codemaven

Hard to say... I haven't done any destructive testing... but I would say in the hand the printed object feels somewhat more flexible and less brittle than PLA... In fact, my printed maple leaf to me feels more like real wood than my LAYWOO-D3 printed maple leaf.

I agree with Calum as well on his thoughts. I think this was MakerBot's goal all along. They started off as hackers big into the opensource realm... But they've been moving towards a closed commercial format and I think it was their ultimate goal all along to transition from 'hackers' to a respected 'proper' business.... I've seen comparisons between them and Apple... and I've been thinking that they felt really Apple-like for the last year. Sellouts in may ways - Eschewing their roots and trying to become a 'respected' and 'proper' brand... I've never been a fan of Apple and in the last year I've been glad that I decided on an Ultimaker and not a Thing-o-matic. I think this is necessary in order to get printing mainstream... Hackerish companies (Companies with out the big generic corporate image) just will not break into the everyday layman market. At the same time, nobody outside of the 3d printing community have heard of Stratesys, but yet a lot of people have heard of Makerbot. This gives Stratesys recognition in the common hobbyist market segment and a way to break into the general consumer market. They do not need the technology but they clearly feel that the Makerbot brand is worth something. I fear this is bad news for Thingiverse.. We've had a few scares in the past year about them changing their terms of services to make themselves less free and open... I think this trend will continue. I doubt they'll ever completely close it to the free/opensource community... but I bet that very shortly we'll see the option for people to sell their models for profit (with Stratysis taking a cut) and possibly down the road a clause saying that you relinquish all rights to any 'free' models that you upload. Overall though, the move might be good for 3d printing in general... Stratysis will have the clout to produce good quality printers at a good price that can be placed right beside inkjet and laser printers your local computer store. This is the way to get 3d Printers into mainstream. I don't think that will significantly hurt UM which is currently still embedded in that 'Hacker' space and I don't think that market will ever go away... As a hacker / maker / tinkerer myself I will always go with a kit or build-it-yourself option over a commercial choice. If I could have a build-it-yourself bigscreen LCD tv from a kit I would.... hmm... I miss Heathkit. Cheers, Troy.

Actually... I wonder if I'm printing it too slowly.. I started out basically with the NetFabb ultra setting defaults. That's 0.08mm layers and fairly slow outer contours. I think the outer contours were running at 40mm/s with the inner contours running at 60mm/s or something like that. Originally my in-fill was at 75mm/s, but that was giving my 'fluffy' results so I reduced my infill to 50mm/s.... However, looking at Fablab013's results (which are way 'rougher' than mine) I think maybe to get the rough texture I need to push the head a bit so that it doesn't lay such a nice smooth bead.... so it's toward's the fluffy side of things only on the outer contour. Cheers, Troy.

Well I printed another maple leaf yesterday... Very nice smooth print. But I did it at 220 and it was just that... smooth. I did not get the expected rough texture. It still felt very strange to the touch... basically it feels the same as laywood does I think. It's not cold and hard like stone and was very smooth. I will up the temp a little bit tonight, but according to what I've read 220 should be the top end. I also tried 205 and saw no difference. Cheers, Troy.

My first test was with a Maple Leaf (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3461) so there was no retraction... My next attempt will be a Yoda bust which has a little bit of retraction for the ears. I'll let you know then. Cheers, Troy.

I just received my Laybrick yesterday and ran one small print with it. I'm impressed. My infill speed was too high so it didn't do the infill correctly, but I think with a simple adjustment that will be an easy fix. It's a strange material because it doesn't feel like plastic, but I don't really think it feels like stone either... it's just too light to convince anyone that it's stone... I can't wait to try some more prints. Cheers, Troy.

I also have to agree with others who disagree with Ian's original post ... the structured topics are too structured.. I think we just need a handful (5 or less) major topic sections... I always just read the latest posts and if the title are not interesting I don't read them... This allows me to completely ignore the topical groups.. When posting something it's rather a pain to figure out the best place to post it, especially since I believe most people just look at the latests posts list as well and ignore the sections. I would be strongly in favour of reducing the number of sections and lumping things together. Cheers, Troy.

