coofercat

Just a couple that spring to mind... 1) attachments to comments in the ideas section. The idea being that I can leave a comment with a picture or stl of what I'm talking about. 2) RSS feeds on just about everything. Also 'follow' optiins on designers, designs, ideas, categories etc. 3) Thingiverse import? 4) Link to other site's design? The idea being to make YM the authoritative site for all designs anyone ever made, even if they were done for some other reason 5) button to turn off the animated render gadget - sometimes the still picture is more useful. Ideally I'd be able to select a 'north', 'south', 'east' or 'west' view in the still pictures too. Just a thought - it's already a good site, which I'm sure will become great in the future :-)

I don't consider myself any sort of 'pro' and so I generally want cheap/free software for my 3D printing needs. I've been a long-time user of Sketchup. I've done some fairly advanced stuff with it, but it does have some horrible bugs that get really annoying. It's easy to accidentally leave a hole in your object, or to leave some internal geometry inside your object, both of which screw up printing in weird ways. Things get a lot harder when you want to use curved shapes, or intersecting complex shapes - and let's face it, 'boxy' objects don't show off the great features of the 3D printing process, so I have been trying to use as many curves as I can :wink: Making things like screws and cogs is a pretty tedious affair with Sketchup - it can be done, but I've never actually made it through the whole process without giving up. Recently, Google sold the Sketchup software, and since then it's turned into more of a proper "product", with license keys and features that don't work without one (sadly bug fixes don't seem too evident). It seems to be aimed at architects and such like, so it's got a bunch of features you won't need (some of which are license locked). I suspect that it'll gradually turn into a non-free option, so that + bugs means I'm looking to get off it. I've been looking at Blender. I've seen some interesting objects created in Blender, some with complex shapes like interlocking cogs and screws and some textured ones too. Making more interesting shapes is partly what's drawing me to it. Blender's not for newbies, but it does seem to have some amazing features. It's primarily aimed at 3D artists rather than printers, so has a whole world of features you won't use. There are loads of video tutorials on how to use it, so you can easily spend a couple of hours just watching those before you even try making something. I'm yet to really design something and print it in Blender, so not sure how easy or hard it really is. Designspark Mechanical looks interesting. I just downloaded a copy so I'll have a play and see what it's like. If it turns out to be Sketchup-like, then it'll be good for quickly producing things - and sometimes that's all you need, and you don't want (by design) any funky textures or shapes. OpenScad is another interesting one - in a left-field sort of way. It seems like it'd be good for making "boxy" objects that are based on cubes, cyclinders and such like. I'm not so sure you can make "free form" object so easily with it, but again, it might be good for making objects quickly. I dread to think how you'd describe the object they have on their home page, but clearly some people can, and it does seem pretty cool that you could parameterise your object so that you could make it slightly different based on a few preferences. In that sense, OpenScad looks pretty unique, as the best you can realistically do elsewhere is simple scaling. I found this thread while looking for "best CAD software for printing", and seem to have answered my own question: Some packages are good for quick, simple objects, some are good for intricate complex ones, and one is good for mathmatically describing objects. It depends what mood you're in, and what you want to do as to which one is best. I'm looking forward to broadening my skills out to a few of them...

Ian: You've definitely made a very good looking feeder :smile: I wonder how it copes with a few turns of loose filament dumped on the floor (which tends to over-tighten and kink unless you use a lazy-susan)? I only have a UM1, so I can't directly contribute, but there are two things I've wondered about: 1) The knurled bolt - if this was more of a knurled wheel (say 100mm diameter), then more of it would be in contact with the filament at any time. That means more of the 'teeth' would be frictionous against the filament, and so you'd be less likely to 'grind' after one tooth slips a bit. You'd presumably need a correspondingly larger ball bearing opposite it to get the full benefit. 2) On my UM1, I too have large spool of filament hooked on the back of the printer. This is a nice neat design, but now that my reel is getting older and emptier, the curve of the filament is much smaller and harder to overcome. I wondered if the feeder needs a "pre-feeder" that is motorised, but perhaps only uses some rubber wheels to move the filament (so that it can slip if it needs to). The motor could probably be a normal non-stepper motor that can stall if it's already pushed enough filament, and can slip if it's 'out of sync' with the main feeder. The idea here is just to get the filament reel to turn, and to push the filament up to the main feeder. It's primarily a way to offload the work of unreeling the filament from the main feeder, which needs to concentrate on getting filament through the bowden and hot end. I also wondered if there should be a (straight) heated tube between the pre-feeder and the main feeder. That heater could maybe get up to 50-100C, so no where near the melting point, but enough to ease the bend in the filament so that it feeds more easily. My 2 pence :smile:

