building of wobble arrester and new cable

Well its been an eventfull couple of weeks.

firtly i decieded to change my usb ttl adapter for the makerbot to a 5v logic level, as apposed tothe 3.3v logic level one i was using. the idea behind this was that the switchover signal voltage could have been too low and therefore meant the data was not being sent at good quality. I was annoyed when i bought the first cable, as i was thinking it was a 5v level cable, but alas… oh well.

the first tests came as i was setting up the uni makerbot for a demo of high calibre… more on that in a sec, but i managed to start repg and the new software version, meaning i could import and manipulate the files stl etc in repg.

the first trial pieces were done using my pc desktop, an old pentium 4. (i now bought a i5 HP laptop, so yay!) I did wounder if the processing speed was too slow for the makerbot, and i think i might have been right…

anyway, my first prints using the 5v cable, turned out to be good. they were a corner bracket, to try simple shapes… and then the z wobble arrester. this is an amazing thing an im glad i printed it, as my sides are virtually wobble free (need a second one for other side of rear as that too is a bit wobbly…

anyhow, i printed these with great success, installed the wob arr and set to print something more complex. The gear set, recently uploaded seemd lie the perfetc vhoice.

link here :(insert link)

the results seemed ok, but the thinner smaller gear had to be height adjusted as too much plastic was comming out causing lumps. – this maybe because there wasnt enough time to cool befre the heater nozel came ploughing through, so need to work on ‘cool’ settings as mentioned in recent blog post elsewhere – should really write the links down!. need to adjust speed and extruder flow rate too, both adjust this issue.

right a picture…
or 2…

the L bracket, shows several wobbly edges so off to print the z wobble arrester…

the wobble arrested whilst printing


The wobble arrester works wonders, and if anyone needs to see why it is handy, check this video out of the one i installed…

with the wobble arrester installed, i made the gears.

picture too come.