Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Here’s where we start to sweat and get shaky hands. Everything previously was done without power. Now we need to apply power to the printer.
On first power-up, the fan above the effector must start up. If it does not then you need to immediately power off. The nozzle should also remain cold. If it heats up, turn off. If everything is good so far then it’s time to connect.
Well, almost.
First, you need to put the contents of the zip file (from RepRapPro) onto the (supplied) SD card.
Now, my Fisher is connecting directly to my laptop, not to a router as most people would. This meant some extra networking steps for me.
I had to go into my ethernet connections and delete the existing network connection that was there. My laptop uses wifi for internet. Next, I created a new ethernet connection, clicked the IPv4 tab and for IP I entered 192.168.2.10 (since my network is normally on 192.168.1.1) and for the subnet I entered 255.255.255.0. Gateway was left blank.
This now puts my laptop's ethernet port on a different network from everything else.
On the SD card, I open the /sys/config.g file and set the IP to 192.168.2.14 and save it.
Now I pop the SD card into the printer, power up the printer, and hook up the ethernet cable from the printer to my laptop.
In a terminal I enter:
ping 192.168.2.10
Getting a reply to that means the Duet board is up and running. Doing:
ping 192.168.2.14
and getting a reply means that the printer server is up and running.
Putting 192.168.2.14 into a browser address bar gets me the printer’s server page (below). I’m in!
Testing, Testing…
Clicking the link on the left that says ‘G-Code Console’ will display a text entry box that you can think of as being like a terminal to issue commands. Entering:
G1 S2 X10 F500
Will move the X carriage up by 10mm.
After several other commands to check each axis, it’s time to go… home.
Going back to the previous page, we click the ‘Home’ button and all three carriages should move up to touch the microswitches, move down and up a bit, and then return to leave the nozzle a few millimeters above the bed.
Now the scary bit.
Hot End
It’s time to switch on the heater and see if we can extrude melted filament. This can be done using the ‘Heater’ link at the top left. When it reaches the temperature on the dropdown menu (190, maybe 200+), we can try using the manual winder on the extruder to get some melted plastic.
In my case it worked!
I did have to tinker with the screw to give the extruder more grip.
Printing
To actually print something, you load a .g file from the SD card. To do this, click the ‘G-code File’ link on the left of the screen, and this lists all .g files that are on the card. Click the .g file and you’ll be asked if you really want to print this. Click OK and wait.
The RepRapPro zip file (from earlier) usually has a little MakerBot file on there to get you started.
Conclusion
From several weeks of printing random things for practice, I have noticed a glitch in my setup. Ideally when you do HOME and ALIGN (in the main tab), the nozzle should be less than a millimeter away from the bed. Mine is about 10mm away. I end up having to manually move the nozzle down. Not a big deal, and it’s something I’ll look into later. So make sure your nozzle is right near the bed before printing.
The printer is quick at whooshing back and forth to print plastic, but expect some prints (even small ones) to take quite a while. The little figure of the Kerbal Space Program character is only 12cm high and took just over one hour to print. Almost half of that time was me holding the base in place as I could see the nozzle was going to end up knocking it over.
Most will print without being held, but there’d be nothing worse than seeing a one hour print ruined by it tipping over. By rights, it shouldn’t happen, but we know that it inevitably will.
I have to say. This was money well spent. The instructions are excellent – with plenty of photos for every step of the procedure. Honestly, if you mess this up, you’ve no one to blame but yourself for not studying the photos, part lists, etc.
There are a ton of good things out there to print, but you need to convert them from STL format to the RepRapPro G format. How’s that done? I’m glad you asked.
Converting
Most models out there are in STL format which is no good for the RepRapPro Fisher. Thankfully we can use Slic3r (http://slic3r.org) to convert to the native G format that we need. Click DOWNLOAD and then, on the download page, click Linux. Follow the instructions there and you’ll have Slic3r almost ready to go.
Next, following the instructions at: https://reprappro.com/ documentation/commissioning-introduction/printing-duet/#Slic3r_profiles will mean that Slic3r will use the Fisher by default with all the settings done for us.
Now, grab a model from Thingiverse.com. That’s my favourite place for models. Save the file somewhere you can remember.
Load up Slic3r and at the top left, click ‘Add…’ and point it to the STL file
Slic3r will show you a 3D model of what we’re going to print. As long as the Fisher settings have been imported, we don’t need to touch the tabs at the top. See how it says ‘Fisher’ beside ‘Printer’ at the top right? That’s good.
Normally the model is shown in yellow. Click it, it’ll turn green, and display the info shown at the bottom right of the screen. Size is in millimeters, so this Lego block will be 31.8mm by 15.8mm by 11.4mm high. That’s about all we need to know. If I wanted this as a jumbo Lego, then I could click ‘Scale’ at the top and increase it to 200%, or shrink it to 50% to make a mini-Lego.
The last thing to do is click the ‘Export G-code’ button and save the .g file somewhere on the SD card.
Pop the SD card into the printer, power it up, network into it, and get printing!