Yeah, communal access or not, I’d rather take a few minutes with the individuals who have done the trial and error on the machine. I’ve encountered nothing but friendly and helpful people at Hive13 so I don’t want to do anything that may negatively impact that culture!
I’m interested in helping setup strectch filament, but I’m out of town until friday.
RE: needing certification…It’s absolutely frustrating that we say certification is required, but don’t have a clear process setup to get it. Making a clear process is something the officers and other members talk about, but havent made happen yet. Maybe soon!
The 3D printers are relatively easy equipment for someone to screw up. Most problems are fixable but annoying, like knocking the print bed out of alignment . Besides that, you are likely to have a lot of frustration getting something to print unless you have previous experience with 3D printers. My suggestions for an “interim policy” would be:
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Gigabot: we want to keep this working. Unless you have significant experience with 3D printing, off limits until you have someone walk you through it. Use good judgement to determine when you have enough experience to confidently run it on your own.
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Cupcake and Ultrabot: Not getting much use anyway, open for people to try. Realize that you will still likely be frustrated without help. However, if you are thinking of changing anything in software or hardware, get permission first. Be warned, Ultrabot has no endstops!
Mike
Of course, the first step is getting your machine configured correctly. I recommend using Repetier-Host as your software… and using my Slicer configuration file for the first prints.
Understand the entire process before attempting to print on the Gigabot… it’s a huge finicky mahine that has some major quirks that you’ll need to understand to operate correctly.
As someone mentioned earlier… I brought in several rolls of “natural” PLA (some under printer and one box under small desk), which has a yellow/brown/transparant appearance… please feel free to use it.\
I also brought in 15 rolls of Black ABS (just not my Black/Blue/White PLA in the box) that you are free to use… but understand, we need to get the heated build plate working before you can print anything large with it. Small items that are printed on blue painters tape with Elmers X-Treme glue applied to it should allow small ABS parts to be printed.
I will be in Tomorrow night to print a part I need… and if someone is interested, they can watch over my shoulder to see how I do it. (Take notes!)
Bill
Bill,
Are your slicer files online anywhere? I’ve been poking around the various Hive sites and I can’t find much. I’ve got my support material built!
The Gigabot wiki page lists the location of Bill's settings file, but it's on a server only accessible from within the Hive.
For everyone's convenience, I pasted the contents into a separate wiki page, and added a link on the main Gigabot page. It is available directly via http://wiki.hive13.org/index.php/GigabotINI