tom

Its not so much an issue of the plastic itself as it is a limitation of the nozzle. The ultimaker nozzle has a .4mm diameter nozzle. Which means when you are laying down a line of plastic it will be .4mm wide. I'm not sure on just how small it can get but as you can see there are limitations on the accuracy it can achieve in the xy directions. As Ultimate-X mentioned there are smaller diameter nozzles available, which can get better resolution, they just require further adjusting of other components on your machine. I hope that makes sense. Tom M.

I've been doing test prints and stuff lately. If you have a model you'd like printed I can give it a go sometime this week or next weekend if you want. Maybe that would give you a better idea?

In my personal experience I didn't have near anything close to the issues of Terry in his post. From what I have dealt with once I had my machine working it was all a matter of the correct settings in the software to get better and higher quality. There are going to be kinks in the process. Time is the "hidden" cost with an open source and/or DIY machine. Sure you can get printers that are plug and play, but you are looking at a total cost of 15-17 thousand to get an entry level plug and play machine such as the vflash by 3D Systems. I'm in no way trying to scare you off, because I personally don't regret my decision at all. I know you gave an idea of the size of the models you are looking to print, are they for professional or personal use if you don't mind me asking? Maybe I'll be able to offer better advice if I know more about what you are wanting to do. Tom M.

The answer to your question is really going to depend on your personal level of technical know-how and how much free time you have. I got my machine some day around January 11th or something. From there I took several days to put it together in my spare time. From that point the more you know about the programs you'll be using the better. Which won't be a problem if you use some of your time while waiting for your printer to arrive and familiarize yourself with them. Also reading some forum and discussion group topics about the issues other people have had can help. After trying several different iterations of programs I personally ended up with Netfabb (mainly for the speed, it takes long enough for my prints to print, I don't like waiting for them to slice as well) and printrun to send the gcode. The machine doesn't take a lot of extra parts to get going. Mine was working acceptably right from the start, though there are a few things you can print that won't necessarily improve the results you get, but more so the ease with which you get them. I had my printer putting out good results within the first week. The only part for my printer I ended up getting that couldn't be made with the printer itself was a glass zstage, and that was the result of my own overzealous removal of plastic from my acrylic stage The important thing to note is this: You will have issues.... but, there are a lot of great guys (and gals? haven't asked before) around the forums and discussion group who have probably had any of the issues you might encounter and are willing to help you through them. I hope this helps a little in your decision. If I need to clarify or go more in depth on anything just let me know.

Would there be any benefit from the MK7 gear drive over the MK6? they look pretty much the same besides the dimensions. I'm looking into building your design, so I figured I'd ask before i bought the pieces just in case there was some benefit you might know of.

This is the drive gear you're talking about correct? : http://store.makerbot.com/mk5-drive-gear.html I seem to be a little lost on the bearings though. I'm not very familiar with how bearings are measured. Can you link an example 106x3 bearing that would work for this? Additionally, would this be printable in pla or would it need to be in abs since it has direct contact with the motor?

Turned it up to 225 and it managed to make it about 30 minutes before grinding in and stopping extrusion. I gave it a little push while it was still running and it caught the filament and started back with normal extrusion, though it was too late by then to save the print.

I've hammered out most of my issues over the last few weeks but only one seems persistent. I am in a constant struggle with my extruder filament driver. The bolt is in constant need of cleaning it seems. Most of the issues showed up when I switched to the Natural PLA from Ultimachine. I'm not sure if its softer than what Ultimaker sent with my printer or what but I absolutely can not keep a steady stream of the stuff. I've gone through many iterations of cleaning the bolt, tightening or loosening the filament pressure mechanism. Past that I'm really not sure what else to do. I raised my temps considerably which helped the most. Going from printing at 190 to 205 C. Even with this change however the extrusion is just not reliable. After cleaning the bolt I can normally get a good 20 mins or so of it working perfectly, however when I return to the machine later I find the print not any further along and the printhead happily skimming around an mm or two above the print. It doesn't appear to be a clogging issue because in general if I just push the filament through by hand it clears things up and will work again if I precede to clean the bolt. And as I mentioned before I've tried this at a very large variety of pressures and the problem just persists. Additionally it appears as if the hotend temperatures are fairly consistent (just basing that off of the force required to push the filament by hand. I haven't taken any accurate temperature readings yet.) I'm hoping to get this figured out as it seems to be my last major hurdle in consistent print quality. Any thoughts/ideas? As always, Thank in advance!

I haven't checked for updates on the status of that version of netfabb since they announced the changes before Christmas. Is there any kind of eta on that? Or somewhere you can still download the beta version?

Got a couple pieces of glass cut to a variety of sizes the other day. Right now I just have one held on by binder clips to the original acrylic board. I gotta say the glass seems much easier to work with. Perhaps my board was more warped than I had originally realized.

I have to agree with Daid here. I ended up trying printrun because I was having issues connecting RepG to the latest marlin firmware. But that was a happy decision. I greatly prefer printrun after having used it for a couple of prints.

I did try flipping it over but the board appears to be high in the center on the back side. Not sure how I managed to do it but it makes printing a real pain.

I may or may not have messed up my print bed yesterday while removing some stuck plastic . Looking at the ultimaker lasercut schematics on thingiverse I noticed the print bed is designed for a 6mm thickness where the one that came with my kit is nearly 10.5 mm. I'm going to go about sanding it back down to a flat surface later but just in case I fudge it up I'm making the assumption that buying a 6mm thick replacement will be sufficient? Do any of you have a recommended source for acrylic (preferably US based for shipping cost reasons) or just compatible print beds in general? I couldn't find the dimensions anywhere on the schematics on thingiverse besides the thickness( I only checked the PDF version). Am I reading it wrong or would I need to include them separately if I gave a cutting shop the blueprints for the board from thingiverse.

