Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Major Updates - Stepper Extruder, New Electronics

This is coming a bit late, but I've made some significant changes to my 'bot. I've got a RAMPS setup from Ultimachine. They're a great company to deal with btw, highly recommended. I am running Tonokip's firmware with RepSnapper, and using SkeinForge 40. I also printed out a Wade's extruder as well as a mount, and am using a MakerGear hot end. See pictures below.



The hot end is their 0.35mm nozzle, V3 hybrid hot end. I have been using it for a couple months now with great success. I print with 0.25mm layers which gives great resolution, comparable to commercial machines which usually print around 0.2mm layers. The small fan you see behind the hot end is to cool the PEEK thermal barrier, without it my PLA extruder gets too warm and starts to warp.

I also just received some new PLA from Ultimachine, in translucent blue, black, green, and white. I have yet to experiment with any of them, and I still have a couple pounds of the natural PLA left.