Should the network processor and the stepper processor be separated? I'd hate for my print to go slow because I was pressing 'refresh' on the web interface :wink: Separating the processors increases the BoM, and means you have to think about how to get gcode from one processor to the other - 250K baud serial isn't enough, unless maybe you binary encode your gcode (eg. http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Ultimate_Binary_Protocol).%20However,%20it%20means%20you%20can%20keep%20most%20of%20your%20existing%20firmware%20and%20have%20the%20ARM%20doing%20all%20the%20networking%20and%20display%20updates. If there's one thing you can be certain of - putting an ethernet interface on anything means you'll need to do lots of security work on the code that works with it (think: IPv6, SSL, etc). I for one would prefer something that has plenty of spare cycles to do that rather than an embedded controller-gone-wild. Just a thought :wink:

I think you've got a solution, but I'll throw this in just in case you need it: I had similar problems a while back, but the head was getting blocked almost every print. I was about to throw the bloomin' thing out the window, but thankfully I didn't. I found that you can get a sort of partial blockage in the head (where PLA gets between the bowden and the hot end, and then cools down). I was finding that it seemed to cause so much friction that molten PLA wouldn't move so well and prints would sometime go really thin and recover, or just stop extruding altogether. The V1 head suffers from the 'popping' problem where the junction between bowden and hot end gets material forced into it, which eventually pushes the bowden out of it's clamp. It doesn't sound like you're quite there yet, but it could be contributory (and raising the temperature will help stop the material hardening when it gets pushed through the junction). If you do find yourself with popping problems, then you can print your way out of trouble with a Pop-Stop (https://www.youmagine.com/designs/ultimaker-bowden-pop-stop). This allows you to get a really tight seal between bowden and hot end without needing some super-strong bowden clamp. I think this is sort of the same design used in the V2 hot end (although I've yet to buy one, so can't say for sure!).

If it were me, I'd put a 'roller' on the filament feed. That is, put a low friction roller onto the filament before it enters the extruder. If the filament moves, so does the roller and so software can detect filament movement. If the filament stops moving (perhaps because there is none, or perhaps due to an extruder failure, blockage, etc) then again, software can detect this and act accodingly. I guess you could go super-advanced and have the roller built into the extruder (so maybe between the extruder gear and the bowden), but that's more of an in-manufacturing solution rather than an an add on that we could print out ;-) FWIW, I was considering a pre-feed solution because my 5Kg roll of filament is pretty old and now it's running low the filament is quite tightly wound in the spool. This gives the filament quite a sharp 'bend' which isn't ideal to feed through the bowden. Such a device could easily double-up as a feed detector.

I'd just like to say "thanks" to everyone who's responsible for making the Ultimaker so good. Thank you folks - you're doing a great job! I had to pack my Ultimaker 1 (with old hot end + friction extruder, about 2.5 years old now) into a box around about this time last year. I got it unpacked over the weekend, and downloaded the latest Cura to use with it. Installing and running Cura walked me through levelling the bed (still pretty close to level, even after some travelleing about), and upgraded the firmware. It also suggested I either buy or print the upgraded, spring & bearing extruder. Initially I skipped that bit ;-) Within just a few minutes, I was up and running and printed out a couple of small parts. I got confident, so had a look on Youmagine (another nice new feature) and downloaded a lamp shade to print (https://www.youmagine.com/designs/lampshade). I tried it half size just to try it out, but my extruder failed, so I decided to print the upgrade. I just put the upgraded extruder in last night, and have printed some things successfully, so once again, full of confidence I've set the printer to print the lamp shade in full size (fast quality, something like an 11 hour print). I'm at work right now, so can't see how it's getting on - I'll find out tonight when I get home ;-) So anyway, with my old, old printer, I'm back up and running. Really cool things that have happened since I last used it include: - Cura has come on leaps and bounds. It's really good now, and much more what home 3D printing needs. It's so much faster and better looking than way back in the day when I used Replicator G (and even early Cura versions). I can't really comment on the quality of slicing, but so far, it's doing a great job. - Extruder spring + bearing upgrade. This is older than a year, but is great. I love that I can print the upgrades that have come along since I bought my printer. - Youmagine - it's early days for the site, but I've moved all my stuff over from Thingiverse. There are some really nice things on Youmagine, so I'm looking forward to lots more in the future - Firmware - I've upgraded it, but I can't really say what's improved in it, but it seems to be working very nicely - This forum - I'm still subscribed to the Google groups digest, but hey, I'm gonna move with the times and get on the forum from now on ;-) So as I say, for everyone who's been a part of these and other improvements - a big thank you from me. Can't wait to print some more cool stuff in the future :-)

