I suppose I cannot help much if it’s dead. Mine was mostly alive; I did need to replace the power driver for the model motor but that’s it. The Hardware is very good. It’s a well-insulated heated enclosure. I don’t know what the stepper drivers do but it’s something fancy because it runs very quietly. For a while I didn’t understand why they would use DC motors on the extruders but then I realized that their entire build head weighs about 1/2 of what it would with NEMA17 steppers. This will translate to less vibrations under high acceleration.
So, with yours being dead, maybe the best option is to tear out the electronics and install a RAMPS board or something similar? This was my plan before I got it to work and I found a couple of Youtube hits when searching for that. Of course you would need to come up with control for the DC motors + encoders setup. Or you could replace the build head with something more conventional. Or you could run it with LinuxCNC :). The controller runs on SE Linux. Otherwise I did three main things to make the old machine usable. 1) get a cartridge writer to reset the filament cartridges. A google search will bring up several different solutions that run on either Arduino or a Raspberry Pi. The cartridges have a one-wire chip and someone made a bunch of libraries to read/write and decipher the bits. Stratasys provides filament in 1KG cartridges for about $250 each. Now maybe they have a higher quality product and I think they basically invented or at least did some major developments in the FDM process, but I can’t afford that stuff, so I buy Hatchbox, load it into the Stratasys cartridges, and reset the chip. I still use Stratasys water soluble support at $250/KG because it is so good and I need so little of it. It won’t print PLA but it does print polycarbonate when you bump the temperature up a bit. Polycarbonate prints are impressive. 2. Install Insight 10.6 and hack it to work with Dimension Elite printers. You basically need to copy a bunch of files to make it work. The original app that the lower-end Stratasys printers shipped with has about 3 different settings that you can adjust, whereas Insight is a powerful slicer that competes with the likes of Cura. 3. Install a glass plate. The original Stratasys solution is to use a $10 disposable plastic build tray and then first build a flat platform on the uneven plastic tray, to eliminate bed alignment issues. This might be OK for a high end prototyping shop where the print needs to “just work and hang the cost" but with a $10 build plate plus about $2-$3 worth of support material before the build even starts, it can quickly become expensive. I bought a steel-backed borosilicate one from MatterHacker—one that was designed to fit some or another magnetic mount but was otherwise the perfect size. Don’t try regular glass; it will crack in under a week. Don’t try borosilicate glass without the metal back. It will last longer but inevitably break too. Get the steel-backed one. I installed this plate by printing little hooks that engage in the same way as the plastic build trays do and gluing these to the steel back. I then leveled it using a micrometer on the build head. Finally , you need to print the first layer with support because the printer refuses to use model first. So what I do is draw a tiny dot of support on the first layer. Sorry for hijacking your tread, Gene. > On Jun 2, 2020, at 4:01 PM, Ralph Stirling <ralph.stirl...@wallawalla.edu> > wrote: > > Thaddeus - > > I'm very interested in hearing more about your old Stratasys. > I've got two old Stratasys machines in a lab. One is a dead > FDM-200mc, and the other is a virtually identical Dimension > Elite I got at auction, presumably working. It was dead to, > and I'm trying to make one functioning machine out of the > two. I've been thinking the FDM-200mc carcass would make > a good conversion project, but would be very interested to > hear about your machine. > > -- Ralph > ________________________________________ > From: Thaddeus Waldner [thadw...@gmail.com] > Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 1:55 PM > To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) > Subject: Re: [Emc-users] missing feature of openscad > > I think your end mill cutter analogy is useful. What I would add is that in > order to get good layer adhesion, the actual width of the 3d-printed track > needs to be slightly “squashed” by the nozzle as it is placed. A good rule > of thumb in my experience is to use somewhere between 2-3 times the nozzle > diameter and no less than 1.5 times the nozzle diameter. > > My experience might not be universal, since I’m using an old Stratasys with a > heated build envelope and print mostly ABS. AND I can’t change out the nozzle. > >> On Jun 2, 2020, at 3:37 PM, Chris Albertson <albertson.ch...