Does anyone have any experience with Bendlay or Laybrick yet? I've just ordered myself a roll of each. Laybrick sounds particularly interesting... I need to do my traditional Yoda bust first (I have a yoda printed in every filament that I have... My 'hello world' print). Then I want to try printing high voltage insulators with the laybrick for tesla coil use. Cheers, Troy.

I found a surprisingly noticeable difference between 0.1 and 0.08. At 0.1 the quality is great and it feels smooth, but you can quite plainly see the layers... However at 0.08 (which is a very small difference) the layers practically dissapear. Between 0.08 and 0.04 I found the difference only noticeable under magnification. I haven't tried Cura for a while, I'll give it a go at 0.06. I'm also looking forward to trying out your new slicing engine, but I haven't had time for anything lately. Cheers, Troy.

I always print at 0.08 because that's the default in NetFabb, however when I got my machine (about 2 years ago now!) I printed as low as 0.04 with no issues... Basically freshly built with no tuning whatsoever... And that was on the old extruder and hot-end. The 0.1mm layers advertised for the UM is highly conservative in my opinion and any properly assembled machine should be able to easily achieve better... I'm not convinced that the same is true for other machines like Cube-x, Leapfrog, or MakerBot's replicators... From what I've seen they really seem to be at their limit at 0.1mm.. Regards, Troy.

I think it's about time for an Ultimaker 2. The Ultimaker is pretty old now and companies like MakerBot are brining out new printers every few months.. I know people like the ability to upgrade and nobody likes their printer to be made obsolete, but really it's time to take what we've learned and design a new printer from the ground up with everything rather than trying to bolt on additional stuff to the current printer. The Ultimaker has the best gantry system out there. I've compared quite a few now and Ultimaker's XY design is far, far superior. I see a lot of talk about 'direct drive' conversion of the Ultimaker... I do not want direct drive. I see no advantage to it and it just causes the motors to stick out. Part of UM's brilliance is the placement of the steppers inside the case while other designs have them hanging out. The biggest advantage of the UM design in my opinion is the fact that all motors are stationary. The only design that I think would be even better is a corexy / H-Bot gantry system. I would like to see an official heated platform... but I just don't think it's wise to do it as an official upgrade on the current version. You either need to change the electronics to be able to directly switch enough current for a low voltage DC solution, or you need to go with a separate power supply or AC version. An AC solution is out of the question for something like this that will be retrofitted by people without AC experience. Even a separate power supply will present serious electrocution hazard as ones powerful enough are either open frame or expose the line wiring to the outside. Any sort of official retrofit kit is just asking for people to electrocute themselves or burn their houses down. A new printer should be designed for a DC heated platform to be plug and play without having to change core parts or do any soldering / wire splicing / etc. Dual extrusion would be nice too... But I'm afraid that UM is working too hard retrofitting the current printer again when they could take what they've learned and apply it to a new shiny printer with Dual extrusion a priority from the start, as Makerbot did with the Replicator 2. Just my 2c. Cheers, Troy.

Right.. I take that back. Looks like the Ultimaker is now on iMakr.com... I was previously disappointed with their selection before, but it looks like they are improving that. Cheers, Troy.

The MakerBot and Leapfrog are both distributed by iMakr.com.... but the Ultimaker is not, nor is 3mm filament (they only do 1.75mm) or any other printer that I'd actually want to buy. Regards, Troy.

