Got my build polished off, my 3mm filament (natural PLA) came in and it was time to print. The calibration went smoothly, I’m meticulous about calibration! I used a dial indicator to verify it and all was good. I didn’t calibrate the extruder yet but figured 840mm/s was in the ballpark. I used the octopus.gcode file - talk about lazy, I didn’t even slice the first thing myself.
Considering the quick and dirty approach to the first print, this came out reasonably well:
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and after a little cleanup:
Now some observations…
The kit went together nicely. I made a boneheaded mistake and oriented the table 180° and that resulted in misrouting the Y belt, which resulted in incorrect homing behavior. Talk about cause and effect! That was sorted reasonably easily.
Calibration went smoothly. I think my table is tougher back as the nozzle is very close to the front left clamp at 0,0,0 but there is about 1cm from the edge at full Y travel. I can probably fix this in firmware with a homing offset.
I used the pre-sliced roctopus.gcode file just to see what would happen and to my surprise, it wasn’t horrible. However, the layer cooling fan is defective. As soon as it was supposed to turn on, it emitted the magic smoke. I quickly paused the print, unplugged the fan, and continued without it.
I printed on blue tape. I prefer to do that while I break in a new printer so I don’t scratch or mar the PEI surface that I’ll ultimately install. Once the printer is calibrated and I have experience, I’ll add PEI. Unfortunately I gave my last Amazon .03" sheet to my son for his mini kossel and Amazon is now back ordered on it. McMaster has the .04" and I’ve used that before. It is glossy both sides so does require a little "roughing up"to give a nice matte surface finish on the parts.
I can’t believe how big 3mm filament is! It’s like a hard plastic rod! I’ll live with the Buddhashnozzle and 3mm filament for a bit while I figure out how I want to mount the Cyclops twin extrusion-through-one-nozzle hot end. I plan to use twin Bowden tubes and remote mounted extruders to take a lot of the mass off the X carriage. I’ve been printing on delta’s with Bowdens for years and have it dialed in really well.
My next step is to work up a printer profile in KISSlicer and get some calibration prints going.