jlmccuan's DropLit Build

[jlmccuan]

Got my DropLit build finished through the mechanical part this evening. Tomorrow begins the fun of getting it to move and maybe even get it to print something. I'll be happy with a blob for starters, lol. I spent 7 hours over two evenings and finished without incident. Ill be using an Acer P1500 for the DLP portion. Today I traded labor with my son for a real nice stainless steel workbench top to match my stainless desktop in the workroom. You can see it in the last pics.

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[jlmccuan]

This afternoon I powered up the motor, Arduino and shield. Configuration wasn't too difficult other than I am not getting 1/8 stepping. The only jumper on the board is in a different location from mhackney's jumper he removed to get microsteps. I removed the one on this board and the shield was no longer recognized. I put it back on and just configured my steps to 500 instead of 2000 and it is moving the correct amount. So if anyone has any advice on this, please let me know. I got Creation Workshop configured and can move the stepper manually, slice and project the slice. However, there seems to be no coordination between the stepper movement and the projector when running the gcode. Sometimes it projects the images when the z axis is paused in the down position, other times it is when the z is moving up or down randomly. Hopefully, there is a fix for that as well. I'm pretty anxious to make some parts and I'm sure it's just a small tweak to get the combo right. I have tonight and tomorrow morning to figure it out before some clients are coming by to see it run. Even if I'm getting blobs, they know it will get solved.

[jlmccuan]

Well, some good news. I have the projector and stepper somewhat in sync. Now it projects the slice every other time. But now I know how to fix it. I'll just cut the calculated timing in half. Still working on the microstepping.

[jlmccuan]

Yet another update. I kept fiddling around with the jumper to get microstepping operating and it finally did recognize the board with the jumper removed to yield 8x stepping. On another front, the timing of the projector and steppers is finally right. You cannot write your own gcode to be used by Creative Workshop. You can add commands, but the actual movement code is coded by CW. So I'm now operational and griping about the folks I ordered my petri dishes from. Hopefully, they will make an appearance tomorrow. I have a liter of MadeSolid in black and 500ml of MakerJuice in red. My DropLit is just now finishing up it's first dry run and it looks like the gcode and slice projections have stayed in sync.

[jlmccuan]

OK, now this is the weirdest hour and a half ever! Since my little Droplit is running well, I felt it was time to finally put the lower front cover on. You know, the one with the SeeMe eyes logo and the blue acrylic? Every time I got that acrylic within 6 inches of the printer, the Arduino GRBL shield locked up. Nothing short of resetting the board and rebooting of the computer will bring it back on line. I tried rerouting cables, bundling the power supply cables differently, putting a ground strap on the acrylic, shielding the board from the front, everything I could dream of. The only thing that works is keeping that blue stuff away. Maybe someone else has the answer. If not, do you suppose I could talk SeeMeCNC into a cover without the cutouts? I'm not thrilled with the way those wires are in close proximity to the cutouts.

[jlmccuan]

Amazon got my petri dishes to me this evening. So I am running my very first part with resin. Very exciting! I'm not expecting much as I just took some guesses. I will say the teflon material from Muve is a real pain. Just getting the backing off of it put some crinkles in it and applying it did not go well either. But I have an about 1 inch spot in the center which I hope is good enough. Pics in a bit.

[jlmccuan]

Well, after a few false starts I got something built that looked almost like the file I started with. A ways to go, but it's going to work, I think.

[img]http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x98/ ... 033934.jpg[/img]

[jlmccuan]

I played with settings, projector position, mirror adjustments way too late last night. Actually, this morning as you can see from the 4:25am timestamp on the post above, lol. But after a couple of hours nap, my first decent print! It was scaled to 37.25mm and measured very close to that. There are still some bugs to work out. Clicking in the wrong place projects your desktop and cures resin if you don't catch it, for instance. I used Muve's teflon tape to coat my build dish. Mistake! It is very hard to put down without wrinkles, air pockets and other assorted mayhem. I ordered some QSil.

So, the print!

Acer P1500 Projector
Contrast 80
Brightness 40

MadeSolid black resin

Creation Workshop
.100 layer height
Exposure Time 4500ms
Bottom Exposure 12000ms
Bottom Layers 3
Lift Distance 3mm
Z Lift Speed 200mm/s
Z Retract Speed 350mm/s

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