gr5

.25 is for really tiny stuff. Like printing a frog on a penny. Look at these stunningly, amazingly small prints - let all the photos load for a minute before scrolling down: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?282,179746

z-hop means it moves up in Z (nozzle above the part and away into the air) while doing non-extruding moves. combing - This is complicated but basically it describes keeping the nozzle *inside* the currently printed island. An island is an area within a cross section (the current layer). For example if printing a table and you are on the 4 legs there would be 4 islands to print. Back to combing - if you are printing a C shaped island and it needs to move from one tip of the C to the other, if combing is enabled it will go the long way around staying inside the C so that it doesn't make a mess. Of course when moving from island to island combing should make no difference. Now none of this has anything to do with your problem. If you know how to use wordcount and grep (wc, grep) you can quickly count the G11 commands in your gcode file and see how many retractions you have but more importantly it's how many times the same piece of filament goes back and forth through the feeder. 10X is usually around the limit. To enforce this you can increase "minimal extrusion before retracting". It defaults to .02mm I believe. This means if your retraction distance set on your printer is 4.5mm you can get 4.5mm/.02mm or 225 retractions on each spot of the filament. In practice this is very unlikely even with printing "bone" fragments. Anyway setting this to .45mm should be relatively safe but still get you *some* retractions. Personally moving this value from .02mm to .32mm made a big difference for me recently and reduced total retractions of a 10 hour print from 34,000 to 20,000 (34k retractions X 4.5mm is 153 meters of retractions! for a print that only needed about 7 meters of filament, lol. Anyway my point is to increase this from .02mm to around .3 or .4mm. Or even .9mm (no more than 5 retractions for each spot of filament).

You shouldn't need anything for the first month. I would get a spare isolator if it's for sale and follow this thread and get this thing Swordriff is making when he has his polyimide washer for sale (post #250): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/7689-custom-heater-block-to-fit-e3d-nozzle-on-ultimaker-2/page-13&do=findComment&comment=94696 Also possibly get his heater block and temp sensor - but mainly this polyimide washer should increase the lifetime of the teflon isolator from a few months to a few decades. Other than that you should get some wood glue and mix with water to coat the glass (easier to use than glue stick to get a very very thin coat). And a paint brush to paint it on. Also get a small putty knife and sharpen the hell out of it until the edge is as thin and sharp as a razor blade. Also get some screwdriver hex drivers when the printer arrives - I forget the sizes but 90% of the screws all have the same metric hex size - probably 2.5mm? or 2mm? And then the fan screws might have a smaller size. Screwdriver style handles for hex wrenches is what Ultimaker assembly people use and they are 10X faster and easier than those stupid L shaped hex wrenches.

Wider tape helps quite a bit if the tape is lifting off. If the tape is twice as wide it has twice the holding force. Usually most of the initial lifting force is concentrated on a vary small area at the corner - spreading that over wider tape helps. Illuminarti has 150mm wide tape. I use 50mm wide tape. I haven't used Cura raft but I've seen what it creates and I don't think it's designed properly to relieve the lifting forces. Daid is living in the "age of PLA". If you go back a few years all the slicers were designed to work with ABS. If you try this older version of Cura where the slicing engine wasn't written by Daid and try it's raft feature I think you might get better results but I'm not sure: Cura 13.04 was the last version with the older slicer (it's very slow! may take a few minutes to slice your part if it's big) http://software.ultimaker.com/old/ I'd be very curious to hear if this older style raft works any better at preventing lifting. There are plenty of reprap printers out there that print ABS fine without heated bed. Many of them used cold smooth materials (like glass or kapton tape) combined with PVA glue (very thin layer - usually from hairspray) and raft.

It doesn't have to be isopropyl alcohol - you can use other strong cleaners. Maybe paint thinner or maybe acetone. I'm not really sure what else works. I have been to the Netherlands and find it very difficult to believe you don't have this product in your drug stores - maybe it has another name? In most countries it is found with the bandages:

How many do you have swordriff?

There's lots of tricks. Since you have no heated bed you might have to go old school: raft. When you used the blue tape did the tape lift off the bed? If so use wider tape. Also did you clean the blue tape with isopropyl alcohol? Found at any store that sells bandages. Wiping with alcohol cleans the wax off the tape. Also when you print is the bottom layer squished nicely into the cracks of the blue tape? You want the first layer squished flat like a pancake. Anyway, consider using the "raft" feature. This is how old reprap printers were able to print ABS without a heated bed. The raft absorbs just enough of the warp (just a tiny tiny bit) such that the part doesn't come off the bed. It warps but such a tiny tiny amount that you can't see it visually. Aheated chamber helps (enclose the 3 sides with clear plastic wrap and put a box on top - then put a hair dryer in there for 10 minutes, then turn off the hair dryer and start printing). The glass temp of ABS is about 100C and room temperature is about 20C. You get about .6% shrinkage in that range and that causes all the problems. If you can heat the air half way (60C) then you get half the shrinking (about the same as PLA which cools from 60C to 20C and does about .3% shrinkage).

mmartin - I just sent you an email. If you reply I will validate you manually.

@melkolo - I haven't had to do this yet but I think this idea is best - just run it on the outside of the existing cable sleeve.

