gadgetfreak

Lars and Nick, thanks for your comments and sorry for my late reply. I actually did drill V-shaped indents into my rods to prepare for a future improvement, but after reading Lars reply I'm unsure. I haven't really been able to assess the new pulleys/belts as I've encounted another annoying extrusion problem (I've started another troubleshooting thread on that) so I'll leave this until the extrusion problem is solved. Later I can put up pictures of the lathe drilling and if I modify the end caps. Has anyone else done before/after calibration prints to assess the new pulleys? Would be nice to see Cheers Daniel

I have some strange extrusion problems since about two weeks. Prints (same gcode) that previously have worked well suddenly give inconsistent extrusion and "easy" overhangs that usually prints well print as if it was an overhang with a too shallow angle with curls as a result. I have tried different temperatures to no avail. Manual extrusion feel a bit "slow" as if there some kind of plug somewhere, even at hotter temperatures. But I have a vague memory of that my hot end started to smell a bit funny at one time and that some smoke fumes was coming out , perhaps around the same time as when the models started to come out worse (but I didn't notice initially). I think the temperature might have risen to about 250-260 degrees so I shut it off but didn't think too much of it then. Today I started disassembling my hot end (it's been over 6 months since I needed to do it last time). I only did a little cleanup in the lower and upper part, assembled again but with same bad results. Now I have disassemled so that the PEEK and attached brass tube is detached as can be seen in this picture: Is this black gunk between the PEEK and brass an indication that the PEEK has melted partially? I cannot unscrew the brass pipe from the PEEK easily and perhaps I would need to heat it up first (oven 200 degrees maybe?) but for now I've left it in my lab. I have a friend who has spare hotend parts, perhaps I should just try to replace the PEEK/brass pipe or what do you guys think? Thanks, Daniel

I received my pulleys earlier this week and will try to install them today together with fresh belts (they are spare parts from UM; my current ones are two years old and a bit worn) and a new Thermocouple board also from UM (my old one is a bit off in temperature). My question to those of you who has already upgraded to the new pulleys: - How long time did it take and exactly whats steps are needed to do this? I would guess that parts of the steps on the Ultimaker wiki assembly pages would need to be followed in reverse, but I also suspect that it might not be as simple as that? I have an older (about two years) Ultimaker with the 8mm rods for the XY head cross, but I guess that doesn't really affect the pulley upgrade? I'm also thinking about making (with my lathe) a small centering hole on the end of each steel rods, so that you could mount a modified screw in through the rod caps like described in the comments to this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:54075 This way it would act like "turning between centers" in a metal lathe setup. However, I'm not sure if it's worth all the work that this would entail, what do you think?? Cheers, Daniel

Excellent write-up Ian, I totally agree with your summary, fantastic people! And I'll add that both Bernhards presentation on motion control and your presentation on using Ultimaker for architecture were both very educating and entertaining! I can really recommend this fair both for the knowledge sharing, the inspiration and all of the great fun and I'll definitely get back next year :-) Small note: my name is spelled "Daniel" and not "Danial" and I'm not in denial of anything ;-) /Daniel

And I'm here already In Erfurt, that is. I heard from Florian that "Modern Masters" is the place to hang out tonight. I was already there but it doesn't open until 18 ;-) Anyone else wanna join in for beer and talks tonight? /Daniel

Thanks Markus, that's great! Will you PM me with your paypal address? Do you want me to PM you with shipping address? Whenabouts do you expect them to be ready? /Daniel

Hi Markus, I would really like two full sets also if it's not too late? How would I pay, by paypal? Is there any chance you will be at the 3D printing FabCon fair in Erfurt, Germany? I'm not sure where you are at! I'm going and I'm from Sweden Thanks a lot in advance, Daniel

Thanks illuminarti, great explanation! Now I can fall asleep a little easier I actually think my Ultimaker is pretty well tuned hardware-wise, however the Thin walls-object looked really lousy in both 13.03 and steam, perhaps that needs to be printed a lot slower than the 100mm/s that I tried? Is anyone else getting a good print with the thin wall tester: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:64842 and if so - in which slicer / with what settings? /Daniel

UPDATE: I have sliced and printed a new one without retraction and it looks identical to the one with retraction (I'm not adding any new pictures). So the comparison to 13.03 still holds :-/ The short belts seem tight and fine...however when I move the head manually in X direction it's quite a bit of resistance...I've added fresh sewing machine oil to X/Y rods which now makes it move nicer and will try another print. I'm still keen on answers to my questions on slippage / extrusion wheel above...if anyone knows

