mm_build

Basically any Skeinforge version less than 40+ is from another era. And Marlin firmware, well that's the beginning of a new era. The two things together make a difference like night and day. (It's really not even worth fiddling with the old stuff any more)

Hey, this could be a major problem. I don't use netfabb now but one day maybe. You mean I would have to buy 2 different licenses for my laptop and desktop just cause I want to take my UM around? And once I reformat I need to buy another license again? That's awful.

That's what I noticed too Maybe you could get a nice piece of glass to print on?

The first charts listed were in half-stepping mode, which actually doubles the steps per rotation to 400 (and the resolution to 0.0125mm). Also this means they are running at about 70% Torque from if they were in full stepping mode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepper_mo ... f_stepping The last chart you listed shows Torque rated in full stepping mode, so for a fair comparison the values would have to be adjusted. Also for the size of a printer you are going for, I don't know what kind of resolution you want but presumably you would be using a larger nozzle size, etc, so it would be less sensitive.

I would suggest raising the build platform even just a little bit more. If you close the distance to the point where it has a hard time extruding and it's still is not sticking, I would check that you are actually using PLA and not ABS. ABS does not stick worth a darn to blue tape, and it will bruise when you bend it while PLA tends to snap. Also stick to about 240ish for now.

I had a look in your other thread on google groups. Looks like you have done the math using a ballscrew with a pitch of 5mm. On the same site there are ballscrew configurations with 10mm pitch which would give you twice the travel at half the rpm. According to the chart you provided that would give 40 oz.in (+282%) torque at 10,000pps. If you run the motors in their sweet spot for torque/speed, you should theoretically be able to add the needed gearing afterwards. If you upgrade to a truly massive NEMA 34 motor (86mm) you can easily achieve ~600 oz.in at 2500pps, which works out to ~150 oz.in when geared to the equivalent speed of the smaller motor running at 10,000pps. I have seen ballscrews with up to 20mm pitch available online, if you used those you would bring your required speed down to 5,000pps, it's only an extra 2:1 gear to get the rest of the way. Also you were asking about the electronics side which I know next to nothing about, but this http://reprap.org/wiki/Stepper_motor might make for some good reading.

Just out of curiosity, what makes you think that skipping steps is an issue, or in other words, why does your UM skip steps, because IMO that hasn't been a problem in months. My UM is not skipping steps, the conditions that did lead to skipped steps are either 1. low grease 2. too high of speed 3. voltage too high or too low 4. axes out of alignment 5. loose wires 6. excess plastic hitting nozzle I guess my original comment was not really fair. Actually, I was thinking of using multiple motors and that a servo would be easier because they would always stay in sync. Then I saw the price tag - wow, over $400 for an equivalent nema17 servo!

It seems to me this would solve a lot of issues with steps being skipped. I don't know a lot about it except that servos are a closed loop and steppers are open, so basically a stepper never really knows whether it's in the right position if a step is skipped. A servo counts the number of steps so it is always on target. Is this something that could be done with the current PCB electronics? Would the firmware work?

Personally I think, open source is open source. So there is no right to complain about someone else capitalizing from it. But at the same time, I want to reward the people responsible for making this happen. But if the founders held all the control, I would reverse my decision. Basically competition is good, and it drives innovation. At this point, so early in the game, I would say if you can afford it then it's better to support original Ultimaker as they are still very much a fledgling company with a lot of promise to bring us new and better things. If Ultimaker was some kind of giant monopoly, I would want the competitors to grow. I don't think there's anything wrong with mentioning that it is an "Ultimaker based design", if you sell an Ultimaker but not call by it's name, that actually seems a little bit more dishonest.

