Vancouver received quite a bit of snow this morning so most schools are closed in the area. It gives me a chance to reflect on the first few days back and prioritizing the projects I'm working on this year.
We're still having a bit of trouble with the laser cutter not cutting through materials dependably. I'm going to try to clean the lenses and bed soon and see if that helps.
Our Ender 3 is running PETG reliably now. Unfortunately, I've noticed that the bed is quite warped; it is higher in the center than on the edges and corners. The buildtak surface also works a bit too well and the PETG seems to bond too tightly to it; it's actually ripped in a few places due to print jobs adhering to the surface. I applied a broad sheet of kapton tape to it and that seems to be working much better.
I also updated the firmware to enable manual mesh bed levelling. This is a game changer in levelling the bed. After calibration, the z-height is adjusted as the extruder moves across the bed; you can actually see the z-stepper motor move as the extruder travels along the x and y axes. I first updated to the latest Marlin firmware but had a bit of trouble with memory space, so switched to the much leaner TH3D firmware.
To actually updated the firmware on the Ender 3 I had to load a bootloader. It was a straightforward process involving an Arduino Uno board and half a dozen dupont wires. I haven't used an Arduino in over a year so it was a nice refresher in using the Arduino IDE.
