rewolff

FYI, from looking at the chemical formula, you can reasonably know what components end up in the fumes when it overheats. So PLA has Oxygen, carbon and hydrogen. Most combinations of these molecules are harmless. My chemistry is probably lacking, but I'd say benzene is one of the few dangerous combinations of these. But it's really hard to make that from PLA: The three carbon molecules are spread out, while the three hydrogen molecules are connected to one carbon molecule. That won't easily make benzene. ABS on the other hand, starts out with benzene and an N with three bonds to a carbon molecule. This could fall apart into HCN. Very poisenous. And the benzene could come loose from the hydrocarbon "tail". All in all ABS can be said to be dangerous to decompose through heating and PLA is safe. (Pla starts out as lactic acid which you find in ... milk)

Hoi, Leek me ook handig/leuk.... Effe googlen leverde: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2007/sl ... n-pov-ray/ Ik vind het te ingewikkeld. Ik moet povray gaan programmeren om resultaten te krijgen. Als iemand een makkelijk scriptje voor me maakt, wil ik het misschien nog wel gaan gebruiken. :-)

Contact support and have them send you a new bowden tube. If it is difficult to push the filament through by hand, then the ID of the bowden tube is bad. Yours seems to be marginal: It almost works. Ultimaker say they have a long tube with just some sections that have a smaller inner diameter. Not simply a tube with the wrong specifications.... After heating the hot end, I can usually pull out the plug without taking the whole hot end apart. I would also suggest that you try printing a bit hotter. I'm not sure at what temperature you're printing now, but I can manage printing at 200 and 210 (PLA) but hotter works as well. And when mine says 200 it might be something different than when yours says 200. So you can safely go up to 250 for pla without breaking anything (except maybe your print if it is really too hot).

Same here. I researched the M113 problem. It is harmless. You can just click ok and continue. However, that doesn't change anything: It still doesn't work (for me). Use the other slicer program in replicatorg: Slic3r. That worked for me. I've now switched to "cura" which allows me to preview the toolpath, so I can see mistakes before they are built in hardware.

I just made a test-part where I wanted to observe different effects but I have the "not-filled" outerlayer as well. I was testing "Bridging": How big an overspan can the printer make without support? The answer is: about 10 to 20mm. However the premise of the 0.2mm layer thickness is that the 0.4mm filament that is extruded is pressed flat into a 0.2 mm thick layer. So if in the bridging area the extruded filament is sagging 1mm, then it will take about 5 layers before the height of the overhang is again at the expected level and the filament is indeed pushed flat. So: Is your part hollow on the inside? Is there a bridge from left-to-right? Did you have cura build support for the bridge? And how thick did you make the solid outer faces?

I was promised a new tube as well. This was june 12th I think. I'm about 50km away from them. I can imagine shipping to australia being a bit more expensive to do quickly but here inside the Netherlands, if it doesn't fit in the mailbox it costs only EUR 6.50 for next day delivery (almost always, sometimes the day after). Although in your case I think he's right the guy at "support" is not good at diagnosing problems. When I described the problem: "It's not hardware, I think it's software: I can extrude just fine with the tools menu in replicatorg" I got the answer: "Thank you for describing your problem so well. your bowden tube is bad, I'll send you a new one".

With a "junction to ambient of 62 degrees/W, that 1.6W of yours will come to 100 degrees. That's 100 degrees above ambient for a total of about 125. 175 is allowed. Now with the fan blowing this number can be much lower. But with the bad fan-casing design (I think so, maybe I'm wrong.) I'm not so sure that the casing + fan will effectively help. So, feel free to work it that way. It'll get hot. If you check it with your fingers, you'll get burned. If you don't burn yourself, the fan DOES work, and I'm wrong about the effectiveness of the fan+casing... :-)

I'm using "freecad" at the moment. Surprisingly nice software. :-) There are a few things I may still need to learn. For example, I can't imagine that there is no way to graphically move objects. I just enter the coordinates. Makes for nice and exact measures, but the ease-of-use for others than me is probably very low....

