jennigma

I guess it's a question of risk vs reward. I don't have a fume hood, so I prefer to avoid toxic solvents as much as possible, even if I get slightly less optimal results from less toxic options.

aiiieeee. dichloromethane? Why breathe that when you could just heat the thing a bit and melt the plastic out?

Ian, I haven't rebuilt the case yet. I'm still trying to get the first print out of the thing. We sorted the main root of our trouble out over the weekend, though- the extruder drive motor port on the Ultimaker board was faulty. David wrote custom firmware to use the second extruder port instead and we shifted the polulu and motor connector over and went through testing beautifully and were all ready to print... when the Bowden tube popped off the extruder head assembly. We called it a night; I'll rebuild the head shortly. On the fan, though, I've downloaded the case laser cut diagrams, and am planning to redesign them to flip the fan, and cut them out in my local maker space. Sometime after I can get the machine printing- hopefully later in the week. :-)

I found the bearing on the back side of my drive assembly had been pulled into the filament path, grinding bits off. These are photos of the clean-up and reconfiguration I did to fix that problem: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jleigh/set ... 755421000/

someone posted that the fan is mounted upside down, and indeed if I take the fan assembly off and turn it over the fan is MUCH quieter. I figure I'll rebuild the fan assembly later to flip the fan, and that should solve that. No need to muck with electronics or airflow patterns, just hack the case a bit.

To clarify a little this happened after the feed test, which is the filament drive motor, not the extruder head (which we know is basically just a heater, a thermistor, and an LED in terms of electronics.) I know the vocabulary around this hobby isn't clear yet, but I was confused the first time reading David's post, so I wanted to clarify for others. :-)

Would you share the settings you're using for the Ultimaker? are you just using the defaults? What firmware are you using? thanks!

I would love some help. I'm in West Seattle and about to toss the damned thing in Elliot Bay from frustration. Any chance we could get together?

Hi! I have a brand new Ultimaker, and I'm trying to get the first print to work. I'm stalled out trying to get the stepper motor that drives the extruder to work correctly. I expect there is a software/firmware problem, but don't know how to fully diagnose. What I know: I can get the motor to turn from the 0025-beta1 version of ReplicatorG if it is below temp and the software puts up the error dialog asking me if I want to turn the motor anyway. (I had the acorn nut loosened so the wooden gear wasn't connected to the drive gear on the motor.) Once it's at temp and I don't get the error dialog the motor won't turn from the software. At all. Ever. Not in the same conditions, not when I try to start a print, not at all. I have a Macbook Air running 10.7.4. I can drive all the X,Y,Z motors just fine from ReplicatorG 0025-beta1. I installed the FTDI drivers even though I probably don't need them, because I've been trying for about 6 hours to solve this problem now and have tried all sorts of things. I can't get ReplicatorG-0035-rc1 to recognize the printer at all. It will report a successful firmware upgrade, but in fact appears to corrupt it. If I downgrade to 0025-beta1 I have to reinstall the firmware to get it to connect to the printer. The 2560 firmware build 1 (old 5D release) seems to be the only one that will work on my machine at all. I can hand advance the PLA when the heater is at temp, so I know it's possible. The PLA seems to move smoothly. And the PLA tension shouldn't be relevant at this point since the motor won't turn even with the wooden gear disconnected, or with it connected and no tension on the PLA. (I have mucked with the Java install on this computer while playing with Processing libraries, so that's a possible area of concern. I don't think it's related, just stating for completeness since the documentation suggests a possible dependency. I installed the latest Oracle released version of Java, but the computer is configured to run the standard Mac Java.) Things I could do, but have not: I haven't tried Cura or Repetier host or any other packages; I was assuming the Ultimaker build of ReplicatorG would be the best chance for success. I haven't tried driving from a different computer. Notably, I don't have easy access to a linux or windows box, but I can hit up friends if needed for debugging purposes. Ultimately it needs to work from a Mac though- I prefer to only maintain a single OS in my home. Please help. This is extremely frustrating.