Day 4 as usual started at 9:00AM, in this day the 3d printer was introduced. Actually I had a previous experience with the 3d printers especially the one introduced in this day which is the FDM ultimaker 2, but only in using cura and printing, so this day gave me an overview about problem diagnoses and maintenance.
The day started by installing cura software which is a software used to convert the 3d object into gcode, I have downloaded cura directly from the ultimaker website, but the file was not ready to be installed since it is not an executable file. I made it executable from it is properties and then it is ready to be used.
Next I have set up the 3d printer and started by cleaning it as shown in following photos.
First, I have cleaned the body of the 3d printer
Then, I have removed the glass cover and cleaned it by using alchohol.
In the following images, the back side of the printer and the filament can be clearly seen and also the motor which transports the filament to the nozzle. The instructor was explaining how to check the belt and the rods of the motors. The rods should be fixed, but in this case one of them was moving easily and the belt was not tensioned. Last image shows the adjusting process of the fans angle, both fans are used to cool the filament down as it flows out of the nozzle at 210 degrees celsius.
Before installing the filament, very important thing to do is to make the tip of the filament like a cone shape as shown in the following images. Since the filament was already installed, I have removed it by the MAINTENANCE -> ADVANCED -> REMOVE MATERIAL option
Another important thing to do is to level the plate as shown the following image. If this is the first time for the machine to be powered on, the menu of the factory reset will appear, but in this case I have leveled the plate by the BUILD-PLATE option.
The following image also shows my first product from the machine. It has poor quality, to solve it I have reduced the speed of the nozzle to 30%.
We had a discussion about the common issues with the 3d printers, for example the humidity can increase the diameter of the filament, if the diameter exceeds 2.95mm then the affected part should be cut and never insert it into the nozzle.
Another problem is the force on the filament, the motor in the back side has a spring which can be adjusted, if the force is bigger than the required force the affected part should be cut also. The following image shows how the rear motor works.
This link shows number of problems and how to solve it.