VzBot 330

[TitusADuxass]

I am falling in love with this printer. 

 

Printed in Amazon Basics ABS.

 

 

[Penatr8tor]

Nice @TitusADuxass

I have to agree with you on the VzBot... Once you get it dialed in... It's a real performer.

Nice looking print and pictures make 3D prints look terrible.

[Penatr8tor]

I just got off the phone with a friend and while we were talking, I said to him, Hold on a sec, I want to start a print. It was 20 wire clips for my RatRig refurb...

after 10 or so minutes I look at my screen and said to him... I have to send you a pic. My print is almost done and it only took 15 minutes... and it's ABS. Gotta love the VzBot. 

 

[mvdveer]

11 hours ago, TitusADuxass said:

am falling in love with this printer.

Told you you would  Once it is tuned in, it just works.

[TitusADuxass]

The CPAP system is working hard on this one.

 

[TitusADuxass]

I've been giving it a bit of a workout, printing part of all sizes. It's Fire & Forget now. ABS onto a smooth PEI plate without any glues.

A T-nut for a Skadia wall board.

Knipex holder also for the Skadia board.

A wall mount for my router.

And a torture test for SnGs - there's a bit of fine tuning required.

 

 

[TitusADuxass]

So after 50 hrs of printing the right hand Y linear rail started to sound a bit crunchy.

So I gave it a good blast of Bulldog BDX penetrating fluid to flush it out and then applied some Muc-off C3 ceramic chain lube as I'm out of grease (grease has been ordered).

After printing the Pi mount and the SKR mount for my v0 upgrade, I've found out that the X & Y dimension accuracy is slightly out.

A quick travel measurement (using tape on the bed and a pencil clamped to the toolhead) of 100mm - X is coming out at 99.6-99,7 and X is 99,5.

What's the best solution or should I stop chasing zeros?

As a quick fix I just scaled up the stl files in Orca - it worked fine.

[Penatr8tor]

1 hour ago, TitusADuxass said:

A quick travel measurement (using tape on the bed and a pencil clamped to the toolhead) of 100mm - X is coming out at 99.6-99,7 and X is 99,5.

Well... you have the numbers, so it doesn't take a lot to adjust the rotational distance of the steppers in your printer.cfg and runt the test again.

If it were me though... I would make a pointer with a sharp tip out of a piece of soft wire, copper or aluminum and wrap it around the hotend. Then I'd just put a steel rule on the build plate, the magnet will keep it in place. Then you can easily adjust and re-run to confirm. Obviously, you should check the Y as well.

[TitusADuxass]

So yesterday I ran some prints off in PETG and PLA - stringy and hot end problems - I'm not happy with the extruder. And, it's FREAKING loud. I can't work in the office at the same time. I know that I could probably tune some of the noise out, but I'm sure that it will still be quite loud.

You have to have just the right amount of tension on or it slips. 

I have 2 itches to scratch:

1. I want to fit an Orbiter 2.0 - I use these in my Vorons and have never had any slipping problems (I've had problems the opposite - it's a strong extruder).

2. I want to fit a Rapido 2 UHF hotend. I want to run a comparison with the Goliath (which is not my favourite hotend). @mvdveer I know you ran the Rapido for a while, do you have the STLs for mounting or is a straight bolt on?

I rarely print PLA and only print PETG for spring parts (catches and latches, usw.) so I'll be using the 330 for ABS/ASA and exotics. I'll tune my v2.4 for PLA & PETG.

Anyway, I'm off to unblock the extruder/Hotend again.

[mvdveer]

5 hours ago, TitusADuxass said:

want to fit a Rapido 2 UHF hotend. I want to run a comparison with the Goliath (which is not my favourite hotend). @mvdveer I know you ran the Rapido for a while, do you have the STLs for mounting or is a straight bolt on?

They are in the Printed Printhead repository:

Orbitor mount  and hotend mount and then some Rapido specific files here. And for the rapid you will need this as well.

 

Hope is what you are after.

[TitusADuxass]

1 hour ago, mvdveer said:

They are in the Printed Printhead repository:

Orbitor mount  and hotend mount and then some Rapido specific files here. And for the rapid you will need this as well.

Hope is what you are after.

I looked at some of that this morning. 

It's a lot of work to scratch an itch or two.

Plus, I cannot get the extruder retaining screws out, maybe too much thread locker. If I try any harder it will tear up the hex in the screws. I think the only way is to strip it down and somehow apply a bit of heat to destroy the thread locker.

My itches are calming down, must be the special cream...

[Penatr8tor]

6 hours ago, TitusADuxass said:

So yesterday I ran some prints off in PETG and PLA - stringy and hot end problems - I'm not happy with the extruder. And, it's FREAKING loud. I can't work in the office at the same time. I know that I could probably tune some of the noise out, but I'm sure that it will still be quite loud.

That CPAP muffler will cut a good 30-40% of the fan noise down. I'm also keeping my fan speeds down a lot lately as I've been using my VZ for ABS lately. My RatRigs are my PLA printers. PETG is cool filament and I've done cool prints with it but it's not a material I need to print that much and if you want stringing... Print PETG out of a hotend designed for high flow ABS. In the beginning I had a lot of oozing issues, especially with a 0.6 nozzle. In the beginning I played around a lot with retraction for ABS I'm only using 0.5mm and at the end of the print I retract 10mm (in my end print G-Code in Orca) to mitigate as much oozing as possible.

I'm not sure why you're having extruder problems. Mine has been a really solid performer. If anything, and in my experience the hextrudort extruder has been the strongest of all of the extruders I've used. I guess mileage can vary.

