Yeah, that overshoot by a few degrees is the PID....it's supposed to do that. (You can fine tune it a bit, but it generally doesn't add much time so that's okay. Nothing to be concerned about.) This is bringing me back to my auto controls class days when we had to control a thermal chip and choose ...

Look at the bright side....at least you know how to solder! (Not in my skill set!) :lol: I cheated. I used a crimp connector because thats what was readily available, but trust me I can solder :lol: . On the bright side, I am back up and running. During warm up the extruder still overshoots by 5C b...

Thanks Jules. When it comes to stuff like this, everyone hopes it is something simple like just replacing the thermistor, and nobody likes having to tear the machine down to investigate. First thing I looked at was the thermistor wire from the print head to the board and I found a spot that has inte...

I am currently experiencing a problem where I set the extruder temperature to 215C but the temp will over shoot the set point up to 220C-222C and then fall to just under 215C and level off around 215C when the print starts. However, during the print, the temp will sit around 205C-210C and some times...

Food for thought: Today I am watching the timer in the machine control panel and decided to time how long it takes for 1 "minute" to count off the clock. It is consistently taking 3:54 for 1 "minute" to go by. It would be interesting to see if this ratio is constant through the whole print...Ill kee...

Do you print via USB cable or do you save the gcode to the SD card and print from that? Why? What are the benefits of either way?

I print via USB mainly because I don't have an SD card reader.

ednisley wrote:A photopolymer printer may be more practical for ordinary home-shop users:
http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/

That's pretty neat! I have witnessed the submerged part/vat style SLA printers at a prototyping shop

Jules wrote:But from a practical perspective, if you need layer heights less than 0.1mm, wouldn't it be better to just go with laser sintering to start with?

Maybe...but...money....I have the FDM machine already

What is the smallest layer height and extrusions width possible with the different sized nozzles available? I print a lot at .1 layer height because I need high quality visuals and aesthetics. I was thinking about getting the .25 nozzle so I could print a finer outer surface finish ("large" prints, ...

Or you could just print the whole mold out of sand