I have officially joined the community!

[helifrek]

hello all,
After 3 weeks of waiting and 1 more week being away from home, the M2 is finally finished and running! Woohooooo!

I ordered the kit on Nov 11th, it was delivered on the 8th (but nobody was here to receive it) and was picked up from the post office on the 9th! I didn't get home until the 13th late at night. I started the build yesterday (14th) around 2pm and spent about 6 hours building on and off. Woke up early today and finished up with the wiring, downloaded S3D and started testing the manual controls. Everything worked as it should, I loaded some filament and tried to print the .5mm thin wall test but it seems it only printed the skirt for some reason..... no idea why. I immediately went into printing the 20mm calibration cube and it came out pretty close to perfect. The cube is slightly under filled and the back right corner is raised just a hair, The layers where the extruder stopped and started are very obvious and look like stitching.
Do I need to increase the extrusion multiplier in S3D to fix the underfilled cube? in repG it was something called dimension multiplier. Also, where can I find the option to randomize where the extruder starts and stops? Last question..... the first 5 layers or so looked very fuzzy and over extruded but then it just "magically" started laying down perfect layers. any thoughts on that?

Thanks again for all the help from everyone here in this forum!

[insta]

Did you have the nozzle fully primed? Do a 30-50mm extrusion next time to make sure all the air bubbles are out of the path, and try again.

Level the bed. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1497 is what I use. Use a piece of paper, or feeler gauges if you've got them. If you're leveling with feeler gauges, do it at full temp, if printer paper, do it at 150C hotend / 60C bed.

Set up a thin-wall calibration piece and use that to calibrate your extruder mechanism. Print at 220C on the V3B to ensure adequate heat.

Let us know how it goes!

[helifrek]

Thanks!

here is a link to all the build pictures. Not in very good order......

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthre ... st30207333

[Tim]

As posted on another recent thread, some thin-walled calibration pieces don't slice in S3D due to having walls thinner than a filament width. If the wall width is really 0.5mm, then it should print, although you might need to adjust the "extruder width" value manually. If it's a bit smaller than 0.5mm, then S3D may decide it's not printable. Again, you can get it to slice by manually adjusting "extruder width" but then you won't be doing a proper calibration anymore.

[jsc]

Check out the "M2 tips" thread in the tips forum for some info useful to new users. Extrusion multiplier is called "Extrusion Multiplier" and is in the Extruder tab, third field down. You can also dynamically adjust it during a print with the jog dial in the lower right of the machine control panel. If your first few layers are over extruded, your extrusion multiplier may be too high, but also maybe your z end stop may be set too high (too close to the nozzle). You want about a 0.15mm gap between the glass and the nozzle when setting it up cold. You can test out the effects of varying the first layer height by manually turning the Z knob during the first layer; turn right for closer, left for further. It will "click" when the Z motor is active. The seam at layer start can be reduced using the Coast and Wipe settings in the extruder tab. Try the defaults of 0.2 and 5. You can also put in a small amount of NEGATIVE Extra Restart Distance if you feel the seam is more at the start of line than at the end. Random start points is under Start Points in the Layer tab, lower right. I prefer a seam rather than distributed zits, but that depends on the model. People claim KISS Slicer does a better job in seam hiding than other slicers, you may want to experiment with that.

[Dave K]

Nice to see another RC heli guy on the forum I think there are a few of us here.

[helifrek]

Been flying for 16 years! mostly helis but I have flown planes, gliders, jets and now I have been getting more into quads and FPV flying. Getting ready to print a tricopter frame right now.
I re-leveled the bed and now it looks perfect, hope I don't jinx myself cause the print just started! I still need to do a few more calibration prints just to check everything but right now I just want to print some fun stuff

[jsc]

Do a search on quadcopter on this forum. There are a few enthusiasts who have shown off their 3D printed designs.

[Dave K]

Been flying for 16 years! mostly helis but I have flown planes, gliders, jets and now I have been getting more into quads and FPV flying. Getting ready to print a tricopter frame right now.
I re-leveled the bed and now it looks perfect, hope I don't jinx myself cause the print just started! I still need to do a few more calibration prints just to check everything but right now I just want to print some fun stuff

I've only been at it for about 3 years now, mostly helis, a couple fixed wing, and a couple of inexpensive multirotors. But this year my flying has been greatly curtailed by my working hours. I'm actually looking forward to the Christmas break so I can get some flying in. As long as the conditions are not whiteout, I'm flying, and that's that. They've been on the wall far too much this year. I'm holding off on anything serious with multirotor and FPV until the FAA and our crack lawmakers in DC decide how they're going to regulate that.

I have only done a couple of heli parts on the M2, and only one of those was original design. The other was a copy of one of Align's battery trays, just to see how it would turn out. I'm still flying that one. Neither part is anything to write home about, but there's something really cool about flying with part you've printed yourself, simple or not!

[dklassen]

Congrats on your new printer bud!