tom

The spam is getting a little bit silly.

Hopefully I'm coming up on the home stretch for mine! This coming Sunday will be 6 weeks from my payment clearing. So I'm hopeful my machine will be coming sometime next week. The wait sucks, but the forums and google group help. Good luck and I'll be sure to let everyone know how the build and first prints go! Tom

Not sure if this is the correct place to put this. The way I understand the transfer of gcode is that your computer needs a USB connection throughout the entirety of the print. Are there any specifications the computer would need to meet. For instance would a netbook be suficient at sending the gcode? I wouldn't assume there would be any special need for hi specs just for the sending machine considering it can be done via SD card. Thanks in advance, Tom

One of my very few complaints is that the machine doesn't have a serial number on it. It'd be a really nice addition to have it laser-etched on the frame.. It'd also be easier to keep track of who's got what. As the design changes/improves over time, it'd be good to have a "change X started at serial number ###" type page on the wiki. I agree wholeheartedly. At the current number of buyers we could fairly easily piece it together if we had a few people who knew their order number. But as time progresses and more sell its going to get harder to gather the info on when changes were made etc...

Good to know they are selling well, unfortunate that I put my parents house as the shipping destination since I am going to be there for the holidays. With that many orders though its likely to be thee full 6 weeks before shipping out which means it'll most likely get there 2-3 days after I leave :lol: . Silly me and my miscalculations. Oh well...

According to the FAQ its common for it to say processing the whole time. Mine is at the same point, though I put my order in Nov. 27th. Which email have you sent your inquiries to and have you tried calling? I wouldn't worry too much about it until the next week as its likely a fair amount of people have picked them up for the holidays and they are probably using every bit of their stated 4-6 week lead time. My Nov. 27th order was 0935 so that's quite a bit of volume in one month in comparison to the amount of time they have been available for order. Tom

What exactly would a volumetric profile do for a print?

I haven't had a chance to play with it too much yet as I'm waiting on my printer still, but I'm interested to see the kind of output that the zbrush 3d print exporter plugin produces. I know its an stl file, just curious as to the quality etc... If it works anything like the decimation master plugin though it should be of fairly high usability and quality.

I'm sure for everyone that at least some of the reasoning behind purchasing/building a 3d printer such as the Ultimaker stemmed from the thought "Wow.....THAT'S AWESOME". But what else steered your way? For me personally its the idea of printing some of my own 3d models into a tangible form. I think it's going to be satisfying in a whole different and exciting way. So what was it for you?

So, how many of you out there with Ultimakers consider yourself competent in modeling? Looking around the various blogs etc... The technical know how doesn't seem to be whats keeping the community from making more high detail prints (like the yoda bust) so much as the lack of 3d modeling experience. Maybe I'm completely off base in this assumption, but I guess thats why I'm asking. Also, I know there have been some posts about good free software to use for modeling, what I'd like to know is what some of the users already making content are producing it with. I personally use blender, and zbrush here lately, though in my undergraduate work we had to use Autodesk products so it was a Maya and Mudbox combination.

I just found it curious. I didn't figure it was much of anything. Your answer makes sense though and I'm sure that's probably on the right track for what it means.

I paid via paypal, and when they sent the confirmation email they also included a note that said "It look like this is your tracking number: XXXXXXXXXXXX" with a link to the DHL site. I was curious if anyone else from the US had paid via paypal and received a similar message. Just seemed a little odd to receive a tracking number for a package not set to mail for another 4-6 weeks. Can I expect another email of shipment confirmation? Thanks in advance Tom

I did indeed, though the pictures you had gathered together in one place did a lot of talking themselves.

My name is Tom, nice to meet you forum. I've spent a lot of my free time the last couple of months researching 3d printing technologies and the various machines which use them. I had initially ruled out most of the hobbyist kits do to the quality of prints I was finding. Lucky for me I stumbled onto Dave Durant's blog and the Ultimaker. More research ensued. Long story short, here I am four days after placing my order and it seems that glorious day 4-6 weeks from now is never going to get here.

I like blender pretty well the more I use it, and its got a whole lot of high end features comparable to Maya from autodesk. I don't have any experience with the others you've listed here, but I can say that a simple organic modeller like sculptris is a whole lot of fun. It is the free version of Zbrush made by pixologic. I messed around with it for awhile before giving in and picking up zbrush for more features. Having used, maya, blender, mudbox, sculptris and zbrush for modeling I'd have to say the last two are my favorite for organic models. I personally don't like nurbs so I never messed with them in maya, or wanted to pick up rhino3d for that reason. Sculptris can export obj files which you can load into blender to save out stl. If you go the not sub 200 way then zbrush actually has a couple of tools to help out with 3d printing. A very good decimation tool to reduce poly counts while maintaining form, and a 3d print exporter where you can set the dimensions you would like your project to be saved at in an stl. Zbrush sits at 699 USD I believe, or $450 usd for the academic version (which is full featured with no watermarks, as far as I have been able to tell, they have you on the honestly system for not using it commercially) You can then upgrade to the commercial version later on for half the price. In my experiences I get the best results when I have a workflow between multiple programs. In school I used maya and mudbox to meet my needs. Now that I'm out I mostly use blender and zbrush. Blender is free and I actually just prefer zbrush over mudbox for both performance and price.

I have to agree with Daid here. With CAD programs you are going to be looking at very precise models as their intended use is generally for engineering purposes. 3D modelers such as blender tend to be more freeform. Primarily I've worked with maya, mudbox, blender, sculptris, and zbrush for modeling. In my opinion If you want to do organics you aren't going to beat something like sculptris (the free version of zbrush) or zbrush in price or performance. If i remember correctly sculptris can export objs which is a standard object file type consistent with most 3d modeling programs. With that file you can load it into a program able to generate .stl. Blender is a bit of a doozy to learn, I had the benefit of coming from maya which is also advanced. I have heard decent things about the freeware Meshlab. I haven't used it myself but it might be worth taking a look at. While I am still fairly new to blender I can say its feature set is extensive and in many ways comparable to maya. Many features I prefer actually. I would probably use blender for hard surface modeling, and sculptris for organics. You'll find that many programs have their strengths and weaknesses and you'll get the best results when you have a workflow between them. Just my 2 cents, not worth much