Three weeks with my Robox

[Michael Gordon @mikeg]

@miffmaster; @gid Thank you both for the re-assurance about the PEI. Looks like a flexible PEI sheet (the ‘right’ way up) on a flat rigid bed provides the best of both worlds.

Now I need some re-assurance about the head. So far I get the impression that it is safer to pick one material and stick with. In other words the purging process is not capable of reliably fully cleaning the material flow paths. No surprises there. I was in the plastic game for many years and specialised purging compounds to hopefully avoid stripping and cleaning extrusion heads were often touted and usually unsuccessful or at best a delaying tactic. Of course others may have had more joy with them.

[MiffMaster @miffmaster]

So here are the images I promised, and video.

http://imgur.com/a/KklvQ

http://youtu.be/6KOCDkyrilA

@mikeg, Unfortunately, your experience is likely valid for the Robox head as well. I will stick to one material type for now. Depending on the cost, I might get more print heads for other materials.

As the forum was down earlier, I was unable to post my adjusted values. Will try again tomorrow.

[Michael Gordon @mikeg]

@miffmaster My plans to use only one material fell at the first fence as I want to only use ABS (I cannot do ABS on my Ultimaker 1), but found that my Robox had been tested with PLA.

Very informative stills, video and explanation. Will have to study and digest.

[René @3dnerd]

Hi Michael Gordon,

could you please tell how you detected that the test was done with PLA (and not with ABS)?

 

[Anonymous]

@miffmaster - that is an absolutely amazing print of the nut and bolt. Incredible, that sort of print must make you think everything will come good eventually! Well done. Thanks for the tips about the x offset.

About the bridge flow rate, I think there are settings to play with, for example in the fine profile you have:

bridge_acceleration = 0
bridge_fan_speed = 100
bridge_flow_ratio = 1
bridge_speed = 20

My guess it’s the flow ratio that wants to about 0.5 or something?

[MiffMaster @miffmaster]

@biscuitlad Where do you find these settings? Either I am blind for the obvious, or there are some difference between our AutoMaker installs.

http://imgur.com/3q0kjiY

[Anonymous]

@miffmaster - they’ve not added them all to AM yet, just the speed and cooling (under profiles).

Best way is to load up the FineSettings.roboxprofile file in a text editor (line endings get a bit mangled in notepad, but something like emacs loads it ok).

Then search for “bridge” and you’ll find them. Make the changes you want and save the file with a different name in *your* profiles directory, e.g. FineMiffSettings.roboxprofile

Then start AM, load your stl, go to custom profiles and your profile should appear in the drop down. Then print.

[MiffMaster @miffmaster]

@biscuitlad OK, I know the settings must be there “some where under the hood”. My point was that they are not avalible in AutoMaker. Not even in an “advanced” mode. However, the average user do not care for such things. They just want to hit print, and expect to get nice parts. So as I said above, this is mostly about what can be expected “out of the box”.

 

But thanks for the info. Now that I know where to look, I might experiment some with them.

[Michael Gordon @mikeg]

@3dnerd When I loaded my first and one and only ABS reel into my just unpacked Robox either then, or not long after, Automaker informed me that the newly loaded material required a different temperature to the last material and would I like to purge (recommended). I deduced (rightly or wrongly) that this probably meant that the last material was PLA.

[Anonymous]

@miffmaster - of course, they can’t possibly add every parameter setting available in Slic3r to the AM interface. They have to introduce what they think is the bare minimum to get reasonable prints. As time goes on, they’ll add more, or create better default profiles. But you can help by giving them (and us) the benefits of your experience with those settings that have yet to be implemented in AM!

[Clicky @clicky]

Maybe ability for printing from already produced GCode would be helpful. That way it would be possible to skip AM for preparation of model and go straight to post-processing/printing part. That way choosing different slicer, fiddling with that slicer’s parameters would be much easier.

[René @3dnerd]

@Michael Gordon: Thanks, I understand!

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