I think I've solved this (at least, it's been solved the last couple of times I've started up the Ultimaker). Short summary: I regreased the fan (replacing it would probably also work, but I didn't find a blower that looked the same in the half hour I spent looking for one). If you want to do the same thing: 1) Switch off the Ultimaker. Remove the wooden cover plate over the electronics and detach the fan power cable 2) Remove the fan from the wooden plate (in my case, this involved unsticking some blue tape I'd put on it to ensure a good air seal) 3) Unclip the case of the fan (this involved sticking a small screwdriver into each of the three clips around the outside of the fan) 4) Unpeel the sticker in the centre of the bottom side of the fan 5) Under the sticker there's a white plastic clip that prevents the fan blades assembly from coming off the fan case - pull that clip off 6) This should release the fan blades from the main fan case. 7) Regrease the metal shaft on the fan blades (I used some bike grease I happened to have - it claims to be good at high temperatures and high speeds, which seemed like it might be good qualities to have, but I suspect any half decent grease would do the job) 8) Replace the shaft into the main fan case, and replace the white retaining clip 9) Reassemble the fan case by popping the top case on and ensuring it locates in all three clips 10) Reattach the fan to the wooden cover plate and reconnect the fan power cable. You may want to test the fan works by plugging in the Ultimaker briefly. 11) Refit the wooden cover plate over the electronics and (hopefully) enjoy noise free printing again :-)

Hmm... yeah, sounds good to me. Mine's (almost) done it from day one too - and like yours seems to get over it after a couple of stop/starts or a few minutes. I'll check the power connection, but it seems to work okay, so I don't suppose there's a problem there. If I get some time I'll see if there's an easy replacement part (hopefully of slightly more reliable quality). Thanks for the help - and for confirming my suspicions. Have a good xmas/NY :-)

Hi All, My Ultimaker's electronics cooling fan is sometimes *really* noisy. It's not touching anything (I know it a wire touches the blades that can make a lot of noise), and it doesn't do it every time I turn it on. However, sometimes, I turn on the machine and brrrrrrr it makes an absolute racket! This sounds a bit like the bearings are going in the fan - but that doesn't seem right, because the machine is practically new. Has anyone else seen this? Got any ideas what I can do to fix this?

Hi All, I took delivery of my Ultimaker about 3 months ago, and have just upgraded the firmware to Marlin Experimental Build 3 and am using ReplicatorG 0026 Alpha 1 on Windows. By co-incidence, I've got a new laptop, so it's a completely virgin install, with no config changes at all. My Ultimaker itself is pretty much exactly as it was when I first built it (so no changes there either). I'm really pleased to say that I've now achieved what I would describe as "out of the box printing". It's not perfect, but I've successfully printed a few different test pieces (eg. the thin wall test, the 20mm box, etc). I've also successfully printed a couple of things downloaded from thingiverse.com and also a box I designed myself. Since getting this working, I've had the printer working for hours on end getting as much printed as I can!! In short, for anyone who has recently ordered or received an Ultimaker, or anyone thinking of getting one - now is a good time to do so. You're still going to be using alpha/beta software, and it's all subject to a lot of change, so don't expect a fully finished/polished product. However, you can basically do what you'd hope to be able to do: That is, download an object and print it (reasonably well). The printed result may not be perfect (it may not be especially high quality, may have stringing, overhangs may not be quite as good as they should be, etc), but you can definitely print things. You can play with the build speed multiplier to see it feverishly working at colossal speed and the printer still works, and you still get a reasonable print. Much of the hype about this product are true - and it's great to be able to really put it to the test. For me at least, this is a huge relief. For months now, I've been fiddling with my Ultimaker/skeinforge profiles and reading forums and groups and being generally a bit frustrated that I never got very good results, and that I'd had to work so hard to get anything going. Those days are over - I'm really excited and am busily designing boxes for various electronics projects I've been working on, and trying to find fun stuff to make for the Mrs as a reward for putting up with having a large (expensive) ornament kicking around for so long! Thank you Ultimaker, and the community for getting us to (what looks to me like) a great milestone! ¡Viva la Revolución! ;-)

This sounds amazing - but it sounds like it'll end up being a complete electronics replacement for the Ultimaker (although you'll be able to reuse elements of the design). Uploading your design to the printer and letting it print is much more the way packaged printers work, and would (IMHO) be a significant selling point for the Ultimaker if it could do it. If you do end up redesigning boards and the like, how about adding in some sort of "expansion port" that hackers could attach devices to (stuff like LCD displays, control buttons or whatever) - it sounds like you'd have enough power available to be able to handle the gcode and some out of band communications like that sort of thing. Either way, this sounds like a great idea - although could take some time to do, I guess. Good luck!