introductions

[jet]

introduce yourself here, please!

[Jason]

wow seems that there are more people around here than i though!

On Nov 6, 12:01 pm, jet <allartbu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> introduce yourself here, please!

[Marty McGuire]

Hi! I'll do an introduction.

I'm Marty McGuire, a research programmer at CMU. By day, I manage
servers and build websites and tools for studying privacy online. By
night, I am a council person at HackPittsburgh (hackpgh.org), getting
into all sorts of electronics, crafting, software, learning, etc.
HackPittsburgh inspired me to suck it up and purchase a MakerBot, and
so in September I got MakerBot #131 up and running!

I've been having a lot of fun printing stuff from Thingiverse
(thingiverse.com) and tweaking the bot's settings to get better
prints. Now, I'm looking to try and learn some 3D modeling skills and
start making things of my own! I'm particularly excited about
projects like OpenSCAD (http://openscad.org/), which brings some nice
precise mathematical and programming aspects to making 3D objects by
combining, subtracting, and intersecting primitive shapes, imported
models, and extruded 2D DXF files.

I look forward to meeting other reprap/repstrap folks in Pittsburgh
and get some community going! I recommend we try to meet at
HackPittsburgh sometime soon, preferably in a week or so when we have
our heat working. :)

--Marty

[Jason]

Hi, I'm Jason. my makerbot has been having a few problems and i was
wondering if there was anyone around the pittsburgh/Sewickley area
that could give me a hand.
Thanks
-Jason

[jet]

I'm on the other side of PGH, but if you describe your problems maybe we
can do some telemedicine...

--jet

--
J. E. 'jet' Townsend, IDSA
Design, Fabrication, Hacking
design: www.allartburns.org; hacking: www.flatline.net; HF: KG6ZVQ
PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8

[Jason Evanko]

That might work too

-Jason

[Rick Pollack]

Hi All -

I'm on the east side of Cleveland (Shaker Heights), have two working MakerBots, parts for a 3rd (being slowly built) plus lots of misc parts. I also run MakerGear.com.

Rick

[Jason]

Hey all
Is there anyone that i could meet with or talk to, to do some
final tuning on my makerbot? I almost have it working but there are a
few things that i have just hit a dead end on what i need to do to fix
it.
-Jason

On Nov 10, 9:41 pm, Rick Pollack <rick.poll...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All -
>
> I'm on the east side of Cleveland (Shaker Heights), have two working
> MakerBots, parts for a 3rd (being slowly built) plus lots of misc parts. I
> also run MakerGear.com.
>
> Rick
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Jason Evanko <samidge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That might work too
>
> > -Jason
>

[jet]

Jason wrote:
> Hey all
> Is there anyone that i could meet with or talk to, to do some
> final tuning on my makerbot? I almost have it working but there are a
> few things that i have just hit a dead end on what i need to do to fix
> it.

Sure, I'm around most of the week. Usually on AIM (burnyourart) and
trying to spend more time on IRC #makerbot.

[Jason Evanko]

That works. I'm On aim most of the time (samidget10).

-Jason

[jet]

What sort of problems are you having?

[Jason Evanko]

Mainly the raft and such not sticking.

-Jason

[jet]

Jason Evanko wrote:
> Mainly the raft and such not sticking.

some things to try:

1) throw away the foamcore and use the acrylic print platform

2) Make sure you're at the right temp. If you have a 1mm thermistor,
use the 1mm thermistor table I put together:
http://www.flatline.net/journal/2009/12/28/thermistortable-for-1mm-thermistors/

3) The print head needs to smush the plastic into the print surface for
the raft. I probably made 20-30 prints before I got to where I could
visually set the print head at the right height, and even then I often
use the belt to move the z platform up/down tiny amounts as the raft is
starting to print.

[Jason Evanko]

I've been using the acrylic platform and it seems to be sticking
nicely. But the edges of the 1st raft fold up and when it goes back
over the extruder pulls it up. I've also been having a little issue
with warping. Was the warping issue ever worked out?
-Jason

[jet]

Heated platforms are pretty much the only way to resolve warping on
large objects. I experimented with raft settings in skeinforge --
cranking it up to something like 70 will make a very solid raft that
warps less.

[Jason Evanko]

Has anyone put togeather instructions on building a heated build
platform?

-Jason

[jet]

Jason Evanko wrote:
> Has anyone put togeather instructions on building a heated build platform?

Kinda.

I documented mine using nichrome at flatline.net, Eberhard wrote his
that uses power resistors on his blog,
<http://pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/2009/11/12/canned-heat/>.
The makergear.com guy is going to be selling ceramic heated plates some
time soon.

It's really not too difficult, you just need a thermistor and some way
to heat the platform. I had some kits in my store but they all sold out
within 24 hours.

The makerbot operator's group has a decent archive if you want to see
what people have tried and what worked/failed:

http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot

[jet]

Also, experiment with the Raft settings. I was able to print some 60cm
pieces with only minimal warping.

[Jason Evanko]

How do I do that?

-Jason

[jet]

It's in skeinforge. If you haven't yet, take a look at the skeinforge
docs: <http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/wiki/index.php?title=Skeinforge>

I'd say that understanding the basics of Skeinforge is probably 1/3-1/2
of getting a good print.

[Jason Evanko]

Also crank what up to 70?

-Jason

[jet]

Jason Evanko wrote:
> Also crank what up to 70?

play around with the infill density, it was good at .70 for me.

The MakerBot isn't a cookbook project where you can just punch in some
recipe numbers and have perfect output. Based on how yours is built and
functions you'll have to tweak all sorts of settings. Each of us has
minor variations in how we wrapped the nichrome for the extruder, where
the thermistor is positioned, etc.