ddurant

Neither do I.. Does the back of the front panel have any marks at all where those slots & hole should be?

Not sure why you'd need to change the cooling time but it doesn't surprise me too much.. For the w/t part, it makes perfect sense.. "Thickness" is sf-speak for layer height and "over" is math-speak for divided-by so "width over thickness" is the width of threads divided by the layer height. If you start with a layer height of 0.20mm with a w/t of, say, 2.0, you have threads that are 0.4mm wide. If you just change the layer height to 0.10mm without changing w/t, SF ends up mapping things out so you have a thread width of 0.2mm wide - that's hard to get right with a 0.4mm nozzle! There are SF wrappers (like Daid says) that will do this math for you but what I do is just find a profile that I like the quality on and remember the thread width on that - between 0.40mm and 0.50mm will work nicely on an Ultimaker, though the actual usable range is probably around 0.35mm to 0.75mm or so. Once you have that, pick whatever layer height you want then divide the desired thread width by the layer height and plug that into the w/t. Example: say you like 0.50mm thread widths.. - for layer height = 0.25mm, w/t = 0.50 / 0.25 or 2.0 - for layer height = 0.20mm, w/t = 0.50 / 0.20 or 2.5 - for layer height = 0.10mm, w/t = 0.50 / 0.10 or 5.0 Just remember to change both w/t values.. There's perimeter w/t in Carve and infill w/t in Fill. Not that I've typed all that in, I wonder if I understand the question.. Does this help?

ABS wouldn't be any stronger. The problem is that a layer of a wall only 1-2 threads thick doesn't have a lot of adhesion to the layer beneath it.. If you're talking about tapering quickly from walls that are thick to ones that are thin, that's not too bad. If you're talking about doing it over lots and lots of layers, you're going to have big areas with not much stuff sticking them to one another. There's probably tweaks you can do to make this better.. Higher temperatures might help since it'll make the plastic more liquidy and get you better adhesion, though there are downsides to running hotter. Wider threads (ie: bigger contact patch) would probably help but that's not the direction you seem to want to go and there are limits to this anyway. In general, I think all slicers treat each layer as a single entity. There are sorta-exceptions to this like 1/2-height perimeters but overall, they're not going to split things up like I think you're saying. A better example might be a wall width of 1.0mm.. If you do 0.4mm wide threads around the perimeter that's a total of 0.8mm, leaving 0.2mm in the middle. What's a slicer to do with that 0.2mm of empty space? It leaves it empty - not much else it can do..

I haven't but in general, I don't see why you couldn't get good surfaces on both sides.. The only real issue is the z blob - the tiny bit of extra plastic you sometimes get when things move to the next layer. Usually people with skeinforge hide the z blob but having the slicing software do layer changes on the interior of the object and if there is no interior, it's gotta be on the exterior.. You could probably minimize this using reversal or something - I haven't really done many vase-like things so can't comment on how hard it would be. You know this part of the object would be pretty fragile, yes?

I think that's status-quo for most startup companies - they're so busy pushing out product that anything within-the-norm of the process sorta just keeps moving along silently. I was at the "if I don't hear anything, I'll ask for an update tomorrow" stage when I was waiting for my machine and it showed up the next day. Have patience! If it's any consolation, they are hiring more people: http://blog.ultimaker.com/2011/12/11/ul ... is-hiring/ .

I added a couple washers to the bolts holding the steppers on - the bolts are just a hair too long and washers will make sure they can be tightened correctly and give things a bit more grip on the wood.

Any other towns you'll be in? I think there are UMs in th bay area and LA - don't think I've heard of any more north than that. There are at least a couple in NY and one (me) in Boston if you happen to be over to the left coast.. There's an Ultimaker google map but somebody named robin seems to have vandalized the locations. :( Or at least my entry since I know I'm not living on some ice pack in Greenland. I suspect the ones listed in the middle of the Pacific aren't accurate either..

I think it could still be that waves problem.. On that printer (my old MakerBot Cupcake) you could actually see the x/y belts vibrate like guitar strings when it changed directions. On print areas like a straight line in x with a small y detail in the middle, it'd cause that ripple effect like my picture. I don't know how to solve the problem but to see if it's the same issue, you could just sketchup something like a 30x30x5mm box with a bump down one side and try printing it at different feed rates. The issue won't be anywhere near as pronounced on an Ultimaker as it was on a Cupcake but you may be able to see a bit of a wave effect. Or it could be a slicing artifact.. Have you looked closely at what it's doing when it prints that area? Maybe there's a Z change or a change from inner-infill to outer-infill right there?

Not exactly sure what I'm seeing.. Is it the same type of problem seen here? making waves... by ddurant123, on Flickr If so, that's usually caused by running at too high of a feed rate. I think it's more "resonance" than "backlash" but could well be wrong..

