alaris2

Daid, you said "print different parts at different slice settings" - how does one do that exactly? I have been assuming it slices everythign with the settings used from the main window when I hit slice in the project planner. I can change the scale per thing, but nothing else?

great work on the tower - that's quite a hard print

don't mean to disagree with you Daid, but I'm going to anyway I've found the first layer to be absolutely crucial - slight variations in filament thickness can make all the difference between a good first layer and a ball of fluff. if it's going to fluff, I'd sooner it did it in the first few minutes while I'm watching, not 6hrs later and then subsequently ruin 3 out of 4 of my placed objects. Out of interest what is the main purpose of project planner? I mean, why not just concatenate all stl files into one stl file and print that - what's the advantage of printing all of one object then move to the next? (not being rude because you've done a really nice job of implementing it, I just don't understand the purpose..)

well done steve. you made the same mistake I did. we were too clever and tried to compensate for the 2mm but what the instructions fail to say, is that they already took that into consideration. careful measurement shows that after correctly applying the horseshoe clip, the tube now only protrudes by 7.1mm. but this works, so don't worry. nik

that's the same as mine now. I found no marks, or intermittent marks means under-extrusion. if you tighten the thumbwheel too far it will actually fracture bits of PLA and you'll see chunks missing as it moves up the bowden tube. I've never personally found the 'oval deformation' problem that some have reported but would imagine it's deeper marks than those shown. the pattern needs to be nice and regular like you show, it looks a bit like a shoelace, for want of a better comparison. nik

so 5.30 through my 6hr print the z stage hits a piece of scrap plastic I carelessly left at the bottom and jams... I've seen a couple of people try to rescue prints, usually their print froze, so they knew where they were. but this kept printing several layers (which are of course all a mess) I can count the number of erroneous layers - so I need to beg for a crash course in g-code now. is there some way I can ask the printer where it currently is in z? I can then subtract n layers, find the relevant G1 ... Z in the gcode and snip everything before that point right? are there any parts in the start gcode that I need to keep? I don't really want it to try and home the x,y,z obviously! and I think I need to reset the extruder so it doesn't try to extrude a stupid amount of filament - I forget the g-code for this :( but I think I need to keep the first 2 lines (M92.. and M109.. ) right? thanks to anyone who helps! my start g-code looks like - ;TYPE:CUSTOM M92 E1075.04754031 M109 S210.0 G21 ;metric values G90 ;absolute positioning G28 X0 Y0 ;move X/Y to min endstops G28 Z0 ;move Z to min endstops G92 X0 Y0 Z0 E0 ;reset software position to front/left/z=0.0 G1 Z15.0 F400 G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G1 F75 E5 G1 E3.5 G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again G1 X100.0 Y100.0 F3500 G1 Z0.0 F400 G90 ;set positioning to absolute G21 ;set units to millimeters M113 S1.0 M108 S25.0 ;LAYER:0 M106 S255 ;TYPE:SKIRT

not sure if this is a fault in Cura or printrun or where exactly.. during printing a 6hour print, I got several errors from printrun saying 'cold extrusion prevented'. this is odd because the print was just fine, and these errors occured about 3 or 4 hours in. I was printing at 210C and the uniformity of the print suggests nothing untoward.

OK you gave me an excuse to buy an ulticontroller now Daid, thanks! that's really awesome stuff - keep up the good work.

now that I have my Ultimaker working properly and making real stuff (shouldn't say that during a print should I..) I was thinking of a 2nd printer too, but a resin based one to make ultra-fine detail small parts. My intention was to have my ultimaker bootstrap the creation of this by creating most of the parts...

well for the benefit of others, the variation is at least partly due to the steppers needing fine adjustment, as detailed on http://wiki.meta-concepts.com/display/U ... Adjustment

that's true I forgot about that 15% overlap. so doesn't that mean there should be even more material here than I expect - where did it all go then? when I measure the part it's 10.01x10.04x4.87mm? 'product shrinkage' ??

I tried printing with the fan disconnected. I don't recommend this, but the result is the first layer prints OK, the next layer has weird x,Y step problems, it starts blobbing, going rough, and the print is ruined. this is at odds with a previous post where I'm sure someone said the fan wasn't strictly necessary except in hot climates. I was printing at 14C ambient. I wonder if how well the fan is sealed to the board makes a difference? the plastic shroud that comes with the kit is utterly hopeless and not even slightly airtight. I have tons of blue tape down there holding the air in. yet no-one has designed an alternative on thingiverse? I found one of those NMB fans destroyer - they're pretty good. I have two the same but 0.62A - they blow a whole lot of air!

Daid, how did you insert items into the print whilst printing? if you pause, doesn't plastic keep leaking out the nozzle and make a mess of the print, and presumably you have to watch that the item you insert isn't higher than the current z level or you'll foul the head on subsequent layers? I have a filter i'd like to insert into a holder whilst printing and would appreciate any tips since I haven't succeeded yet!

just checking my math here - if I print a 10x10x5mm 100% solid fill object, with 2 perimeter lines, would I not expect the volume of PLA extruded to be 500mm^3 ? because Cura tells me I extruded 83mm of filament, at 2.85mm diameter and pi*(2.85/2)^2 * 83 = 529mm^3 so does that mean I'm overextruding, or do I not expect the numbers to match up? If it does, presumably I can adjust E very slightly accordingly.. ?

