MBot raft vs. hairspray

[Karrly K]

Hi guys,

does anyone has a working setting for printing a good raft that won't print super slow and become a very solid layer?
Because this is exactly what my rafts printed with the standard MBot profile is...
It is not a web of two or three layers of thin lines but a solid plate. It is actually impossible to remove something printed from it.
Any solutions or good settings?


Another thing.
I've read a few times hairspray makes the first layer very sticky.
I tried it and i works awesome!
For Christmas i printed some stars and the points of them stick to the bed very well with hairspray.
You should probably try it ;)

Oh. you should be careful with it when spraying it on the bed. Don't let too much of it get on the metal pipes from the z-axis. They might get gluey so that the z-movments won't work properly.

best regards

K

[Giga Faze]

The raft being a solid plate, never heard of that. The raft is actually some kind of algorithm with a wide degree of customization. This is done in the slicing profile. I am using an edited Replicator 2 profile. To do this in ReplicatorG, go to GCode/Edit Slicing Profiles. The top one should be Replicator 2. Hit edit and another panel will come up. This panel is explained step by step in the ReplicatorG documentation but it can be challenging. Click on the Craft tab, look at all the buttons and there will be one labeled Raft. This is where the Raft can be fine tuned. This is the documentation on the Makerbot site. It is for an earlier version than ReplicatorG40 but the description of the Raft setting is mostly the same:

http://www.makerbot.com/support/replicatorg/documentation/skeinforge/

Also, make sure the profile is saved or it will seem like the settings didn't "take". My experience is closing out of this causes ReplicatorG to lock up. I just go to the Task Manager, shut it down, then restart, sometimes needing a reboot. Then, when Generate Gcode is started, in the panel that pops up, the top little line should say Replicator2, which is the profile just edited. Below is a line called Print-o-matic and that should be checked. That tells the Gcode generator to use this profile setting.

I have found out the ReplicatorG/Skeinforge default is to turn Skirt off. Skirt is basically a line that goes around the base of your part. It helps in many ways, first, to show a boundary around your part build area. It also helps to keep parts down and it helps getting parts off the table. The other setting I found is set to off by default is the Preview analysis. This will show your part layer by layer and there is some way to animate it, haven't messed around with that yet.

A lot of people are searching for other software, which is out there, but the point of the new software is make it easier for the user with more settings made automatic. This can mean it is good generally but poor at handling special conditions. On the Makerbot forums, the more pro level guys prefer ReplicatorG/Skeinforge over Makerware because of the wide range of customization. Hope this helps. 

[Karrly K]

thank you giga faze for your long answer.
I know what a raft should look like and i know how to work with skeinforge.
My Default settings from mbot just do not generate a normal raft.

Could you upload a picture of your raft values in skeinforge so i could compare them with mine?

Thanks;)

[Giga Faze]

Are you using the Replicator2 slicer or the Mbot slicer profile? I didn't use the Mbot ReplicatorG installer. I am at firmware 5.2, python 2.7 and ReplicatorG040, which is not recommended for firmware lower than 5.6.  Too long of a story to explain my path to getting to this configuration but that is why I am using an edited Replicator2 profile. The Mbot is a Replicator clone but it is closer to a Replicator 2 with 2X capabilities. I found python 3.0 with ReplicatorG040 to be very unstable. The important thing is use the machine type driver for Mbot3D.  The attached is my raft screen settings for this edited Replicator2 profile.  I haven't gone through and try to understand each and every parameter setting but looking at this raft setting, it sounds like the infill density is set to 1 which would be 100%.

[Jokah.D]

The reason the raft is solid (I've noted the same thing) is because you are printing a 2 colour object (dual extrusion)

If you look at the generated gcode, you will find that 2 rafts (1 for each extruder) are being printed in the same Z space.

This is why they say not to use a raft with dual extrusion as they haven't worked out or at least haven't written a piece of code when merging the stl files for dual extrusion that makes one raft fit the area for both and omit the smaller one.

For a single object this would be fairly simple to code but for a group of dual extruded objects spaced out on the bed, it'd be a bit more of a challenge as you wouldn't really want the entire bed covered with one raft.

On a side note,  I need a little help myself. I had Rep'G installed and working with an Mbot Cube slicer profile, it stopped working, I uninstalled (deleted) and re-installed but now I have no MBot Cube slicer profile. Any ideas guys?

[Karrly K]

Hi Jokah,

thank you for your answer. That was the solution for the problem. 

That post was quiet old, i changed my profile from dual to single to test it and it works now.

But in the meantime i started to use MakerWare which works pretty good for me ;)

Regarding to your question...

Do you use Windows or Mac?

And do you mean the Slicing profiles in Rep'G? When you uninstall the program you probably need to paste the folder containing the MBot profile in the skeinforge_application folder. At least this had to be done on my Mac.

There is a download link on the mbot3d-website (http://www.mbot3d.com/pages/software) "For Mac where the engine and machine files could be downloaded...

good luck ;)

[b...@magicfirm.com]

there is also a new software :Mprint   ,you will get better raft with this software  (http://www.mbot3d.com/pages/software)

在 2014年6月30日星期一UTC+8下午10时25分52秒，Karrly K写道：

[b...@magicfirm.com]

there is also a new software :Mprint   ,you will get better raft with this software  (http://www.mbot3d.com/pages/software)

在 2014年6月30日星期一UTC+8下午10时25分52秒，Karrly K写道：

Hi Jokah,

[musician1928]

I just print directly onto blue painter's tape and have no issues with the print not sticking.

Cheers,

John