IRobertI

Thanks for the tips guys, I needed to get my brain un-tilted. I have some aluminium profiles lying around that just might work as a sort of jig; put the tube in one of the grooves, pinch it up against the wall and then use the bottom of the profile as a guide. Worth a shot if nothing else. If that doesn't work I guess I'll have to head over to my fathers house and borrow his drill press to create a jig. Tapping the end of the tube is also tempting, but I still need to get a good seal to start with, so, first things first. To be honest I'm not sure if the classic "disc blob" formed every time but it did at least a couple of times that I could see. The thing is that I feel straight away if something is wrong or not, with just a turn or two of the drive gear it's immediately obvious that it's not going to work so I just rip it apart again immediately. Everytime I've had it apart there is PLA around the perimeter of the PEEK though which led me to think that it's not sealing properly.

A few nights ago my printer finally stopped working properly and I quickly traced it to the dreaded plug in the PEEK. I had that problem once early on but fixed it by doing Joergen's drill bit trick. Since then it worked for a long time printing beautifully for hours upon hours without issues. This time I had to shorten the bowden though as it was too chewed up to grip (it popped when the plug formed). And now I can't get the #!@n thing to seal again. I've tried: Cutting the bowden and re-assembling. Tried Joergen's trick again. Changed the bowden retainer clip to a spare. Installed Owen's bowden clamp (which I had fortunately printed early on and saved for a rainy day). Bowden clamp + retainer clip. Bowden clamp without retainer clip. Unscrewed PEEK to make sure it was clean. Brass tube is just slightly above the lip (which does look a wee bit chewed up from cleaning). Having the bowden protrude 8mm, 9mm and something random. I stopped counting after having had the print head apart ten times and my fingers no longer wanted to keep doing it. After each re-assembly I tried extruding by manually turning the extruder gear and it jams up pretty much immediately. My only conclusion is that I'm not getting the bowden cut straight enough so that it is not sealing properly. Would you concur? And if so, do you have any tips on how to actually get it perfectly square? I have a very limited set of tools at hand unfortunately. I really wish Ultimaker could come out with a better design for the bowden-hotend interface. It's the weakest point on the machine IMHO and for the past couple of days it has made me want to throw my printer in the trash because it has me so bloody frustrated.

At the top of the Printer Interface window change "115200" to "250000" and try connecting again.

Yeah my platform flexes quite a bit as well with a bit of pressure and I was concerned about it in the beginning. It hasn't posed much of a problem for me though so I've just pushed it out of my mind. In a way it's kind of a feature as it allows the bed to move out of the way a wee bit if it hits a bump during the print. When leveling the platform I do have to avoid pushing down though as I wont see how much I've actually moved the thing otherwise before I take the screwdriver away. A slightly more annoying issue though is that the left ... uhm... "support arm" (sorry, it's late, my english are failing at me ) is sort of crooked. It actually curves a bit and as a result the front left screw has to be screwed down _hard_ to allow enough room for the other screws to level out the platform. On the plus side I very rarely have to re-level it though, I think I've only done it three times so far.

What's the reason for that? Seems to me that's pretty dangerous thing to do. Say, for whatever reason, the printer looses steps and thinks it's further away from an edge than it really is, then when it tries to move in that direction it will slam into the side of the machine thinking it still has room to move.

I don't know if this has anything to do with it but how much tension do you have on the tension screw? Looking at the first picture it looks like the filament is deformed quite a bit. Maybe try to back off on the tension a bit to see if it has an easier time going through the machine.

I've posted these before but it can't hurt to do it again. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17058

Oh Daid you cruel man, reminding me of the skirt feature that Netfabb is lacking, I had just managed to get over it

Before the print starts plastic can flow out of the nozzle and thus emptying it out. As your print starts the extrusion gear starts turning and starts filling up the nozzle again, once it's full it will start extruding properly. To help avoid this problem you can either manually turn the extruder gear a bit by hand just before the print starts to make sure the nozzle is "loaded". Or, you can be a bit more elegant and add G-Code to the header to make the printer do a bit of "pre extrusion" for you automatically. Unfortunately I can't give you any code right now as I'm not at my print computer but I'm sure someone else will come along and help you out soon enough.

