Tthis is a long one - or at least it looks long on my phone…
I’ve had a chance to sort out my printer. It’s been running fine but not great for a while, depositing blobs on the model and generating “candy floss” at the nozzle. So last night I set to, and using this video, I cleaned out its hot-end using the video below for reference.
I found that the end of the PTFE tube had deteriorated pretty badly. The end was burnt and there was gunk on it.
After freeing up the end, I used my 3D printed pipe cutter to slice off the damaged part.
Then after I put it all back together, I decided to change the operating system. My current one, Jyers, is no longer supported, snd everyone is talking about the benefits of using MRiscoC, so I moved to that one using this video.
The only fly in the ointment is you need to use an 8GB card to do this, and I no longer have one, so I used some partitioning software to make a 32GB card pretend to be an 8 GB card.
I'm really pleased I made the change, as the levelling/tramming is a lot easier than before, and the whole thing feels much better thought out.
After that I created the mesh that maps the flatness of the build plate, and test printed a cube. The PLA brand I used has given me a lot of gyp, (so much that I almost considered donating it to a local Makerspace), but after the clean it printed well!.
Just before a huge storm hit this evening (electricity is out in the next town over, and it’ll be here anytime now), a 6 hour print of a railcar underframe in 7mm has completed. It’s my best print for a while.
I printed a skirt at a distance of 0mm just to catch the tips of the cross braces.
Next is the rest of the chassis, then the body, and finally the roof.
Onwards and upwards!
JCL