Geeetech

Hi everyone,

As soon as i saw a Delta printer on youtube, i just knew i had to have one of these beauty's.
Ordered the DIY kit of the Rostock mini and after just 1 week it was delivered.

The video's were very helpful so keeping in mind that i'm a model engineer, building/repairing/maintaining live steam models at 1/8th scale, the printer was assembled in 2 days.

3th day was the electronics day and after all the wiring was done flipped over the switch and... nothing, i mean NOT a THING lcd kept dark, no noise, just plain death... detached all big power eaters like bed heating, dual extruder heaters, still nothing, but i had ONE fuse that was becoming VERY hot, so it was obvious that there was still life in A circuit, lol.

Only things still connected were the endstops and the Z-probe switch, i took away the Z-probe cable, suddenly the board came to life and a small "yessss" sound coming out of me.

After the mistaken position of the switch was solved, reconnected all the other wires and uploaded (after a 2 days search of a working Arduino IDE that would actually COMPILE) the firmware, so now after tweaking and fine-tuning this is the result so far.

After 1 week of working with the printer already decided to order the Rumba Board, the Diamond hot-end and a 3rd extruder, pictures of that upgrade will come real soon
https://youtu.be/1HRucwuAzxs

Hi again,

The upgrading of the printer is almost complete, these are the results so far.

First of all the link of the youtube video
This is the FIRST testprint after calibrating the printer firmware wise, notice the bottom left corner has no filament.
This was the result after calibrating the heated bed COLD, and printed at HB of 65°C so keep in mind that even THAT much of temperature COUNTS
This is setting me to think. Would it be possible to set up a firmware menu where you can choose for example, HB off, HB 65°C, HB 90°C HB 100°C and list it on the LCD, so that you can set different kinds of bed calibrations without having to trouble in slic3r or any other slicing program?

Also started to upgrade the upgraded version, lol.
For the people that have troubles printing ABS properly due to environmental temp changes, on thingiverse i found this enclosure and allready started to print the pieces

After the video was taken however, problems started to rise :/
The black and red filament used in the video did not give any problems at all so i was really getting progression i thought.
When i switched from green filament to blue (green also printed out nicely) i first cleaned the nozzle by putting the head (only the head so i dismounted the heatbreaks) in a small glas filled with acetone and let it rest overnight.
Next afternoon coming home from work i wanted to start cleaning the nozzle, but i did not find ANY cleaning tool in the package...
so i used the cleaning wire and cylindrical brush from my other 3d printer to clean out the interior. I already blocked 2 of the 3 intakes with M6 bolts to make sure no returning filaments could come back that way and after a while the three intakes were cleaned out. BUT, what about the mixing chambre? what about the tip of the nozzle?
i mounted the pieces back together and run the red filament through the intake that first had black, black filament through the intake that had green and blue filament through the intake that had black. so when these three colours would come out clean i could be pretty sure that all three channels would be clean...

In two out of three cases i was lucky. Red and black came out pretty clean after about 50mm extrusion, blue however was something else.
The extruder (1) was skipping the whole time over the filament while with black (2) and red (3) there was no problem (yet).
Tried to tighten the extruder by placing a washer between the bottom and the spring (my extruders are WITHOUT a tension regulator), i didn't do the trick. Added another one, and another one, did the trick and blue started to print out nicely.
The reason i said "yet" earlier, was because after 2 days of printing test cubes, in PLA, and ABS extruder 2 (black) started to skip, did the trick with the washers again and it was solved.
1 WEEK LATER... extruder 3 (red) was having the same opinion as 1 and 2 and started skipping!!!
So now my question is, because i can't keep on adding washers, WTH? are the MK8 extruders that weak? or is there something going wrong with the nozzle? Before you ask i cleaned out the nozzle already a dozen of times but the extruders seems to dislike the diamond hot end...

i'm now gonna try the original dual head again with the extruders and see what will happen. Also ordered 3 Titan extruders from E3D and i'm planning to self make a triple head carriage out of aluminium with 3 E3D V6 full metal hot ends.

https://youtu.be/b1fSHw7jv8s

It has been proven.
With the original 0.40mm dual head the blue filaments are printing without a problem, this is a nozzle problem...
Thursday 31 Aug my three E3D Titan extruders will be delivered.
I am curious what this will give on the diamond hotend.

The titan extruders from E3D are working on the original Dual head config like a beauty, gave me back a little hope on the diamond head.
E3D vs Diamond will be something for tomorrow. I still use the original high torque extruder motors originally delivered by geeetech. just replaced the extruders themselves.

Hello again,

The diamond hot-end and the E3D Titan extruders are working GREAT, finally i'm starting to get some real good printing results.
With this being said, now i can start on fine tuning the XYZ movements and extruders settings.

Later this week i will upload some pics of the result and also a video of the diamond in action.

Keep in mind that i'm still using the Marlin config and that i'm not (yet) capable of mixing the colours, as so far only repetier FW is capable of doing so.
Or is there somebody that knows Marlin FW well enough to oversee this problem and can give me a hand on this?

The E3D Titans