[Kit Assembly] - A few problems and how to solve them

Hi guys!

So yesterday I received my Materia 101, and I spent most of the night assembling it. Even after reading the posts on this forum, I have still come across quite a few problems during assembly, and I would like to share them, in case this can help someone else.

I agree with the fact that documentation really should refer to the actual parts contained in the package you get. I found it sort of challenging to have to figure out if I had all the parts, or how to adapt the instructions to the way my parts were different (pre-assembled frame, for example), but that's just me, I believe most people would be plain annoyed at it.

Anyway, here are the main problems I found, and how I attempted solutions for them:

  1. In chapter "Assembling the X carriage and the extruder", my X carriage plate was completely missing the two holes needed to mount the assembled extruder block to it. I has to manually drill holes into the steel plate, keeping my fingers crossed that the actual position of the hand-made holes would not introduce any problem in the printer's nozzle positioning.

  2. When assembling the 6D rods for the Y axis belts (Chapter "Asembling the frame", Fig. 5), I found out that my frame was designed differently from the one in the manual, and was missing the 4 supports that helped position the pulleys (the supports with holes where the 6D bearings are supposed to go). Instead, my 6D rods were longer, and reached the holes on the sides of the frame, but "not quite". The rods barely reached the 6D bearings and would fall off one end inside the frame at the slightest (slightest, I am talking about fractions of a mm) sideways movement. I solved this by inserting thin round spacers into the bearings from the outside, so that the summed length of rods + spacers perfectly reached the outer frame surface, and then I fixed a flat plate on the outside of each 6D hole, in order to prevent any sideways movement.

  3. I found a few holes in the frame that were supposed to be threaded but weren't. I was able to force a 3M6 bolt into them, etching a sort of thread, and then replacing the sacrificed bolt with a good one.

Apart from these points up here, I was able to follow the instructions pretty smoothly (by taking into account what other people said on this forum, for example that the printing bed should be put into the frame BEFORE the Y rods and the whole XY carriage structure).

Now, from my very first tests, I noticed that my print bed has a problem when moving along the Z axis at "high" speeds, it tends to jam, whereas I can have it move quite smoothly with the "Move axis" program... But this is another story, I will add to an existing thread that I found about this issue, or open a new one.

In the meantime I hope this was helpful, happy assembly! ;D

I also had a hole in the frame that was not threaded. Luckily I had been wanting to have an excuse to get a tap and die set. Problem solved.

I have had several other problems during assembly and I still have yet to produce my first part.

My extruder motor is not grabbing and feeding the filament properly. I see the motor turning against the filament but it doesn't feed unless I push on it a little. Still working on solving this problem.

Any tips on leveling the printing bed? It is giving me a headache currently. The manuals are lacking in this department. I'm not sure where to set the z end-stop and how much to raise the bed using the four spring-mounted screws.

The biggest problem I have with the manual is that it tells you to home the axes before setting the z-stop. The first time I homed it, the z-motor drove the bed right up into the extruder nozzle and tried to push right through it. I had to yank the power cord to stop the motor. Still not sure how much damage this caused and if my filament feeding issues are related. I should have seen the problem coming but I was trying to follow the manual.

Some of the things I do like are the opportunities to upgrade the printer. I noticed the board can actually handle twice the end-stops, which I think it's a great idea to have one at both ends of each axis, and room to add a second extruder. I am also going to look into adding a heated bed.

Hey guys could you PM me your serieal numbers? Because the newer kits use a plastic pin to fastned the cover.

kengdahl:
Hey guys could you PM me your serieal numbers? Because the newer kits use a plastic pin to fastned the cover.

I will get that serial number for you tomorrow. Which pin are you referring to? I still have not put the shell on.

I fixed the problem with the filament not feeding properly. I had the bearing improperly mounted and it was not pressing against the knurled stepper wheel.

Maybe I got in over my head on this project. I am a beginner and have had one difficulty after another. I'm not sure if I have the print bed calibrated correctly but I went ahead and tried a test print anyway. Printing quality parts seems to require a lot of knowledge and tweaking of parameters, which I am willing to learn but it will take time.

The biggest obstacle I am facing right now is when I start a print job my printer will reset partway through the first layer of the build. Any idea why my printer is resetting?

Is the case fan running? it could be that the fuses are overheating.

also double check all your connections. All the wires.

