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robmiles

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  1. I've had this and I'm pretty sure it is caused by a combination of temperature and perhaps particular fibre type. I've been printing at 220 degrees with some Faberdashery fibre and getting good results, although my layers were sometimes a bit uneven. Today I put in some ColorFabb fibre and used the same gcode with very uneven results. At 220 the ColorFabb PLA seemed to be a lot more runny and this made it harder for the printer to control how the layers were laid down. I dialled the temperature down to 200 and printed again with much nicer results. I started using higher temperatures in the first place to improve adhesion to the base, but 200 sticks fine and I'm getting much smoother layers. I'd advise you to drop the temperature as low as you can, I reckon that will solve your problem.
  2. Hi. I was wondering if you folks were aware of the upcoming 3D printer support in Windows 8.1 and if you have any plans to support it in the future? If you've not seen it, there are some details here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/3-9027
  3. Hi. Just found this thread. Wonderful development. If it's not too late, I'd love a set of 12. I'm in the UK, so shipping should be easy enough. If you PM me with your PayPal address I'll sort out the cash and my address. Rob
  4. I had a problem with my Z axis microswitch where the bolts came loose and the switch moved up (which would give the kind of problems you are seeing). In my kit the bolts actually tapped into the switch and this was not a very solid fit. I ended up putting a bolt right through the hole on the switch and a nut on the end to hold it a lot more firmly.
  5. You need to make sure that before you adjust the screws you have sent the Ultimaker back to the home position in Z, that's why you do the Autohome at the very start. Otherwise you'll have a bed that is level, but at the wrong height. Then when you print you'll get the problems you are reporting. Or the machine will print in the air. I've found the bed levelling wizard in Cura very useful. Just get to it from the expert settings. It moves the head to each corner in turn and then prints a border abound the print area to test. Another thing that I had to do was to put longer screws on the Perspex bed supports, because for some reason my wooden build platform ended up slightly twisted after I'd made it. This is a common problem apparently, and doesn't affect the printing at all once you get the print height set. I also put a locknut between the bed and the spring, so that I can keep the spring tension the same when I adjust the height.
  6. You are so right. I printed at half speed and got a robot that looks a lot better. Of course I then tried to cut off the supports and tidy up the model and ended up breaking one of the arms off...
  7. I had a go at printing the robot gcode and I got the above. I'm actually quite happy with it, but I reckon that what I really need is a fan that blows from the right. The left hand side of the robot is quite well defined, but the right is a bit droopy.
  8. Out of interest I printed a robot (at Cura default settings) and got almost exactly the same results as you. There is some sagging across the back and lack of resolution of the features. I used white PLA from Faberdashery. I'm not massively unhappy with the results really though, I'm wondering if white is just a tricky colour. It might be interesting to try different plastics or perhaps drop the temperature to reduce the sagging. I find it ironic that Ultimaker picked such a hard to print object as their mascot and then shipped the demo one configured to print out in such a small size. If they made it a bit larger I'm sure it would look much better. My favourite showpiece is the Pentapod rocket on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:26424 This prints fairly quickly and has no overhang problems. BTW I think the owl looks ace. Rob
  9. One thing that you might like to check up on is the initial print bed height. I've noticed that things go badly if you don't have the height precisely right when you start printing. Things get even worse when your print bed is warped (as I'm starting to suspect mine might be). If the print head is too close to the layer it is printing on top of you get a "squidging" effect which causes some layers to flatten out and causes ridges on vertical surfaces. I'm presently playing with this at the moment to try and get the sides of my boxes as smooth as I can. On my machine, if I adjust the height at the corners (as with the lovely bed levelling wizard in Cura) I find that in the middle of the print bed the head actually crashes into the baseplate and the output, so I have to tweak things a bit. Of course it is a compromise, if you make the platform too low it means that the first layer doesn't stick and then you just end up with a ball of wool being produced. If you make it too high you get the head digging into the output and producing "squished" output.
  10. I've been thinking about the problem, and what I'd love to see is this: During construction you stick a piece of blue tape on your Bowden Tube, exactly 100mm from the connector at the feeding end. During calibration you provide a UI that tells the user to put some fibre in and line up the end of the fibre with the connector. Then let the user press buttons to move the fibre to the 100 mm mark. The program can count how many pulses it uses to move the fibre this far and then the user presses "Confirm" to indicate when they have reached the end. Job done. The software now knows how many steps per mm. Software wise it would be easy to create and you could do it as part of the sequence where the bed is levelled during first installation. You could also add a "change fibre wizard" which could talk the user through changing from one fibre to another and do this measuring procedure if required. It could also provide a UI where the user could say which fibre they were changing too, so that it could ask for a new measurement if required, or just feed 100 mm to confirm.
  11. While I agree with Daid, in that I'm sure the problem is a mechanical one, I have noticed tiny differences when I print with the controller. Highly detailed stuff (i.e. lots of small moves) seems to go a bit faster on the Ulticontroller, perhaps because the Ultimaker controller can pull data off the SD card faster than the PC can send commands down the serial port. If you are still having the problem I'd suggest you to try using the Ulticontroller speed control to slow down the printing a bit, and see if that makes a difference. Bill, I've seen reports of people having Ultimaker problems that have been traced back to noisy mains. One chap had a fridge that put enormous transients onto the power supply when it turned on and off. Although I'm pretty sure what you are experiencing sounds like a failed Ulticontroller board you might want to investigate that issue and try adding a surge suppressor if you haven't already got one.
  12. Thanks for the quick reply. I agree that it was hard to follow, the first time I used it I misunderstood what the number meant and managed to get a feed rate which was out by a factor of a100 or so. Fortunately I'd made the feed much slower so no damage done. I'd love to see it back though, once I'd figured it out I found it very useful.
  13. Older versions of Cura used to have this mode where you could get the Ultimaker to feed 10cm of plastic, measure the actual length fed and then use this to calibrate the extruder feed rate. I can't find this on the later versions. Has the feature been withdrawn, or am I not looking in in the right place?
  14. I had a problem like this. Turned out that the stepper motors had come loose from the frame and the small belt that links them to the big drive rods was slipping. You could also check that the grub screws in the pulleys (particularly the motor ones) are tight. I'm not sure how running from the Ulticontroller could affect this - unless the controller is feeding data a bit more quickly than the serial connection to the PC, causing the Ultimaker to try to move things faster to keep up, and causing something to slip.
  15. It might be the belt from the motor to the upper shafts. I had mine come loose and it went wrong in exactly the same way. The motor bolts can work loose and the motor can slide up, causing this smaller belt to slip. I pulled my motors down and gave them a good tightening and they have been fine since.
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