exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Icky wrote: 24 Aug 2021 19:34

exxos wrote: 24 Aug 2021 19:25

Depends what your into I guess :lol:

True. It could end up as a stunt double in a zombie flick

Or a weird Frankenstein remake for finger puppets? :shrug: :hide:

Got this image back from the fab house for the TOS206 decoder boards / 16Mhz boosters..


Still waiting for news on the power supply boards..

New printhead came today :)

Hope it works as nice as it looks. :thumbup:

PhilC wrote: 01 Sep 2021 21:51 Hope it works as nice as it looks. :thumbup:

Yep cost enough !

Just ordered some longer bolts.. Another fan.. Still waiting for my oddball thermo probes to arrive. Ordered a heater bar. No idea what wattage mine was. I ordered a 60w then read sites say your hoot enough to melt aluminium with the thing :twisted: :lol: well feker took forever to heat up before so hopefully be twice as quick now...

Onto the next problem.. :roll:

I fitted one mechanism because I was having trouble getting the filament through my bodged extruder. But the motor keeps on "slipping". I tried increasing the current until the printer shutdown but did not seem to make any difference.I keep on wearing the speed and I am at about 100mm/sec now and it still has fits and starts of slipping :(.

I think the problem is the new extruder mechanism has a much larger gear than the one I was using before and it is having great difficulty turning :roll:


I did order a couple of Nema 17 Motors earlier where I think they are about 4kg torque. My current motors I cannot find the exact model but I think they could possibly be 3KG. in any case, if the Nema 17 motors cannot drive it, I'll have to go to the next size up motor which can do 5KG.. The problem there is there is almost no room at the rear of the motors before his the back of the printer. So if those don't work then I cannot simply upgrade to a even larger motor :roll:

I have the tensioner as loose as it can be without actually slipping on the filament. God knows what motor they actually intend to drive with this mechanism as I think it would need one twice the size to drive it on the tightest setting!

Just ordered a couple of 60mm NEMA 17 motors. Twice the current and twice the torque I think.

The problem is they are not going to be physically easy to fit in the printer.

There is only about 8mm clearance from the rear of the motor to the "flash forge banner plate thing". I may just remove that to give a few more mm clearance. But as the vertical bars are behind it it will still not be enough clearance.


I will probably just glue a 10mm block onto the mechanism to fool the printer into thinking it is further back than it actually is. I cannot actually use the outer edges of the print bed because of the bulldog clips clamping the glass down.

Yesterday's NEMA 17 Motors just turned up so thought what their help and I will fix them to see if they are any better at least...

Assembly fitted.


For some bizarre reason the tubes are different lengths...And indeed the wrong length anyway..


So this is a total :WTF:

Totally different mounting bolts ?!


Anyone know what those hollow bolts are actually called ?

It's probably to stop them being fitted the wrong way around by a numbskull.

The drama continues...

One of those times where having a long shaft is not an advantage :lol: :roll:


I padded the thing out with a view washes later on.


The next problem was the mounting bracket, which held the connector block on top of the assembly ,actually had no screws in the new mounting block :roll:


It did have some holes on the top rather than the sites which are utilised instead. But I did not have the right bits to make it fit. So I used a long bolt with some nylon spacers to pad out the gap. Only it was not that simple :roll:


The spaces caused the bolts to go angled. Ordinarily I would not care, but it would mean the second motor would not physically fit.

So then I spent ages looking for a M3 stud bar and cutting it down and trying to get the notes on it afterwards ! I spent about two hours messing about just on this part alone :roll:


Progress on the Dreamer got halted because the heater elements do not physically fit in the new blocks :roll:


Meanwhile the new block for the i3 came..


Annoyingly they did not send a bolt which clamps the block onto the extruder bolt :roll: I did not have won the right size so had to cut another one down to fit :roll:


The next problem was the original block had a long threaded bolt and the new block was a lot shorter. In fact the old block had second large hole which was to clamp the block to the metal bracket.


Again annoyingly, the new block had two smaller holes which I could use for mounting but they were not tapped all the way through. So I cut a piece of plastic bag to mark out where the holes were so I could use that as a template to drill the bracket on the printer.


The next problem was to drill bit was not long enough :roll:


After hunting around I found a small drill bit which had one of those square adapters on the end which locally fit a square extender bar I had lay around.


It was very wobbly but it got the job done.


Just managed to fit the next size drill bit in the drill for it to reach.


Mounting holes done :)


The next problem was the bolt in the block which clamps the extruder bolt in with, was physically impossible to get at when the block was mounted because it was on the left-hand side :roll:


So some hacksawing later..


This way I can assemble the whole extruder assembly and bolt it on to the bracket afterwards.


Need to order some more bolts as I don't have any the right length for it :roll:

Also in the mix the old extruder bolt would not physically fit in the new block . So I had to steal one of those odd ones from the Dreamer for now. I need to find out what they are called and order a new one next.

The goings-on in this post represent a 12 hour stint on messing with these things :roll: Had enough now.Need to go hunting for more parts to order and hopefully they will come sometime next week.