MakerGear Forum

insta - for feedback, any and all; run it, beat on it, put it through its' paces, and then let us know anything you notice as particularly well designed, or, especially, if anything broke, or didn't go together/stay together right.

For the firmware - yeah, I do understand that; I think my record for fresh Marlin copy to upload is under 3 minutes X) I'm just glad there was a simple, obvious fix. This has reinforced the need for one of the app changes I'm working on - more resilient and robust connection establishment and maintenance; or, basically, only say "connected" when connected and receiving non-gibberish, and be checking constantly for proper responses to commands.

How does the weight of the new spider compare to the old one? There's substantially more metal on this one -- it was almost 200g more for just the aluminum bits. I didn't check with the springs and steel thingy added, but it seems that there could easily be some substantial weight reductions performed?

The locking screws are a great touch, I love that.

Weight can be your friend or your enemy. Depends on which parameter you are trying to optomize. Obviously, there are compromses to be made.

insta wrote:How does the weight of the new spider compare to the old one? There's substantially more metal on this one -- it was almost 200g more for just the aluminum bits. I didn't check with the springs and steel thingy added, but it seems that there could easily be some substantial weight reductions performed?

The locking screws are a great touch, I love that.

The new spider setup weights 6.1 oz more.

-Steve

well so far i have no hardware issues at all. all the hardware has worked great and i think everything is really improved. i like how much more solid everything is. im not really worried about the +6oz spider when im running a build plate thats prob 2 pounds. like i said i just wish there was a real quick way to make gap adjustments without going through the sequence in the app. i thought i had a good way with s3d but josh burst my bubble on that one lol. only issues so far have been some small tweaks to the app that are needed. other than that i have no complaints. i havent had a chance to see if the ringing is improved yet. maybe ill get a chance tonight. if not, i will be out of town over the holidays so wont have a chance to get back on a printer until the 1st.

jimc wrote:well so far i have no hardware issues at all. all the hardware has worked great and i think everything is really improved. i like how much more solid everything is. im not really worried about the +6oz spider when im running a build plate thats prob 2 pounds. like i said i just wish there was a real quick way to make gap adjustments without going through the sequence in the app. i thought i had a good way with s3d but josh burst my bubble on that one lol. only issues so far have been some small tweaks to the app that are needed. other than that i have no complaints. i havent had a chance to see if the ringing is improved yet. maybe ill get a chance tonight. if not, i will be out of town over the holidays so wont have a chance to get back on a printer until the 1st.

My little test showed ringing is unchanged at 3000 accel, but it behaves very nicely at 1000. I notice no difference except it's a lot easier to level and the first layer is more consistent.

I wanted to provide my feedback on the kit.

Initial Thoughts
Kit is well put together, the new spider is beautiful. You guys nailed it in terms of design.

Installation
Installation went pretty good for me. I had the same issue with the nuts falling off the back of the belt clamp. I just folded up an index card to stick under it to hold them in place.
I did not change the end-stop or utilize the clips on the corners. More on that later.

Leveling
I used a dial gauge that mounts directly to the extruder, where the drive roller is. I wanted to kind try to do this without any system interaction. Lets face it, I've used the S3D method, and it was fruitless in the past.
I went from corner to corner/top to bottom, making small adjustments. I was able to get it essentially level to .001".
As I noted earlier, the rubber corner stops, while I like them for shock absorption, cause the HBP or build plate to get hund up when making adjustments, and you even up going too far only to realize that the plate is hung up on the rubber and not dropping. I went with modified versions of Jim's corners, 3 are plain, 1 has the screw clamp.

Overall
I was interested in this beta because I've recognized and was familiar with the issues with the old/existing system, and was running a MIC 6 plate which I can say is very flat and a good basis for conclusion on a leveling system.
The new system makes it much easier to be able to fix the intended problem. Takes all of the slop out of the works really, the platform is rock solid,
For what its worth I elected to not deal with the endstop at the current point in time.

For those that had nuts falling off issues, you can mount belt clamp and belt on spider with it upside down on a table before mounting to the y carriage.

Working through the setup with the quickstart software, I ran into the same problem jimc was having with the extruder crashing into the platform. I'm running a V3b with a dual power supply on some old tweaky firmware. To get it figured out I opened s3d and jogged my Z-axis up to the point where the nozzle was just about touching the glass then made note of the value shown (197mm in my case). I then used that number for the Z-MAX_LENGTH in the firmware and it fixed it up nicely.

Having run a couple quick prints with the new system, I'm definitely impressed with the leveling. It is way easier. The Z-height feature provides an okay starting point, but my machine needed some adjustments. Dialing in the Z-height with a cold extruder makes for a sort of mashed up first layer, in my experience. I ended up correcting for the Z offset in the G-code tab of S3D.

Jumping topics, the instructions were easy to follow and assembly was extremely easy. I wonder, though, if it might make sense to hold off on fully tightening the brackets that hold the glass until a rough leveling has happened. It seems like it would be pretty easy to crack the glass if you have the brackets fully tightened down and then are pressing in the opposite direction with the set screws.