"..but it it's a high quality 3D gantry then there's nothing much wrong with the Leapfrog." I watched a Leapfrog and a number of other printers in action at the iMakr store here in London and wasn't impressed with any of them. They all have the same generic gantry system which looks like a clone of the MakerBot replicator... The Leapfrog in particular looks like a well built piece of kit, but it has no innovation or anything to set it apart from any of the other offers. Seeing all these printers in action has made be a believer in the Ultimaker gantry system. It can produce better results than any other printer I've seen at far higher feedrates thanks to the low moving mass. Not having to move the X motor around means that it doesn't have problems with vibration on fast moves ora lot of inertia to overcome. When you increase the speed on a 'traditional' (Leapfrog / Makerbot) style gantry the quality goes down considerably... I would estimate that I run my prints at 4-5x the speed of what I saw the Leapfrog printing at and still achieve better results. For CNC machines which have a heavy head to move anyway the Leapfrog style gantry is great, but for 3d Printers it's sub optimal. The Ultimaker design is far superior. Another alternative design that I am a fan of which I think is ideal for 3d printing is the H-Bot design (or CoreXY). I've been experimenting with this system in various forms for a few months now. There is _another_ 3d printer on KickStarter now called the 'Buccaneer' that uses the H-Bot style gantry. I don't intend to back the Buccaneer, but I do have to admit it is sexy. It's the first 3d printer I've seen to use the H-Bot gantry and I like the the idea of the object being lowered to table level when it's complete. Cheers, Troy.

Yeah, I've seen this and I find it very odd.... It indicates that there are no flyback diodes on the motors which is simply bad design. Motors should always have flyback diodes to prevent damage to the sensitive bits of silicon... However, I thought that the motor controllers we use had integrated diodes on the chips so external ones should not be needed... And it's also strange that it's able to find a path all the way back to power up the LED on the TC amplifier board... In any case, I wouldn't worry too much... Those motors can generate surprisingly large voltages across sensitive parts meant for 5v only.... But if there was a serious problem with it then we would have people complaining about blown electronics all the time. There must be enough resistances and protection in the circuit to prevent damage to the sensitive bits of silicone. I always move my head by hand and don't concern myself with it too much.... I've not had an issue yet nor have I heard of anyone damaging their electronics this way. Cheers, Troy.

I agree with the above, although Arm would be great there are other more pressing priorities... The current Arduino Mega solution with the Ultracontroller works quite well. I originally bought the BeagleBone to drive a resin DLP printer that I was working on. Still haven't gotten far on that project as I drift around between things that I'm working... but I had started to develop my firmware on the BeagleBone in c++ using WT (http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt) to provide all of the interface as a website over Ethernet. The idea was to allow you to set the machine parameters and upload your sliced file to the machine (in that either case a multi-layer SVG of each layer or a series of BMP images for each layer). It could then be started, stopped, and monitored from a web browser anywhere in the house on my phone or tablet. I intended to also include a slicer right in on the unit to allow you to upload an STL and have it sliced right there. Slicing for a DLP resin printer is much, much simpler than for an FDM machine. Cheers, Troy.

Actually, I have a BeagleBone that I've played with for other similar applications but not for my UM.... But these days I think the better alternative than either the BeagleBone or the Raspberry Pi is the pcDuino. I might get a few of these to play with - https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11712 Cheers, Troy.

Does it have to be ABS? I'm located in London myself and could print something for you in PLA, but I'm not printing with ABS at the moment. Cheers, Troy.

