I chose to follow his specs. Moved the extruder so the X and Y axis appeared to be front and left, and brought the z axis motor so that a sheet of paper slid through with a little friction. Then we calibrated the extruder feed rate by marking off some filament and sending 10 mm at a time through the printer. The extruder feed didn't even need adjusting, but it was good to see that Josh offered all the "math" necessary to make the adjustment should we need them. (I'm keeping those formulas handy).
Here is the short video peak at my first print.
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