Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Felix 1.0
IR beam. An LED on it should turn off when
the endstop is triggered, but ours only got
very dim, making it hard to know exactly
where the Z home position was triggered.
However, the X and Y belts are extremely
easy to tension: just turn one screw on each
axis to tighten them.
The Felix's extruder uses a spring-loaded ten-
sioning mechanism that presses a ball bear-
ing against the filament and extruder gear.
We finally got the proper tension when we
set it so that the ball bearing rests against the
extruder gear before putting in the filament.
The Felix is a pretty speedy machine. Its print
quality is great when the belts and Z lead
screw are properly tensioned and aligned.
Aligning the Z lead screw is the hardest part
of getting a great print; if it's off, there will be
ridges between the layers, an effect known
as
Z wobble
.
The Felix was designed to print in PLA. While
it has a heated bed, its open-case design
doesn't allow the bed to get hot enough for
printing ABS. The bed also needs to be slight-
ly leveled every couple of prints, and it can
warp due to the flexing of the aluminum.
The Felix is based on RAMPS 1.4 electronics,
has a rigid frame made of aluminum extru-
sion, and has a generous build volume. It
took us longer than the estimated 5-10
hours to finish this build, and we've built kit
printers before.
The Felix version of Repetier bundles Skein-
forge and Slic3r under the Repetier frontend,
so you can choose one or the other when
slicing your STL file. Felix came with a handful
of slicing profiles, as well.
Leveling the bed and setting the Z height
were a bit of a challenge. You use a wrench
to loosen a nut under each of the three lev-
eling screws until the aluminum bed is
leveled.
The Z limit switch is an optical endstop that's
triggered when an opaque object blocks its
Felix's best feature is that it's extremely quiet.
DryLin polymer bushings glide along the lin-
ear rails so stealthily that even at high
speeds, it's quiet.