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> I just printed a set of 3mm pitch GT3 timing pulleys with my 0.4 mm nozzle. >> They came out just fine. >> >> The final profile of the pulley tooth is not determined by the >> nozzle diameter it is limited by the step size on the printer. My pulley >> fit the belt well enough that tooth shape is not the limiting factor. On >> my case it is runout, not tooth shape that will cause the greatest error. >> >> Think of an end mill cutter. I can make sharp corners with a 12mm diameter >> end mill. What I can't do is make less then a 6mm inside radius. Same >> with the nozzle but backwards. A 0.4mm roud nozzle can make at best a 0.2 >> radiu corner while the 0.2 nozzle can print a 0.1mm radius. But the >> printer steps are that size and introduce a larger error than the nozzle. >> In any case what you really care about is error in motion transfer between >> the pulleys. Runout matters but a tiny radius error on an outside corner >> does not change how the belt sits in the pulley. >> >> There is a big disadvantage to 0.2 nozzles (1) they clog up and need >> cleaning and (2) printing is about a lot slower. >> >> Your first step before printing pulleys is to print a cube. Use CAD >> software so you know the exact dimension you specified, run it trough the >> slicer, print and measure all sides and angles. Get those >> measurements good enough. >> >> When designing with plastic, you have to make stuff bigger. Use the >> largest pulleys that will physically fit and this keeps the percent error >> down. >> >> I any case my A6 primer is the same as your Ender except mine uses ground >> steel rods for track and yours uses extrusions, But everything else is the >> same all down to the Merlin firmware. My 3mm pitch by 9mm wide GT3 >> profile pulleys came out pretty good. I had to make the flanges wider >> as the aluminum pulley design has tapered flanges that came to a point. I >> made them thicker and blunter and used a 20mm center bore. Odd that I >> could print the tooth profile just fine but not the flanges. >> >> >> >> >> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:26 AM Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote: >> >>> On Tuesday 02 June 2020 12:50:54 Karl Jacobs wrote: >>> >>>> Gene, just make it executable and run the appImage. I use Cura to >>>> slice for a Delta-printer and use LinuxCNC (actually, Machinekit on a >>>> Beaglebone) to drive the hardware. Marlin on Arduino hardware works >>>> nicely too, of course. Good luck with 3D-printing, just needs the >>>> usual learning curve. >>>> Karl >>>> >>> Which for my ancient 85 yo wet ram seems pretty steep, but I think I have >>> the top of this hill in sight. That 3d cat is printing now... :-) Ought >>> to be done by dinner time. >>> >>> I think I need to find some .2 nozzles before doing any XL timing pulleys >>> though. Thats about next. Then I suppose I'll appreciate the speed its >>> doing now. >>> >>> Thanks Karl. >>> >>> Cheers, Gene Heskett >>> -- >>> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: >>> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." >>> -Ed Howdershelt (Author) >>> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. >>> - Louis D. Brandeis >>> Genes Web page >>> <https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeneslinuxbox.net%3A6309%2Fgene&data=02%7C01%7Cralph.stirling%40wallawalla.edu%7C358154b005bd4961280208d807375df4%7Cd958f048e43142779c8debfb75e7aa64%7C0%7C0%7C637267281671719624&sdata=1MnE3M9nJGBGBUu8Avf%2F8noo5E6ZPss2sfdAnr4wpw8%3D&reserved=0> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Emc-users mailing list >>> Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.sourceforge.net%2Flists%2Flistinfo%2Femc-users&data=02%7C01%7Cralph.stirling%40wallawalla.edu%7C358154b005bd4961280208d807375df4%7Cd958f048e43142779c8debfb75e7aa64%7C0%7C0%7C637267281671719624&sdata=k94FbnOQaKY5cTVejK9IR6pw0ffmAqJmiRALnBcnD6E%3D&reserved=0 >>> >> >> >> -- >> >> Chris Albertson >> Redondo Beach, California >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Emc-users mailing list >> Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.sourceforge.net%2Flists%2Flistinfo%2Femc-users&data=02%7C01%7Cralph.stirling%40wallawalla.edu%7C358154b005bd4961280208d807375df4%7Cd958f048e43142779c8debfb75e7aa64%7C0%7C0%7C637267281671719624&sdata=k94FbnOQaKY5cTVejK9IR6pw0ffmAqJmiRALnBcnD6E%3D&reserved=0 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.sourceforge.net%2Flists%2Flistinfo%2Femc-users&data=02%7C01%7Cralph.stirling%40wallawalla.edu%7C358154b005bd4961280208d807375df4%7Cd958f048e43142779c8debfb75e7aa64%7C0%7C0%7C637267281671719624&sdata=k94FbnOQaKY5cTVejK9IR6pw0ffmAqJmiRALnBcnD6E%3D&reserved=0 > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
