holy crap
Damn that came out great, I'm a bit envious at how easily you got up and running.
Watch out for shrink on ABS, it's like dunking a hot guy in freezing water if your bed temp isn't above 90C.
PLA is a nightmare to get right, it turns out I broke
both 120psi pneumatic fittings that hold the bowden (feed) tube. Seriously, the fittings hold 120 psi, and I snapped the hell out of both of them.
When they broke they not only jammed my nozzles, one piece also jammed the entrance to the print head. What stinks is I kept redoing my fan layout, thinking the PLA was clogging. It was, however it wasn't a temp issue, it was metal in the feed system causing excess pressure, which allowed the PLA to overheat.
Now that everything is cleaned out, I'm printing ABS like a champ (even that had begun to clog after 5 minutes of printing). I have two new fittings on the way, and I'm reworking my fans a little more to hopefully get PLA flowing good. I'm finally able to start making things other than small simple stuff.
I found out a few other things.
I upgraded the PSU from a tired 17amp unit to a new 22amp, added a larger heatsink (with heat sink compound) to the Ramps board, and increased the awg size on my bed from 18awg to 16awg. WOW what a difference. I immediately saw a huge change in how the bed heats up, and no more light dimming when the lights are on. However, this unveiled a new issue... The new PSU showed I was still undersize on wiring and the wires were heating up bit enough to burn, but quite warm, had I still been using the 18awg, I'm sure I would have melted something. I put 14awg wires on the bed and not only are the wires cold, but the bed heats twice as fast as it used to.
I did some checking, I was on 18guage wires and according to some charts, for a short run, 18awg will handle 11 amps. However, I had issues even with 16awg. This tells me that either some of the wire size charts are wrong, or the bed is pulling more than 11 amps. Before, it would take 15 minutes or more to reach 75c, and that was with no fans (sometimes it struggled even with that), now it heats up to 90c in about 5 minutes, even with a small fan blowing across the glass .
I also insulated my head (currently in the garage drying), and I have the parts for my magnetic arms, which will clean up slop, but I need to buy new JB weld as the stuff I have I think is bad, it didn't hold very well at all. Once I get PLA flowing I'll finish the magnetic arms, and then I will be off and running with good accuracy. I still want better head, but now that it's not as much of a hurry now that I know the head wasn't the main problem. I can always use the old one for another color. I just need another Nema motor and bowden tube.
Oh, and I did finally get the PID done, but I have to redo it again now that I changed the wires and insulated the head.
I hope no one has the wrong idea, I built mine from scratch from a newer design. It's bound to take some tuning and tweaking. While Mkawa is printing great, he spent a lot more to do so. I wanted the newer style and the experience of working from scratch, mine was as much about the journey as it was about the destination. Both methods work and eventually (with luck) arrive at great working printers, we just took different routes. Some of my issues were my fault, others were luck of the draw, some are due to lack of documentation. I'm sure Mkawa is happy with his, as am I with mine.