IRobertI

Not sure what the "ABS fix kit" is but I'm not surprised the wee one managed to break it. Kids are incredible that way, they will find the point of failure faster than any engineer ever could. Also, I might've been a bit unclear what I meant with what I said earlier. I was speaking more in terms of mode of failure. Generally when you bend ABS to the breaking point it'll bend but still stay together. PLA on the other hand tends to fail by snapping apart. In other words PLA tends to be harder than ABS. Of course we all know that different brands/colours/etc behave a bit differently but oh well. Here's a couple of vids that show what I mean:

Hah, that's awesome. I was just watching some StarCraft (iNcontroL is streaming at the moment) when I came here to check the forums. I have to say I'm tempted to print that one myself.

They each have pros and cons, no reason you can't use both man And I'm glad you're back on track Andyww.

It's not all about layer height though But, as an example the black car printed in the following link is done at 10micron layers and it's mentioned elsewhere on the page that they expect 1micron layers to be possible: http://code.google.com/p/lemoncurry/wiki/main (scroll to "Sample DLP Prints") And a couple of examples of detail from the controversial veloso printer: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kozEBx2HeX8/T ... G_2616.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lVP5nZpNEQU/T ... G_2610.jpg If you can print that orb there I'll gladly pay for the filament and your time

Aren't there resins that are less sensitive to "everyday light" these days? And no, you cannot achieve the same type of resolution and prints that these types of printers produce no matter how much you tinker with your Ultimaker.

Hopefully Daid will chime in with an actual answer, but in the mean time, did you look at this link directly above the download link? https://github.com/daid/Cura/issues/106

The good news is that this all sounds very fixable. I'm thinking this is purely a software issue and it's not surprising that you're having problems considering how fragmented it all is at the moment. My recommendation would be to try out a software package that Daid here on the forum has put together, it's called Cura and is aimed at fresh users just like you. Basically what it is is a front end to a tweaked and improved version of Skeinforge where the hard work has been done for you. It also incorporates a firmware updater and a few other things (I don't run it myself so I don't know all the specifics). From what I've read from other users you're very likely to get up and running with this. Don't give up, you'll be a very happy camper once you get it up and running (and if you still feel like tossing it out I'll gladly pay the shipping and have you ship it to me instead ) edit: And yes, that tiny fan is a cheap POS, either put up with the noise or replace it not much else to say about that...

You can ignore those messages, they pop up because of the comments that Netfabb puts in the file. As for the preview of the current layer, yeah that's not working for me either. Don't know how to fix it I'm afraid but then again I haven't tried to because I think that preview is useless to begin with.

You could use one of those washers that I've forgotten the name of right now... These guys: http://image.made-in-china.com/4f0j00zv ... 798-V-.jpg That should bite in nicely into the plastic and make it stay in place.

Also, it would be interesting to know how large "Large" is. I haven't printed really huge objects but my biggest file was 20megs and that printed just fine in Printrun.

You need to print out a little gift for him then. Print something intricate and leave it at his desk with a note saying something like "Sorry, I forgot the 3D glasses, I'll bring them tomorrow".

I bought Netfabb with my printer and it improved my first prints tremendously (tried with skeinforge initially). However, a lot has changed since then when it comes to the free alternatives. I'd say first try out the free alternatives such as cura which is a front end to Skeinforge which aims to make things easier for beginners. There's also Slic3r and Kisslicer and of course stand alone Skeinforge. If you're happy with any of those, great, you just saved some money. If not, give Netfabb a try. Sure, there might be a bug here and there (although I personally don't have any problem in 99,9% of cases) but no one can argue that it produces great Gcode, works fast and offers other benefits like the great GUI and so on. The biggest issue IMHO is the lack of volumetric slicing (which supposedly is coming in the next version) which means you might have to spend a bit of time on calibration. But, of course the wonderful community has come up with something for that as well. ddurant has made a nice little program that essentially turns netfabb volumetric, you can read about and download it here. I haven't personally regretted spending the money on it at all. Maybe not the definitive answer you were hoping for but I hope it helps you make a decision.

