Category Archives: Getting Started

Some of the parts I made years ago (May 2011) for a frame to hold some solar panels on a sailboat are coming apart. Fortunately they are not all that bad. This one held up well as I had cracked … Continue reading →

What a greeting to a 21+ hour run! I had started this run yesterday, a rather large part. I started a bit too far back, so when the support was laying down, it ran off the back of the foam … Continue reading →

I started this week with high hopes of running some more Torlon inlet buffers like I did back in Jan’12 (rrr… two of the LOST posts – cursed ‘puters, networks, & databases). And of course I didn’t remember precisely how … Continue reading →

I ran a small run this morning and it ran without any torque limit errors. I’m getting quite a few hairs and burnt globs from both the material and support having too much moisture. Also the models is not separating … Continue reading →

Well, I got things back together. The motors & gearheads from the ICW head. The used feed block from RapidPrototypeTech for the model side, and the original feed block from the support side. While I was at it I stuck … Continue reading →

I remembered I had a ICW head, and when I found it and looked at the motors, they were the 2233U012S 23/1 43:1 type. I pulled them (as I don’t have any casting material & the head is for the … Continue reading →

Having an hour to kill, and the used parts in, I hooked up my test blocks to see how the torque values looked. I applied some Krytox grease to the planetary gears & reassembled to the motors. Still not sure whether to … Continue reading →

Getting nowhere very quickly I contacted RapidPrototypeTech and he had a few helpful things. He said the planetary gear end screws off the minimotor, and it is what usually goes bad. I re-screwed the motor to the block, and gently used a … Continue reading →

Getting nowhere very slowly with the shim stock cleaning tool, I picked up a 0.004″ slitting saw to try to get the crud out from underneath the drive wheels of the model material feed block. This was all I could … Continue reading →

I got some RS232 breakout blocks so I’ll be able to test the filament drive motors while in the machine & running. Today I’m just going to quickly test the setup & get a no-load torque reading as I have … Continue reading →