My FDM 1650

I worked on trying to get the crud that is between the feed rollers & feed block out.

Feed rollers & feed block

All I had to work with is some 0.004″ shim stock — even an Xacto knife blade is too big at 0.014″ thickness. I ground some notches to try and make it like a saw blade:

Rollers, tool, & crud

After a couple of hours, taking more skin off my fingers than crud out of the rollers, I decided I need to come up with a better way.

I was also thinking that maybe a shaft was somehow bent, and I should be able to measure across the 0.525″ rolls and if there was a difference it would indicate something was bent:

Measurements looked okay

Whew, these looked okay, so nothing is bent!

—-John

The motors in both the model & support feed blocks are both MiniMotor SA 2233U012S  123. There’s also a 486 on the support vrs 466 on the model. Both are geared 23/1 43:1. Both are also labeled with a Micro MO Electronic, Inc tag. I’m guessing that Micro MO integrated the MiniMotors with the 6 conductor ribbon cable & the DB9 male connector. I’m guessing there’s no encoder with just 6 wires — I need to ohm-out the DB9 connection too.

With the motors off the feed blocks (by removing the three slotted flat head screws), I should be able to plug them into the empty FDM head, and power up in the machine using the ‘Load’ function to see the no-load torque of each motor.

Connectors & Inlet Buffers Labeled

I’ll do that some other day, as today I’d like to check the clearance of the feed rolls to the feed block. On the support block (the block that turns pretty free), the smallest feeler gage I have is 0.010″ and it starts to ‘go’:

Support block 0.010″ starts to go

I found a piece of 0.004″ shim stock, and that seems to ‘go’ completely to the shaft:

0.004″ shim goes completely to shaft

On the model block (the block that is almost frozen), the smallest feeler gage I have is 0.010″ and it starts to ‘go’ just like the support block:

0.010″ feeler starts to go

But the 0.004″ shim stock doesn’t get to the shaft:

0.004″ shim doesn’t go to shaft like support block

In this picture it looks like it’s going, but it is due to parallax – it wasn’t even halfway. I’m going to scrape all that crud out and see if it frees that block up some.

—-John

‘Torque Limit Errors’ have both the 1650 and 2000 offline, and as the 2000 has a few other things :::: the 1650 seems the place to start.

The heads that I have for my machines are:
FDM2000 — Soluble Support (stripped model tip thread), ABS (Torque Limit Errors), & ICW
FDM1650 — ABS (Torque Limit Errors)

With all this stuff you would think there would be a combination that would work.

Although the heads look the same, they are not. The electrical connectors are different 1650/2000. The dowel pin spacing/pattern is different between the 1650/2000 feed blocks:

FDM2000 Left — FDM1650 Right

In addition the number/material (and probably size) of the feed rolls is different (one pair/two pair), motor size/gearing, the notch in the base plate for the protruding gear different too… arguhhh…

The FDM1650 ABS head model side seems almost siezed compared to the support side, and that seems to be the cause of the Torque Limit Errors. The motor seemed also ‘stiffer‘ that the support side motor.

Model side feed block and motor

When I removed the blocks, the model side had a coating of black grease, like lithium grease, but the support side had a white grease, like Krytox. Perhaps the last person to redo the model feed block didn’t want to spend the big bucks on the good high temperature grease?

Also, the feed rollers on the model side appear to be in direct contact with the block, where on the model side there seems to be some clearance (where did I put the feeler gages?).

Everything seems to be pressed fitted together, except for the pin holding the motor gear and the three screws attaching the motor to the block.

So, over the next couple of weeks I hope to be figuring this out (after I find the small bench press) and I’ll try to take pictures and get into the blog ….

Anyone who’s done this before, I love some comment pointers from you.

—-John

Well it seems like I futzed things up and lost a lot of posts, and of course I didn’t back anything up. I should know better.

I’ll try to get a post up to summarize the MG94, and if you have something specific you want me to cover, leave a comment here.

—-John

There was a Stratasys 768 listed on eBay recently with a ‘Buy-it-now’ price of $1,425, and it also had an ‘Offer’ button — It was only a few miles away so I was watching it. A couple of hours before the end it was still there, and I checked the sellers other items/feedback and I noticed he had been taking a lot of offers. I decided to offer $425. Next thing I new he snapped it up.