The tensioner Daid posted does work, for a while. Mine started warping quite quickly and lost their springiness. The ones I've linked to below are superior IMHO. They're naturally a bit more finicky to get installed but they will stay consistent. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17058 I have a bit of the problem you've mentioned as well but it did improve with better tension (still haven't got rid of it completely though).

Gah, I had forgotten all about your tool. I'm such a tool... Thanks for the reminder, that should make things easier.

Finally. But to be honest after all this delay I had hoped for a surprise in the form of volumetric printing :/ I guess I have to finally sit down and individually calibrate my different filaments *sigh*

I haven't had filament break during a print (red from UM, white and black from supply3dpla) but it will snap if I bend it sharply. I've also noticed that it sometimes cracks just as it enters the extruder if I've left it sitting for a few days.

Your build envelope will not be affected if you install the spring in the correct location. For example, to tension the belt closest to you when facing the machine; move the head to the left or right end stop and then install the tensioner on the opposite side as close as possible to the pulley. With the tensioner installed in this location you will be able to move the print head as normal and it wont affect your build envelope at all. Personally I used piano/music wire to create tensioners which worked quite nicely but I ended up replacing them with these: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17058

You're comparing the output of a professional industry machine, assembled and calibrated in a factory to a hobby machine put together at home with wood and screws (and even some tape!). The price of the z150 starts at $15k and the Ultimaker costs $1500. It's really not a fair comparison and with the budget you have I wouldn't even consider an Ultimaker for anything but producing quick and cheap prototypes.

"Countour count" corresponds to "Shells" and you can find that on the first dialog that pops up as you start editing a style. Also, what happens exactly when you set fill spacing to 0.0mm? You say that you get "filling rather than solid material". Do you mean that there are still large spaces between the lines? How about on the up- and downskins? Are there gaps there as well?

I don't know if this is the correct way to solve it but it worked for me when I had that problem in the start. Heat the block up to printing temperature and then tighten the block against the peek and the printhead against the block by a small amount, say 1/8th of a turn. Then try to print and see if it still oozes. If it does, tighten another 1/8 of a turn and try again. Now I'm sure one could tighten it up faster than that but I was in no rush and didn't want to risk breaking the brass pipe. Since I did that I've been printing for hours without any sign of leakage.

I wouldn't put this in the "small" category but one thing that has been bugging me a bit is the following. Say you have two cylinders next to each other that the print head needs to jump between, the thing that has been bugging me in that situation is where the jump occurs. Would it be possible to have the jump happen at the point where the two objects are closest to each other? I realise that it would take a fair bit of clever calculations to make the z-jump happen at the right spot to make that happen though. I do have a small request though. When rotating an object, please add an "Apply" button or something equivalent so that you can make several small adjustments without having to open and close the settings window over and over.

Wetsanding followed by polishing paste and lots and lots of patience

I can edit my post above, so yes, that did it.

The lead time for delivery is 4-6 weeks. This is very clearly stated on the order page. You have to be patient.

I obviously need to work on getting proper bridging... wow. I've had worse results with far shorter gaps than that. Then again so far I've almost never had to use it so it's no wonder it's not well calibrated. Also, netfabb's circular skins are absolutely terrible for bridging, they should really do something about that, make it switch to hatch when bridging or something to avoid having to use the hatch pattern "globally". Or it might already be in the settings, I haven't checked :oops: Awesome work on the platform so far though, you should submit this to Hackaday.com, they love this stuff and I'm sure it'd get posted Oh and you should upgrade to a better CAD program. What you're doing now just looks painful to me Autodesk 123d is free and a fair bit more powerful than SketchUp while still being quite "sketchy" in nature. Kul med en till Svensk här förresten

Administration Control Panel -> Board Configuration -> Post Settings -> "Limit editing time"

I doubt you'll get the results you hope for. Due to the way the Ultimaker works it has issues with stringing when moving through open air. Since letters tend to have space in between them that then means that there will be small strings between each letter which requires clean up. The software can do clever things like trying to move over areas that will have plastic in them regardless but when it comes to spaces there isn't much the software can do, it's gotta go where it's gotta go. And then there's the physical limit of how thin the printer can print like others have already mentioned.

Jury rig it while you get your printer up and running and then print replacements Sorry, but it had to be done