Sad to say, the first print was a failure. I’m going to add a brim the next time around as it appears it came off after about 23 minutes of printing. It looks pretty good as you’ll see in the video, but fortunately I was watching it and saw it come up a bit from the printer – then it started floating all around. Trying again with a brim, and I used a tip from Prusa’s website to increase the layer height of the top layer which is supposed to help. I’m printing this at only 5% infill, so it should be nice and squishy!
Next print is going now, and I’m hoping we make it past 30 minutes this time!
Very exciting milestone for this printer – it is the first time printing something other than PLA! I just started the first tire print using “Flex” or TPU based materials. Here is a quick video of it laying down part of the first layer… We’ll know in an hour or so if it works! Check out the live footage here.
I used some of the tips from this link on Prusa’s site to give me a better shot of the print turning out successful. They include loosening the extruder gears, and ensuring I’m printing at slower speeds. I honestly have no idea if this is going to work!
It’s starting to feel like Christmas around here these days. Below, you’ll see 5 more of our required parts showed up today. From top left, and going clockwise, we have the two batteries per car, the two motors per car, the Rasberry Pi Zero W, the Motor controller, and lastly – the power on/off switch!
In addition to the electronics, another very required item showed up today – the TPU filament to be used for the tires! This is the first time I’ll have printed with this new filament, so I’m going to start with a single tire (likely tomorrow morning) to see how it goes. I’ll post updates to document the spectacular failures (or possible successes)!
Yah, neither had I. Until tonight. You see, one of the parts we need for the build, is a small board that we connect a mini-USB cable to in order to charge the lithium ion rechargeable batteries inside.
As I’ve found, most of the parts are available incredibly cheap, as long as I’m willing to buy it from China and wait for it to arrive (30+ days). Well, since our build begins Saturday – we don’t have that kind of time!
Fortunately, I was able to find the USB charger board relatively cheap on Amazon for 5.99 for 10 boards. I say relatively, but $5.99 isn’t a huge deal for a part, but if I was able to wait longer – I could have picked up 10 for $1.89!
Well, it turns out the 10 pack on Amazon was actually still all together – and had not been separated into individual pieces!
The good news is that after a bit of googling to give me confidence (yah, just break it with your hands!) – I was able to break the single board down into the required individual pieces. Phew – that was a new experience!!
The picture below shows the board after I had snapped the single board in half (and then one half broke 3/2 like you see below. Extra credit for anyone who can anyone spot the missing piece!!
And here are all the pieces, waiting on some soldering and connecting time!
I’m happy to report that parts are starting to arrive as you can see with the pictures below. We are now just missing the Pi Zero’s w/ Heatsink, batteries, motor controller, motors, and switches. Getting closer!
The votes are in! We will be (gulp!) attempting the ZeroBot Pro for our final print! I just completed the purchases for all the parts, and am expecting the parts to arrive during this week.
As discussed, we’ll need to likely extend our time together a bit in order to complete the final project. While the first print is complete (see pictures and video below) – we are going to have a fair amount of time soldering, and trying to figure out how to get everything connected and working!
The current game plan (subject to MUCH change) is to keep our normal time on Saturday the 20th, and add another session on the 27th. The session on the 27th would likely be much longer, and we’d see how far we get that week.
Please review the documentation found here, here, and here before the next time we meet! I hope to be posting info as I continue to do more research and testing (and perhaps even a pre-build…
Congrats to everyone on their successful prints and post processing on Saturday. We had a great session, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes back with for their final project nomination!!
To get some ideas flowing, here are a few cool projects I stumbled upon:
Sphere-O-Bot (could also make a 2-wheel robot with the same parts!)
I started the print for Luke’s Mini Dragon, and it seemed to go off the rails pretty quickly, with pieces coming off the bed and moving around while it was still printing. I stopped the print and took the picture you see below. @Luke – any ideas on how to fix the print, and would you like to resubmit the gcode?
Ezra’s Spinning Top has just started printing, and is looking to go for about an hour longer. What is interesting is the number of layers on this one – 286 layers (quick – do the math – how many inches is 286 layers, when each layer is .15mm high?) First person to comment with the right answer gets to pick out one of the Pokemon that Jackson has printed!
You can watch this print live until about 11:15PM here.
