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glasswalker

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  1. Hey, so I designed a custom heated bed upgrade for my UM Original... New Z platform (solid aluminum plate) new flanged linear bearings (similar to official bed kit), and using an MK2B heated bed and glass plate with 3 point mount and wing nuts to level it. So far so good, works fantastically. But I'm manually controlling power to the bed right now. I've heard the reason that UM went with the external control board for the official kit is that the PSU shipped with the UM Original isn't up to the task of powering the heated bed and all other electronics. Is this the only issue? The reason I ask is for simplicity, I'd love to just wire the heatbed to the UM control board, and simply replace the PSU with one that's superior. But if there are issues with the control board itself, or it's mosfets, or whatever, then perhaps I should go through building an external control board, or just using an SSR. Thoughts? (oh and if anyone wants pics I can post them later).
  2. Hey, so I'm upgrading the bowden clamps, the one at the hot end failed, and I'm replacing both as preventative maintenance. My question. How does one go about REMOVING the clamp at the drive end? (short of cutting off some of the tube). Is there a method to this that I'm missing? Thanks!
  3. The short belts can definitely cause backlash. Backlash is the primary cause of circles being out of round. Any loose belt on a pulley can cause backlash (ability for slop, allowing the pulley to turn slightly before the belt finally "locks" and engages, this allows for a "deadzone" where when the pulley reverses direction it can turn a few steps before the belt kicks back in and starts moving. It means anytime you reverse direction you loose a small amount of movement. so circles (which have a reverse in direction at each side) will loose some of their size in the axis that is affected most. Other key symptoms of backlash: - Infill won't line up with perimiter loops on one or more sides, leaving small gaps - The smaller the circle, the more Wonky it will be (larger circles won't be affected as much, this is because the backlash is fixed, for example .5mm so no matter the size of circle it's still out of round by .5mm) - Higher speed will result in more backlash effect (by a small margin) - Printing an H pattern (a flat object in the shape of an H) will result in the inner vertical lines of the H not being lined up. because the head is traveling one way on the top and the other on the bottom, and the backlash shifts one from the other. This can be measured with a caliper to determine your backlash. The H must be printed twice (rotated 90 degrees) so that you check the X and Y axis for backlash. Some other notes: The belts and pulleys on the ultimaker are very nice. And should not suffer from ANY backlash under normal operation. If you are seeing backlash make sure your belts are securely tight, use tensioners if need be. The long belts shouldn't touch one another under light-moderate finger pressure (they should be tight enough to not allow this) The short belts should barely deflect at all under finger pressure If the belts are good and tight, and you're still getting backlash the next thing to check is pulleys. If a pulley is slipping on the rod, or slightly loose, it can cause backlash too. So check all pulleys have their set-screws tight, and aren't slipping (all pulleys, including the ones on the x/y rods, the short belts, and the motors. Lastly make sure you don't have too much friction on your X/Y rods. High friction normally causes skipped steps and so on, but high friction will also contribute to backlash to some degree. Hope some of that helps.
  4. Yeah I increased my temperature to 220C (230C for first layer) and it doesn't seem to be jamming now. But it's oozing like crazy (and tons of strings). Still working on tweaking it. And of course the leaking is still an issue (dripping into prints)
  5. So I'm thinking up ways to put a heated bed on the Ultimaker... I have a bed using power resistors and an aluminum block as a bed for my RepRap. Was thinking about something similar. Problem is the Power Resistors are huge and hang under the board (like 1.5cm) and the Ultimaker bed is very close to the wood plate, not leaving much clearance in there. So then I thought, I could use a cartridge heater (similar to the heater in the extruder) clamped between 2 pieces of aluminum with half-circle channels milled into it to clamp and provide nice thermal interface to the cartridge heater. This would fit better (And I could use a couple if need be) but the aluminum bottom plate would be likely in direct (or near direct) contact with the plywood plate. What kind of temperatures would be "safe" with the wood that close? Any other thoughts/suggestions?
  6. Sorry that was worded funny... lol I was replying about the leak, but yes you're right the most likely place for it to jam is between the PEEK and the bowden tube. I can doublecheck that tonight. But as I said it's got plenty of contact. The only possible option would be if it's cut crooked. Even then when I back it out, it backs out clean down to the nozzle (you can see the pointed/melted tip like on any other 3d printer, once it's backed out). And there are no crazy parts that would be grabbing in a hold (like the "flange" effect I've seen posted here). I is a bit "widened" (as in it's still smooth, but the end that's in the barrel is maybe 3.1mm diameter but rest of the filament is 2.8mm) for about 1-2cm from the molten tip. (on the backed out filament). Thanks!