So I started a print this morning. I left for a moment as everything seemed to be working as expected. When I came back 2-3 layers in I found the print head must have snagged my tape and managed to cut out a perfect little square where the base of the print was. While this was interesting since there was a little ball of crumpled tape off to the side it left me with an issue. I let the print finish, unfortunately the bottom couple of layers snapped off when I went to remove it. So long story short, I had read about how well Pla sticks to acrylic but holy crap. Heh that stuff doesn't want to come off no matter how much I scrape. Ive managed to get it down to the last layer or two with a majority of those gone as well but now my efforts seem futile. Any suggestions? Could I just blowtorch it off thereby removing the scuff marks I made with my scraper as well? As always thanks in advance for your help guys!

#1) Looks like your understanding is about right. #2) I send the prints from my EEE Pc Asus netbook. Thats the first netbooks to hit the markets however long ago that was if that tells you anything. Sending the prints doesn't take much at all. I've used both RepG and Pronterface on the netbook without issues. After using it I have to say I really prefer Pronterface. #3 and 4) Netfabb is only able to be put on one machine at a time, heck I put my voucher to use on an invalid serial number let alone one that had already been used and I had to wait for a reset to get past the demo version.I personally have Netfabb installed on my 64 bit machine. Though it doesn't seem particularly intensive I haven't used it extensively enough yet to conclude it doesn't need a better computer to run efficiently. I just sliced this to check while writing this reply: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12288 I sliced it on netfabb high quality with 2.2mm spacing on the infill. On an I7 1.6ghz laptop CPU with 6 gigs of ram netfabb stayed at a constant 13% cpu usage and the ram didn't go higher than 165,000k according to my task manager. Didn't check the graphics card usage but I'm running an ATI 5870 mobility with 1gig of ram in this particular machine. Hope that helps in your decisions!

I figured it was probably something simple like that, was hoping not that simple haha, kind of silly of me. I screwed each corner of my bed down by one turn and the print seems to be going much better now! Thanks.

Yesterday I put the latest marlin firmware on my machine and decided to give pronterface a go as I was having issues connecting to the printer from RepG. I'm generating my code with netfabb and I keep getting a similar result while printing. I've tried slicing with ultra, high, and standard settings. So at this point I'm not sure what it is since its staying fairly consistent. As you can see the majority of the first layer looks like its pressing in firmly but there are sections that always seem to blob up. I've replaced the tape where the print is located between each print and re-leveled the bed a couple of times just to try and keep as many variables out of the equation as possible. (Note: the large cone and string is where I happened to stop the print and lower the bed and the material free-flows out for a moment.)

Does Netfabb have a start.gcode file somewhere the way skeinforge does? I've noticed I need to have the M92 E14 command for everything to work correctly. Is this just something I need to add in manually every time or is there a function to do it automatically? In case you plan on giving a file path I'm on windows 7 64 bit. Thanks

When I ask about alternatives I'm thinking something along these lines: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835708011 The current heat sinks are about 6.4mm X 8mm X 4.8mm where those copper ones are 6.5mm X 6.5mm and the top would have to be trimmed as the height is 12mm?

While removing the fan shroud for the board I seemed to have popped one of my heat sinks off of a stepper driver. I've ordered some 3m 8815 thermo tape as it looked like this was the most likely adhesive for holding the heat sink on. Has anyone else has this issue. Secondly, since its popped off now anyways are there any better heat sinks out there? For instance would copper ones be likely to make a difference? I'm also making the assumption that I shouldn't run the machine until I have the heat sink back on the chip. Thanks,

This weekend I downloaded the Netfabb engine for Ultimaker to give it a whirl. I like the program and decided to purchase a license. Unfortunately when i received my voucher and new serial number I forgot to change the serial number of the demo version before entering the voucher code. To which I received this response via automated email: "Serial number N38U080X was used for activation too often. Activating demo version instead." Thinking this was an easy fix I changed the serial number and re-entered the voucher. The response was different, but not in the way I hoped: "Voucher code *********** was previously used. Activating demo version instead." I sent an email to both the Ultimaker team and the Netfabb support email yesterday morning (I'm in the US, Eastern time zone). Surely this is something that could be resolved easily. Am I missing something that I could be doing on my end? I would think there is something in place for if one wishes to migrate their software to another computer? Any help is appreciated as always.

Although I haven't seen too much talk of it in this forum if you google the topic you'll probably get tossed over to the google discussion group. Though I don't think much has been said about it lately, I could be mistaken.

How easy should it be to move the extruder head around by hand? I know the troubleshooting guide mentions too much friction. But how much is too much? Mine seems to be rather tough to move by hand though it moves just fine via the control panel etc... I've greased the rods and checked the x and y axis for squareness and everything seems to be close as far as I can tell. It seems like once I get the head going it moves smoother until I stop... Thanks in advance!

Mine shipped out today. So hopefully it'll get here quick and I can get it together before school starts back up full time next week.

While I don't think it should be an applied for job I'm sure there are a few people that peruse these forums who would "moderate" if asked. If in no other capacity than to remove the obvious spam. Though if the Ultimaker people fill job position #4 and monitoring the forums is part of the job duties then more power too them.