/K

The case fan is running but at a very low RPM compared to the extruder fan and it is hardly drawing any air. I have not put the covers on so my boards are exposed. The ramps shield is definitely overheating; I can keep the printer running by blowing on the board to cool it, at least until I pass out and then the board overheats and resets.

I am going to try to find a way to boost the RPM on the fan, either a hardware fix or it maybe using the software. I suppose it might help if I tie all my wires down and put the covers on to create some flow through.

Here goes...

No solution to overheating yet. Heat sinks are crazy hot even with the covers off. I am ordering a couple of mini fans and going to aim them straight on top of the board.

I zip tied the fan to the floor, but it doesn't move any air. I assembled mine two months ago and still can't get it to auto-home. Serial # 127. There really shouldn't be a problem updating an online pdf instruction manual.

Bear in mind that I have not assembled mine yet as I am reading all of the post in the hope that I can avoid any of the mentioned problems.
Since there seems to be a heat related problem from the get go, I would add a couple of suggestions for consideration and exploration.

  1. An old trick from computers is to take a small fan (desk size) and leaving one of the panels off have it blowing into the cavity moving air.

  2. Investigate Peltier heater/cooler the heater side could be used for heating the assembly table, and the cooler side could be used for wicking away heat from the heat sinks.

  3. Get some larger computer fans and cut a hole to fit in the case panels and mount one blowing air in and one exhausting on the other side. These fans can be purchased in 5V or 12V.

Hello

  1. I've contacted Sharebot about the Ramps board overheating.

  2. The auto-homing issue seems to be solved by flipping the connector 180 degrees on the end-stop. I tried to flip mine to see if that resulted in the machine resetting itself and it did.

I too have found that the two holes in the plate that the extruder assembly bolts to are missing and I suppose that the alignment of those holes are not critical to the positioning of the extruder. See Fig 1 on the section 06 Assembling X Carriage and the Extruder. Also see Fig 9. In Fig 12, the manual says "It is time to secure the assembled extruding block on the plate with m3x10 bolts (2) the threaded holes are marked in red (see picture) Boy! was this confusing, since I had no holes and the picture had no "marked in red" on the picture Fig 12.

Also the instructions to mount the fan to the end of the stepper motor using the 5mm 3x6 Teflon spacers did not indicate using washers to offset the 5mm spacers from the deep hole in the end of the stepper motor as that hole swallows up 4mm of the 5mm that are needed to offset the stepper motor to allow sufficient space for the needed airflow around that stepper motor. It also did not indicate if the motor was to be mounted airflow in or airflow out. I mounted mine airflow in with a thin plastic washer along with the 5mm spacers to allow airflow around the coil end of the motor. This should be sufficient to allow the heat to wick away from the motor. See fig 6.

Also package C 20 indicates M3 nuts (12) and washers (4). There were no washers in the package.

Mounting the stepper block to the extruder was a daunting task as the stepper block does not have any threads, so one must force the brass threaded part into the plastic and hope to align the part vertically. See Fig 11. My effort is not quite vertical, but this may not be critical, hopefully.

I just finished taking my assembled carriage apart. It seems that I assembled the X axis guide rods with just one rod guide (those little cam like holders that hold the guide rods in place) on each corner when the instructions say to use two per corner. It really doesn't say that but since the parts list indicates to use eight and you have only four corners then "Ta-Da" two per rod. I thought it a bit silly when I assembled the carriage with only one per, as that did not seem like enough support for the rods that hold the injector/heater assembly in place, but when I finished the assembly, it seemed very solid. And the pictures seem to only show one per. It pays to re-read the instructions again before attempting the assembly. If I paid careful attention I should have found that each rod requires two of the rod holders (rod guides) for each end of the rods.

normoldboy:
Mounting the stepper block to the extruder was a daunting task as the stepper block does not have any threads, so one must force the brass threaded part into the plastic and hope to align the part vertically. See Fig 11. My effort is not quite vertical, but this may not be critical, hopefully.

I had an interesting adventure mounting the extruder. Mine went in crooked the first try and I had to cut notches in the brass threaded part to be able to back it out with a screw driver. The second time was better but not perfectly aligned. If I get my other problems out of the way I might troubleshoot this later. I was thinking to back it out again and tap some threads in the block.