  7. I went through the troublshooting on the wiki for it. The tube is plenty extended (as I said it's hitting the lip inside the PEEK and there is plenty of gap once the bolts are tightened down solid (a good 1mm+ gap between alu plate and the wood) I didn't confirm 100% if it was perfectly flat, but it did appear to be so. And as I said the leak was coming out between the PEEK and Aluminum block. It may have been leaking higher up, but then it went down through all the thread to leak out between peek and alu block. Either way it's no longer leaking there at all. It's now leaking between the nozzle and the aluminum block. Thoughts?
  8. Hey, so I'm new to the Ultimaker, but a veteran of the 3D Printing scene. Been around a while, and (had) a reprap mendel, and still have an Up, and a BFB 3D Touch at work. Plus the Ultimaker now. So I know my way around a printer. I have to first say DAMN am I ever impressed with the mechanical build of the Ultimaker. It's resolution and print quality blow away EVERYTHING else that I've tried. But... (here comes the issues) I'm having a hard time with the extruder. (and reading through here I'm seeing it's fairly common). I know this is just like anything else... Will take some time to tune/tweak/adjust. So just looking for tips/pointers/help solving this issue. My Problem: The extruder is jamming... Often... Like I can't finish most prints without it jamming to the point that I can't push filament through it. (if I heat it to 220 and push from the extruder drive end (with the gear disengaged) it will not extrude at all, but I can retract it fine). If I retract it, snip off the last couple inches, and re-load it, it extrudes fine again for a bit. But jams again shortly after that. Also, I'm getting leakage. (I was getting it above the aluminum block, between it and the PEEK. now I'm getting it between the nozzle and the aluminum block). It's fairly minor, but irritating (long prints get lots of burnt spots in them from the oozing leaked plastic). Small prints are unaffected. I'm extruding at 210C for my first layer and 200C for all other layers. I tried 10 degrees higher than this, and it oozed horribly. (I'm used to extruding at 185C on my other printers for PLA). So I dropped it lower. When at 185 or 190 it seems to have a hard time with adhesion and extruding fast. So I raised it back up to 210/200 and this seems to flow fine. Also I notice a lot of "give" in the extrusion. (if I click extrude in pronterface, and I hear the motor warm up, it extrudes "late". There is a half second delay from when the motor starts turning and when the extrusion comes out, then it comes out for a half second longer after the motor stops, plus it then oozes RAPIDLY for another 1-2 seconds after that.). This seems to be contributing to stringing a lot. What I've Tried: Initially I assumed the jamming and the leakage between the PEEK and the aluminum block was the result of a poor seal in the PEEK. So I disassembled the extruder fully, cleaned up the threads as much as I could (I didn't mean to seperate the nozzle and the tube, but the nozzle unthreaded and the tube was jammed in the aluminum and peek, had to heat it up and unscrew it at 200C to get it out due to plastic jamming the threads). I cleaned it up the best I could, and re-assembled all of it, this time adding half-width plumbers tape into the threads above the aluminum block (before threading into the PEEK). I also ensured the brass was exactly flush with the lip at the top of the PEEK. Then I inserted the bowden tube and ensured it had solid contact with the lip and left a gap, then tightened it all up. So I know that's sealed good. That solved the leak up there, but now a leak started between the nozzle and the aluminum block (which were tool-tightened together nicely with no gap) In addition I've tested different temperatures (+/- 10C) and different speeds. And it still seems to jam almost every print. thin-wall (vase style prints) seem to extrude fine. I'm using KISSlicer right now so my extrusion speeds are variable, but none of them are over 100mm/s (all should be under 75mm/s right now for infill, and under 50mm/s for perimiter loops). Can anyone offer up any suggestions? If I'm missing any details that will help eliminate the cause, please let me know and I'll provide whatever other details will help. Thanks!
  9. I'm in Canada, and I'd be willing to do a print for you as a sample. I just got my ultimaker so I'm still tuning/tweaking a bit, but I'm a die hard veteran 3D Printing enthusiast, so I'm not concerned about being able to get good quality for you (and might be a good test since it's early in the "tweaking" stages, so would give you a good idea what a machine "out of the box" might be able to produce) Let me know the approximate size/volume of the object, and it's intended use. And do you care if it's in yellow? (the spool currently on the machine) or would you prefer white/black? I'll also need to see the STL to see how the file is laid out before I can give you an estimate.