I wouldn't worry so much about strength of the inner part which seems to be the main reason you want it solid. If you set extra perimeter layers and about 30% infill, it should be quite strong (as far as plastic goes). As for the warping, it's worse if you print something completely solid. One of the tricks a lot of people use is to print the two parts separately, and leave a hole or two for an M3 screw and assemble the two later. You can also use some glue if that's more convenient, a keyed design would keep the inner and outer from sliding. I know this isn't a realistic option but it's fun to talk about - it is possible but not practical, if you really REALLY wanted to, you could separate your model into the two parts that you want different infill for. Then after slicing, you could combine the sections of gcode from different files along the layer heights. Of course there is the E value to think about, and besides taking hours of time, there might even be other problems I haven't considered. Daid, any thoughts on the feasibility of inter-meshing two gcode files with some fancy programming tricks? That is assuming that they were to fit exactly within/beside each other.

At the time of this posting the most current version can be found here-> https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin

Wrong! where did you find that link? Because you should point to the ErikZalm version, that's the latest and most stable version.https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin You know, I thought there was a newer version than the one I linked to, but I couldn't find it. It's hard to keep track of all these Marlins sometimes. :?

I don't think you could do this because of the 'E' value in GCode. It is always increasing unlike x, y and z which always stay below 210. Admittedly this isn't my area of expertise, but couldn't you manually enter a G92 and set the E value to wherever the new one picks up at?

You *can* print an object with multiple solids inside each other, but it's not exactly straight forward. I have printed cubes inside of cubes before. The trick is, the outer solid must actually be modelled with walls having an inside and outside facing, so it isn't just a solid cube but a "box" that has walls of a certain thickness. You can then put another solid within the box, and if the sides of the two objects are close enough together, it will print as though the two pieces are continuous. If you have enough concentric objects within one another in this way, the printer *should* just print perimeter after perimeter after perimeter, which pretty much amounts to a solid. It can be a fair amount of work in modelling however to get this set up. If you have a solid cube with no inside walls, and try to place another solid cube within it, it will not work. The inner solid will represent a hollow spot.

The link for Marlin firmware is here: [do not use->]https://github.com/bkubicek/Marlin [use this one->] https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin Easy version here: http://daid.eu/~daid/marlin_build/ The link for printrun pronterface is here: https://github.com/kliment/Printrun Easy version here: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/ Warning / disclaimer: There is some fiddling to get these things set up and running. You will need to read the instructions if you plan on doing it the hard way.

This is something I've been thinking about lately. You could slice the model twice, once with 30% infill, and once with 100% infill. Then cut and paste the g-code at whatever layer you want the new infill to start. I hope in the future there will be a Skeinforge plugin for something like this.

Not to try and scare anyone, but I have experienced some glitches with my heater previously. I am not sure if they were a repG problem, or something else. Once the heater kept reporting about 40°, and I momentarily thought there was a problem with my heater. I heard some loudish snapping sounds and looked over to see a thin wisp of black smoke coming off the print head. :shock: I also had the temperature reading jump all around like crazy a few times. One thing I have noticed however is that these glitches only have happened after stopping and restarting prints multiple times, and never happened randomly in the middle of a print. Restarting RepG fixed the errors each time. I have not experienced anything similar since using pronterface, but that does not necessarily mean anything.

My only slightly modified start and end codes [edit] in brief I have increased the speed because it was painfully slow, removed retraction from start.gcode because it was unnecessary, and changed 5mm of extrusion to 10mm because it often takes more than 5mm to prime the nozzle (start of start.txt)G21 (metric)G90 (absolute positioning)G28 (home all axes to min endstops)G92 X-105 Y-105 Z0.0 E0 (reset position to front/left/z=0)G1 Z10.0 F500 (move the platform down 10mm)G1 X0 Y0 F1600 (go to the middle of the build volume/platform)G92 E0 (zero the extruded length)G1 F600 E10 (extrude some filament)G92 E0 (zero the extruded length again)G1 Z0.0 F500 (back to Z=0)(end of start.txt) (start of end.gcode!)M104 S0 (extruder heat off)M106 (fan on)G91 (relative positioning)G1 Z+10 E-2 F1600 (move Z up a bit and retract filament)G1 X-30 Y-30 F1500 (move X and Y over a bit)G90 (absolute positioning)M18 (steppers off)(end of end.gcode) I am not using an M92 in the alteration files because it is in the firmware

