Daid

The tower plugin is not used very often, and VERY dangerous. If you have more then 2 towers it can move the head trough a tower while moving from one tower to the next. I've used it once, but I didn't find the results very good. But that was at my early days.

My nozzle is black from the PLA on it. No problem. But smoke might mean you are printing at 250C, which is a bit high for PLA. I don't go higher then 230C with PLA, and then it flows like crazy.

Nice! On my batch-1 machine, the bolts on the motors didn't grab really well. A few heating/cooling cycles (on the old motors, which got pretty hot) and the short belts would end up getting loose again. A couple washers on each bolt (on the outside of the machine) fixed that up and I haven't had that problem since. I think those washers are default now.

1) Yes. The extrude button from RepG is kind of a hack job. 2) Most likely cause is the "dimension" plugin is off in Skeinforge. 3) That's odd. But upgrading to Marlin might help in this case. Or, upgrade to SkeinPyPy: https://github.com/daid/SkeinPyPy/wiki Which will upgrade you to Marlin v1, is known to work with all default settings. And has a better printing interface (PrintRun) where the extrude buttons work instantly.

How fast are you trying to print? And with what layer thickness? Maybe you are trying to print more then 10mm^3 per second, which seems to be about the limit of the current extruder.

SkeinPyPy (Or, "Cura" if I rename SkeinPyPy to Cura, which seems the most likely canidate at the moment)

Sounds like the "dimension" setting is off in Skeinforge. We haven't been able to locate the root cause, but it seems to be off in some cases. (It should have been on by default) But, solving your possible GCode problems: https://github.com/daid/SkeinPyPy/wiki (and any other software problems) It simpler to use, and all ready for the Ultimaker. Oh, and it also upgrades your firmware at first start (if you want, and I highly recommend it!) to make sure you don't have any problems with firmware.

The LCD and SD reader are optional. Ultimaker is working on "productizing" it I think. Atleast, I've seen a few of those at the Ultimaker HQ. Same for heated platforms. Stripes can happen if you switch color, and material is left in the head. If you look at my print above, you'll notice the bottom of the chest is black. This was because there was still some black on my printer head, and the glow-in-the-dark is slightly translucent. The "sealing" he did is optional, normally the printer head is sealed with some Teflon tape against leaks. It's part of the assembly instructions. The default fan mount is a bit... problematic. It has a tendency to disassemble itself. If you super-glue it it will stay in 1 piece. Other fan mounts provide different types of cooling. I have one with a very small nozzle, because I print small things I want localized better cooling. You don't need access to a workshop. I did everything I do at home, with my tools being a box-knife, a screw driver and a hammer. It's one of the goals of the ultimaker to be easy to assemble and maintain. It's even shipped with the proper screwdriver you need for the type of screws it uses. My experience with support structures is limited. I've used automated support from SF, with limited succes. My first print was a mess and the support was impossible to remove. But the dragon shown also had automated support for the hand on top of the chest (two separate prints, joined later). Removing support is quite a task. But my limited experience doesn't help in this case. Maybe some tweaks will make it easier to remove. For: I would print it as multiple parts, glued together. The "beast" can be 1 part with support (impossible to print the underside of the belly otherwise). I would print the radars as 2 different parts, the arms as different parts and finally the center piece as another part. Any angle more then 60 deg slope is a problem for the Ultimaker. (with horizontal being 90 deg) However, there is a concept we call "bridging" shown in these tests: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12925 which make it possible to print pure horizontal lines from a tower to a tower. But, yes, these are in the "difficult to print" category. (awesome paint job btw on the radar beast) With support you get stringing problems. To explain stringing problems, see this horrible case of strings: http://daid.eu/~daid/IMG_20110927_000944.jpeg (Lower temperature greatly improved the amount of strings, and thickness of them, but the effect is still there)

On the 2nd picture, but it might also be the camera angle. 200C is good. I can print at 190C with 100mm/s on 0.1mm layers. I don't know if exactly 8mm is enough. My alu plate is not connecting to the wood because my tube is slightly too long. This ensures I have a very good connection between the PEEK and the tube. You can use your caliper to measure the depth of the PEEK. Maybe 8mm is slightly to little. Cutting off some tube will improve the grip. Maybe you can also widen the end of the tube a bit so it's a bit larger and the clip will have better grip on it.