  10. I didn't suggest lash as a full solution, mostly as a "closing the gap" solution (once you've tried belt tension and so on). Backlash can also be caused by loose pulleys, or too fast movement (too much inertia in the head). Or poorly meshed pulley/belt. Because of the double-belt driven approach on Ultimaker you may need to check the smaller belt from the motor for backlash as well. If you check all that and it's tuned and the problem still exists to some degree, the lash plugin can compensate for the rest of the issue in software (and does a fair job of it).
  11. Amusing, I've been reading through the forums getting prepped for the arrival of my first Ultimaker. I've been involved in 3D Printing for years now, have a reprap, an up, and a BFB 3D Touch, as well as access to a couple makerbot machines. And I've seen several people on these forums now posting pics of issues that look EXACTLY like backlash problems First I would check belt tension, as that would contribute to backlash significantly. But if that doesn't help or only reduces it some, then if your using skeinforge (or something with a "Lash" plugin) assuming left to right in that image is X axis, you can set the X backlash to what looks like about .8mm from that photo and Y to .5mm I would guess. See if that closes those gaps.
  12. That looks pretty good. I'll try it out once the Ultimaker is here... It didn't show up today unfortunately (sad panda...) anyway, I'll try a side by side print test. Also I'd be happy to run a speed test with those models. Can you share your settings you used? (so I can approximate them with KISS, it likely won't be "the same" but I can approximate the same resolution/settings). I know in my side by side tests with Slic3r earlier I was seeing 5-10x improvement in speed over slic3r. Mind you at those speeds, it's really not even important anymore lol, unless your talking about slicing on minimal hardware (KISS is fast and efficient enough that it could run directly on embedded hardware, which opens some interesting opportunities lol, it's written purely in C/C++ so it can port to damn near anything relatively well) Like I said your UI looks good. One thing to think of is KISS does have a full commandline interface. Allowing you to do batch slicing jobs purely from the commandline. You could talk to Jonathan about integrating it with your UI as another backend option. He'd likely be happy to help work with you to integrate it.
  13. The gui isn't the most pretty thing out there, but the focus is on usability (also it's partly due to the gui lib he's using I think) Honestly I don't care what it looks like as long as it does the job well Never used SkeinPyPy, but for me the slicing time of skeinforge was a downer. I do some fairly large complex prints, and slicing on skeinforge was literally taking me 2+ hours to slice prints. On Slic3r it would slice those same prints in 5-6 minutes. And KISSlicer could slice them in like 10 seconds. (seriously, it's THAT fast) lol And the print quality out of the box (with minimal "tweaking") was far higher. Sure Skeinforge can get damn good prints if you spend eternity tweaking it, but KISS was getting much better prints out of the gate, with room to improve with minor tweaking along the way. I'll be happy to post up some side by side comparison shots of the same STL done in several slicer apps once my Ultimaker arrives. (any suggestions for slicing apps and/or STL files to test?) Since I'm new to the Ultimaker, it will be an interesting test to set each slicer up and do a test print with it (to show it's "out of the box" factor) lol
  14. I used to consistantly run into circles out of round on my reprap (Sells Mendel) The circles would come out in a slightly oval shaped pattern on 45 degrees from the X or Y axis. And sometimes infill wouldn't line up with the skin due to the offset. It was caused 100% by backlash. So loose belts aren't too far fetched. (my issue was EXACTLY consistant every time, it was out by about 1mm total from round, so larger circles you didn't notice it, really tiny holes looked badly squashed)
  15. Hey, I'm one of the beta testers for KISSlicer. I also should be receiving my Ultimaker today or tomorrow. Once I have it I'll be doing some testing on the Ultimaker with KISS. I can say it's a damn good slicer, it's extremely fast, and has some very nice features. And Jonathan is constantly improving it and adding new features based on community recommendations. From my experience using it on both a BFB 3D Touch and my RepRap (using Marlin Firmware) I can say it produces much better prints than Slic3r did or than Axon (Skeinforge) for BFB. It's faster than Slic3r by a fair bit, and WAY faster than Axon/skeinforge. (like seconds instead of hours kind of faster). One thing I prefer it for is that it's far better at compensating for extrusion width (I believe that's "Stretch" on skeinforge). Something that Slic3r has done a poor job of for me, and Axon has had issues with as well (ie: if I design a hole to be 3mm diameter, KISS prints it 3mm diameter) Anyway, I definitely think it's worth a look, I'm happy with it. (though I've yet to use netfabb to see how it compares there). I'll post more once I've got the Ultimaker printing with it.
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