3D printer first partial print

Again I didn't have a lot lot of time to work on the 3D printer today.  I did get a little bit done though, including the first partial print!

I hooked everything up and tried extruding some plastic.  The first time, the plastic filament got hung up somewhere before reaching the nozzle, and the pinch wheel dug an indentation into the side.  After that, I started sharpening the end of the filament before feeding it in, and that seems to work better.  The extruder barrel seems to be slightly crooked in the PTFE thermal barrier (maybe the drilled and tapped portion wasn't drilled quite straight?), and I'm wondering if the un-sharpened filament was hanging up at the top of the metal barrel.

The first few attempts to print something resulted in a mess of spaghetti rather than a coherent part.  After messing with Skeinforge settings for a while, I managed to get a MakerBot Coin partially printed out:

This came loose and got pushed around the build platform before the last couple layers were done.  Still, it's exciting to see the first solid object out of this thing I put together!

These are the Skeinforge adjustments I made to get this far:

• Thicker raft
• Hotter printing temperatures
• Slower printing speed (to get thicker strands)
• Thinner layers (to make layers stick together better)