The tronxy lives

[phaxtris]

Bought this thing over Christmas as a project, and now it finally prints ! Although not perfectly

As part of the 'project' aspect ive upgraded it to linear rails, fixed some of the poor belt routing, upgraded to a clone e3d v6 volcano hot end with a clone BMG direct drive extruder

It does some funny things maybe other tinkerer 3d printer guys can explain...it won't heat up to the bed temps and extruder temps before printing...I have to manually do that for some reason, maybe that's a Cura setting go astray?

Adhesion seems to not be great, the corners lift, and there is some warping in the top layer corners as well...wonder if that may be to high of a print temp causing excess shrinkage ? (@200 w/pla)..or it just needs some glue stick?

Ayways I took a video of it running at 120mm/s with a .6 nozzle....it needs some tweeking...once I get the issues sorted I'll try to see how it does at 200mm/s

 

[cjmac]

I bought one of those Tronxy X5SA that someone posted about being for sale on Amazon. Is that the one you got? It seems to be working OK. I'm new at 3d printing but I have a pretty good support group when I have questions.

Chris

 

[phaxtris]

yes, im the one who posted them

yea, it seems to be working ok, i never did try it as it comes out of the box so there is some tweaking that has to happen, at my 1 day a month on it, itll probabaly take me another year to get it fully sorted out though, its a project for me...one of to many

 

[cjmac]

I thought it was you. Thanks for the lead. Are you using the slicer that came with it? It was an older version. I'm using it for now but setting the nozzle temp to 205, the bed to 65 and the filament retraction to 3mm instead of the default settings. I haven't had to use a glue stick. I do give the bed a quick wipe with alcohol on a paper towel to remove finger print oils and dust. I have probably gone through a kg of PLA so far. Most prints are successful. I have had a tiny bit of curl up at the corners on a few prints. I also, as an accidental experiment, printed a vertical slab 1" by 1/8" with no raft or other support. It actually made it up to a height of 1 1/2" before the adhesion to the bed failed.

Chris

 

[Perry]

This might help for the adhesion.

The Complete Guide to Blue Tape for 3D Printing

This is a complete guide to using blue painter's tape for 3D printing. Learn how to use this easy & inexpensive trick for bed adhesion in this in-depth post.

tapemanblue.com

 

[phaxtris]

I thought it was you. Thanks for the lead. Are you using the slicer that came with it? It was an older version. I'm using it for now but setting the nozzle temp to 205, the bed to 65 and the filament retraction to 3mm instead of the default settings. I haven't had to use a glue stick. I do give the bed a quick wipe with alcohol on a paper towel to remove finger print oils and dust. I have probably gone through a kg of PLA so far. Most prints are successful. I have had a tiny bit of curl up at the corners on a few prints. I also, as an accidental experiment, printed a vertical slab 1" by 1/8" with no raft or other support. It actually made it up to a height of 1 1/2" before the adhesion to the bed failed.

Chris

ive only printed the two things with this so far, im using cura as its what i use with my other printer, so its familiar. I've never had any problems with adhesion on my other printer and about 6kg of filament...but it doesn't have a .6mm nozzle and a volcano hot end running at 120mm/s, so its a game of playing around with settings and googling...the aim is to make a fast printer, at least double my other one, so it may end up with klipper, then it will be a whole other learning experience setting that up

if i cant get it to go with just the heated bed i will probably try the gluestick next, not much to lose there

glad the printer is working out for you, hard to beat the price it was at

 

[The Ken]

Bought this thing over Christmas as a project, and now it finally prints ! Although not perfectly

As part of the 'project' aspect ive upgraded it to linear rails, fixed some of the poor belt routing, upgraded to a clone e3d v6 volcano hot end with a clone BMG direct drive extruder

It does some funny things maybe other tinkerer 3d printer guys can explain...it won't heat up to the bed temps and extruder temps before printing...I have to manually do that for some reason, maybe that's a Cura setting go astray?

Adhesion seems to not be great, the corners lift, and there is some warping in the top layer corners as well...wonder if that may be to high of a print temp causing excess shrinkage ? (@200 w/pla)..or it just needs some glue stick?

Ayways I took a video of it running at 120mm/s with a .6 nozzle....it needs some tweeking...once I get the issues sorted I'll try to see how it does at 200mm/s

Yo Ryan...
*quote*
It does some funny things maybe other tinkerer 3d printer guys can explain...it won't heat up to the bed temps and extruder temps before printing...I have to manually do that for some reason, maybe that's a Cura setting go astray?
* end quote*

I am unsure of the Tronxy firmware, but if it is Marlin based, there are gcode's available for bed and nozzle preheats.
In Cura, there is a 'Prepare' tab on the top. Open that and under the Printer tab there is 'Start G-code' and 'End G-code'. Whatever you have in there will be automatically prepended or appended to your g-code file when you slice.
The ones you may want to add are:

M107 ; Fan Off (helps heating)
M140 S[first_layer_bed_temperature] ; set bed temperature for filament
M104 S[first_layer_temperature] ; set nozzle temperature for filament
M190 S[first_layer_bed_temperature] ; Wait for bed
M109 S[first_layer_temperature] ; Wait for nozzle
G28 ; home all axes
G1 Z5 F5000 ; lift nozzle

You can replace the stuff including the [square brackets] with a number, but the things in the square brackets are placeholders (I use Slic3r, maybe Cura uses {} brackets) and they may grab the number from your Cura slicer.

I also use the following End G-code:

M104 S0 ; turn off temperature
G28 X0 ; home X axis
M84 ; disable motors

Really useful stuff (all g-codes) can be seen at the Marlin site

Gcode

Printing the planet, one layer at a time.

marlinfw.org

The [first_layer_bed_temperature] type placeholder lists are hard to find, but google-fu may help you (Interpret this as 'The Ken looked for this a few weeks ago, finally found the list and then forgot to bookmark it)

Have fun with the Tronxy!

 

[phaxtris]

It is Marlin, I've tried to compline a new firmware with the different steps for the different extruder, but couldn't get through a couple compile errors

I should look at the g code, maybe it is missing that m109 and m190 from the first few lines

I did manage to cheat the different extruder in Cura by putting in the g code override for steps on the extruder in the pre code, but I didn't think I would need to do that with the bed temp/nozzle temp, I thought Cura would do that on its own

Thanks for the tips, I'll check out the g code and see if it's missing some things

 

[The Ken]

Looking further into your post....shrinkage.
PLA - I leave the part fan off for the first 3 layers, then they seem to stick better without warp. Cooling will cause the shrinkage - think "tubing down the Elbow in springtime". (Yup, born and raised in Calgary...Go Flames!)
Get your first layer SQUISHED. I use .1mm gap, 0.28mm first layer, 1/2 speed and tuned the extruder push/acceleration/pull back on a small 0.4 nozzle. no skirt. Getting very good adhesion (so mush that the flex mag bed is pretty well the only thing to print onto)
I use 205/60 for PLA temps, but I am a few thousand feet lower with about 35% more relative humidity, ymmv.