Cracked pepper sir? (3D Splinter...) Pi Chef Challenge Blog post #6

This week has again been quite slow in terms of progress. I spent most of the weekend slowly watching a 3D printer fail.

As i posted last week the 3D printer I am using is a micro3D (https://printm3d.com/themicro/ ). I had a reasonable amount of trouble just getting it set up as the latest software wouldn't install the drivers successfully. The solution to this ended up being installing an old version of the software (for which the drivers installed correctly) and then installing the newer version. The older version i used wasn't provided by m3d but was in a dropbox i found through reddit, located here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/maf6kv4c80fyu0b/AABnYs9yG5jPDUnqw5H3gr82a/Software%20-%20Windows/Windows%20Software%20-%20201…

Once i got the drivers and software up and running i thought it would be smooth sailing, boy was i wrong. I was originally printing using ABS and was having a lot of problems with the models peeling from the print bed. The image below shows one of the major culprits where the front corner is raised quite a bit.

The printer I'm using doesn't have a heated print bed and this issue seems to be quite common. After some reading i decided to try using double sided tape on the print bed to stop the peeling. The results are below:

I'm pretty sure i wasn't printing a model of squashed cotton candy but it seems as though that is what i got. At this point i moved onto trying some PLA the results were much better. After an initial failure i bumped the nozzle temperature up by 5 degrees and end up getting some reasonable results.

The above image is of the two sides of the base of the robot arm. These prints are much better than i had previously managed but the are still far from great. Its a bit hard to tell from the image but the smaller circles are pretty inconsistent which may be a problem when it comes to construction.

Whilst I was at the hardware store grabbing the double sided tape I also picked up most of the remaining materials:

• 1m length of 12mm aluminium pipe (design calls for 15mm, ill have to fit it in sleeves)
• 1m length of 6mm aluminium rod
• 2 M8 bolts
• 8 M4 bolts
• 40 m3 bolts
• Nuts for above bolts
• some washers

The complete list with sizes can be found on page 4 of the instructions pdf on the uStepper github https://github.com/uStepper/uStepper-RobotArm-Rev3/blob/master/armInstructions.pdf

I am also waiting on some parts to be shipped to me:

• 12  624Z bearing
• 4 608Z bearing
• 4 servos

The printer is going to be working most nights when i get home form work as i still have a lot of printing to do