The day of winning.......

One this is for sure you don't want to miss order these 2 parts on your build, the motors and the hot end! I have learned the hard way but it's not something I can't live with. Stay away from a copy hot end, well known people you can trust. I'm talking about the one and only J-Head and there are sub-par units out  there. I happen to find one before. Just the layer tightness is enough to sell you but I'm sure there are some comparable copy J-Heads that would so it for you. I'm just listing the link in my blog for the best one, IMHO.

www.hotends.com

The Mk V-BV to be exact.

Here are a couple of pictures and you can see how tight the layers are on that second pic.

Some designs

Things are looking up for the MendelMax! I am 97% there I believe and when I receive my new .35mm hot end, we will hit that 99.9999% mark! I am just not happy with the hot end I have at this time seeing it is a .50mm end and the filament is coming out at .65-.68mm. I understand from others that the metal swells but this may be a little much and it is throwing off some of the seams. At this point, that is not acceptable to me and if I hadn't made the end to "fit" my extruder, it would be on its way back to where I bought it from. ANOTHER lesson learned. I did a little fixing on my Y axis as I installed 2 solid blocks of wood on the edges and took out the 4 aluminum spacers I had there. It just makes it more rigid and less vibrations all around. I am happy I took it apart to fix!

SO here are a few designs I chose to print from thingverse.

YODA

BRAIN SLUG V2

MENDELMAX SKELETAL SPOOL MOUNT

This is printed at a 50% size. Notice the ears have some buggers and at the neck its a little bubbly.

If you notice on the feet, there is some separation of layers and I think this is from the hot end not being what its supposed to be. It will be better once I get the .35mm end. 

and just because I had black plastic in the unit when I first printed a 100% Yoda!

A mishaT version of the spool holder

Happy New Year to all! 2013

So lets get right to it. I bought 2 new motors to replace my X,Y axis motors. I for one will not disagree any longer that cheaper will work as good as mo money ones...! Just made a believer out of me. I purchased 2 - 2.8v/ 1.5A motors from www.lulzbot.com and very happy I did. I may go back for a third for the extruder but that will happen when I get a new hot end.  So I went from a hot motor to a very cool motor and it really makes a difference. I'm still trying to get this thing calibrated and hopefully will hit that soon! I'm getting closer. Time is what I lack since I can't spend every minute of the day working with it. You can see the difference in the cheap Ebay motor on the left and the nice chunky one on the right.

Here is a picture of bad motor mojo......

And here is a day 1 picture again and a newer version from today. Its getting better!

One of my very near future plans is to re-build my Y-axis platform. I think I need something more solid and rigid. The current one seems to have vibration occurring which may contribute to my issues.