I've printed with filament that varied by 0.3mm. it gave lousy prints but it didn't jam anything. good filament shouldn't vary by more than 0.05mm (ideally less). I think Daid's point is that if the thumbwheel is too tight you will deform the filament which may cause problems. however i've never managed to do that by hand. I heard of someone who had a bowden tube with a slightly mangled end on it which caught on the filament as it went into the hot end - they pulled it out, cut it square and suddenly everything was great again. but that doesn't necessarily mean any of these are your problem.. is your filament Ultimaker silver by any chance?

oh don't worry frodeheg, I understood your post perfectly. the decision to unplug the fan was mine since it's incredibly noisy anyway and I've been meaning to replace it for ages now. I doubt the board is broken but I'll have a proper look tomorrow - I'm more concerned about understanding those strange click noises from the extruder motor and why they continued even after clicking the 'disconnect' button.

so I probably shouldn't have done that... I unplugged the board fan. it made a change to have a quiet print. on the second layer I noticed a strange X and Y offset, then I noticed the extruder motor was just going click click click. then I stopped everything. the extruder motor still went click. it was trying to move one notch and failing, so I powered everything off and pulled the filament out of the hot end. it sounds like bad news.. is this the noise/symptoms of a hot end plug? I thought the board fan wasn't strictly necessary except in very hot climates, presumably me having it off caused overheating somewhere. it's only 15C ambient in this room right now tho!

strange you should mention roughness - I just had a print failed on me after about the 3rd layer. the machine hadn't been on long enough surely to have z motor overheating problems (I don't think?) although it doesn't rule out too little power. I'll try again with the fan off. thanks!

I've seen this apparent on several posts including prints of my own - the printer is well set up and works fine, but prints of repeating layers eg. a cylinder, cube or other simple shape where each layer is essentially the same, will have variations in quality on the z axis. this is seen as differences in color, or thickness, ie. the amount of material extruded. now we now that variations in filament diameter can cause exactly this problem. layers may extrude too little and string excessively, or worse may be missing entirely such that the next layer prints in thin air. however in my own case, the filament is fine, variation of <=0.01mm I can also print many layers (1/2" at a time) at excellent quality and layer adhesion. then all of a sudden I get a bad layer - if it's bad enough, the whole print will fail. I was thinking of blaming the hobbed bolt, which had a fair amount of plastic on it, as slipping. but a clean later, and no real improvement. I believe the tension of the thumbwheel to be correct (otherwise I wouldn't get as many good layers as I do would I?) any other suggestions from folks? should I just change for another extruder design entirely? do those with the other extruders get more uniform print quality across layers.. or is it just a different set of problems to face?

I've actually used the 'rounding bug' to my advantage to print several parts with thin slots for inserting filter paper. don't think of it as a bug, more an opportunity waiting to be utilized

you'll want a different fan for that. the stock fan is good for large area objects, the mauritius? fan is better for tall objects. ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17768 ) but don't expect very tall and thin to ever be perfect - are you using Cura? there are settings there that will help with regard minimum layer times. note that fan I linked is *only* good for tall thin objects or finely detailed things. it creates too much back pressure on the puny fan and most of the air comes out the wrong side. I've come to the conclusion there is no 'one fan fits all' solution, but that will probably start a 'favorite fan' thread..

not a very useful response I realize, but 'me too'. it seems to happen more often in one axis than the other. does rotating the piece before printing make a difference for you? I also thought that underextrusion might be the issue and adjusted the same parameters as you but now wonder if it might be alignment or belt tension to partly blame. you can change the overlap with perimeter setting in Cura which might help slightly, but I don't think it gets to the root cause of the problem.

ahh, I wonder if I can download Solidworks free edition maybe. I'll look into that - don't really want to switch 3D model tools yet again since the learning curve takes so much time. I try to modify before I export as STL, I'm using hexagon right now on account of the speed and ease of use but it only exports, not imports STL which is mildly annoying. it beats the pants off 123D which was the only other free contender to the title that I knew of. I've used everything from 3D studio max through to Rhino and some exotic modellers I've forgotten the names of now. 123D will let you load and modify STL, but it takes a long time and doesn't play nice with other apps - if I had an STL from thingiverse I'd probably go this route. for 'copying' I use a 3D scanner, David, meshlab, post fixup in hexagon and then on to repg, then finally Cura and printrun. it's an awful long tool chain, but no one tool does all of what I need ;(

OK, a retro challenge. http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w228 ... 100593.jpg a 1970s shatterline lampshade recreated by ultimaker. 23cm high original didn't quite fit my z limits so truncated to 20cm, also reworked to make one side thinner (1mm) than the other (3mm) so light comes out one side and tends to reflect off the other - this makes it a directional light now. hard to see from the photo. took 9hrs 16mins to print. a couple of minor burns and defects but they rather add to the homemade appearance and are in line with the 'spun resin' original anyway. nik

an ugly house, but nicely printed ! I put a copy of my lampshade in the 'what you printed' post Ian.