kristen

I've burnt through a number of fans on the hot end so far and the one cooling the PCB sounds like it's bearing is starting to go as well. The ultimaker has only been together for 3 months so far and typically the fans in my pc's last 5+ years. Any idea if this is tied to the UM board and consequently the fans being run at 19V ? I was thinking of adding an70 ohm resistor in-line with the fan to drop the voltage down to 12V, but Daid didn't seem to think that would work due to the pwm control. Thanks

I think I see why the cooling fans are burning up, they probably don't like being run at 19V. Any reason not to add a 70 ohm resistor to lower fan's input to 12V ?

Sorry to get off topic, but did you find a decent thermal tape, or did you go with a thermal epoxy to stick them on. I had some generic double sided thermal tape that fell off on the first long print. Got my new linear rods and the double-grub screw style couplers from china, but after reading all the posts, I've ordered up some of the clamshell type couplers.

For those of you with heatsinks and fans on your stepper motors, does the placement of the heatsink make much difference ? I'm wondering if the fan/sink could be placed on top of the motor, rather then the back-end, just to keep this whole assembly from getting overly long. Since the sides are flush with the ends, I don't see any decrease in surface contact, it might even help keep the shaft/mounting side a bit cooler ? Thanks for the pictures. I like the addition of a countersunk screw hole at the end of the extension.

If I was building an Ultimaker from scratch, I'd modify the laser-cut wood templates I'd probably move the slots for mounting the extruder motor to the left side and leave some extra material for mounting the motor stand-offs.

I tried pulling the print head across it's range of motion using a spring-type fish scale. Where the cams/gears are out of phase (tightening the belt), the force more than doubles (jumps off the little scale). I liked the previous version of Cura (pre 12.12) because it let me select the center of the machine to start the parts at so I could try to avoid spending too much time in the overly tight area (the rest of the updates to 12.12a are very nice). The little stepper motors are more than strong enough to power through the tension variations, but when printing a big part, overheating the motors can lead to some missed steps. If we can lower the stress on the motors, that should reduce the heat build up which should reduce those glitches.

Please keep us updated. I noticed the same 'problem' with mine after assembly, it's hard to tell if it's just due to the whole in the stock pulleys being too large or if they become distorted when you try to tighten the grub screw. It can be made better by aligning the offset like you mentioned (reducing the tight spots in the x or y motion), but it also adds a cam-effect to the motion. If I was buying new pulleys, it might be a good time to upgrade the belt as well, or at least install one that's ~2 teeth shorter so I could eliminate the extra tensioners.

I'm still pissed that after being promised a v1.5.7 board with my order I got a shoddy, poorly assembled v1.5.6. Flux left on the board, solder spatter, half soddered components, and improperly bent components. I hope you make the 1.5.7 PCB files available soon so I can assemble a new board myself.

The new tensioner is 5mm wider than the extruder's body. Assuming it's sitting nice and symmetrical that means it hangs out 2.5 mm on the gear side, plus another 1.5mm for the button head of the screw meaning a minimum of 4mm. Each washer's only 1.5mm, so it takes 3 washers, simple enough. What I really need is a straight gear for the drive motor, then the extrude gear wouldn't be binding up and walking all over the place.

Well it was really nice to get shipped an "old" kit then. I have a feeling my kit was just put together on a Friday afternoon. The soldering and connectors on my circuit board look like crap (and it's marked 1.5.6 vs. 1.5.7); the holes in a couple of my limit switches were drilled out too much so they can't be held in place with the M3 bolts; crooked drive gear on the extruder motor; and these missing spacers. Even if the laser cut pieces were from 08/2012, you were posting on here earlier in this thread at that time saying to use the plastic spacers instead of the wood pieces.

The button head on the tensioner block of "bertha's upgrade" is pushing my big extruder gear outwards. Should I throw a 3rd washer under it. This would offset the extruder gear and the drive gear on the stepper motor. The drive gear sits a bit cock-eyed on the shaft as well so there's a spot every revolution of the motor that binds up against the extruder gear. Do these issues wear themselves in after a bit of use, or should they be taken care of now during assembly ? Thanks

This should be a new kit as It came with both the v2 hotend and the extruder upgrade, but I do have parts 7a/b/c as well and the "quality note" says it was "the laser pack was packed on 16-08-2012". I've pretty thoroughly investigated every nook and cranny of this kit now and the spacers were definitely forgotten. Do you have their full dimensions, tolerances, and what they are made of ?

Compressing the wood after putting on the right short belt tension is good. This makes the washers digging into the wood, keeping the motors in place.Anyhow, instead of the wooden spacers you should add normal round spacers, same as found holding up the electronics, this reduces noise. How much of a difference does this really make ? I've dug through every little bag of parts and haven't come across any black motor spacers.

Cool, thanks for uploading those

Wow ! details on the channeling ? I'm assuming that's not something you printed ?

I doubt I'll be adding backpack straps to mine, but I expect it to get moved and inspected a fair bit. I didn't mean to pick yours out Daid, but it was the only good under-side shot i found.

I was looking through the assembly instructions and I see a lot of exposed wiring and everything tacked in place with painters tape. eg. http://daid.eu/~daid/IMG_20110919 ... small.jpeg I was wondering what others have done to tidy things up; shrink tube ? cable-tie mounts ? expando-sleeving ?

Regarding the memory usage, could you have an option to use a cache file on the hard drive if the user doesn't have enough memory. Even my little AMD based netbook has 8gb of ram. I don't remember ever seeing someone completely fill their build space, but it's pretty common to max out 2 axis on a print. I've got several glue carriage designs to try that will all need to be printed vertically to max height.

I'm curious how you're managing to make all these speed improvements. Are you utilizing PC specific instructions ? If you can slice a big STL in 20 seconds on your PC, do you think the program could be ported over to Android and run on an inexpensive dual or quad core ARM tablet ?

So next question... Where's the "thumbs up" emoticon ? I love that you guys are just rolling in updates and improvements as you go.

I was reading in your blog about the various clip issues (having to double up the plastic ones, would metal would be better) and I noted in the Make Magazine review that clips weren't actually included in the kit they reviewed. Has that upgrade been rolled into current production ?

It could also be that the particular member has private messaging disabled.

Couldn't the temp sensor issue be fixed with just a resistor and a modified table ? I was looking at http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Next-Gen_Electronics and the Due pretty much matches all the requirements. It's pin compatible with the Mega, and I paid about $40 for mine with shipping. Throw in a new 3.3V compatible temp sensor or one of these level shifters ( https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8745 ) and you'd still be well under the 75€ goal. The level shifter is small enough to make it an in-line adapter with a bit of shrink-wrap.

Maybe they could just open up a US location... I hear Seattle has a thriving additive manufacturing scene Plenty here to make someone from the Netherlands feel at home as well. On a serious note, there are lots of government grants and incentives to get into manufacturing 3D printers in the US right now. Shipping and conversion rates certainly made me choke a little. Little fluctuations in the dollar/euro exchange are pretty painful, but Paypal checkout certainly added a few percent on top of that as well.

Got my order in yesterday after the certificate was renewed. I'm really hoping that 14 day approximation (updated today) includes weekends If it gets here early enough, I'll have time to paint it. I plan to demo it at the first ASME meeting of the new year.