gr5

http://reprap.org/wiki/Ultimaker%27s_v1.5.7_PCB In the photo of the board on the bottom of the UM, there are these 5 "stepper driver" boards that can be removed without any soldering. They are socketed. The top right one is the Z driver (notice it is closest to the connector to the Z motor). A quick check is to swap the cables for Y and Z. Use pronterface to move the motors 1mm at a time. If the problem is with the stepper motor or the cable the problem will stay with the same stepper (it won't move). If the problem moves to the other stepper than it's something on this circuit board so next you swap the stepper drivers aka pololu's. These are manufactured and sold both by Ultimaker or through the rep rap community. If it's not the pololu (that's the most likely thing after cabling) then it's probably the arduino (even easier and cheaper to locate and purchase!).

Is retraction visible in layer view? It is shown as a *vertical* short blue line. If so you could experiment and set the minimum travel to .7mm (which is farther than this moved) and see if the line (retraction) goes away.

Well you could try alternating the colors for a little while. That would mean much more welding though :(

Picture please foehnsturm.

Bastards!

I haven't tried glass yet but people report that it is MUCH less sticky than blue tape or cardboard or Kapton tape. At MakerFaire NYC they used glue stick *and* had to heat the bed to 50C. When they didn't do both parts popped off. But it's complicated. Each part is different. You can get away with neither for certain parts (small parts). It sounds like wood glue and water is better than glue stick. It would be nice if UM had a scientist who would spend a month experimenting with sticking and then another month experimenting with fan speeds, then another month experimenting with bridging, then another week experimenting with maximum flow speeds. All of these with various PLA. Maybe some day. In the mean time we have to rely on people like Illuminarti who do pretty good job with these kinds of experiments (but don't spend the month the issues deserve).

Orientation? Object? There are no objects that I know of. You can simply control the low level aspects of the machine. For example you can send gcodes. Or move one of the axes. Below is a screenshot of Pronterface. As you can see on the right side, I tried sending M503 but nothing happened because I hadn't connected to the printer. So I clicked "connect" and then tried again and it worked. Also notice that when I connected it displayed some information. In fact it looks like the moment I connected, pronterface sent a M503 also. So I got all the settings twice. edit: As usual to see an image in it's full size you have to first left click on it, then right click and choose "view image" and then usually left click it again except this time my image just barely fits in the screen so you can skip the final zoom click.

If you bought your own I think you have to format it on a computer first. But I don't know the procedure.

Is this the SD card that came with the Ulticontroller or did you buy your own?

Owen I only see the UM Original on makershed.

Okay. You got me interested in this. I want to print that bridge thing (lower picture). Can you supply a link? Is it on youmagine or thingiverse? I love experiments.

Oh! I'm pretty sure Sander will be there. He has a beard. Make sure to say hi to him!

At least 3 people had their stepper motors with the wiring backwards over the last 6 months. One just in the forums today I think.

I don't know if your object is too tall or too many line segments. I recommend as an experiment to reduce the number of polygons. Here's a quick way with meshlab which is free: http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/226-polygon-count-reduction-with-meshlab.html If the problem is the height I suspect you can mess with this in the "machine settings" max height setting. But more likely you need to reduce polygons. I think Daid said around 100k polygons things start to get bad in Cura (runs out of it's 2GB memory limit).

Do tell! Spread the rumor! Give us a link! Or was it just in these forums? Or in google groups?

Oh. I don't know what that is. It looks like it *might* be a problem. Sorry I don't have a UM2. Yet. The Bowden tube is the long, clear tube that runs from the feeder to the head. I don't know how far down into the head it goes. But maybe it goes all the way into your picture?? I don't know. Could you take a picture of the top of the print head also? I want to see if you are missing the little blue clip. Bowden tube is a mechanical term. Other examples are the tubes that contain bicycle brake cables, bicycle gear shift cables, automobile speedometer cables.

Wow. Please post photo! That's what I did. My heated bed power supply is from a computer and I just use the digital pin that turns it on and off to turn it on and off. Instead of switching the high current of the power itself. My power supply hasn't died yet. PID stabilization makes no sense with my heated bed. A simple over temp off, under temp on is all that I need. Like a house thermostat.

Then clean the tape first with isopropyl alcohol to deal with the warping, lifting of the corners.

You should go ahead and place an order for the UM1 kit. You seem quite smart and handy and patient and I'm sure you can put it together yourself.

Once you've printed a dozen experiments and played with the printer for a week, printing a 30 hour print is no big deal. Just do it. Just have the patience. It takes you longer than 24 hours to design a section so it should be okay to take 24 hours to print a section. Cura won't print anything less than 2X the nozzle width. e.g. with .4mm nozzle, if the part is tilted and is exactly .8mm thick the cross section will be slightly less than .8mm so it won't print. Other slicers might let you get away with this. You can lie about the nozzle width up to a certain amount - for example saying it is .3mm when in reality it is .4mm will work okay but the quality won't be quite as good (but not too bad really). I recommend you stick with .4 or .6mm. .6mm can push through 5(6/4)^2 or 2.25X as much volume of PLA so it can print about twice as fast. Illuminarty uses a .65mm nozzle. .8 is kind of extreme for a mere 8 by 8 by 8 inch bed. I also recommend you get the UM1 if you are going to be messing with nozzles. The nozzle on the UM2 is a single piece integrated with the heat chamber. You can't just easily change nozzles. You have to remove the thermocouple, remove the heater unit, swap out the assembly, and reinsert. This is *not* easy. Both the heater *and* thermocoulple are delicate and tend to fuse to the chamber after a few months. On the UM1 it is easy. (well some people have had trouble after a year or two of never removing it but I had no trouble). You heat it up, unscrew it, screw in a new one. Takes 2 minutes.

This suggestion - air on the nozzle - makes sense until you realize the nozzle was *more* stable at full speed. So... I think the problem is electrical interference. When you set the fan speed to 180, the fan is turned on and off many times per second. This causes strong high frequency spikes in current which causes voltage spikes (noise) especially in wires that are parallel with the fan wiring. Your new fan is probably more inductive or more capacitive than the existing fan. The fix would be to separate the fan cabling farther from the temperature probe cabling. The temperature wiring is already twisted pair which helps but isn't good enough as they two signals don't go through a differential amplifier like they should but instead one side is grounded and the other goes into the arduino. Even better shield the power cable to the fan with a grounded shield. Or just always use 100% fan. I find that 100% fan gives the best results.

If you do that I suspect you need to publish the source code also with the same license. Is that okay for you or are you working for Makrbot and need everything closed source?

Wait - what? What? You have a bowden popping off a UM2???? I haven't heard of that before. I thought the extruder was too weak. If you pull real hard how much force does it take? The UM Original feeder can push 22 pounds of force so obviously the bowden should be MUCH stronger than that. You should be able to pick up the machine by the bowden - either end. At least I can on my UM Original - just tried it. The UM2 might be heavier.

Pretty much anyone you ask here has a UM Original so they are all going to be biased towards it. It works. You can get one much faster (probably just a week but certainly less than 2 weeks - they are probably ready to ship sitting on a shelf unlike the UM2s which are about 5-6 weeks wait for now). Ask Illuminarti in a month or a year when he's printed many things on his UM2 (which he doesn't have quite yet).

It's pretty safe. Just do it. You can always change it again later.