ultimate-x

In my experience it's best to clean the rods once with alcohol. Don't let them run completely dry. Use just some drops of high quality silicone oil. I got my oil in a rc hobby shop.

Hi Daid Don't use grease on the rods! You risk to get high resistance on the rods if there is only a little dust. I clean the rods about every 20 hours and add only a few drops of high quality silicon oil. Like that it runs as smooth as possible. Only the lead-screw needs a little grease.

Appreciate that Thank You

Hi Daid Just a quick question: In the readme the support of a 16x2 LCd is mentioned. Does this mean your branch supports the Deuligne Interface of Snootlab? Thanks in advance Michael

Hi Gasgano I'm printing quite a lot of big parts to build remote controlled aircrafts. See post: http://forum.ultimaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=297#p1588 High Temperature increases the wrapping (bending) mainly if there are big differences in the structure width of the things you print. It's just the usual engineering problem of plastic casting. Every unevenness in wall thickness causes differences in cooling rate which results in internal stress which causes the wrapping. For example: - A cylinder with no infill will have no wrap, because the wall thickness is constant. - A cube with no infill, the edges will tend to wrap in z-direction because there is more mass in the corners - A rhombic footprint (As my SR71 fuselage segments) has a huge mass in the sharp corners. They wrap quite a lot - Infill causes the whole structure to wrap because the ribs cool down faster then the thick walls. A heated build platform may solve the problem for not too high parts but when using the whole 200mm there is a risk the stress in the layers gets high enough that the print just breaks apart. After quite some experimenting with different temperatures and settings I found the premium PLA 45 type from Orbi-tech in Germany. This PLa has the least wrap of all materials I tested. I print it with 240°C at 100mm/sec with no problems (120 hours the last two weeks) It's a bit more expensive but if you use double the material because you have to throw the prints away, it's always worth the money. Michael

Hi Tom Now printing with the alx's branch for about 120 hours without problems (expect for the florescence lamp's EMV issue). There is no need to use the erik zalm marlin branch. Posed the same question to me, too. It would be nice to know if the whole improvements erik did will be available for the Deuligne interface. Hope we get the answer in that post. Michael

Thanks for the link It's quite useful info

As we know, Surface finishing with solvents works pretty well with ABS PLA is another case. What's your experience with surface finishing of PLA prints

Just out of interest What's your experience with gluing PLA parts. Which glues work and which don't

You're right. There are different translations for these lights But your description of the Layershifts just at the instance you are checking on the print is quite a hint in the direction of that sort. Because this discussion is off topic I suppose to start a new thread in the troubleshooting section.

I would strongly recommend to us a SD-Card like the one from Snootlab to get an stand alone printer. http://forum.ultimaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43 http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Deuligne_LCD_interface http://shop.snootlab.com/lang-en/snootlab-shields/140-lcd-kit-for-ultimaker.html It's worth every cent. Since I use it, no aborted prints any more. Start a print in the evening, get the part in the morning.

Thanks, I'm quite happy with them

Hi Harry Well as always, forgot to follow all links in Your tread. Sorry about that. I printed this Yoda some weeks ago to test the 0.04mm netfabb high quality setting and it looks amazing. Unfortunately I gave the print away so I can't do some photographs. This level of detail is absolutely achievable with a well calibrated extrusion rate and some fine tuning of the temperature. What I meant with the rounded corners in xy direction you may see in the detail picture of the Yoda. Inside corners are printed sharp and nice. But outside corners are all rounded by half of the filament width. I did a print of this bust scaled down to half the size (About 15mm height). Then some details around the eyes and the ears were missing, the outlines blending into each other. There are some experiments wit thinner nozzles with 0.15 and 0.2mm bore but it's harder to get constant extrusion out of these thin nozzles. So if you want to do builds like this Yoda bust, the Ultimaker is a valuable candidate.

As mentioned above, it needs some technical skills to build this printer. But the kit is quite well engineered and you can't do too much wrong. I think one of the biggest advantages is its fast evolution in the open source community. Therefore the development goes on and will increase. It took me just five calibration prints until the 0.04mm layer height worked. If you have patience you'll be able to get the same results. For your application at a scale of 25 to 50mm You have to be aware, that there is always the visibility of the layer and the geometric resolution is limited by the process itself. The minimal xy resolution for details is about 0.3mm everything below that will be smoothed by the tip of the print head. The layers are built with a plastic string which always forms an outline with rounded corners of about 0.15mm radius. Maybe post a picture of what you like to print. Michael

Just for the ones interested to follow the build of my SR71: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1588486 Please post in rcgroups regarding the project, so this thread does not go off topic. Michael