Hyrel up and running again

So after a long summer break, we started working toward getting our Hyrel System 30 up and running again.  This was not without some very frustrating issues as we had yet to get a good print from the machine.  Luckily, the folks at Hyrel are very attentive to our needs and we had a couple of Skype sessions with them to try and correct the problems we were having.  We have in our posession one of the earlier machines so there were some updates that were needed.  The guys walked us through all of the updates over the weekend and we set about trying to print with the new updates and recipes.

Here's what we got the first time we tried a complete print;

This is a macro LED ring for photography.  the one on the right was an epic failure due to a couple of things.  Sometimes our students get a bit impatient and they like to bump some of the print speeds up a bit too high.  What they found was that the infill print speed was too high and the machine was vibrating so bad that it shifted the print (along with a lot of other things).  We took a look at all of our settings and re-printed the one on the left.

We still have a lot to learn about this machine.  I know it will be able to create some fantastic parts, it's just a matter of asking Hyrel a lot of questions and working through the system.  The bottom line is that this is a very touchy and particular machine right now.  There is so much more the students will learn from this printer than they ever could from some of our other machines.  We have a lot more control over our print parameters and a ton more options in regards to materials we can use and with 4 heads they will learn a lot about multi head prints and how to produce them.

Below are a few more images from the macro ring to show you how the print came out.  Settings were as follows;
Layer height: 0.2 (1.75mm ABS)
Infill at 10% (and set to print very slowly...25 mm/s)
If you are interested in Hyrel print recipes this one was N0.50_Z0.10Hny35
All print speeds were at 25 mm/s (non-print speed was 130 mm/s)
Bed temp. was 70C and head was 240C
Hairspray kept it all stuck to the bed