Experimenting with Printrun v Replicator and printed a useful spanner!

Well I spent the day 'playing' with printing and seeing how Printrun worked as against ReplicatorG with Sprinter. I also designed and made a couple of knobs for the front panel addition I have been working on. Whilst printing the knobs (see photo's) I quickly designed a 10mm spanner for unlocking the fitting at the rear of the machine when changing filament.

The spanner would also test the calibration of the machine and software settings. The results were good enough but I would like to improve the finished surface. A few weeks ago I would have been over the moon with the results but now am seeking better prints, and that's how it should be. The completed spanner proved to be very accurate (see photo's) and also a useful addition to be stored at the rear of the printer ready to go!

I also tried printing with Printrun. It has a nice look and feel to it with useful axis movement controls. However I wanted to compare it with ReplicatorG when using Sprinter firmware. I tried laying down a print under both but not continuing it when I saw the initial results. The ReplicatorG finish was far superior to Printrun. I would have been happy to have continued with the print using ReplicatorG but the Printrun version actually failed. It does say on various sites that Printurn is much better when using Marlin, so its a little unfair to dismiss it yet. If I use Sprinter though, I will only use ReplicatorG to print from.

Next week will see a concerted effort to get to grips with Marlin firmware and also the completion of fitting a second extruder running 3mm filament and a duplication of Richards hot end design. My own design is on the back burner until I have the dual extruder in place. I am waiting for some 3mm filament to try in some tubing I have, as I think the internal diameter may be undersized. I also need to source the correct sized 1/8BSP pneumatic stud.

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1. SD card reader bracket printed using Sumpod 3D printer