Yeah. Glitches on clock lines are the nastiest.... -> The 19V SHOULD be pretty "separate" from the 5V that the electronics runs on. it is the POWER source. Hit the switch on the side of the ultimaker and everything inside just goes on, only without any power. The motors won't turn. The heating element won't work etc etc. Turn the 19V down to 12V and things work, but maybe not as fast as normal. Turn it up to 24V and things could work a bit faster, or things break and you get to keep the pieces. It is JUST power, no logic depends on it. On the other hand, there is the 5V that the arduino runs on. The CPU is guaranteed to work at 5.5V, and will survive 6V. It could miss an instruction or crash or "anything" between 5.5V and 6.0V. (but it should work again after you get the voltage back to around 5V). Similar things hold below 4.5V: The cpu could miss instructions or crash or ... anything when the voltage drops below 5V. Even if the "drop" is only 50ns, that is a whole instruction time. So that's why I'm guessing that when things crash if the bulb is operated you should look at the logic supply and not at the POWER supply.

So... what was the ID of your bowden tube that was not good? Although by eye the ID of my bowden tube looks more like 3mm than 4mm, I'd say 4mm would be too big. So the 4mm tubes would have to be replaced. However I do see my filament moving about inside the bowden tube. So when the feeder pulls back 1mm of filament, there is no movement further down the bowden tube....

With a separate powersupply you can do something like that. However you're in big trouble when you connect the grounds of both powersupplies together. Hmm. Maybe it won't even work. That "+12" is the "separate powersupply", right? The GROUND you are drawing there is the GND of the separate powersupply and the mosefet output (the switched output) of the board. It'd be a lot better if you just put an optocoupler in between. heater-output plus - resistor 2k2 - opto-anode -opto kathode -> heater output minus (heater output plus is tied directly to the 19V). On the other side, you have the circuit youve drawn, but the opto-output goes between the +12 and the gate of the mosfet. That's all. Three extra components to do it proper. [edit] I did the calculations for "acceptable current" with "1W" as the max power. Now these packages can handle a lot more, but you'll have to do something with heatsinks, or know what you're doing and do the math yourself. I like margins. 1W has some margin... :-)

@technicality: I was informed I probably have a "bad" bowden tube, so I'm getting a new one. The prints are reasonable, and I wasn't informed how "bad" a "bad" bowden tube is. (I'm not expecting it to turn zombie on me....) (what's a classic bowden plug? Googling for that phrase gives hits like: ) Yes, I've nulled the Extrusion position after extruding the "wall". I've found that I can prevent having to edit G-code manually by enabeling the skirt. So now I have 8 loops of plastic on the bottom layer around my object and I've eleminated the "possibly faulty" G-code that I manually wrote. I've tried getting skeinforge generated G-code to work. That was a big disaster. Absolutely nothing worked. I've given up and I'm back to slic3r. At what temp do you guys extrude PLA? First layer same temp? [update] Some more experimenting... I've written a program to generate the G-code for a "cup". Doing the bottom layers slow, speeding up for the higher layers. To get the flow going I draw a 160mm line around my object. This works reliable. I think the retractions influence the extruded material. I've written my own "write-the-G-code" program because I was anoyed at slic3r who generates blobs in my objects because he stops for changing layers. The stopping with extrusion means the solid PLA is pulled back, but the molten PLA keeps coming out. The result is at least blobs of extra material near the place where layers are changed. My program simply increments the layer and gets really nice results. (Just that the sides of the cup don't attach strongly enough to the base. :-( )

We're trying to print some stuff, but after two or three layers the flow of plastic stops. It prints 2-4 layers of "mostly air" and then starts putting out the proper amount of plastic again. I've added G-code to the "start G-code" window to start by extruding 20mm of plastic (at Z=20). Then move to the platform and deposit a nice "wall" of a few layers of plastic. The wall looks mostly solid every time. All this has made very little difference: it still stops extruding for a while during the actual build. Oh. It is not something mechanical with the material feed mechanism. The stepper turns and the PLA moves into the machine just fine (at that point in the machine). Suggestions?