When I got there I found it pretty well gutted, and when I got the covers off it was pretty much a XY table and hopefully a heated chamber….

The pics:

Yep — no Z Axis

Parts of XY there

Yep – No Head

Lots of cut wires

Cards are gone

Small card by material is there

Same card from other side

Not sure what the green things do

Motor Driver board I think

Lastly a small power supply

Certainly not my best purchase……

—-John

HaveBlue had emailed me with a tidbit of information — he had shown one of the bases from his 1600 to someone who thought the foam looked a lot like ‘Balsa Foam’. I emailed the mfg and found out there’s a $300 minimum order on some 10x10x1.5 chunks, a bit to much to spend when I’m not sure the stuff would work.

One day while surfing eBay, I searched for ‘Balsa Foam’ and found an Arts Place that had 10# 9x12x1 for under $20 — so I ordered two thinking I’ll piece & epoxy up a 10x10x2 out of two 9x12x1 sheets. Here’s what the raw stuff looks like:

Packaged Balsa Foam 10# 9x12x1

And a closeup showing fine cell structure, but a few bubbles:

Balsa Foam Closeup

The color of the foam is a bit darker than Stratasys Foam, and the 10# material has a finer cell structure. This seems very close and I’m anzious to give it a try.

—-John

Well it looks like there’s overs a years worth of posts have gone missing from these pages — I wonder what might have happened, and how much has gone missing. I guess I need to start some sort of backup process to the database — another thing to figure out.

But anyway, I had the opportunity to run a 768 SST a week back, and I found a cute Nautilus Gear Set on Thingyverse. I sliced it up in Catalyst, and was pretty small so I added extra set, scaled 1.5x, and sent it to the printer.

Front View

Side View

The support head seems to be leaking a bit in the machine, so the support didn’t break cleanly from the parts. The two cross arms warped (lifted), but I was able to get together. I need to figure out how to increase the support overhang in Catalyst.

One assembled

—-John

I had epoxied up a sheet of the old pink foam, that had problems with part removal. I wanted to make some pegs for the workmate, that I use for support removal, so the test was run making two pegs:

WorkMate Peg

I used Insight (sparse model, and sparse support). P400 model material, and release support.

I started the run 0.005″ above the coated foam (I think — the Z-Axis DRO has been acting up). The first layers of support went down pretty nicely:

Some of the first support layers

Things continued well:

Getting Bigger

Support for the barbs looked okay while running:

Support for barbs

The finished tray of parts:

Front View

Left View

The parts were easily (almost too easily!) from the foam:

Easily lifted from foam

The foam was intact and not damaged at all:

No damage to foam

The bottom layer of support was pretty irregular like I was too far away from the foam when I started the run:

Ruff 1st layer

Once I got the parts to the support removal bench, it was obivous the bottom was bowed quite a bit:

Bowed bottom

Also, the Y+ edge of the back part was completely unattached at the entry corner:

Unattached Edge

Using a mini-torch, I heated up the unattached edge, and stuck it down. It shrank a little bit being such a big area:

Fixed edge

A good time to try the epoxy part finishing, so I mixed up a small batch and brushed on with an acid brush:

Epoxy coated parts setting up

I’ll run these again of the same foam, but this time right at touch-off.

—-John

I most assembled the FDM2000 today with the ABS head I got off eBay. It’s suprising how much you forget, when you dis-assembled it over a year ago……

All axis jog okay, and model & filament loaded okay.

Testing & alignment starts this week sometime (plus I gotta find a space for it).

—-John

I got some old penetrating epoxy put on the Pink Foam today. I just used a throw away brush to apply. As I was applying, the foam was dusting, and those particles became imbedded in the epoxy. It didn’t penetrate nearly as much as I hoped, but the old stuff did manage to harden up (thank goodness):

Epoxing Setup

The surface got a lot glossier than I really wanted it to, and there’s some voids too where the epoxy wouln’t stuck down. I didn’t try applying a second coat to fill the voids, as I figured it would just make the project even glossier. I’ll scuff it up with some coarse sandpaper just before I try it.

A little too glossy

BTW .. the old B&D Workmate is an excellent support removal workspace. I’ve been using a 1″ wood chisel as the main removal tool, and the Workmate has saved my fingers a lot.

I’ll give the epoxy coated foam a shot tomorrow, while I’m working on the FDM2000.

—-John