c-ernst

I am building a heated platform, the stock one is acrylic which won't play nice with heat. Also preference too, some prefer the qualities of glass or the thinness of aluminum. Chuck

It worked for me... 3 months no leaks.

Picked up two plates from a place by my house,

oh... so you want a finished product. The ultimaker has decent resolution but might not work for your "print then cast" process. So far I have printed some decent stuff that required little finishing before casting. Usually for bigger stuff. 1/3 scale should be fine for the Ultimaker.. well for a person that has a machine that is working properly. (my machine is still having some temp issues) You will still need to sand and coat the prints out of the Ultimaker. I would typically send files like this to quickparts.com to get casting ready prints... but it's expensive. Depending on how fast you need them a 1/3 human hollow 1/8" wall thickness hand print with SLA would be around $350. I would post on the ultimaker google forums and ask if someone would print them for you, I will try to did you up some more files from my backups. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ultimaker Chuck

What kind of heads are you looking for... most of the heads I have are "hero" types... muscles etc.... I can pose those hands for you no problem. I sculpt these in Zbrush.... so the res can be as high res as you want. Chuck

Another thing you need to consider... Zcorp and most other machines don't produce ABS parts. Only FDM models do. The zcorp generates powder resin saturated parts usually for props or casting into more durable materials. If you go Aluminum tooling you can get your mass production costs way down. Aluminum tools only last 10-20k model pulls before needing to be repaired or replaced. you can read up on it at Quickparts.com http://www.quickparts.com/LearningCente ... esign.aspx And no I don't work for Quickparts .... I use them for protoyping (before I got my Ultimaker)

Better late than never... I made these a while ago and needed to dig them up.

Depending on what you are working on and what the durability requirements are casting would be the way to go. You can contact Smooth on and talk to their techs...they will point you in the right direction and recommend the right materials for the job. You would still need to make the source object you would make the molds off of. You can crank up the quality level of the Ultimaker to make a good source model. http://www.smooth-on.com/ If you need smaller runs.. less than 500 I have sent stuff to http://Quickparts.com

yeah your right... just dug up some pics on their parts site interesting...looks like they used to use aluminum in the head and switched to a copper heater block. Also of note... they use a "build platform adhesive" to coat their build plates. Wonder what that is.

What happens if you mixed a nema 17 at the extruder gear and a light weight stepper or servo at the nozzle? The nozzle disengages when fully extruding and engages for retraction or assisting in fine control at the head? Just a thought. Anyone seen what the Cube extruder looks like? (its encapsulated in a plastic shroud) I have seen plenty of video of the thing and it looks pretty small.... and no stringing. Chuck

ok.. I'll send you some pics when I get home.

Sure thing... I see what I can dig up tonight and post them for you. Any format you need need in particular? Are you able to pose them etc? Chuck

I am meeting with the glass guy tomorrow... If that looks like it's too much of a pain then I might just do the aluminum thing.

Yikes! Then I should go ceramic glass.... I wonder how expensive that is.

sxt is that where you got yours? You really think it needs to be tempered? I read a couple of blog entries that said make sure it's not tempered. One of the reasons I wanted to go water jet is so that I preserve the stock slots. I'll email those guys and find out if can do that. Didn't think of the frosted glass.. I wonder how that would work. Might be worth a test and find some cheap thinner frosted glass and slap it on top of the acrylic.

I am having a glass build plate water jet cut, slightly larger than the acrylic with extra holes for mounting a heater and a three point leveling device. It's pretty expensive for a one off, but if I can get 20 made it comes to about $25 a piece. Anyone interested in going in on it? They would be about $25 plus shipping from Chicago. Also if you have some mounting ideas I can include them in the cutting template before they get it. they can pretty much cut anything from a 3mm hole or larger. Chuck

Blue tape tends to have a wax on it... try cleaning the tape with alchol or windex. I use windex and works great without the smell. In some cases it makes it so sticky I can't get the pieces off the bed with out pull up the tape.

You can also check turbosquid.com... if you are skilled at "fixing" meshes in another app. Otherwise I have modeled plenty of heads and hands for my job (video game artist) I can send you some files if you let me know what you are looking for. Chuck

My parts have shipped... should be here this week... so I guess I will wait on Netfabb until then. Thanks!

That is what I am doing, I duplicated the PLA High and entered my temps. The end result looks like someone sneezed PLA on the table. Just trickling out of the head. If I look at the extruder wheel it is going painfully slow. I'll try resetting it tonight and see what I can come up with.

Just got Netfabb... Edited the head so it knows about my marlin firmware. My question is about the default profiles. Are they pretty much supposed to work out of the box? I mean except for the temps? I set my temps in the material and loaded up my standard sphere with support test print. The extruder is turning extremely slow. I would say 1/5 the speed it would be turning on this model out of SF. There seems to be a plethora of places to set extruder speed. I am just used to the volumetric SF settings and have no idea what to set these (or even which ones matter) to. I guess if I had a check list of settings that need to be set or changed as a starting point would be great. I assume I need to get this thing printing something before I start messing with calibration too... correct? Chuck

FYI if you install the demo it never completely uninstalls... The registration information is still on the machine and you never get a registration pop up after installing the legit version. You need to trick it into opening up the registration window where you enter the voucher. To do this go to the HELP menu->registration information. Edit the serial by deleting a character and entering something else. This breaks the registration and then the window will pop up on next launch. There is probably an easier way... this just happened to be the way I did it. Chuck

thanks... once I get the heat issues on my machine worked out I think this extruder is in my future. Chuck

Ok... my temp regulation and monitoring is completely FUBAR. I managed to get the ABS to print decent at 300 degrees C. Finally I get the ABS smell I have read so much about. When I first was experimenting with ABS it didn't smell any different that the PLA... which was no smell. Now I know I was running way too cool of temps. I still haven't received a reply from Ultimaker on the issue... I guess I will start by replacing one part at a time and see what is up. Thanks to everyone with the suggestions. Chuck

Thanks Daid on the Marlin build app thingy... that is pretty slick. Chuck