joergen

yes, a sticky/dirty z axis was the problem

[UPDATE] "prehistoric" also refers to the state of the grease along the lead screw and the z nut. it was all caked up and dried and made the z stepper loose steps. removing it, a deep clean and some new high-quality oil solved the problem. Amazing to see a decade old UM still working great. ------------------- My (ancient) UM2 heated bed just gave up yesterday (separate topic), and I am trying to reactivate my (prehistoric) UMO, which i haven't used since I got the UM2 in 2015. A lot of the finessing and how to tweak gcode knowledge has been lost since then. Problem: i need to get something printed today... I got the GMO to home and heat up, and theoretically print again. home (0) is set to paper sheet thickness under the nozzle. I think the FW is a marlin flavor from 2014, but if there is a newer one, I can flash it (open to suggestions). I would prefer to not change the FW, because I am sure I tweaked a lot of parameters (dim, accel, pid etc) to a T for productions prints between 2011 and 2013) something is wrong in the starting gcode, and the UMO prints mid air (about 15mm above the print bed). I used the original start gcode I found in Cura5, and also tried to change it, but no luck. would appreciate some pointers how to fix the start and end gcode, as well as what settings/flavors i should change in cura5 (i.e. relative or absolute E? etc). it appears the line "G1 Z0 Y50 F9000 ;move the bed and the head" doesn't move the bed back to 0. Help please

Hi Greg, yes, the last 10 years have taught me that the direction matters a great deal. one of the advantages of the hex comb infill is the independence of the infill from the orientation

Greg, I did try the grid. I had gradual infill steps accidentally turned on, which screwed up the infill completely. without it, grid works nicely, thx for the hint

never mind the 10 years of commercial 3D printing experience I have ever since I got my UM in 2011. As mentioned, other slicers (from the good old/defunct netfabb, to simplify3D (also abandoned) and others), hexcomb works great. I personally like a low infill for larger parts (20%) with a 1mm line width, and 35% with 0.6mm lines for smaller parts... as I said, it was a feature request, if there is no need for it in your opinion, you don't have to.

Hi Cura team, Feature request: please implement a proper hex comb infill into cura (if it is already implemented, please let me know how and where to find it) Reason: hex comb infill is an old and very reliable infill for practical 3D prints that get used directly. within the hex comb parameters (in other slicers) one can create very strong parts with only 2 shells and a 20% infill. none of the current CURA infill options come close to the strength and reliability, as well as ease of printing, compared to the hex comb infill the lack of hex comb infill in CURA has been the main reason why I am still slicing with other slicers. I hope that hex comb is not plagued by some nasty intellectual property issues from i.e. the netfabb days, or because hex comb wasn't part of the original skeinforge code... the part i am printing today had a volume of 60x7mm and about 40mm tall, and all of cura infills (even when set to 65% infill) fail to produce a structurally valid infill. "cubic subdivision" came closest to create something meaningful, but the infill prints very bumpy, causing tons of vibrations.

Hi UM community, I am sorry if this may look like spam, but it isn't. Some of you may remember, I am an UM user from the early days, printing a panoramic phone holder for Sony in 2011 on the Ultimaker 1. After the Sony project ended, I set my mind to building a better 360 video camera system, and all throughout 2012 we sold the 360 Rig, which was also printed on a by now heavily modified UM1 (http://freedom360.us/about/360rig/). This was the first fully spherical (no blind spot) video camera system in the world, and marked the transition making a UM 3D printed object a commercial success. This project then transitioned into the current Freedom360.us LLC, where the Ultimakers 1 and 2 are used to print prototypes and new product developments for the last 2 years. The actual products are mass printed via SLS/nylon. I would like to ask for your help: Chase (a US bank) is giving grants every year for small businesses, such as our Freedom360. To be considered for this grant, we need min 250 votes until October 17 as the first step. Winning this grant would help us a great deal to dedicate more time to R&D, more time developing new products and technologies, making it easier for everyone to produce new content for the next revolution in VR. Please visit https://www.missionmainstreetgrants.com/business/detail/54409 and click on the vote button on the page that pops up. We need min 250 votes until October 17, 2014, every vote worldwide counts. (FB account link is necessary to vote, and Chase won't post to your time line, and you can disconnect from it next week again). Please share the link with your friends and colleagues and make them click on the vote button. Thank you thank you thank you for your help and consideration.

keep in mind that not only do you need the machine (which eats a lot of electrical power, because the chamber and steel powder need to be brought near critical temp), but you also need special clean room environment, the stainless steel powder is one of the unhealthiest things you can get into your lungs (carbon fiber particles are the worst). great technology, saw it last year.

I'm up in Astoria... we can do a meetup late Spring, before Summer in NYC gets us to the Tg of PLA

Makerbot doesn't sell 3mm filament anymore, only 1.75mm ABS for a more comprehensive list, have a look at http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap_Buyers'_Guide#Filament

good to know, i have a piece of garolite coming in today from mcmaster (i had to order other stuff anyway). I'll print the first prototype in ABS, and if I have time, I do another one in Nylon, either on garolite, or bluetape or MDF. thanks so much for the tips.

