TechPaladin Printing

Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

MendelMax build: X and Z axes

I titled the last post in the build guide “MendelMax Build: frame part 1” because I anticipated there’d be a part 2; turns out the build was faster than I thought. Let’s move on to the X and Z axes. First, assemble your X-carriage. This should be a matter of attaching whatever manner of bushing [...]

Open for business

TechPaladin.com now has a store! We’re carrying high-quality parts for RepRap printers such as precision leadscrews, sintered bronze bushings, aluminum motor couplers, and GT2 belts and pulleys. We also sell filament, MendelMax printed parts sets and can print you custom objects and individual RepRap parts. Please don’t hesitate to direct any and all questions, comments, [...]

MendelMax build: frame part 1

My MendelMax parts arrived! Here’s my beautiful pile-o-stuff from Misumi: Time to get cracking! I immediately tore into it. Step one is to tap the extrusions that need tapping. That means the two top extrusions (420 mm), the four diagonal extrusions which will attach directly to the lower vertices (340 mm, which only need one [...]

Time to add another printer to the mix

I’m building a MendelMax. Here’s a really cool one made by __red__. Tell me you can look at that and not want one! My Prusa has been a wonderful printer, but time marches on, and progress comes with it. The MendelMax is an excellent improvement on the Prusa in the areas of build area, rigidity, [...]

Printed bearing guides = bad idea

triffid_hunter’s bearing guides didn’t actually work for me because, but due to an imperfectly calibrated printer and the vagaries of FDM printing, they didn’t wind up quite circular. In particular, there was a bump on the edge where the perimeter loops met. I tried to dremel it off, but that’s not exactly a precise operation, [...]

And now for some time-lapse movies

I finished my thing that lets you attach your iPhone to your Prusa Mendel for easy time-lapse movie creation: It slips onto your threaded rods and attaches to PrintTo3D’s iPhone stand with a printable peg. It took several iterations to get it right. Here are all the versions, first try on the left and final [...]

More skewed layers; another solution

While I was investigating the peculiar problem that was afflicting my latest large print, I ran into a recurrence of an old problem: starting from the very beginning of the print, each successive layer was slightly offset in one direction from the one beneath it. This turned out to be a fairly simple issue: the [...]

The quest for perfect layer alignment

It turns out that my Prusa’s layer alignment only looks perfect when I print objects without straight walls. Here’s an example that tipped me off that something was quite wrong: The print on the right looks reasonably okay, layer-wise. The one on the left is another story. So I asked the ever-helpful forum and got [...]