 

[TitusADuxass]

3 minutes ago, Penatr8tor said:

That CPAP muffler will cut a good 30-40% of the fan noise down. I'm also keeping my fan speeds down a lot lately as I've been using my VZ for ABS lately. My RatRigs are my PLA printers. PETG is cool filament and I've done cool prints with it but it's not a material I need to print that much and if you want stringing... Print PETG out of a hotend designed for high flow ABS. In the beginning I had a lot of oozing issues, especially with a 0.6 nozzle. In the beginning I played around a lot with retraction for ABS I'm only using 0.5mm and at the end of the print I retract 10mm (in my end print G-Code in Orca) to mitigate as much oozing as possible.

I'm not sure why you're having extruder problems. Mine has been a really solid performer. If anything, and in my experience the hextrudort extruder has been the strongest of all of the extruders I've used. I guess mileage can vary.

I am quite happy with the noise when printing ABS, it only gets really loud when printing overhangs (80%).

I don't know what it is with the extruder, it certainly does not like silky PLA (the Devil's own filament in my opinion).

With ABS, If I have the tension screw too tight it slips, it's probably cut away at the filament, when printing first layers. Almost as if the nozzle is too close and it's causing back pressure and restricting the flow rate.

On the other hand, if it's too loose, it slips. It is quite easy to tune it on the fly while the lead in & brim is being printed - all in all it's no biggie.

[Penatr8tor]

16 minutes ago, TitusADuxass said:

I don't know what it is with the extruder, it certainly does not like silky PLA (the Devil's own filament in my opinion).

Silky PLA is some gummy stuff and it expands when extruding and it shows every flaw and yes... I agree. 

[Penatr8tor]

So, I started looking at the new Vz-Hextrudort-Low extruder that arrived the other day.

I needed to see what I was in store for as it has a 60T gear and the old extruder is a 50T with 10T on the motor. At first I thought, Wow... Now I have to buy an 8T motor but... as luck would have it... it also supports 10T motors and that's what's already on the printer. That means I just need to swap out extruders and change a few settings in the printer.cfg.

On further inspection I noticed a little setscrew next to the spring preload thumbscrew. How clever... The setscrew limits the depth that the teeth dig into the filament while still allowing you to adjust the pressure thru the spring thumbscrew. I think the real benefit of this arrangement will be seen when printing with really soft materials like TPU. @mvdveer

A couple photos below.

[mvdveer]

4 hours ago, Penatr8tor said:

soft materials like TPU. @mvdveer

Don't temp me!.... Ah bollocks . It's on order 

[Penatr8tor]

3 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Don't temp me!.... Ah bollocks . It's on order 

Sorry 

It is really nice though. Like 3D printer jewelry. 

[TitusADuxass]

7 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Don't temp me!.... Ah bollocks . It's on order 

I'm fighting the urge....

[TitusADuxass]

8 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Don't temp me!.... Ah bollocks . It's on order 

But, I know that I need one...

[mvdveer]

5 hours ago, TitusADuxass said:

But, I know that I need one...

Yes you do!

[TitusADuxass]

9 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

Yes you do!

You're not helping...

[claudermilk]

Welcome to the meeting of Printer's Enablers. 

[TitusADuxass]

Beacon doesn't like the heat!

The other day, after about 5 hours the Z height went all to pot. No matter what I tried it wouldn't get down low enough to print a good first layer. I was baby stepping more than 0.25 just to get it close.

I ran multiple Z endstop and Beacon calibration, saved the config and restarted. Then ran my usual 1st layer patch test.  No go, way too high.

So this morning I fired her back up and without making any adjustements or config changes printed my 1st Layer test - the result was perfect.

So, I homed all, then dropped Z to 0, set the bed to 105, the nozzle to 260  and let it heatsoak (I'd already changed the timeout in printer.cfg).

After about 2 hours the beacon probe temperature was at 80c, so I ran my 1st layer test again - the result was too high, not extremely high but you could see the individual extrusions.

I'm now waiting for things to cool down and will try the 1st layer print again.

I suspect that the Beacon has a heat problem.

[atrushing]

33 minutes ago, TitusADuxass said:

So, I homed all, then dropped Z to 0, set the bed to 105, the nozzle to 260  and let it heatsoak (I'd already changed the timeout in printer.cfg).

After about 2 hours the beacon probe temperature was at 80c, so I ran my 1st layer test again - the result was too high, not extremely high but you could see the individual extrusions.

I'm now waiting for things to cool down and will try the 1st layer print again.

I suspect that the Beacon has a heat problem.

I understand that you are trying to prevent nozzle oozing by dropping the Z height to zero but that leaves the the entire surface area of the Beacon a mere 2.5mm above the 105° bed to absorb all of that radiant heat while soaking the chamber.

The large horizontal surface is a weak but necessary part of the Beacon design and the more copper there is in the PCB, the quicker it will absorb the heat. I wonder if it would help to add a thin insulating layer under the PCB similar to how @G_T placed ceramic fiber above the Dragonfly heat block. I would also try to soak with the nozzle at a lower temperature and higher off of the build plate.

Edited July 26, 2024 by atrushing

[TitusADuxass]

22 minutes ago, atrushing said:

I understand that you are trying to prevent nozzle oozing by dropping the Z height to zero but that leaves the the entire surface area of the Beacon a mere 2.5mm above the 105° bed to absorb all of that radiant heat while soaking the chamber.

No, I am trying to induce the heat failure. That's why I dropped the Z so low, I didn't want to run 5 odd hours of printing to reproduce the error. By dropping the proble low I accelerated the process, unfortunately successfully.