I'm not sure but I don't think that would help. I think the problem is how strong the bowden is pushing on the white isolator. The harder you push the more the isolator warps and the tougher it is to get filament through. This means it's not quite so much how tight the screws are but how tight the bowden was before you starting tightening the screws. I could be wrong but I can't imagine any other possibility.

It seems bizarre to me that someone would start a kickstarter for a closed product like this. I mean some kickstarters are for physical things like arduinos. But the whole community kickstarter seems to go against this kind of thing unless it's a community of designers. So I don't think this kickstarter should appeal to printer owners, but designers.

Something is wrong with your model then. Either walls too thin, or the part is not manifold. Something like that. If you look at it in xray mode is there any red? Red is a problem. Sometimes you can fix this with the "fix horrible" checkboxes in advanced settings. Sometimes you have to fix the model. Please post a photo of the model in cura in normal view, and xray view and slice view.

The 20 micron is the height. If you tell Cura to slice 20 microns thick it will move the Z axis 20 microns between layers and when it prints the layer above, it (usually) is printing mostly directly on top of a layer below such that there's nowhere for the plastic to go but sideways so you get a trace of plastic 20 microns high and 400 microns wide. It works better than you might think. Of course it's kind of silly to have a vertical resolution of 20 microns and a horizontal of about 200 microns (radius of nozzle hole). So at that point you might want to get a smaller nozzle. There are .25 and .3mm nozzles available from 3rd parties. But then it takes much longer to print. But if you are printing something very tiny like a ring - it's good to use smaller nozzles.

It needs to make a complete circle. But only 1 circle. What are you talking about - can you post a photo instead of posting gcode?

I sent you an email with the pricing. Maybe it got lost in your spam folder?

I always change nozzles at 180C. That is plenty hot (even 150C is probably hot enough) to make the pla turn from "thread lock" to "thread grease".

I still have 2 heater block kits (and 2 nozzle kits) but I only ship to usa/mexico/canada (I am swordriff's north america distributor). I get inquiries almost daily (but no bites) so I think they won't last more than a week or so.

sketchup. I don't use sketchup for anything other than text now. I usually use DSM (design spark mechanical - it's free) for CAD now.

I think you have nozzle set to .4mm and shell to .8mm. The .8mm tells cura to make 2 passes. Is that what you mean?

Always look at your part in layer view before you print. Otherwise some letters may have gaps or not print at all. And if you really are pushing the limits with nozzle width < .35 I also recommend flow > 100%. Typically 150 or 200%. And also be very aware of the "first layer thickness" parameter which defaults to .3mm.

I model the part .1mm high and tell it the bottom layer is .1mm and it works fine. The problem is your width. .25mm is narrower than the .4mm nozzle. In fact Cura won't print anything less than .8mm wide if your shell and nozzle are set to .4mm. I've printed things skinnier than .8 - maybe down to about .6 by lying about he nozzle width. I set both the nozzle width to a smaller value (I hate going lower than .3 so try that) and the shell has to be a multiple of the nozzle width (so .3 or .6). Then after the text is done I do a cold pull, change filament, and print a part on top. The part on top - I don't bother removing the text from it - I just print it flat on top. The key is that the white part in the pictures above has a bottom layer of .3mm and the red text has a bottom layer of .1mm such that the MUCH THICKER white bottom layer just flows in and around the text and it manages to fit (even though in theory there's not enough room - it just manages fine). To get .1mm thick text you have to level SO much better than normal - I don't use the leveling procedure to get it perfect - the leveling procedure gets you close - then I do the rest by turning the knobs while it's printing the skirt. Once it's at the right height it stays there for months.

Please update your settings and include you country in the "location" field of your profile. If you end up needing support it matters what country you are in (other answers to other questions might also matter about the country).

Your X axis is barely moving. You should have pointed the camera at the stepper and belt in the back right corner. Is it doing anything? It looks like it moved a little. Most likely the pulleys are not all tight on the X axis. I know you said "I checked the tightness of the pulleys" but did you check only the 4 top ones or all 6? There are 6 pulleys (maybe one of them is a dual pulley - maybe only 5 - I forget which axis has the dual pullay). Anyway, of all the pulleys the most likely loose one is the one on the stepper motor. If you don't believe me mark the rod and the pulley with a tiny dot using a marker and start a print and see if it moves. You can also try pushing the test head around with power off. X and Y axis should exhibit similar resistance - look to see if the motor is actually moving when you push the head around.

Nice catch. I think if you wait 1 to 2 minutes the stepper driver power will turn off. Not certain though.

Not sure. Do you have a heat gun? With PLA it softens at a much lower temperature so it's easy to work with - just heat it up and pull it off with a wooden stick or a screwdriver or something. With Nylon you have to get much hotter and have to be careful not to melt the fans and wiring insulation. I guess I would remove the left-and-right fans assembly and let it hang by wires. If it's stuck on at that moment I would turn on the heater block to 200C. Wait a few minutes for things to really soften up (240C is much too hot as the Nylon might caramelize). Then pull the fan shroud off and then attack the blob of nyon with a sitck. A hair dryer or heat gun might speed up the initial warm up step.