Sure, it's always a good idea to check the belts every once in a while I tried feeling them while printing but it's difficult to get a feel when they are moving I think. I'll let this print finish first... About the filament slipping, I think its always hard to know exactly how much to turn the screw...when I change filament I usually turn the wheel by hand and it's ok. Sometimes I need to tighten or un-tighten the screw but usually not. But lately I've experience a bit of "backlash" in the extruder wheel when doing this by hand (no motors involved). If I turn the wheel a little bit to forward some filament and then release it, the extruder wheel will retract back a little bit. It doesn't feel right, but other prints come out pretty fine so I'm not sure whether it's bad or not. So questions: 1) is the extruder wheel supposed to stay still or retract a small bit after you forward filament by turning the wheel by hand and then release it? 2) while the machine is printing and forwarding filament, I sometimes pinch the filament close to where it enters the wood, so that my fingers are pinched. Then I know that the filament is going forward. BUT I wonder, if I pinch hard on the filament, should I be able to stop it from forwarding or if I'm able to stop it by this, would it be slipping / too loose screw then? About your print: The picture is a little bit out of focus, but 0.06mm sounds really nice! Is it from the super-shaper? Three days, wow! My longest print so far is 24 hours. And a couple of 18h prints. Are the several-days-prints reliable?

Yes, I agree it is a bit disappointing. I'm using an SD card/Ulticontroller, I always do that (I have tons of USB devices connected so I don't want interferences on the USB chain while printing. I'm doing a re-print now of the Bumper model without retraction, I can update in an hour of how that looks.

Ok, so I have tested for about 5 hours in the new beta steamengine release. I have reported some issues to David, gotten responses and am waiting for some more answers I have sliced and printed two different models so far, you can see (and read about) my results here: Other beta testers: please comment and share pictures / stories yourselves. In short: I really love the speed and general feeling of steamengine, but it seems to produce worse quality for my models than 13.03 so far. I guess that any new slicer would need to mature before it could be expected to compete with one that has several years on it...so I'm keeping my thumbs! It would be nice to see what results you other beta testers have. /Daniel

I have Ultimaker red PLA that I ordered on August 28th, 2012 with this designation: "PLA plastic - Red 0.75 kg PLA_RED_075" Sometimes it would print nice, but over time is was unreliable, I think that the diameter is not consistent. I have some left on the roll but I don't use it anymore. Ultimaking unfortunately does not have a good Quality Assurance process for their PLA. Some rolls are really great (like a green translucent I have) but for me it's more important that I can trust the PLA consistency / quality. There are enough parameters to tweak for good prints so I definitely don't want to have uncertainty over a roll.... Nowadays I only order from Colorfabb or Faberdashery, so far all of their filament has proven to be really good. I'm located in Europe / Sweden so they are the best for me so far I think. I would report your roll as bad and try to get a new one... /Daniel

How are you guys that are part of fab labs/hackspaces dealing with the noise from your 3D printers? My Ultimaker is quite noisy for some models. We're planning for where and how to put about 5-10 3D printers in our new Stockholm Makerspace. Hopefully we'll have a couple of Ultimakers there and also some others. We'd like to have access to power / USB and that it should be fairly easy to physically access the printers when needed. Also mounting of cameras etc. We're thinking about constructing sections sealed with acrylic see-through plastic together with sound-proofing material. But I gather there are others out there to take inspiration and learn from, please share! Also, for shared 3D printers - how do you book / charge 3D print time so that people are happy? Thanks, Daniel

I would LOVE to beta test! I have several models that does not slice too well i Current Cura (thin wall etc) waiting for (your) new slicer. Also, I recently go a new thermal camera that might be used fo some nice comparison pics Gimme the binaries please /Daniel

Thanks for your replies guys. I'll will re-check the set screws the next time before I start the print again (not until earliest Sunday now unfortunately :( ) The plexiglass cannot move in the Y direction, so that can't be it. The frisbee (or the support part of it) has skewed a little bit off the blue tape, but the blut tape is also a couple of millimeters to short on that end. I think the axes are well oiled, it was not too long ago I oiled them. I'm starting to lean towards Illuminartis "You might also check if there's any chance that the end switches triggered while printing as that might throw things off too, I think." because I know they were really close to getting hit (the first run actually failed a bit funny because of that I think). However, isn't the print supposed to stop altogether if any end stop is hit? I can check this somehow from Cura by executing som M commands towards the printer, can't I? I remember there are some settings on that in the firmware. And how would the things be "thrown off" so to say? I would actually consider that to be a firmware bug then ;-) The print surface was pretty bad considering all support needed to be removed from the top of the surface (printed closest to the print bed) so I'm planning on designing some manual support rods and print it diagonally with slicer-generated support and let it be 20cm high instead. Do you think that would make a nicer print perhaps? Cheers Daniel

