Major fix, now destined for better 3D objects.

The issue I must have been fighting for a loooong time was due to the hobbed bolt in the extruder. I rectified it by trying to hob a new bolt but for the real grip I then took my dremmel tool with a carbide/diamond cutter, slightly thinner than the other cutters and cut grooves lengthwise through the bolt across the groove where the filament passes to give it better teeth. I used my drill press to hold the bolt so I could turn it as needed and use my dremmel in a vice that is used for milling and then drove the dremmel against the bolt to cut the grooves. The solid positioning helped not break the blade and give good grooves. I then tried making another square box and had solid sides this time. There were good thick walls so I may need to cut back on the amount of extrusion, but all the layers were solidly stuck together. The next problem to address is cooling all the sides. Cooling from the back of the object left the front rounded, so I will install another fan so that it is cooled there and the objects filament should solidify as it prints.
Now I should be able to concentrate on calibrating everything with consistent plastic flow.

Wholy holes Batman

I have learned that fan cooling is important so that the filament doesn't stay soft and deform after being laid. Above you can see uneven extrusion and 3 holes toward the bottom where you see the brighter patches. Above the dark patch there is another wide hole. I think that the thin spots (voids, holes, whatever) may be due to lack of extrusion rather than any other factor. I figure that since there are sections that have good extrusion, I have to imagine when I see the thin stretches, where there is a tiny thread of filament, that the filament was simply stretched from sufficient extrusion to sufficient extrusion, leaving the thin thread that I see. Hard to see that kind of detail in the picture, but you can see the uneven nature and the appearances of voids. So I hobbed a spare 8mm bolt I had and will see what happens now. I found a new technique slightly different from what I used, that is easier, so am including the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSmhUWTSlZE. If I need to do it again I will use this method in that the washers give you someting to rest against for pressure rather than trying to hold the drill steady.

Applying 3D printing to solve the "Leaning Tower of Pisa" Issue

The title is a total lie. Just wanted to be clear on that before we continue. It was just a shameless ploy to grab attention.
This is my latest print attempt, using polypropylene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene plastic welding rod.
The above object was my attempt to print the Vertical Calibration object http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:215101. It was supposed to be 30mm wide and 50mm high, but my dimensions were about 35mm wide and 46mm tall. That means I need to increase my z axis and decrease my x and y axis. I also noticed that the sides were not filled completely. That may be due to a temperature problem, I was extruding at  about 235C, though I had set a value of 237C. I will try increasing to see if smoothness improves doing that. The other reason is possibly I need to increase my extrusion multiplier from 1 to maybe 1.2.  According to the stats it was about 2.6M of filament and about 18+ cubic centimeters. I was happy to see that I was able to print straight up and down. This makes for a great start. I bought some Canadian whiskey, maybe I can print one of those shot glasses everyone was toasting their early repraps with. I'm anxious to start printing parts that will be sturdy and functional and replace the cheap molded parts I bought way back when.

Finally some printing...

Had problems with my Polypropylene (PP) welding rod that I bought for such a good price, so I started thinking about using ABS and that brought up thoughts of creating my own filament extruder (google Lyman Extruder). But then that started me thinking about printing with nylon, which I had some of. There were cautions of printing with Nylon because of bad fumes that could be given off. To balance that I found that there are some nylons currently made that don't have any smell or toxic fumes given off. Well I had some 2.2mm weed wacker that I had bought a long time ago prior to getting my PP deal. So I thought, why not try some. I heated up the extruder and pulled out the old white PP filament when it got hot enough and then threaded the new filament in. I heated it up to 230 C and used manual extrusion to get the white stuff out and see some of the new orange nylon start to exit the nozzle.

So on the left is the first print I tried today of a little test box I downloaded from thingiverse and then sliced with slicer.

I think that the temperature was too low (defaulted back to about 215 during my learning how to set up the configurations for Repetier. I use Repetier host and Repetier firmware and am happy with them so far.

The middle picture was after I figured that something must be causing the drift to the right for every layer, my assumption is that the default speed of 130mm/s for non printing move caused a bit of backlash from the sudden stop, so I set that down to the same 60mm/s that it was using for normal printing and infill settings.
Unfortunately the print temperature was a bit too low and it just stopped extruding.

Finally after setting the new temperature back up to 230C and trying again, I got the example on the right.
It made me very happy to see that I was finally getting results for all of my efforts. It actually looks like a box.

I may need to do more with rafting to keep the corner from curling. I think you can see a little rounding on the lower left edge.

Further thoughts on the PP, I think I may need to take the temperature up quite a bit higher for it to make it as fluid as I have done with the Nylon at 230C. If I can't get that to work I can always go with getting ABS and making my own filament extruder, I am kind of excited with doing that as a project anyways.

Season's Best to you all

I have had more success. I got some flux from Radio Shack and tried cleaning my traces that I bridged.
I got them to look cleanish and then got back to testing the axes and verifying what worked and didn't.
In the course of my testing I found lots of errors and after getting them correct, found more. Seems there are many more ways to do things wrong than right. Well after all that checking and testing I got all 3 axes working. Now to work on the extruder and then the thermistor connections and some real testing.

To all my readers who celebrate, a very Merry/Happy Christmas.
And to everyone, Happy Reprapping!

Limited success reviving my messed up Arduino Mega

I was wishing I had at least one axis so I could play with pieces of my new Delta 3D Printer to be. So I figured I couldn't hurt my damaged one much more since I deemed it unusable. After playing with the connections and solder sucking and trying to draw extra solder from between the tiny connections it looked better than when I knew I messed it up. So I managed to drill through the melted plastic on the connectors that occured when I was carelessly messing up the pin traces with blobs of solder. Anyways when I tried it, I was surprised to see that I had x and y axes working, the z only partially working. There is a trace that I pulled up I will investigate what that went to and maybe try soldering a single strand if that is for the z axis. So not bad, getting over my frustration and fear.

Replacing my Arduino Mega

I decided to just buy a new board to be able to move forward and will remember the painful lesson of not trying to do surgery on something I can't see so well even with my large lighted magnifying glass.
the board I am getting is from the same place as the last one I think. It was not too expensive, even for me at just under $17USD, and delivery is expected between Dec 24 and Jan 3. Delivery is free.

MEGA2560 R3 Control Board ATMEGA16U2 For Arduino Compatible USB Cable

Now I can concentrate on the hardware. I am relatively assured that I want to go with a delta printer. I think I can maybe get away with building the hardware from mdf or wood.

I ran across a neat metal delta printer. I'm very excited about the way 3d printing technology is taking off lately. Here is the 3d metal printer Open-source metal 3-D printer - Appropedia: The sustainability wiki.