snowygrouch

I think the frame is the best bit to keep from wood ! To make a really good metal frame needs machining after some rough laser/waterjet cutting because you will never get a great fit for the bearings in a rough cut metal frame as there is no "give". If you want to make something, do a new Z carrige from metal...THAT would bring some serious benefit just over and above the aesthetics. The wooden Z carrige really does need more stiffness....

Here is a link to my website where I provide my Kisslicer config files for old and new Kisslicer versions. http://www.calumdouglas.ch/3d-printing-software/slicer-configuration-files/

You will have to upload pictures for anyone to help with details like that. You should also upload pictures of your "before Kisslicer 1.1" results.

I spent a LONG time searching for hollow tubes earlier this year, the problem is that such tubes tend only to be available in quite large sizes. So its no problem to find 20mm diameter hollow prescision ground hardened rod, with an internal diameter of say 12mm. However the production difficulties of either drilling out solid bar (very very expensive, needs to be "gun drilled") or actually grinding a thinwall tube sucessfully are such that its economically not feasilble. The only possible source I found was Sandvik, who could do them but I never got a response from them regarding a quote. Probably because they are only interested in making a run of 500 tubes...not 10. http://www.smt.sandvik.com/en/products/tube-pipe-fittings-and-flanges/tubular-products/precision-tubes/thin-wall-precision-tubes/ I also looked into glass & other ceramics, some of which have very high stiffness and hardness but are basically extortionately expensive and not really available in lengths over 200mm or so. http://www.coorstek.com/markets/chemicals/ceramic-tubes-rods.php Carbon fibre tubes will not give you anywhere near enough surface hardness, since that property will be determined by the matrix, which is basically epoxy resin.

I finally got the latest KS version working for my Ultimaker last night. I will post the files on my website tonight and paste the link here. I had all sorts of problems getting it to work properly, my issues mostly stemmed from retraction settings. The latest KS is really quite different in terms of the settings and config files so it was not easy to problem solve.

So I just updated my firmware with the latest from https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin now the some options are missing from the Ulticontroller display, such as saving the settings to the EEPROM. Anyone else getting weird stuff happening with latest build ?

Personally I refuse to buy anything that doesnt have a diameter tolerance given. So instead get these: http://australia.rs-online.com/web/p/linear-shafts-rails/3411560/ 400mm long 60+ HRc 8mm dia nominal to h6 tolerance In fact these are probably better than the ones I have on my own machine...

Yet another very good reason to put a filament thickness sensor on the machine linked into the software to adjust "steps per e" as you print.... C.

Im experimenting with the latest KSlicer as well, you can download my config files for the last version from my website, but I dont think they work perfectly for the new KS, which also has an extra config text file. Would be interested to read your settings for KS 1.1.0 when they are done. If I have time this week to mess with it I will post my new settings to my website.

Ummm I think its a cool project, and I am sure it will be popular with people who are using printing as just a nice way to make stuff all on their own, but for me the expense of the printer is down to: 40% Preparing the CAD model for printing (maybe slicing it into chunks or modifying it to not need support etc) 20% Slicing the STL file and doing one or two test prints to see how it goes 15% Model cleanup after finishing 10% Electricity / Machine upgrading and matienance 5% Filament cost Of course depening on what you print these values may well not hold true...but if I charge my own time at 50€/h the cost of the filament is almost nothing. Also decent filament, free from impurities, inclusions, defects, of known properties, with repeatable results and of constant diameter far far outweigh any interest of mine to make my own filament. I want good prints, repeatable and of known properties. I dont care if I have to pay a few more Euros to get that. I am sure others with different priorities may well like the idea. If there were a large number of different plastic beads available from one source, along with the machine as well....I might be intersted to try my own blends for specific properties....but its alot of work and if I can buy filament by the reel for €30 now....I dont see much need to change. C.

PEEK becomes structurally fairly unviable much above 260 Deg C. It might be 300+ before it decides to actually phyically break down, but if you are planning on being well above 260 you need to consider a new material. I agree with Sander that you should stop all printing at the first sign of unexpected temp behavior and investigate before you do anything else. If you ever saw 350 appearing on the Ultimaker display...this is basically the equivalent of all the lights flashing red and sirens coming on. On a safety front, I personally would like to see a dual thermocouple system with a logic circuit to disengage the whole PSU when either deviates by more than 20 Deg C from the other. I dont think it would ever be needed by 98% of users...but perhaps such a thing (or similar) could be put into the next electrical developements step at UM ? (and perhaps the 2% who would need it might be happier) C.

h6 tolerance (h5 too expensive, h8 too rattley) Silver steel ground and polished (carbon/chromium through hardening steel) 42HRc min (62 is way overkill and will be for sure be a special order only)

Im glad someone is showing that MACOR is the way of the future for the insulator. I have been banging on about that for ages without much luck... However I am not at all sure what you are trying to suggest about printing "alloys". You cannot print Aluminium in this way because it oxidises instantly on contact with air and so would need an inert gas shield. Printing lower temp "metals" like solder is a no-no because you will either die of lead poisoning or get very ill from the flux in non-leaded solder (which is actually in the short term even worse for you then lead is). Also printing anything above the autoignition point of the materials that make up the body of the machine is totally disasterous in principle.

Bit late now really to put this up on here....as its sold out. WHoops :oops: However it might serve as a notification to look out for eachother if anyone else is going. https://ohm2013.org/site/ So its from this Wednesday until Sunday. There is a fair bit of general REPRAP stuff going on, I believe that Mr Prusa himself is doing a lecture also. I will be talking about making metal castings from Ultimaker parts, on the Wednesday 3pm on main stage. Anyway, hope that someone might be dropping by especially from the Netherlands. being just north of Amsterdam. Regards C.

