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alaris2

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Everything posted by alaris2

  1. I think I'm right in saying none of the people Joergen mentions have a stock UM. it's an engineers machine, much like a reprap but made of wood (as Daid wonderfully sold it) if you're an engineer, you might be able to make a small income from it, but otherwise expect big disappointment.
  2. actually I'm after a printable extruder Ian, so I'd love to test that when you're ready (if you're up for it). I saw y'all were discussing metal hotends, printing nylon, and new slicers over on google. guess the guys there don't realize we've already done all of that right here on this forum - they're missing out on so much by not being here. you might like the new slicer that's coming - it handles negative space correctly, so no more heartache for you. nik
  3. Troy is basically spot on there, especially the point about speed decreasing as you add features. for example today I had to decide how to handle the massive memory storage requirements that comes with generating support structure for a model that takes the entire Z height of the UM. even with maximum compression I was topping 4.5GB. I can't really allocate that as memory, but if I allocate it as disk-side storage it will have a massive speed penalty.. all for a corner case that might never happen in practice..
  4. hey, Ian is back, and designing some sexy stuff it looks like! thought we'd lost you to google Ian.
  5. that's very clever Robert - I tried a similar technique once (which was why I asked) and injected a sort of rubberized paint into the recess. the problems I had were - 1) the color bled into the PLA (it seems the PLA leeched the color and so didn't give a crisp edge that I wanted) this wasn't helped by the alcohol which dissolved some of the color during cleaning and then spread it into the fine inter-layer lines. 2) when cleaning up, the paint stuck to itself better than to the PLA, so I would sometimes remove the infill as well as the bit I was cleaning, so then had to go back and re-fill :( it looks like you succeeded very well where I failed so well done! if it's not a trade secret I'd certainly be interested which paint you used and I might try again, inspired by your success.
  6. well porting might well be possible. I was thinking i'd get it working first on a PC and see if people like it tho. is there a demand for slicing on android?
  7. you're turning into a proper designer now Robert, nice work! how did you do the text inlay? is that printed separately and slotted in place?
  8. ian> good question, and I don't know the answer, but it apparently works. there are several new printers coming out using this method. I found it while investigating the fishing wire trick used by tantillus. how long it works is another matter! yzorg> SG is correct, using bevels is not recommended, actually no gearing really is since it will just introduce additional points of failure or backlash. if the mod is considered too 'ugly' (personally I think it's just fine), pancake motors are the correct solution. let's face it - you have a big extruder sticking out the back of the UM already.. GT2 looks the best, but most expensive, overall solution - but I'm not ready to spend all that money just yet. I favor the direct drive as a 'does most of what you want' solution instead.
  9. that's awesome robert, sg, keep it up. I'm compiling a list right now with the aim to either do, or at least provide future support for as many things as possible.
  10. I made a note that for GT2, the following are known to work (but you can see from the price why I haven't tried it yet) http://www.royalsupply.com/store/pc/Gat ... tm#details http://www.royalsupply.com/store/pc/Gat ... p17193.htm the synchromesh cable is here - much cheaper alternative https://sdp-si.com/eStore/PartDetail.as ... roupID=768 I'm fairly sure that new pulleys are required in both cases - our current ones won't match the tooth profile.
  11. awesome, thanks Sander! Daid> is the UltiController dual extrusion and heated bed ready or does it need upgrading? cheers, nik
  12. bit quiet on this topic - I confess I had expected more 'wants' and such. just as an update - I've written the core code now. it loads 85MB of stl in about 20 seconds and slices it almost as fast. am working on support, interior fill and g-code generation next. you've still got a chance to throw in your 'wants' before I release something!
  13. aside from getting rid of the short belts which I hope to be able to do too at some point in the very near future the next thing is to deal with the long belts. I've measured considerable backlash in prints caused by the belts (right now I can't be sure how much is accounted for by the short and how much by the long) even when the belts are so tight they're at breaking point. there comes a point where additional tightening of the belts actually makes things worse - there really is a sweet spot. staying in that sweet spot is difficult - I find constant adjustments are necessary if you really care about surface quality. but two interesting alternatives have presented themselves and might be worthy of discussion (other than the ballscrews) 1) synchromesh cable. it looks a bit like fishing wire (used by the Tantallus) but with a grip which stops it slipping. there are various printers trialling this and it seems to be fast, light and small. one question I can't find an unbiased answer to is what the long term properties are like (does it end up stretching?) 2) GT2 belts instead of the MXL we use. these are designed for accurate motion, not just as timing belts and are being tested on repraps. the word is they are good and the difference in quality is noticeable. again, can't find an unbiased answer because 'noticeable quality improvement' on a reprap isn't hard. the price would also be high - we need 8 pulleys and 4 belts whereas their system uses half that.
