sydneydesigner

Hi Graeme, Owen and Daniel, I'm planning to order my UM in the next few weeks. Through all the hard work of UM and the excellent community, the UM hardware/software seems to be getting stable enough for me to be able to use it for work, without being diverted into spending too much time tinkering with the UM itself. As I'm likely to want to print in ABS too (as well as PLA), I'd love it if UM offered a heated bed solution for ABS....hopefully soon, or maybe I need to source that elsewhere? I was also really after the taller Ultimaker+ but that development seems to have been deferred by UM - not sure to when? Graeme - where are you based in Sydney? Maybe we could meet up. I'm in Willoughby. Not too far from Owen either (~100km)...bit further to Daniel! Cheers, Marc

Thanks ddurant and Joergen - I think I understand now. Very helpful.

Thanks ddurant. Not having a machine yet, I'm sure how fragile a 0.5mm wall will be? In PLA would it be very easy to snap with your fingers? Would ABS be a lot stronger? The bit I have difficulty getting my head around is when the wall is (say) 0.8mm thick. Then presumably the 0.4mm nozzle does the left side of the wall for one layer and then does the right side of the wall for the next layer .... etc. It seems to me that the central 0.4mm will end up with twice as much PLA as the two 0.2mm wall sides.....so the two 0.2mm wall sides will end up being light on material. Is that right, or does the PLA/ABS just squish out so it all evens up?

Please, if anyone can help, I really would like to know if anybody has actually printed anything like this and got a good result on both surfaces? Is the Ultimaker up to this task I wonder?

Many thanks for this. I'm particularly interested to learn about the quality of both walls when the outside and inside contours butt against each other and then overlap as you say. Has anybody actually printed anything like this and got a good result on both surfaces?

Thanks for your help. I don't think I phrased my questions well enough so I'll have another go. With a UM with a 0.4mm nozzle, suppose you are printing a vertical tapered wall 10cm high where you want a good smooth finish on both sides of the wall. Could the wall be 5mm thick at the base tapering to 0.5mm thick at the top, and still give a good smooth finish on both sides of the wall, all the way up to the top? The basic issue that I see, is that the 0.4mm wide extrusions for each side of the wall will start to bump into each other when the wall gets to around 0.8mm thick. Any thinner and I can't see how both sides of the wall would have a good smooth surface finish. But maybe I am missing something. What wall thickness do people think would start to loose surface finish quality on one or both sides of the wall? Would it be best to print the wall solid throughout, or with some sort of fill?

Thanks for all your ideas. There is a parallel discussion on this topic in the Ultimaker Google Group which people may be interested in: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 9eprnjA1bQ

G'day from Sydney again. Suppose you are printing something like a vase (vertically - i.e. the right way up).....and I know some of you already have! If you want both the outside and inside of the vase to be good smooth finishes, how thin can the vase wall get to, with the Ultimaker 0.4mm nozzle? For example, could the vase wall be 5mm thick at the base tapering to 0.5mm thick at the top lip, and still give smooth outside and inside walls? If not, then what is the thinnest that the top lip can be? Would it be best to print the vase solid throughout, or with some sort of fill (up to a certain minimum wall thickness of course)? Thanking you in anticipation....

Thank you for this guidance. Basically, what it seems to boil down to is this. 1. A taller Ultimaker+ (more Z, same X and Y) will perform identically to the standard Ultimaker up to an object height of 22cm - am I correct? 2. Thereafter, as the Ultimaker+ platform steps lower and the object gets taller, the only extra issue to consider over the standard Ultimaker is the potential vibration-induced sideways leverage forces, which would tend to get worse for taller objects but would probably not be so much of an issue for broader based objects - is this right?

Thank you, this is very useful. It's sounding like increasing Z is easier than increasing X and/or Y. As you point out, increasing Z doesn't increase the Bowden length (assuming the extruder stepper is mounted the same distance down from the top of the UM). I'm wary of straying too far from the norm and forum expertise (at least for my first printer). Reorientating my objects to print in a taller UM like Ultimaker+ will give me overhangs.....but maybe that is OK given the pretty impressive Yoda ears seen clearly on Florian's useful website http://techwall.net/20-microns#more . What minimum overhang angle (from the horizontal) can be reliably achieved with a standard Ultimaker (and what are the tricks to achieving this)? Do you think this can be translated to similar overhang capability for a taller Ultimaker?

Interesting points thank you. Here are a couple more considerations.... Do you think there is much sideways force from the UM extruder on the object, that might flex (or even topple) objects as they get taller? Do you think a longer Bowden tube would introduce more problems? (From the forums, quite a few people seem to be having problems with the current Bowden.) The Bowden would presumably need to increase by a similar amount to any z-axis increase, and only by some portion (due to the angles) of any X-axis and Y-axis increases.

Hi everyone, First of all many thanks for all the contributions I've been reading over the past few months on this forum, Google Ultimaker Group and the Reprap forum....particularly from the regulars. I've found them very inspirational, if a bit daunting and bleeding edge at times! I'm a design engineer based in Sydney but I don't have a rapid prototyping machine yet. I'd like to print larger parts, of about 1kg weight. They would fit within an envelope of about 100mm by 300mm by 500mm, and could be printed lying flat or perhaps standing up. I'd prefer not to print them in 4 pieces. So, I'm looking for your thoughts please on larger Ultimaker-style designs that could do this. Do you think larger X,Y,Z axes are practical give your experiences with the standard Ultimaker so far? I like the design of the Ultimaker and feel that it is probably the most upwardly scalable design out there, basically because it doesn't move the (heavier) part in the X or Y axes, and the extruder functions much the same independent of part size. Would you agree? I know about the taller (i.e. Z axis only) Ultimaker+ but I've been told by Ultimaker that is not for sale for the next few months at least. Apparently there are some issues to sort out as printing with it becomes more challenging because the object itself has limited stiffness and becomes a large lever which exerts torque on the platform. Perhaps larger X and Y axes would be easier to implement - what do people think? I think there are a few Ultimakers in Australia now......with a bit of luck, maybe someone is already working on a larger Ultimaker in/near Sydney! I'd be very interested in your thoughts please.