Prototype Gigabot X printer user guide
This guide will walk through the steps to successfully operate the prototype Gigabot X from Re3D.
Printable Materials
So far, the Gigabot X has been tested and proven to work with the following pellets:
Virgin PLA, with MasterBatch Mixing
Recycled PLA from failed 3D Prints
Recycled ABS
Recycled PET
Recycled Polycarbonate
Recycled ASA
Recycled Polypropylene
How to use
Power and Lights
Interface
The interface is just like any other RepRap 3D Printer. It does use a mini SD card instead of a full size one however. Also there are two extruders, extruder one is for the bottom heater and extruder two is for the top heater on the extruder.
Slicing
Build size: 560 X 710 X 600 (mm)
Extruders: 2
Heated Bed: Enable
Enable Cooling: Off
Nozzle Diameter: 1.75mm
Retraction: 14mm
Retraction Speed: 20mm/s
Purging Materials
To purge from one material to another, a g-code has been made to purge 8000mm worth of material through the extruder. This process takes about 20 minutes to complete and sometimes needs to be ran several times to get all the old material out of the extruder.
Make sure to remove hopper extenders, and clean out any remaining material in the hopper with a vacuum, this reduces the amount of time to purge to the new material.
When purging from a high temperature plastic such as polycarbonate to a lower temperature plastic such as PLA, it is best to step down to the temperature by first purging to something like polypropylene or ABS and then purging to PLA. This reduces the chance of the PC clogging and the PLA burning.
More testing is required with extrusion purging compounds to see if they are worth buying and using.