New new to this. They haven't even shipped my M2 yet.

[Mark the Greater]

You guys are alright you know that? I can do metric. I just like to bitch!

The more I read into the details of this journey the more I realize that I have grossly underestimated what goes into 3D printing. I am going to have to come up to speed real, real quick if I am going to pull off what I want to do. Like, I had no clue how much everyone hates ABS, how crummy PLA stands up to a stiff breeze, and how PETG is the thing that I actually want but will take for-the-fuck-ever to "dial-in."

I hope you all like feeling useful...

P.S.- No clue how BB code works here but dude, insta was on fucking Battle Bots?!? That's about the coolest thing I've read on here.

[jimc]

i did the same as you. read all i could for 2 months while i waited for my m2. i tried to lessen the learning curve and i did i guess. took the curve down from 8 mos to about 7. haha. just start with pla, then get a roll of abs and then move on to petg.

[Mark the Greater]

Alright. My M2 came yesterday. Very cool. Slappin' it together as I type. Noticed a few inconsistencies in the assembly instructions so far but nothing worth bitching about. One thing though that may be nice to include would be a hardware list. I am stuck between whether I am missing hardware or there is a hick-up in the assembly guide.

Any of you kids purchase a kit recently? As It stands I may be making an emergency order at McMaster. Want to make sure there won't be more missing before I place though.

FYI: I am short one M3x8 SS SCHS. Need it to mount the X axis motor and I already used all four to mount the Spider.

---UPDATE---

So "LH" on the M3x8 hardware bag does not mean Left Hand thread. It means Low Head. Found my bits!

[jimc]

you shouldnt be missing anything. you actually always have tons of extra left over. makergear gives you extra everything. i think for the x motor you need 3x12 and you use a flat washer and a lock washer to keep it from bottoming in the stepper. i just did an assembly a few days ago.

[jimc]

yes low head. those are the ones you use to mount the metal plate to the rail carriage

[Tim]

PETG is the thing that I actually want but will take for-the-f**k-ever to "dial-in."

It's really not that bad. Sometimes you'll have a model that's just bad for printing in PETg, and usually there's a decent way to redesign the print to make it work. Some people on this forum insist on dialing everything in exactly, but really, if you start with a new filament that you don't know anything about, there's not much you can do other than to change the extruder and bed temperature, then run it and see how it goes. And it usually goes well enough not to be a total disaster. If not, then you take a guess at what went wrong, make adjustments, clean up the mess, and start again. Just make sure you babysit the machine when printing with a filament you're not familiar with.

Run PLA a couple of times until you get used to the whole procedure, and you'll be ready to move on to more experimental things before you know it.

[Mark the Greater]

Had a wonderful time last night. Got everything built, wired, and function tested. Okay, not everything. Not surprisingly I do not know G code. I know it's a thing, but I have never had occasion to use it. Long story long, I wanted to fully test yesterday but was unwilling to walk all the two blocks to my car to get my credit card and buy S3D. So I went the Pronterface route. Everything was going great until I hit the portion about bed leveling. I understand the process but not the instructions. Basically I don't know how to "lock" my Z. Apparently you just tell the machine "Z+.1" and it locks the axis. Makes perfect sense except I get an Unknown Syntax error.

Is there a good thread on here that runs though the basics of G code? I looked but I've never been very good at hide-and-seek.

[Tim]

At least for this part, there's no significant difference between Pronterface and S3D. You don't need to send a G code command by hand; just go to the motor manipulation part of the GUI window and where there's the vertical bar with "+Z" at the top and "-Z" at the bottom, click on the "0.1" button on the upper half of that map. Just make sure you remember that "+Z" means that the bed goes down.

The motors always power up in the free-spinning state. Moving any motor from S3D or pronterface activates the motor, and it becomes "locked" (that is, no longer freely spinning or able to be pushed around by hand, although it can be moved with enough applied force), until all motors have been idle for the default timeout period (which is unfortunately kind of short, at 1 minute, I think; which is why one of the first modifications people do is to change the timeout to 5 minutes or more in the firmware code, and re-flash the firmware).

Mostly you want to avoid entering G code by hand, and instead let the slicer generate it. There are a few G code commands that are occasionally useful, but for most practical purposes you will never need to write out a G code command by hand and send it to the printer. If you start modifying your printer to the point where it doesn't always behave like the slicer expects it to, then you will really need to understand what the G code is doing.

[Jules]

Had a wonderful time last night. Got everything built, wired, and function tested. Okay, not everything. Not surprisingly I do not know G code. I know it's a thing, but I have never had occasion to use it. Long story long, I wanted to fully test yesterday but was unwilling to walk all the two blocks to my car to get my credit card and buy S3D. So I went the Pronterface route. Everything was going great until I hit the portion about bed leveling. I understand the process but not the instructions. Basically I don't know how to "lock" my Z. Apparently you just tell the machine "Z+.1" and it locks the axis. Makes perfect sense except I get an Unknown Syntax error.

Is there a good thread on here that runs though the basics of G code? I looked but I've never been very good at hide-and-seek.

Here's a good resource:

http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code

[Mark the Greater]

Yeah, took me a little while to figure out the motors loose power and not that my M2 is filled with ghosts.

I see what you're saying. I had it in my head differently what that command did. Just for the sake of curiosity though, why would I get a syntax error? Is there a preface not included in the text I was reading? I'll link the page below though I am sure you've seen it before.

http://makergear.wikidot.com/m2-getting-started#toc13