A few days ago, for me the "just use XXX in the G-code" wasn't as easy as you think it is. You have to know how..... For reference: - You can add G-code in the G-code tab of replicatorg before hitting "build". (don't forget to switch to the G-code window before hitting build for a second run, because otherwise it will automatically regenerate the G-code). - You can add G-code in the G-code-> edit slicing profiles -> -> custom G-code -> start G-code. [update] Still not easy to do..... I've gotten models to build using slic3r, so now I know the basics are working, I decided to go back to the "recommended" (or at least default) slicer. Turns out the "edit profile" is completely different. But by default they should at least do SOMETHING. Apparently skeinforge 4.0 and skeinforge 5.0 are "old" slicers, because I needed M92 E28 and not the E866. After pressing "build" the platform moves down 35mm, some plastic is extruded.... and then nothing. What am I doing wrong????

I'm not sure what component limits the "19V max" of the ultimaker board. I'd asume you cannot do this until you verify that it really can be safely done. There are mosfets that go up to 20V. There are capacitors that officially go up to 24V. All these would make it very risky to run the board at 24V. Isn't there an adjust screw that you can make the 24V supply give a little less? (Assume that this will reduce the power-rating, as the current rating will remain the same).

IIRC the heated bed can draw more current than the POWERSUPPLY of the ultimaker can handle. So getting a separate powersupply would be a good idea. Assuming the board has the STP55NF06 as listed on the 1.5.4 board layout, it should be possible to hook up loads up to 7A, or at 19V about 133W. On the other hand, you'll exceed that a bit with 1.3 ohms. By connecting the external powersupply ground to the ground of the ultimaker, andthen hooking up the heater element between the external powersuppply positive side and the mosfet output of the ultimaker board, you'll be able to control it from the ultimaker. Some electronics experience required I'd say.

My fan also runs slowly when USB power is connected. I don't worry about it. It runs so slow it doesn't make a sound. It runs so slow the power-use is minimal.

What do you mean "nothing going on"? The day before you wrote that I got the email below: (I used the "sales@..." email address and have been getting replies from that address ever since. They had a link "for support contact support@ultimaker....." but then had the link pointing to sales@ultimaker.... They have fixed that after I pointed that out to them.) Now in fact I don't think our original problem was caused by this bad bowden tube, or at least there is a combination of bowden tube and something else: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=987&p=5933#p5933

OK. The original problem in this thread was caused by a mismatch in the "units" of the material feed assembly. You can set them with a G-code command. The setting can be saved to eeprom. Apparently there are two settings for this parameter in existance and getting them mixed up doesn't work. If the software needs to extrude 1mm^3 of plastic, it could send "G1 E1". The firmware then translates that to X steps of the stepper motor and everything is fine. Everything also works when the units are not mm^3 of plastic but mm-of-filament. Then in this case, only about 0.16 mm of filament would be needed. So the G-code could be G1 E0.16, which with the proper scaling in the firmware could work out to exactly the same X steps of the stepper motor. Mix these up and it doesn't work. In practise I switched to slic3r who had things setup correctly.

OK. guys. Same problem. here..... A very important question for us was: Does the white clip go into the "8B" part with the tabs on top, or on the bottom? What we finally did was we used a dremel with a triangular grinding-tooltip to mimick the expansion of the lasered holes in 8B, but not as deep. Not quite as deep. Only 1 or 2mm of 45 degree slope. Now the white clip simply fits in. No need for the C-clip. The white clip has some small "knives" that cut into the bowden tube. Those might be damaged by the bowden tube pulling out. See if you can bend them back a bit before reassembly. We now have the clips with the knives at the bottom, the C-clip would go on the "inside" of the extrusion head assembly, but we don't have it.

