Difference between revisions of "Eggbot Quality Troubleshooting"

Revision as of 11:01, 11 July 2014

If you are having quality issues with your prints that might be due to a misalignment of some sort, we hope that this guide will help you to find the source of the problem. This guide contains some helpful pictures that show how configuring the EggBot in different ways can produce different outcomes.

"Hardware" issues

Our test file

This is the test file that we'll be using for our examples. Note that the print quality is fine and consistent. The "O's" have closed shapes, the vertical parts are vertical, the horizontal parts are horizontal, the slants of the "W's" have consistent width, and so forth. (Some of the examples that we'll show later do not have these properties!)

You can download the example file here. (TODO: ADD LINK)

This was printed with the Deluxe EggBot on a chicken egg with an Ultra Fine Point Sharpie. The egg was oriented with its "fat" side pointing towards the egg motor (headstock).

The print settings were as follows:

• Timing tab:
  • Speed when pen is down: 300 steps/s
  • Speed when pen is up: 400 steps/s
  • Pen raising speed: 50 %/s
  • Delay after raising pen: 200 ms
  • Pen lowering speed: 20 %/s
  • Delay after lowering pen: 400 ms
• Options tab:
  • Reverse motion of Motor 1 (pen): checked
  • Reverse motion of Motor 2 (egg): checked
  • Egg (x) axis wraps around: checked
  • Start with pen centered: checked
  • Return home when done: checked
  • Enable engraver, if attached: unchecked
  • Curve smoothing (lower for more): 0.2

Dry pen

A common error that tends to happen when using old pens, or pens that have been left un-capped. It is easy to fix this problem by taking a scratch piece of paper and, right before you start your EggBot, bleeding your pen a little on the paper to get the ink flowing again.

Alignment of the egg in the egg cups

This skewed image is the result of misaligning the egg within the couplers, like so:

In order to avoid this you should place the egg between the couplers with the egg as flush as you can get it against each coupler. To check if the egg is properly aligned, you twist one of the couplers and watch for any wobbling as the egg rotates. Adjust the egg until there is as little wobbling as possible. It should look something like this:

Loose screws

This is the cause of the screw under the pen arm coming loose.

If this screw is loose, then the pen arm will move left to write as the pen is dragged across the egg. If this screw can be wiggled a little bit by your fingers, then it is too loose.

Vertical position of the pen motor

Headstock / Tailstock position

Pen arm not flat when in the down position

Pen arm backer position

Bumping the pen arm

Distortion

"Software" issues

Motor reversal issues

Timing issues