Daid

PVA is water soluble, it's a bit more expensive then PLA. But it works. This is fixable. This is an Dual head Ultimaker print: http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:27402 But you do not want to know how long the slicing took, as it was manually edited GCode to get it to work. (Not my print)

Now that's what it should look like! Nice job!

You need a 19V supply. I think 150W, but more wouldn't hurt. The default is quite large compared to my laptop power brick.

With Cura, my 6-8 hour prints slice in 10-15 minutes. (Note, Skeinforge by default is about 4x slower then Cura!) Slic3r indeed is faster, but that also largely depends on your object. Some objects slice 100x faster, some only 30% faster. Slic3r looks VERY promising, it has a few of the heavy math core function in a C++ library. Skeinforge is a dying horse. It's build around string parsing and bad design. It's not even that Python makes it slow, it's the design that makes it slow. The guy that made it had no clue about how to write fast code. There is some Bresenham line drawing code in there that I optimized, it used 3 function calls and a lot of math per pixel. My optimizations ended up in SF36, which made that version about 40% faster. Even now, I'm not sure why there is line drawing code in there, but it used heavily. I think in a few more months or so, Slic3r is where is should be, stable. When it is, Cura will use Slic3r as back-end instead of it's own brand of Skeinforge. The problem with GPGPU is that it's hard. Most people working with 3D printing right now are not real software wizards. So something more hackable like python is pretty useful then.

It should not be needed on 1.5.6 electronics. You should have a ARDPWR jumper somewhere, maybe it's not connected on your board? This jumper makes the main board self powered.

ABCD are the extra rotation axes in GCode, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCode#Letter_addresses Not sure what you are proposing, but I was thinking about: G1 Z-10 A-5 B+5 F300 To retract and push at the same time.

Few reactions I had on my free Cura package in regards to NetFabb: I do not own NetFabb myself, so I cannot tell you how good it is. But when I started my idea was "I'll try with the free software first, and if that doesn't work I can always buy NetFabb". I think NetFabb comes as a download with license key, so there is no shipping time for it.

http://www.makergear.com/products/nozzles Damn, last time I checked the 0.25mm nozzle was crossed out. Anyhow, for me that's a $10 nozzle with $30 shipping costs. I would be interested in trying smaller nozzles, but that price is a bit steep. (And I have so many other things to play with)

Oh, support from the firmware side is fine. Would be a good way forward. But Cura currently doesn't depend on it, because the mainline Marlin firmware does have multiple extruder support, but not the tool switch commands. I do want to propose the possibility to use multiple extruders at once. For example, E controls the current selected extruder, but A/B/C/D control extruder 1/2/3/4. This enables you to retract 1 extruder while pushing in filament in the other. Or print 2 of the same objects at once (object needs to be smaller then the distance between the nozzles)

I've had 1 report of the same problem, also under 64bit Win7. (But there are enough Win7 machines that work fine) Not sure how that was solved, but in the end it was. Check if you have DirectX and your latest video card drivers installed, that might help.

If you printed it at 210C then it's not ABS. Also, ABS gives off toxic fumes, while PLA fumes are harmless. And, if I got it right, ABS should be a bit more flexible then PLA. And ABS loses 15% of it's volume after heating, so you would be extruding to little material then.

The X/Y positioning is way more precise then 0.125mm. Imagine a marker, your normal marker on paper, while it makes a large dot, you can still draw very precise lines with it. You just cannot make sharp outside corners with it. A smaller nozzle would be interesting, but nobody is selling one of those right now.

A heated build platform does little for resolution. It helps in printing with ABS (but printing in PLA is better in most cases), and it helps against warping on large prints. I've done a few shots at gaming minis at Warhammer scale (40-50mm in height), and the results where decent, but nowhere near official minis. Not a perfect photo, but this is possible: http://daid.eu/~daid/IMG_20120125_211716.jpeg The "layer lines" you see are almost invisible at 0.1mm layers, which everyone should be able to achieve, and people have printed at 0.02mm layers. But on the resolution, the nozzle tip has a 0.4mm hole, this means every corner/detail needs to be made with 0.4mm round lines. So you can get very detailed objects, but you cannot create very sharp objects on the X/Y plane. Note: It's almost impossible to sand PLA, because the sanding causes the PLA to go soft before you get the wanted effect.