Hi, I've been using my Ultimaker for almost two years. I'm mostly using Cura (13.03 now) and I have upgrade to the v2 hotend and the v2 extruder and v3 bolt. Most of my models print fine, some really great. But this is the first time I print something really large in X and Y (the whole of the print bed). I modeled a frisbee (a flying disc of the "disc golf" type) and I'm trying to print it full size (about 20cm in diameter). I scaled it to the max with external support in Cura 13.03. The firmware I have is from Cura 13.03 as well ("Ultimaker: 13.03"). Now, halfway into the print (about half the height, total height in about 1,5cm), both the actual model and the support structure has shifted 8.5mm, mostly in Y direction, a little bit in X direction. In Cura, the model looks fine after slicing: In RepetierHost the model looks fine after importing the same gcode I ran (used the Ulticontroller to start it) during the print: Could this be a firmware bug? Other models I have print fine (although not as large in X and Y as this one)... Thanks for any troubleshooting help. /Daniel

I find it really troublesome to get good polish off PLA prints. I found this kickstarter project that seems to work for both ABS and PLA (depending on the chemical used): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1809448130/3d-refiner-by-3dprintsexpresscom I backed it a couple of days ago and will receive my unit in Mid-May according to them (it's between May and July I think depending on what level you back on). It will be really nice to see if the machine works as well as the pictures / videos show. Has anyone else here backed it? If they receive more backing they will add even more hw improvements depending on how much they get during the last 17 days now. /Daniel

Here it is: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:69709 Please let me know if you could print it without support (I tried and it failed a couple of layers in but I didn't try to tweak any settings, used Cura 13.03).

I have printed the owl at really great quality at 0.1mm layer height, check my albums Can you post the settings used? What revision of the Ultimaker do you have? What modifications do you have? E.g. clip at extruder drive for retraction, etc. What filament (supplier/type) do you use? Can you supply a simple print of a 20mm cube? Then it's easier to help

That looks so much better than mine! Double cooling looks really good. Is it on thingiverse? Thanks for the gcode, I'll try it tomorrow! btw, if you have the new extruder (and v3 bolt) you might want to change your e-steps value to 833 for even better prints? I saw you had 865 in the gcode.

Thanks a lot guys. I did try printing with 25mm/s. A tiny bit better, but not that much better on overhangs. I tried rotating the robot with the face towards the fan but then the whole robot came out a lot worse, really strange. I also tried with Faberdashery pink PLA, no real difference. (no new pictures, I didn't get the time to take new ones) I have an unassembled UM kit (my colleaugues) sitting next to me that we will start assembling tomorrow - hopefully it will be done by the end of the week - it will be really interesting to compare to this one. I'd really like to try this with some gcode that somebody else has gotten good results with (I have V3 bolt/new extruder /V2 head, albeit mounted onto a really old Ultimaker (from June 2011 so it's rev.1).

A cool head modeled by a friend and printed by me. Sliced with Cura 13.03. Support was manually removed with pliers. this is the first try, it can probably be improved a lot when tweaking slicer options (and I have some belts tightening to do as well).

The new "High quality" UM Robot still has overhang issues :( I added two pictures of that in the album: as well and result from Jelle Boomstras bed leveling gcode "BedLevelv4" From the bedlevel it look like I have a little backlash in X judging from the two rightmost circles which does not touch? The setting for the UM robot for this print was as follows. What's next, take the pain and replace all belts? [profile] filament_diameter = 2.89 nozzle_size = 0.4 wall_thickness = 0.8 retraction_enable = False max_z_speed = 3.0 travel_speed = 150 print_temperature = 220 print_speed = 50 retraction_speed = 40.0 layer_height = 0.1 solid_layer_thickness = 0.6 fill_density = 30 support = None enable_raft = False filament_density = 1.00 skirt_line_count = 1 skirt_gap = 6.0 retraction_min_travel = 5.0 retraction_amount = 4.5 retraction_extra = 0.0 bottom_layer_speed = 15 cool_min_layer_time = 10 fan_enabled = True bottom_thickness = 0.2 object_sink = 0.0 enable_skin = False plugin_config = model_matrix = 1.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,1.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,1.0 extra_base_wall_thickness = 0.0 cool_min_feedrate = 5 fan_layer = 1 fan_speed = 100 fan_speed_max = 100 raft_margin = 5 raft_base_material_amount = 100 raft_interface_material_amount = 100 support_rate = 50 support_distance = 0.5 infill_type = Line solid_top = True fill_overlap = 15 bridge_speed = 100 sequence = Loops > Perimeter > Infill force_first_layer_sequence = True joris = False retract_on_jumps_only = True hop_on_move = False

I had to leave before I could see the result of the 0.1mm UM Robot, now I can only see it from the side in my Skype webcam, cannot really tell the quality from that angle....will update again when I've had a closer look! Most likely tomorrow.