At what temperature are you printing? Also, make sure the bowden tube is nice and straight at the end (I see a small "gap"), and sticking out far enough so there is no posibility for the filament to get between the tube end and the PEEK. The tube should not slip. But if it does, the clamp from Owen might help. Look for it on thingiverse.

Your extruder is most likely fine. You'll most likely have a "plug" above the heater in the bowden tube. Which is blocking extrusion. At high heats this can happen. Recommended: -Check for a plug by removing the fan, removing the alu plate + everything below it (as 1 piece, taking these parts apart should be a last resort, as the brass and the PEEK break very quick). The plug should be in the tube. -Print PLA no higher then 230C -Watch out for temperatures nearing 300C, because your PEEK can melt then.

The skirt setting helps in this case. This will print an outline before the first layer. This sort of "primes" your extruder. Also, lowering the temperature will help, as there less filament as dripped out of your extruder tip. You might want to give SkeinPyPy a shot: https://github.com/daid/SkeinPyPy/wiki it's easier to configure then Skeinforge. And has the skirt enabled by default on 1 line, and can print multiple lines to prime your extruder even better. (feature not found in Skeinforge)

Confirmed to shipping in 3 weeks? Ultimaker is making good time improvements. Let's hope they get to their goal of having kits in stock, so they can ship when they confirm payment.

You will.I have a very big time constrain on my prints. I need to watch my printer while it's printing, so I only have a few hours for each print (my longest print was 6 hours). I have a cat who loves to craw into my printer. So I need to keep him out during prints. I cannot let it run over-night. I'm also a bit inpatient The above dragon took 30 minutes for the chest (which is 100% filled as the glow-in-the-dark works better if it's fully filled) and 45minutes for the dragon itself. Both printed on average speed 80mm/s and 0.1mm layers. The ultra-high quality Yoda (in gold) took 13 hours to print (if I remember correctly). Which is still a lot quicker then waiting for shapeways

I'm a professional engineer. In software that is. So I do have a bit of a tinkerer mind, but I rather have working mechanical parts then that I tinker with them. My printer needs to work, when I want. It's my tool, not my tinkering toy. My print from today. With SkeinPyPy's default settings (only layer size to 0.1 instead of 0.2) I didn't change anything in my machine, it's all stock hardware. It's not as good as some of the highest details Ultimaker prints, but I have never tried anything below 0.1mm, which already looks very good. Hardware It's simple, once it works, you can get this quality quit simple. I had some tinkering problems in the beginning, but that had to do with me not following the assembly instructions properly. After that I only added belt tensioners, and oiled it a few days ago. It's quite an amazing machine. Oh, and you will replace the stock fan shroud, but that's almost part of assembly instructions these days The real tinkers can be found building RepRap machines, they spend more time fixing/upgrading machines then actual printing. Software The software options are a bit chaotic at the moment. There is ReplicatorG from Ultimaker, NetFabb (not free), Slic3r, Skeinforge, PrintRun. And then I'm not even mentioning some rarer options. However, I'm trying to solve all that with SkeinPyPy. Especially for possible users like you. You don't want to tinker with 10.000 software options and configuration settings. You just want to print. SkeinPyPy allows everyone to do that. You don't have to take my word for it. Other people have been saying "I've been struggling for 3 months, and suddenly now I'm getting good prints thanks to SkeinPyPy". It's a project not aimed at making the best possible prints. It's a project aimed at making the best user experience.

I don't have a lot of experience with RepG, but the controls should act pretty quick. You might have a case of motor driver overheating. Which causes the motors to go on/off when the driver shuts on/off because of overheating and cooling again. http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Electronics_b ... or_drivers Is the gear turning? Because it's impossible for the filament to really stop the gear. If the bolt is not grabbing the filament make sure you have the pressure screw is tight enough. And the quick release is "closed"