I hopefully fixed mine yesterday. (With many thanks to Harma) It's in the experimental phase. RepG34 from Ultimaker can do dual extrusion, but requires customized firmware. Cura-Development can do dual extrusion, which only requires you to enable the 2nd extruder in the firmware. However, there is a big oozing issue with my Code so far.

I disagree. Both slic3r and cura try to simplify the process of turning stls into gcodes, so they are comparable from a user standpoint. Then you simply don't see the added value of Cura. Cura is not just a Slicer. It's a 3D printing software solution. They are comparable from your standpoint because you only look at "turning STL files into GCode". While the goal of Cura is, "how to improve the user experience of 3D printing". Slic3r is trying to be the best possible GCode slicing software. And I say, GOOD! Go for it. I would even say, drop the GUI. Just concentrate on the slicing part. Cura is trying to improve 3D printer user experience. Especially for none-techy users. Good working installers, easy to use GUI, feedback to users. Extra tools like the project planner. I'm not targeting the power users. But I am wondering which parameters you mis. There should be about 220 Skeinforge options that indeed are unaccessible.

Just put the GCode on pastebin, that would be the easiest: http://pastebin.com/

Are you sure you're not just having layer shifts due to mechanical problems? Because what you say should be impossible, however, if you can upload the GCode file somewhere, then I can take a look to be sure it's not the GCode.

It's a hardware problem. Most likely it's the small belt to the Y motor which doesn't have enough tension. Check: * All belt tensions * Make sure all pulleys are tightly screwed on the axes

Yes for both. Software will still manage your heater, but you might need to tune the PID controller for better performance. Main issue will be that you cannot reach higher temperatures and that it will take longer to heat up. For the steppers, some adjustments in the current will do.

The Arduino is not connected to the input voltage on a 1.5.4 PCB. And the design of the 1.5.6 is not online, but I think it was connected to the 12V regulator on those boards, but I could be wrong.

Going less then 14.5V is not advised. Because the 7812 regulating 12V on the board will need at least 14.5V for proper operation. With less voltage you will notice that you heater will not work as good as with more voltage. The step motors will also get less voltage, meaning you might need to adjust the current settings.

Or stay away from electronics if you are not sure what you are doing. I know what I am doing: Making sure that there is no "magic smoke" coming out of the machine Are you doing that, or are you thinking you are doing that? For example, your power resistor idea. That generates a normal resistor divider, but the resistance of the other side is far from stable, so the actual voltage behind the resistor will be unstable. Which is a good way to destroy electronics and get unreliable results. The Christmas lights is even worse, because light bulbs do not have a stable resistance, they start out with a very low resistance on power on, and then quickly stabilize in 100ms. So every time you turn the machine on, you will have a lot more voltage on your board then intended.

Don't worry about it. You can print fine at 0.002 scale, and Cura no longer has this message. (it will also allow you to slice, even with a red error)

Scaling down to 0.2%? That means your model is so large it's outside of the camera "view area" at 1.0 scale. So that's why it's not showing it.

Actually, I think, if your bowden tube stays in place, and you don't get a gap between the tube and the brass. Then you won't have issues. Now that I have two extruders, I can see the difference clear as day. One of them has insane grip on the tube, and has been printing without issues all the time. The other has way less grip with the white clip, so the bowden tube slowly creeps up during printing. Starting with a small gap where molten PLA can creep into. Causing more friction to the filament you're pushing into the hotend. So it will still extrude, but there is more friction, giving more chance on grinding at the filament. Now, this gap will grow and grow, until it's so large that you can have plug that's large enough so it no longer is soft because of the resident heat from the heater. My primary (good) extruder also "plugs" in the bowden tube, but these plugs are inside the tube, and the inside of the tube is small enough so it still can be pushed into the brass to be melted then. At my secondary (bad) extruder, everything I tried to get more force out of the extruder drive only made it worse, because you can sort of push trough the plug if it's small enough, but the bowden tube will only creep up further and further. During these problems I noticed my instinct was to get the tension screw tighter and tighter, because the filament was slipping. But that was not the source of the problems. (And if it's way to tight, then you'll get the deformation issue that destroyer2012 had)