4 days with the Jaycar TL4100 Delta Printer

[Jason Ball]

Last weekend I picked up one of these from Jaycar at there clearance sale, they dropped the price to the point I was willing to take the risk and... so I did.

Starting out, the assembly manual is _terrible_,  The instructions aren't overly clear with a reasonable amount of chinese-english and the photos don't help with the more complex parts such as the extruder head.   There are several sites where people have added additional information and I highly recommend looking at these.  Other than the instruction manual and a thermistor issue (that one's my fault) the kit is reasonably well made and straight forward to assemble. 

One gotcha is the cabling from the extruder head needs to be threaded through the mounting block, and the hole for this is _tight_.   I've inadvertently damaged the wire to the thermistor at this stage and have now ordered replacement parts from AliExpress.   The thermisor has been jury rigged for now but it won't last, se la vie.

One of the early prints didn't look all that promising, lots going on here:

So after:

* PID Tuning

* Bed Levelling

* Extruder Tuning

We have:

Its almost difficult to believe it's the same object...

A minor change to correct the pollowing and it's better.  I haven't identified the cause of the minor layer misalignment yet, but I will.   It's time to re-tighten everything anyway as it wouldn't take much to cause this artifact.

I may need to borrow some time from somebody with more experience in 3d printing at some point, for now I'm happy with this printer as it's starting to tune up nicely.   How it lasts over the long term has yet to be seen.

J.

--

--

Teach your kids Science, or somebody else will :/

ja...@ball.net
vk2...@google.com

callsign: vk2vjb

[James Campbell]

Working at Jaycar, ive seen a few returned because they turn the printer off while its hot.
The extruder MUST be below 100° before turning off otherwise the PTFE liner will melt and block the nozzle.

The belts don't need cable ties, you can slot both ends into the toothed plastic on top of one another and I would recommend doing that.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Robots & Dinosaurs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sydney-hackspace+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sydney-hackspace@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sydney-hackspace.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Darryl Adams]

I also damaged the thermistor on my new printer, or at least I think it has as it reports -24c.

Joy. 3d printers are fun!

[kris]

or have you got a machine that prints ice scuplutures?

[Jason Ball]

Thanks for that warning re the ptfe insert James.

The printer is nicely dialed in now and printing with more accuracy than i anticipated.    As per home workshop standards the first real print was a part for the home workshop...

I need to order more filament.

[Jason Ball]

One note..

The cable from the power supply to the controller is undersized for the length of cable and power needed when all three steppers, heated bed, extruder and blower are running.  

I was having issues maintaing the temperature on the extruder with the blower running.   i swapped out the included cable for some 13awg i had I the scrap box and the power issues are gone.

I actually dont like the location of the power supply and will eventually change this, for now this solves one problem.

J.

[Jason Ball]

> The extruder MUST be below 100° before turning off otherwise the PTFE liner will melt and block the nozzle.

Its not a lot of PTFE in there is it.  I dismantled the print head to assess the suitability for nylon, sadly the ptfe contacts with the hot end so it isn't suitable for temps beyond 240C as the liner would start to break down.

it does look like it would a simple enough upgrade to one of the E3D v6 all metal hot ends though ;)

Cheers.

--

The era of procrastination, of half measures of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to an end. In it's place we are entering a period of  consequences.  - Winston Churchill
<a href=http://www.climatecrisis.net/downloads/ecards/preview-glacier1.html>An Inconvenient Truth</a>

[Darryl Adams]

They are cheap and plentiful at your favourite Chinese web retailer, they are almost disposable. E3D and their ilk are also easy to replace the heads, nozels and electric bits, especially compared to the UP.

However, if you want to do the more exotic materials I would strongly sugest looking at a new extruder. Especially if using flexible filliament, the average Bowden's is not up to the job.

Angus over at Makers Muse did a review of a not cheep but we'll engineered extruder that can be dialed in nicely for different filliament.

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Robots & Dinosaurs" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sydney-hackspace/iWwQgmpy72U/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to sydney-hackspace+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Jason Ball]

After a couple of months this little printer is still going hard.   

The only real upgrades are:

* build-tak mat

* lots of thread lock compound, especially on the axis adjustments which constantly self-adjust if you don't use it.

* Humidity controlled box for storing PLA/PET filament. 

The 'current' project on the basis of 'because I can', at a 0.5 scale as the full sized components don't fit this printer.   IF this works I'll likely commit to a full size replica ;) which, of course, would require a larger printer...

To be honest I'm quiet happy with the Jaycar TL4100 for the price (warehouse sale special) and somewhat surprised at the accuracy of this printer once it's all setup... admittedly the setup is a pain...

 

[James Campbell]

Taren Point Jaycar has a Velleman K8200 kit in the back room thats going for $415 in the system