Hi curious, The Ultimaker, like most 'hobby grade' printers is what we call a Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) printer. It prints from spools of plastic filament (like plastic wire) that it melts and deposits layer by layer on the surface. There are basically two main types of plastics that people use with FFF printers, ABS and PLA. ABS is the kind of plastic that is used in many consumer products such as Lego and such, as well as industrial uses such as sewer pipes. It's a fairly flexible plastic and quite strong, however somewhat difficult to print with because it tends to shrink when it cools and warp. The other common kind of plastic is called PLA. It is a completely organic plastic that is made from corn. Common uses for PLA include food packaging and medical dissolvable sutures (stitches). PLA is much less flexible than ABS and somewhat brittle. It also melts at a lower temperature which makes it unsuitable for anything where it could potentially get too hot and melt. However, it is much easier to print with than ABS (less shrinkage/warping) and it's completely biodegradable for those that like to be kind to the environment. The Ultimaker was designed specifically to use PLA so that works best, but it is also possible to print with ABS in the Ultimaker. There are also some newer and less common plastics that are used. One is Laywood 'Printable Wood'. This is basically sawdust suspended in a plastic material so it looks and feels somewhat like wood when it's printed. Another material is Nylon which is a very common plastic that is used in many, many things... However it is extremely hard to print with because it doesn't stick well to most print surfaces and shrinks and warps worse than ABS. A newer blend of Nylon called Taulman 618 is making it much easier to print with Nylon, but it's still difficult to work with. There's also PVA, which is a plastic that can be dissolved in water, it's mainly used as a support material to help with printing large objects that have lots of overhang. People are also experimenting with other plastics like polycarbonate and polyethylene as well as blends of plastics such as PLA/PHA blends. None of these plastics require any treatment afterwards to finish them off. Another variation of the FFF printer can be used to print chocolate. And there is a type of selective sintering printer that can print with sugar (candyfab). That's just for FFF printers. There are other types of printers... Many others. Another type of printer that is available to the hobbyist is a STL (Stereo Lithography) or DLP Resin printer. These printers use a liquid resin that hardens when exposed to UV or near UV light. This material usually looks and feels like ABS plastic, but has some slightly different properties. These printers also do not usually require any treatments afterwords to finish, though sometimes additional exposure to UV (such as just leaving the object out in the sun) can be needed for it to fully harden. And moving on from the hobby printers if you have thousands of dollars to spend then the possibilities are limitless. There are many other technologies for 3d printing that allow you to print with ceramics, metal, glass, paper, etc... Cheers, Troy.

Hi Somerwil, With the new firmware you need to have the Ultimaker on Volumetric as the firmware is designed to work with volumetric calculations. If you have it set right then you no longer need the M92 E835, which was an old work-around from before NF supported Volumentric. Cheers, Troy.

Hi Gijs, Can you tell us how this compares (flexibility, toughness, shearing strength, impact resistance, etc) to ABS? Also to Taulman 618 (Nylon). How is the warping and shrinkage on this material? Does it improve with a heated bed? also what is the adhesion to blue tape like? I've been printing quite a bit in the 618 lately and it's a great material but the warping is very difficult to manage. Thanks, Troy

Glad to hear this is progressing well. I look forward to seeing it in action. What's the license going to be on this? Will it be released under an opensource license at some point, or remain closed? Cheers, Troy.

I find it interesting that this only goes down to 125 micron and is not configurable beyond 3 settings (500, 250, and 125 micron). I normally always print at 80micron on my Ultimaker (default with NetFabb) and often go down to 40. Also, I'm really enjoying the Wood any Nylon filament options now which would not be possible on the CubeX. It will likely never get those - or the other options like PVA, flexible PLA, etc... Also it seems that you have to 'activate' the machine. Not sure what that means exactly but it usually implies DRM. I wonder if they are brining DRM into the 3d printing fold. The software could potentially implement restrictions on what models you can print. I don't see much information on the software, but it apparently only works with stl files so it cannot handle .obj (which most current slices can) or AMF files (which are _supposed_ to be a new 'standard' format for 3d printing... though I've honestly never seen one). The software also only works on Windows so that eliminates all of the Mac and Linux users out there. I only use Linux these days. Cheers, Troy.

Thanks for your input Joergen... You're right. I originally was going to get a 160C cutoff switch, but opted for the higher one instead to give more potential operating range... but as you point out 200 is actually way too high, I would never need more than 110-120 in reality. I think I will get a lower temp switch. These things do have quite a bit of hysteresis built in. It switches the power off at 200, but will not switch it back on until it cools down to about 150 I think.. Cheers, Troy.

Thanks Daid, Ultracaps have pretty high esr, so the current spike when they're fully discharged should be small and very short. None the less, I plan on putting a small resistor in series with it to limit the maximum current draw. Regards, Troy.