  14. are those the 3W ones? if so, you only need 10 around the bed and you can do away with the hot end completely (and your eyesight too)
  15. to explain the commercial thing Daid - I don't think it will affect you and the AGPL shouldn't matter either. the exclusion is: 1) you wouldn't be able to sell Cura - but you're not anyway are you? 2) you couldn't claim endorsement - which I doubt you'd do anyway 3) you couldn't use the slicer as a means to sell a product (UM), by inferring your product was better than other peoples on account of the slicing (because the slicer is both free and not printer specific) or infer that it was the work of UM (ie. not give credit where credit is due whilst increasing the apparent value of the company). branding etc. is no problem at all. i expect that. these clauses are there to prevent a certain company starting with M from paying $50 for a feature upgrade to make it work with their printer, then trying to milk it like a cash cow. about the source code - I simply meant there won't be a publicly accessible github or whatever it's called repository of source code you can just download and start hacking. end user will see it in executable form, pre-configured to work straight out the box.
  16. tempted to print that just cos it's awesome. multi-function fan - cools random other stuff as well as your print
  17. anyone care to point out to him the melting point of PEEK?
  18. rotfl. Daid is writing manuals for all my products from now on
  19. thanks Daid. yes the SF comments are very true. I'm aware of miraclegrue, haven't had time to properly assess the code for worthyness yet. i need to look at the licence too - if it's GPL that's a no from the start. My current thoughts are to make the software free. because collecting money and arranging licenses and such is just a pain. but even more of a pain is support. so for new features and 'bug' fixes there will be a fee (unless it's a bug in main code and affects everyone in which case it's free). there won't be a UI (there will be stuff on screen, but not interactive). the engine will be driven by a single config which can be modified by programs like Cura to be used as the front end. there won't be any documentation nor source code, but I'll document the config so that people like yourself Daid can interface to it successfully. I'll maintain the code initially, but in the event I get bored of it for some reason, I'll release it at a future point to whoever is making most use of it from the UI side (probably Daid), although the stipulation will be that there must be no commercial gain (price charged or deliberate promotion of products or inferred endorsement etc) from its use now or ever. (bespoke feature requests are a different matter and may be charged for). how does that sound? PS. that also means you're better off putting that list of huge ideas for a slicer in this thread now, otherwise I may consider them bespoke feature requests I'll use this thread as the repository for features people want in the core edition.
  20. !^%$"^$£. that's exactly what I wanted. but couldn't find. I hope it helps someone else tho. I ended up buying an ulticontroller, which is expensive and doesn't really do what I want. thanks greenarrow.
  21. have to admit active cold zone and V1 nozzle seem to be key recurring themes here. unfortunately there's no E value in what you pasted sven - it looks like you're using Cura in which case the number you want is 800 something and will be hiding in the first run wizard page. (actually, the number isn't something we can check - only you can do that by ensuring you follow the steps in the first run wizard. the number varies a bit by filament and machine. mine is 893 or so, some people have as low as 835)
  22. I think I understand that as a spiral from outside to inside right? that's a good idea, I was pondering better ways to do infill last night.
  23. you're very lucky. your next 23 prints will all be dismal failures now
  24. they have 4 config files in the newest release. you're right, one is plenty enough. Troy> I have the same problem with finding time, and yes sorry I meant C++. SG> Ahh, I understand what you mean. OK i use repG to solve that problem not netfabb. it's pretty annoying to solve when the file comes from a 3rd party too. definitely on the list!
  25. totally agree SG. i've been putting this off for ages because I felt someone must surely be about to do all this. except they haven't. :( Daid's done a nice job on the UI for Cura, and the slicing engine in k'slicer is current state of the art. but you're right, there are features missing, and that's a really good starting list. for #1 - did you mean flipping normals, or mirror? #3 - yes I know, there are lots of people in denial still tho. Troy> I was planning on C rather than Java, do you think (or are you interested in) a port of your algorithms? Daid> here's a big question. right now, few people know SF exists as the back end of Cura. credit for everything goes to yourself. You're now a UM employee too. This might be part of the reason Jonathon was reluctant to help - how would you envisage credit working between all parties? or paid/free mixing of software? and is your intention that Cura be UM-specific, or for all printers (it now includes a UM robot and UM model by default I see..) put another way - the UI can control everything the engine does and everything the user sees and experiences (which is hopefully good, but sometimes can backfire) - is there any means in which the engine can exercise some control over the UI? there's a whole bunch of other things to consider too, but probably best to have this discussion off-line. let's keep this topic to 'does anyone want a new slicer?' and 'what things do you want it to do?'
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