Sorry but I absolutely refuse to believe that an Ultimaker can print anything that looks like that. The only prints I have seen like that came from really badly assembled medel etc REPRAPS. If thats an Ultimaker making those shapes it must be in absolutely horrific condition, and on the verge of total mechanical breakdown. I think looking at the layer to layer alignement that you need to post some pics of the printer itself as I would say the slicer settings are the least of your problems right now.

We quite possible already did discuss this, but the chances of me remembering stuff like this are fairly remote...the further I get away from spanners and machine tools the more often I have to have a quiet sit down to collect myself...

I agree with Joergen, You can see the bed flying around all over the place during fast head moves, and mine is screwed down so far the the plate is actually touching at the back. I would also suggest that we should try to mount idlers in the mid-span of the long belts to reduce resonance. However I think for packaging reasons this will be tricky. Regards C.

Hi, I am trying to sort out my dual extrusion, (I am not using Cura to make the code directly, so please dont tell me to just use Cura). There are alot of conflicting stories on various websites about how to do this in the gcode for Marlin. http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code This one says: "Example: G10 P3 X17.8 Y-19.3 Z0.0 R140 S205" Why is it assigning the printhead as "P" ?? Everything else I have seen always says you should use "T" ? Since the head offset cannot (I think) be set in firmware, it must be done internally in the slicer (like CURA), or by GCODE if you want to use a different slicer like Kisslicer. I dont always want to use CURA so would be good to have opinions on currect GCODE syntax. Also M104 seems to not be working, its still waiting for heatup. Has M104 been deleted from latest firmware.? Ideas ? Regards C.

Its nothing to do with the strength, its the stiffness that will cause you a big problem. I think the UMaker drive layout is only good for print bed size maybe 350x350mm Any more and the vertical flexing will likely exceed the layer height (meaning the nozzle may well decide to start scraping and banging into the top layer in the middle depending on the speed its going and so on - which wont always be constant). You will also run into accuracy issues printing quickly as the XY rods will also bend laterally during fast moves so your geometry will likely end up being thrown out if you print really fast. Issue is that if you increase the diameter of the two 6mm XY rods, the weight will go up with the square of the radius. So you will loose all of the benefit of having a light printhead. Having very thick rotating bars for the outer slides will help, but only a bit. Another problem is going to be that the bowden will be much longer, and potentially getting quite nasty curvature at the limits of travel. All of which will give bad printing results. So just for example...if you calculate the beam deflection, to have the same stiffness as a Ø6x300mm XY bar (the standard ones), in 500mm length, the required diameter is Ø9mm !! The moving mass of this is triple the standard one (not that you can buy a 9mm rod, but you see the point). Or you can just use Ø6x500mm rods, and accept that for any given printhead accel your printhead will be deflecting 4x as much as the standard one. So by extending the Ø6mm rods by +200mm length you are decreasing their stiffness 400%. This is because in the beam bending equation, the term for the beam length is "beam length cubed". So thats a compromise you will have to accept if you want to keep the Ultimaker drive arrangement with a larger format. It will probably print not as well, because of the long bowden, and the printhead will be less accurate for a given speed. But if you are happy with that, of course it will still "work". If you REALLY want to do it, I recommend making it rectangular format, keeping perhaps the Y axis short, that way you keep it at least very stiff in one direction. C. PS> I suppose this might be helpful: http://www.engineersedge.com/beam_bending/beam_bending2.htm

1) Turn on the 2nd heater (Configuration.h) 2) Turn on the 2nd extruder (Configuration_adv.h) all info on this can be found here: http://www.calumdouglas.ch/ultimaker-3d-printer/adding-dual-extrusion-to-ultimaker/ Actually getting the slicer to make proper code to work with this (that actually works well) is another matter....haha As far as this applies to a paste setup, I have no idea....someone else will need to help with that. I dont know how the system will react to using the 2nd motor but not recieving any temps. Perhaps you can fool it by setting 2nd extruder temp to 0 degrees..I dont know.

I have never recieved any crap ones.... The best ones I got from China (amusingly enough), I got some others from Germany which were not quite as good (they were a bit stiff for my liking). Just google 5mm to 8mm flexible coupler. Or try ebay, there are loads. Just make sure you get ones with pinch clamp design, and not grub screws.

I just bought a used laptop from UK, when it arrived in Germany there was an A4 sheet of paper in the top. "You have 7 days to report damage/missing items/other problems" "Anything reported after this will not be repaired" "After reporting you have 14 days to return the package to us" "If the fault is replicated by us, the full postage will be refunded after repair and re-delivery" This stuff should not be left in the corner of some corner of the website.

Sounds great, I think I have enough now so will not order any more for myself. Only point to just mention is that a small letter on the tolerance prefix denotes a tolerance on a shaft...not a bore. Its a capital letter for a bore tolerance...(difference is that if you order some more on a h7 shaft tolerance they will all come out -15>0 micron instead of 0>+15micron which would be written H7). Just checking ! C.

"only an idiot or an engineer" This is an my fave quote of the week and is going on my facebook page ASAP.

Its not at all obvious Trion, if it was 100% a z level problem there would be no reason for it to only occur at the back only without showing any other sign of interlayer mismatch on sides or front. The Z screw is not moving during a single layer (unless the new CURA has "jump" feature). Therfore any layer offset from the Z stage must be reflected in the alignment of the entire layer in question. So I think its important to get more info. What happens on the outside is also strongly influenced by whats inside the model. So if you have some infill happening on a certain level and so on, this (depending alot also on the slicer) is having an effect on outer shape. I would suggest to post STL file, and details about what slicer settings you are using.