Cool!

Personally, I like the idea of a Archimedes\screw drive as that would enable different types of feed stocks. You can buy a 5lb bag of pellets a lot cheaper than you can buy a 5lb spool of filament. That and you can (in theory) worry a lot less that the stock is consistantly sized. It probably wouldn't work well with the bowden setup, though.. :(

Yup. That's ok, I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't already pretty sure (s)he was indeed a spam bot. edit: it was just a "you look & sound like a spambot but I won't report you if you can show any sign of being alive" sorta deal. And, as if on cue, the last post at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=140 showed up just after I posted that, too..

Just curious, are you a spammer?

One of my very few complaints is that the machine doesn't have a serial number on it. It'd be a really nice addition to have it laser-etched on the frame.. It'd also be easier to keep track of who's got what. As the design changes/improves over time, it'd be good to have a "change X started at serial number ###" type page on the wiki.

For a print? Nothing much.. The short answer is that "volumetric" has come to mean calibrating via math instead of via trial & error - the software calculates the volume of threads it wants drawn then does a bit of math to figure out the right amount of filament to pull *into* the extruder to get that volume. Once you get a bit of setup done, you can just tell it any layer height or thread width or speed you want and it figures out what to do with the extruder. I was just posting about this (in the skeinforge context) over in the mbi google group so I'll copy/paste that here..

I've been working on something sorta like that for a while but work (the work that pays my mortgage, not the work where I get to play with 3D printers) keeps getting in the way - only so many hours of coding I can do in a day before my brain turns to jello! Next Friday is probably my last work day this year (woot!) so I'd be reeeeally suprirsed if I didn't have something at least partially working in the next few weeks. No idea if netfabb themselves are working on such a thing, too. If not, they should be. It's the way to go!

I used a MBI Cupcake for about 18 months and it was.. uh.. error prone. That and the build area felt really cramped. I got to meet Erik and see an Ultimaker at Botacon about a year ago and was blown away by the design and speed, even on a pre-release machine. After the show, I ended up having dinner with Erik and Jordan Miller and my "impressed" level just went up - soooo much thought went into these machines! The day Ultimaker pre-order opened (or maybe it was the day after), I ordered one.

Odd, maybe, but I don't think it's a big deal.. DHL may assign them a block of lables or something and they might use that to keep track of what order things are in.. New orders get a label on the top of the pile, when a box is ready to go, they pull whatever label's on the bottom of the pile and slap it on the box.

This usually means repg is having problems communicating with the printer.. Can you copy/paste exactly what it's saying?

PLA smells sweet, like maple syrup. ABS smells nasty, like.. uh.. burning plastic. You REALLY don't want to be actually lighting this stuff on fire unless you're outside or in an area with good vents. ABS definitely produces very toxic fumes and I think PLA does, too. Also, PLA will snap if you bend it too much - it's harder and more brittle than ABS, which will bend a lot more before it breaks. In general, volume is volume and profiles for one material should be close to profiles for the other. ABS will likely require either turning the extruder speed up a little or the X/Y speed down a little. Or a combination of both. The theory is that since ABS is softer, the filament drive gear bites into it more, giving the gear a smaller effective diameter - one turn of the gear takes in a slightly shorter length of raw filament. ABS also needs a bit more heat, though I'm not sure what a good number is on an Ultimaker..

Welcome, Laura.. You should start up a new thread here with more details about what's wrong!

I think 60 degrees (so.. 2:00 with noon being a vertical wall) is the number people usually quote. Where on the print this happens (sorta) doesn't really matter - could be right near the start or could be near the top as the issue is about putting plastic onto thin air. There are a number of things you can do to help push the limit but you'll never (with FDM) be able to just print on air. My favorite things that help are lowering the temperature and having a high width:height ratio.

Some of the folks around here are doing some really amazing prints! Welcome aboard - fun times coming!

You listened to me??? Good grief, man.. ( )

In general, the nozzle shouldnt touch the object being printed - the only connection between the nozzle and the print should be a very small bit of liquidy plastic. In reality, this isn't always true because some bits of prints can curl up a little and cause (usually safe) contact with the nozzle. Large overhangs where you're printing onto air as much as onto plastic are notorious for doing this. The real issue here is probably more about the normal vibrations of the machine. X/Y movements in one direction push the machine in the other direction and with the speed these things can run at, it can make for a bit of a bumpy ride. I think this usually isn't a problem (never has been for me anyway) but since the print is only connected to the machine via the first bottom layer, you could end up with that equaling a lot of force at the top of a tall object. You could use a raft or something to help anchor the print to the platform but that delays/lessens the problem rather than solving it. Nope - don't need a longer bowden if you're just increasing Z.. X and Y only/always move at just the top layer - you can add more space at the bottom (Z) without having to make any changes to X/Y.