jhertzberg

I'm glad my musing was helpful. If you hang your filament spool well above the printer, instead of at the rear, you can reduce some of the strain from the twist.

That makes sense, but if I understand you correctly this means that the orientation of your driving wheel will change relative to the column of filament as the shaft sweeps. Might this twisting snap or weaken the filament? Will the entire hot end rotate with the angle change, or will the filament twist again between the driving wheels and the melt zone? (Sorry if this sounds negative. I really like the idea, and I may be overthinking it.)

You would still have the masses of your motors to contend with on just the wrong diagonal moves. With all the stiffness you are building into your XY carriage, perhaps you would be better served by keeping the motors stationary, and for each, running a splined shaft up the side (y axis) and through a bevel gear assembly mounted to the slider block, with a second splined shaft running through the head, to the opposite slider block. The additional weight of the bevel gear assembly is probably more than offset by the lack of moving motors and the simpler head.

You could relocate your material feeder to eliminate this issue. I think it was David Braam who at one point suspended the feeder inverted above the center of the machine, using a tripod and rubber bands.

Mine has always been on a solid table, but in years past, UM has hung running printers from bungee cords at crazy angles for trade shows. If the worry is that your printer might walk off the table, try putting it on a rubber mat or some cork. That will reduce noise transfer too.

I use a four year old Ultimaker Original, and have made several mods over the years. Quick rundown: Heated Bed - OMG, why did I wait so long! Virtually no minuses. Big pluses for bed adhesion and smooooth bottoms. Direct drive - It works fine, but I don't know how much improvement in print quality it really gave me. I probably could done as well just slowing my jerk settings. The plus is that I have fewer pulleys to worry about. The minus is that I'm always smacking into the protruding motors when fiddling with the feeder. Twister blocks - Do this instead of reptar blocks. They make wor

Yes, is the same as shell thickness. It's called wall thickness in Cura. If you are using the new version of Cura, use the advanced settings Gradual Infill Steps and Gradual Infill Step Height along with your setting for Infill Density. You can add these to your UI by clicking the gear icon next to the Infill Category and checking the boxes on the resultant dialog. With this at your disposal, you can set, for example, Infill Density to 20%, Gradual Infill Steps to 2, and Gradual Infill Step Height to 2mm. The result will be an object filled at 5%, until 4mm before the top of the infil

That depends on the object that you are printing. For print quality, if what you mean by that is the best surface representation of the model, the infill percent only has to be high enough so that all features are supported sufficiently and top layers will close and not sag. Simple designs that taper slowly to a point don't require infill at all. For most everything else, an infill of 20% is usually ample if you are using the usual number of top layers. With Cura 2.3 and higher, you can even save material by setting infill to 20%, then setting Gradual Infill Steps to a 1 or 2 so that the 20%

Only to a limited extent, since often the optimal settings for a different brand, or even a different color of the same brand, will vary slightly. Some things are obvious, like color inconsistencies, debris, and pocking, but things like underextrusion may be your printer settings. If I am not happy with a print the first time I use a new filament, I'll do some debugging. I'll print a small calibration object ~50mm high, and raise the temperature about 5C every 10mm, starting at 10C below the stated temp for the filament. Or, I might slow the printer down to 50% speed, and increase it by 10%

Look at the flair of the user you dissed. Look at mine. Look at yours. The etiquette of this board is not like 4chan. The standard here is to comment as if you are face to face. Many of us do meet with each other at conferences and maker faires. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you would not say "Never made use of Google in your life?" to someone you were talking to for the first time at a conference. Also, user/ultiarjan 's statement, notwithstanding the existence of combination bearings, is correct. The Ultimaker design uses bushings for XY. Combination bearings instead of bushin

You are new here. We are a supportive forum. Your informative links are very much appreciated. The insulting tone of your comment, not so much.

You also can have access to the rearward holes just forward of the four holes surrounding each of the linear bearings. You would just need to swap in a longer M3 screw.

That's great news! Will you cover all Ultimaker models, including Original?

The Structur3D folks went the syringe and geared extruder route. They even sell a package with the paste extruder integrated with a UM2+. It should be straightforward to adapt their extruder to your toolhead changer. Unfold ~fab uses compressed air and a moineau pump instead of a geared motor, definitely not something for a home use. I ran into the same five issues as you when I built a syringe extruder, but since I'm looking to print clay I'm now thinking about skipping the high viscosity issue entirely, and doing some variant of a powder bed type approach.

It's because the cooling fan would hit a side panel that is flush.