Does anybody have a place where to buy a sheet of garolite in NYC? I need to print some nylon on Saturday (april 5, 2014)

140C nozzle? ABS has a min temp of 240C usually (natural ABS without pigments), and up to 260-270C for black ABS. printing hotter will make better layer bonds, printing lower than 240C will result in underextrusion, if you even get anything meaningful out of the nozzle to begin with.

I also find the "pay now, we'll ship it later" policy strange and unusual... it was suitable and acceptable for the beginnings of Ultimaker, but by now a "pay before shipping" policy should be in place. I don't think UM will ever be facing a warehouse full of unpaid printers... the machine is too awesome, and there will be always a line around the block for any printer that becomes available earlier than expected. amazon merchant services have a simple functionality: capture the payment when the merchant is ready to ship (via CC), so you know you have the money when the box leaves the warehouse. paypal on the other hand isn't capable of doing that, even when you send out paypal invoices, which cause more work, and are more bureaucratic. maybe it's time do make paypal a secondary payment option (where people always know its 'pay first, ship later') and find a proper payment gateway for the bulk of the orders. to handle the problem with failed payments, simply put a 3-5 day hold on the order, to give the customer a chance to clean up the financial mess and then capture the payment. after 5 days of no emails or reply from the customer, the order goes back to 'on hold' or 'canceled', and the machine gets assigned to the next order that needs one. that way you should never have too many machines sitting around doing nothing. or get to a point in production where everything is running smoothly, and you simply ship the same or next day, like we do in our company. hopefully UM gets there this year :-) joergen f360.us

Look for Calin's excellent posts (http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/user/908-calinb/) about Nylon and ABS in this forum

UM has thousands of users worldwide, as you can see with this huge online community and is on the market for quite some time now... Z has how many users? and how many slicers support Z? (UM is supported by cura, slic3r, kisslicer, netfabb (kinda) and soon photoshop, just to name a few)... plus in the (fortunately) closed thread you said yourself that only the good reviews are posted, and any bad reviews get deleted, so what kind of value can a user derive from the Z, if all we see is propaganda (incl you)? In regards to ABS printing, many printers, including the UM1 and UM2 print ABS just as they print PLA, or any of the other available types... to ask if there are any other printers marketed for ABS shows very little insight into the 3D printing world...

Disconnect the 2 heater cables from the 2 green terminal blocks and measure the resistance of the heater element with a multimeter: you should measure something very close to 9 Ohm... if you get 9Ohm, your heater is ok, and the problem is something else. if you don't get 9 ohm, the heater or the cables to the heater have a problem.

did you check if the heater is still properly connected to the the UM board?

Yes, I agree, this thread should be deleted... nothing huberbobas has posted in this thread so far contained anything valuable for the UM community.

I find it difficult to believe that you are blaming UM for changes in the international currency exchange rates, and that UM has any influence on the charges Paypal is leveraging on you... it almost sounds like this is the first time you ordered anything internationally. welcome to the real world.

even if the Tg of PLA is 65C, there are many occasions outdoors where material gets close to or over that temp. There was even an anecdotal post about PLA parts sagging over tome (which is what I was referring to as "loadbearing"). PLA does biodegrade, but only under certain conditions, Keegan documented it quite well: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/ultimaker/hydrolysis/ultimaker/8s1bq_9LsRM/DxLchSNlAD8J In regards to UV protection, commercial ABS for extrusion molding has UV filtering additives already mixed in... I would assume our ABS filament doesn't have any/much of that, since it wasn't parts of the specs. any art supply store has lots of UV protecting varnishes, just get one you like, and follow the instructions... if you pick one that contains acetone, it will create the best surface bond with ABS imaginable :-)

If more people are interested, I can get a bunch of UM2 nozzles from UMHQ and drill them to custom size/specs (I am located in NYC).

I had PLA in the garden soil coming out after 2 years basically unchanged. On the other hand, PLA warps over time... if you have a load bearing part, it will deflect/bend, no matter the temp (unless it is permanently freezing). I guess a knob thing will to quite well outdoors, but a hook will not. ABS will see surface degradation from UV, but will hold it's structural integrity much longer. If you apply a thin layer of clear, UV filtering varnish, it'll last forever...

It can't hurt to repeat it occasionally... for all UM2 users, pour the watered-down wood glue onto a clean glass bed, spread it, and set your bed to 70C until the PMA wood glue is nicely dried.

Gluestick is not an ideal method, but rather a hack if you have nothing else around. it is so much easier to take a bit of wood glue, thin it with 2-3 parts water, pour a bit onto the glass and spread it evenly, and let it dry (you can put the glass into the oven at 70C for 15 min to speed up drying)... this gets you a perfectly even coating that washes off with warm water.