One of the early improvements I added to Squirty was a ducted fan to blow air on the plastic just after extrusion. The aim of the fan is to cool the plastic more quickly and to provide better bridging performance. I measured the improvement in bridging with a ducted fan in an old post. I’ve […]
In previous posts I described a z-probe modification I made to Squirty the RepRap. The major issue with this z-probe was that the point probed was about 30mm away from the nozzle, which meant that the probe could not reach the entire bed. I’ve designed a new version that resolves that issue. By mounting the […]
In a previous post I described some safety electronics for Squirty the RepRap that will switch off power to the printer if the hotend got too hot or if the bed was powered for too long. In this post I’ll describe an upgrade to that system and a setup to allow logging of safety information […]
After my printer almost killed me I needed to get my hands on a new hotend. RepRapPro, which made my printer kit, has unfortunately closed down so I got a new nozzle, heater block, heatsink block, heater cartridge and thermistor from emaker.io. The nozzle is the new “quickset” design, which is clamped in place rather […]
After a period of relevant dormancy, Squirty has had a lot of work done recently. I have replaced most of the original plastic parts, which were starting to crack, and put in new bearings. I also designed a new x-carriage ducted fan adaptor that put better air flow on the printed part and put in […]
Once I got my printer’s z-probe and autoleveling set up I was struck with a sudden paranoia that my printer bed was saddled. The standard autoleveling in Marlin can deal with a printer bed that is not level, but it cannot fully correct for a bed that is not entirely planar*, e.g. one that is […]
Some time ago I put a borosilicate glass bed on Squirty. I really like it because PLA will stick firmly to it when it is hot, but will pop off easily once it cools down. It is also really easy to clean. The only issue I had was how to attach it to the aluminium […]
In the last couple of posts I described how I put a z-probe onto Squirty the RepRap. Adding the z-probe meant new wires. These wires ended up jumbled all over the place and occasionally got caught on the z-axis threaded rods, causing all manner of chaos to break out. The z-probe also requires a lot […]
Yesterday I was fortunate enough to get access to a work-in-progress laser cutter (aka the LAZOR). I didn’t have time to do any cutting, but was able to try out the workflow by engraving a piece of box cardboard with the same svg file I used for the Cameo based name card project. I have […]