To test it without printing you can simply start bending it sharply at random points. PLA will snap, ABS will not.

Probably from Florian's post here http://techwall.net/analyzing-your-first-print

Thank you Ian Yes, I used Solidworks for this model and in 98% of cases it transfers cleanly. Sometimes Netfabb wants to fix a hole or two but I've never seen any traces of what is actually done so I'm guessing it's some very minor inconsistencies. In this model however I was a bit of a moron... if you look at the bottom right, on the inside of the print on the first picture you can see a bit of a weird ridge there. That was caused by me forgetting to merge the interior of the model to the exterior before exporting. In the export to STL it left a strange hole that Netfabb freaked out about and tried to patch as good as it could. I was lazy and didn't check the result of the slice before printing otherwise I would've caught it (it was obvious when you went through the individual slices). And at 11 hours and 16meters of filament I'm not too keen on re-printing hehe. But yeah, it comes out clean in the vast majority of cases.

First step towards a solder fume extractor. Still need to come up with some kind of stand for it. This was my longest print yet at 11 hours and I actually had to go to sleep before it finished. Didn't really sleep well... (paranoia about heat and wood). Also, the print I posted in the first post is now the most popular item on Thingiverse. Yay :mrgreen:

You can try to do it with slic3r instead. Someone else asked about this in the google groups and that's what he did: http://groups.google.com/group/ultimake ... 79?lnk=gst

In short, absolutely. Just take your time and follow the instructions carefully and you'll be fine. And if you get stuck anywhere just ask and someone will nudge you along. Be prepared to spend a bit of time on it though, I spread my assembly out over a couple of days.

When I see signs of the first layer not adhering properly I usually just give the z-axis screw a little twist, one or two "snaps" is usually enough to get the head to really smush the plastic down into the tape. I gave cura a quick try last week and I think by default it's set to make the first layer thicker (as in higher) than the other layers. Personally I think that's wrong and I set it to be the same height as the rest of the print. Nice job with cura btw daid it's come quite a long way since I first tried it, I'm still sticking with Netfabb but alternatives are always good Aand now that I've finished typing I realise that you're really only having trouble with the support and I now feel like an idiot. My head are a million places at once lately... Carry on! :lol:

1. Yes, the software will create it for you (a lot of stuff can be printed without support though). The main slicers right now would be Netfabb, Skeinforge (which cura uses) and slic3r, all of these can generate support automatically. And yes, you can create your own as well if you feel like. 2. PLA might be iffy at that temperature as it starts going a wee bit soft at those kinds of temperatures. ABS might be a better choice there. 3. As far as I know they're working on it. No idea on timeframe though. 4. It's a bit of both really. But I'd say the majority is in the actual hardware. It's pretty easy to get good results, getting those last bits of perfection out takes a bit of fiddling in some cases. It's not an exact science so it's hard to say "this is what you have to do". I'd say the main things is to get belt tension correct, that seems to be the thing that impacts print quality the most. 5. This one I can't help you on as I have no experience with the UP! printer at all. Hopefully someone else will chime in and fill in the blanks. But I'll leave you with this; I doubt you'll be sorry if you go with the Ultimaker, it's a pretty damn good printer.

Note to self: Please check that your model can actually be sliced properly before printing it... I'm just glad I went to check on it and didn't let it run for three hours And also, isn't it amazing how well prints can recover even after "printing" several layers of air followed by layers of barely anything.

Not terribly exciting but I thought it came out rather nice. A bit of paint and elbow grease goes a long way to make clean looking prints. Unfortunately I managed to snap the lid (far left in the pic) just when I was done with the last sweep... couldn't be arsed to replace it.

One more reason to re-design the bowden-hotend connection Good to see some progress being made though. I'm personally not all that interested in dual extrusion at the moment though, cleaning strings from just ONE head is enough for now hehe.

Have you tried printing anyway? I can't remember if I get that error in the terminal (because I don't really look at it) but I do know that it doesn't show a preview of the slices or an accurate time estimation, however, it still prints just fine.

Uhm... what the hell is going on here? Are you copying posts from the Google groups now?