My SkeinPyPy project grew into something larger then I imagined when I started it. It just started out as a speedup of Skeinforge with PyPy. But now, it's a whole new GUI, a bunch of tweaks, firmware updater, first run wizard. It has grown beyond it's Skeinforge roots. And the goal has shifted from "Making Skeinforge faster and a bit more userfriendly" to "Making the whole 3D printing experience more user friendly". It's not done, but it's improving almost every day, the "printer interface" GUI starts to take shape in my head. So that might be added soon. If you compare the development version to the Beta4 you already will notice a bunch of changes. Including the ability to switch between GCode and Model view. And easier to use "model" tools, no longer hidden in a tab (which always was a temp solution), or how about the "model errors shown after slicing" feature? With the advert of new features, and some ideas I still have planned but not implemented or even announced. I was thinking. SkeinPyPy is a bad name. If I add "Slic3r" support it still has the smell of Skeinforge behind it. Which is bad, as Skeinforge is associated with "slow, hard to use, zero feedback", which is everything SkeinPyPy is not. (well, except for the "Slow" part, but still faster then Skeinforge) So, I'm looking for a new and better name for SkeinPyPy. And I'm terrible at names. I don't want anything "Ulti-*". I'm looking for something flashy, something unique, and something which can be pronounced without hurting your tongue. (I know renaming a project is not always the best action, but that's why I rather do it now, the earlier the better)

Care to link to these EU rules?

The free version doesn't do slicing for the Ultimaker. So it's no good.

Lasers.We use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_deposition_modeling which is quite simple to build, and pretty cheap in materials. ZCorp machines use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering which requires a more complex machine, and very fine and good powders. I've also heard, that the default quality of ZCorp machines is very high, but the prints are very brittle, so to break very easy.

Avoid Chinese sellers. Those usually sell bad quality. The RepRap page on PLA has a few sources: http://www.reprap.org/wiki/PLA I like faberdashery, it's not the cheapest. But they have a wide range of colors, and you can buy small amounts of them. I don't print huge quantities, so price is not a huge problem for me. And I have 14 different colors now I think. Including glow-in-the-dark, which is totally awesome.

Indeed, the large belts need tensioners. I have 3 of these in my machine: (the back belt was tight enough without) http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10082 Did wonders for my print. Using the "lash" plugin is a bad idea IMHO. Because it doesn't solve the core problem.

I used the pure defaults for SkeinPyPy. And the following settings for Slic3r: --nozzle-diameter 0.4--print-center 100,100--z-offset 0--gcode-flavor reprap--filament-diameter 2.89--extrusion-multiplier 1.00--temperature 0--travel-speed 150--perimeter-speed 50--small-perimeter-speed 50--infill-speed 50--solid-infill-speed 50--bridge-speed 50--bottom-layer-speed-ratio 0.5--layer-height 0.2--first-layer-height-ratio 1.0--infill-every-layers 1--perimeters 2--solid-layers 3--fill-density 0.2--fill-angle 45--fill-pattern rectilinear--solid-fill-pattern rectilinear--retract-length 0--retract-speed 30--retract-restart-extra 0--retract-before-travel 5--retract-lift 0--cooling--min-fan-speed 100--max-fan-speed 100--bridge-fan-speed 100--fan-below-layer-time 20--slowdown-below-layer-time 10--min-print-speed 10--disable-fan-first-layers 0--fan-always-on--skirts 1--skirt-distance 6--skirt-height 1--scale 1.0--rotate 0--duplicate-x 1--duplicate-y 1--duplicate-distance 6 A commandline interface in KISSlicer sounds good. I couldn't start it because of a missing library on my Linux machine. But I also have a ton of GUI ideas that I still want to implement... so much work.

Paying upfront is quite common with these kinds of projects. Is saves them the hassle of securing capital beforehand, and the hassle of getting payment afterwards. And they are doing a lot better then OpenPandora, who took your money, and delivered 2.5-3 YEARS later. While the original estimate was 5-10 months. But you are free to buy where you wish. However, buying from eBay is more risky then from Ultimaker, as you won't get any support from Ultimaker. They told me, the most annoying part about copy-cat sellers is that you can get support requests from people that never bought a kit from you. And suddenly you have to verify every request if it's from a real customer. Which is not something they want to be busy with, they want help people to get 3D printers.

Looks a lot like the belt tension problem I had. Make sure the large belts are at proper tension, and the motors are pushed down so the small belts are tight. Also make sure the pullies are firmly attached to the rods.