I don't think a spike on the 19V is the way EMF gets into the machine. The 19V is the "power" to the machine. It powers the motors. Power the motors with 12V they will all still work, just not as fast as they would at 19V. (If you go below 12V, some MOSFETs might stop working properly, depending on the type and way they are wired). So a powerdip on the 19V will cause you to lose a step or two at high stepping rate, but nothing more. A power surge on the 19V will cause 24V rated mosfets to short themselves. This is permanent. Nah, you're not seeing any power surges on the 19V lines. In any case, because of the currents involved, there is loads of passive buffering of the 19V line. Any external influence will have to have enormous "power" to influence the 19V. The arduino works at 5V. The arduino is powered from the 5V from the computer. There is a whole lot less "power" involved in those lines. A power dip or surge on the 5V may cause the atmega2560 to miss an instruction and crash. So: - Get a shielded USB cable. - Put the cable away from the powerlines to that lamp. - get a shorter cable. Good luck!

Hi, I'm using a new ultimaker with replicatorg0035. It has an update function and then it will download a 90kbyte firmware file. I downloaded erik zalm's marlin firmware directory from gitub, and when I compile it I get 47k worth of firmware. (I enabled the LCD, which might increase the build size a bit but not decrease it by 50%, right?) I downloaded a build-me-marlin version, and I get a 75k firmware image. Al these are firmware bytes-in-the-arduino, not the filesize of the HEX. If these changes are easily explained by configuration differences: that's fine. However I wouldn't expect such big differences. As the default ultimaker one is the largest: What am I missing? Can I find the "default ultimaker Configuration.h" file somewhere? I'd like to start out by just home-compiling the "known working" version, but I seem to be changing a whole lot. (Background information: I just printed http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6560 , and I see facets. They make nice noises while printing, but I think we should be able to make rounded surfaces..... A firmware change might be neccesary, including slicer changes etc etc. more work than a 5-minute-hack. Oh well.... Oh, I see the facets in the model in thingiverse too. Maybe the model just needs changing....)

Hi, I don't have any Windows machines. Ultimaker being open hardware and using lots of open software, I was expecting the whole process to be doable from Linux. I heard about "google sketchup" and that people are using it to create 3D printable models. Knowing google is a mainly-linux-shop I considered that problem solved. Now that I have an ultimaker sitting at home, I've thought of something I'd like to make. It's pretty simple. It probably can be done without a 3D printer, but what the heck, now I have a 3D printer.... And starting with "simple" objects helps with the learning curve of the modeling software. Anyway, I moved to installing google sketchup.... No Linux download. People report it works under wine: Well not for me: the installer correctly notes that I don't have Windows XP service pack 2 installed. So that leads to my current question: How do I make a 3D model if I use Linux?

The thermocouple has a very low impedance, right? What would a 10k pullup resistor on the positive side of the thermocouple do? I'm hoping for: when disconnected, the pin of the thermocouple-sensor-chip will go high and the chip will return "max temp". This would result in the heater being turned off without any modifications. Is there really an AD595 chip in the thermocouple module? It's an expensive chip! [update]

Thanks for your answer, but the jumpers are set correctly at the factory. The problem turned out to be that the recommended slicer, in all variants, experimental or not output too little material feed movement. I tried "slic3r" and suddenly it started printing! During my second "testprint", of the 20mm cube, the print suddenly stopped. Shortly thereafter, the thermocouple disconnected from the little PCB on top of the extruder head. Shortly thereafter, the head overheated and started smoking. It turns out that the head had become clogged, and that the material feed was pushing the pipe backwards instead of the material forward. This resulted in the pipe pulling on the thermocouple wire and then disconnecting it. The software SHOULD detect this and not continue to heat the head without any temperature feedback. Anyway, the bowden tube slides easily through the plastic fitting, so it will no longer work. I'm waiting for feedback from Ultimaker about what they are going to do about it.....