Evolution of a Blog

This blog has evolved as I have as a maker. It starts at the beginning of my journey where I began to re-tread my tires in the useful lore of micro electronics and the open-source software that can drive them. While building solutions around micro-electronics are still an occasional topic my more recent focus has been on the 3D Printing side of making.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Bowden Tube Friction

The bowden tube I mention is the teflon tube that moves filament from the extruder to the nozzle.  The use of a bowden tube, with the stepper motor on the back of the printer, helps make the Ultimaker 2 more accurate and speedy as it takes weight out of the moving print assembly.

I have two Ultimaker 2's upgraded this summer to 2+'s.   The + upgrade, and its new feeder, has really helped with my extrusion reliability but I am struggling at the moment with one of the printers and during debugging I observed a distinct difference in material flow between the front right and left rear of the build platform.

The below chart shows weights for a small test object printed on two locations of the build platform with #1 being the right side closest to the door and #2 being the back left.


With two out of two printers behaving this way, and some other posts on the same topic seemingly reporting similar things, it would seem this is not an unusual behaviour?   What percentage difference is tolerable?   I have not noticed an issue with a print but may need to watch more carefully!

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