Printer prep. Got 300 kids that want to play with it this year!

Dug my MM 2.0 out of the closet and got it set up and running in anticipation of 300 new students that want to try it out this year...

'Course, had to do a test run...









Printer ran great, although my design needs some tweaking to prevent warpage.

Thought I needed to give the printer a workout, so I found a broken bit of plastic I needed repaired.

I've got Pelican cases on my KTM, and one of the latches lost some teeth. The release would still catch and sort of hold it on, but I didn't want my lunch flying out on the way to school.

Gettin the dang thing apart proved to be a chore... Had to drill a hole to get to the back side of the pin so I could punch it out.



Pin on its way out:



Viola! Latch removed. You can sort of see where the broken teeth are- the bottom piece where it sticks down is supposed to have a hook on it.



Sketchup to the rescue.



Took me about 5 attempts before I got one that fit nicely and pulled the door shut tight enough.

Gettin a print ready:



One of the early attempts:





Heres the one I'm currently "testing". It was printed with only 10% infill, so I don't think it will hold up long. We'll see. Already found a few minor changes I want to make, but here it is as printed:



Cut and ready to fit:



Assembled:



Installed.



So here is the before:



and the after:



Had some issues with the printer this time. Think I've had problems with my control board from day one (pretty sure its one of the first RUMBA boards- every now and then I get a random issue where after every move, it pauses for about a second.  Think I found a workaround today though). If I have any money left over in the school budget I might just spring for a new one to rule that out.

Also going to start experimenting with settings (jerk, in particular) to see if I can get better quality and higher speeds.

One other thing (okay, 2) that I want to learn more about is Bridging and "moving part" prints.  Both I can attempt with this model-  could do 2 bridges and have only 2 pieces printed instead of 3, and print them in place.  The harder one would be to print bridged, with pins in the holes so I didn't have to use metal.  Probably too weak for real life application, but it would be pretty neat to print the part, pull it off and have a moving part with out any other assembly!