Hi, I don't have all your answers. 2. You may want to consider a heated chamber, not just a platform, in order to reduce warp from the ABS cooling. This is based on the results of an associate with a rep-rap who reports that the heated platform has limited effect on larger models. 3. Not really understanding your question. Assembly of the Ultimaker is done in pieces, the instructions are now quite thorough. Assembly of an individual part may or may not require different pieces. The limitations of the print process require that some overhangs must be printed upside-down then mated with another piece. 4. Skeinforge has a built-in setting to add support, it can be adjusted to some degree. Many of the users here also use Netfabb. I am not familiar with Netfabb but I am quite sure it has a similar setting. These are the standard programs used to slice a model (.stl) into a toolpath that the printer can understand. (g-code). You may also find some other alternatives in various stages of development. Skeinforge is free but slow, while Netfabb is fast but requires payment. 5. See this topic. Developments are being made with multiple print heads, although there are still technical hurdles. There is currently no "off-the-shelf" solution for the Ultimaker. 6. I have seen some interesting youtube videos using Microsoft Kinect for 3d mapping. I have not had the time to get into this further, but it would be my first start.

I have an older Revision 2 ultimaker, but as far as I know they are still shipping the tube of grease. I have been using a technique like you describe, maybe even putting a little too much, but even so it seems to need re-greasing more often than I would like. I have cleaned all my rods with alcohol and have now started using 20W silicone oil. So far it seems to be working good, and everyone seems to be saying it works better. I haven't done enough printing yet to really compare, but if it's that much better maybe Ultimaker Team will consider shipping silicone oil instead of grease? It's quite inexpensive too.

Thanks for that list, I had not seen it before. Yes, it is international but it's just US to Canada, they sure like to rail you for ordering outside the country I guess. There are 2 Canadian suppliers in that list, one has no stock at the moment, and the other has only 3 colours (4 if you count white and translucent white). No one has Natural PLA :(. Well, I suppose it is better than paying so much. I can make do with white and black PLA, eventually I am going to want some flexible stuff though. Thanks again

So I got my shipment of PLA from Ultimachine today. Cost of PLA on spool: 66.00 Cost of shipping: 23.89 Tax: 3.28 Brokerage Fee: 29.70 Tax on Brokerage Fee: 1.48 Grand Total: 124.35 That is for One (1) 5lb spool of PLA, shipped regular ground by UPS. There has to be a better way :(

Where can I get Gucci belt for my Ultimaker? 240 mxl Pls. [EDIT]-> (Chinese knockoffs OK) [EDIT #2] And a fashionable handbag to put my screwdrivers etc in, (other forum members will be so jealous when they see it)

So apparently I learn something new every day. I had no idea the rods were not supposed to be greased. I have been greasing mine religiously. I often lamented at the amount of grease buildup around my rod bushings. And how quickly the rods seized up (started jittering) when the grease got low. So now, any suggestions moving forward? Clean it and let it run dry?

I print at 240, the only reason is I find the strength of the finished plastic is greater. The transparency of the plastic and the strength both seem to drop along with the temperature. I have noticed the warping you are talking about, I find having fewer solid layers helps a lot, also not printing objects completely solid, but having about 20% infill (also helps for bridging at higher temperatures). It is an ongoing challenge, you might want to drop your temperature for a more difficult piece. Even a very good first layer will not help when the plastic decides to warp, it will pull the tape up from the platform, or even break loose from the acrylic if there is no tape. In another thread this http://www.orbi-tech.de/shop/Kunststoff ... 30_46.html supplier was mentioned to have "low warp" PLA, could be worth looking in to.