[Adding second glass plate with Garolite to UMO with heated bed kit]

Thank you both for the input. By aluminum tooling plate you mean something like this? (Found via a quick search, if you have a supplier to recommend please do.)

What thickness would you recommend? It looks like most sites I've found so far go down to 1/4", which still seems a bit thick compared to the 1/8" glass I'm using now.

I'm honestly not worried about this bed being a different thickness. What I've done for my current garolite bed is to create a shim that sits on the wood that triggers the Z-switch and adjusts the height to match without needing to re-level much if at all.

 

[Adding second glass plate with Garolite to UMO with heated bed kit]

I'm planning to pick up the UMO heated bed kit. In addition to the glass plate supplied with the kit, I was thinking of picking up another glass plate of the same size and gluing Garolite to it based on my http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/8276-solution-for-being-unable-to-buy-un-warped-garolite-to-print-nylon-on/ printing Nylon on Garolite. I had a couple questions I wanted to get advice from everybody here on.

Is the glass supplied with the kit borosilicate glass?

 

It looks like the glass plate is just clipped onto the bed, so I shouldn't have any trouble attaching an alternate plate?

Will I be able to glue the garolite to the glass that way I did with my existing setup (linked above), or will the expansion of the glass during heating cause issues with that?

 

[Solution for being unable to buy un-warped garolite to print nylon on]

Garolite LE is a great surface for printing nylon on, but in practice it's hard to buy sheets of a thickness appropriate for printing (e.g. 1/4") that are not hopelessly warped. The 1/4" sheet I order from McMaster Carr was warped at least 1/16" in two directions (dome-shaped).

After trying a couple alternate surfaces and not being entirely happy with any of them I came up with a solution for printing on garolite that I've been printing on for several months and am extremely happy with.

What I did was get a 3/8" sheet of glass cut to the size of my bed, a 1/32" sheet of garolite from McMaster cut to the same size, and some sheet adhesive (I used Killer Humgo Adhesive because I got a 3-sheet pack for cheap) to glue them together.

The 1/32" sheet of garolite is flexible enough that it doesn't matter if it comes warped, and once it's glued to the sheet of glass it has a very consistent thickness. The thickness of my glass-garolite sandwich is consistent to 0.01 mm or so.

I use binder clips to affix to to the bed and a spacer (the same thickness as the glass-garolite combo) on top of the z-stop trigger to offset the additional thickness.

 

Even buying the glass and adhesive the the total cost was about the same amount as buying 1/4" garolite to begin with.

 

[Progress update on the new Cura slicer]

The idea to print spare infill denser near the top is pretty good. Need to think a bit on how to implement it (I know how KISSlicer does it, but my code is using a different way to do things)

The "oversolidfy" (or interface layers) is something I never really understood from Skeinforge, I know what happens, but I never understood why someone in their right mind would think it's a good idea. Thus, my engine does not do this.

I'll most likely throw in a "power user" mode, where you can configure shitloads of things, like different extrusion widths and speeds for just about anything.

For support material, there is a lot to improve. I currently have an implementation that resembles the SF way. But most certainly that will change.

The "Skin" or stacked layer implementation of Skeinforge is just an ugly hack, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But this feature for my new engine will most likely not make it in the first version. As I have to choose what to include and what not. And slicing at different layerheights add quite a bit complexity to the current code.

My "thin wall fix" is pretty simple and effective, but it will require some tweaking for optimal results. My initial settings caused overextrusion so I dialed it down a bit already. It also causes a LOT of tiny head movements, which result in a lot of noise. But the path-order-optimizer combined with the combing code take care of the possible time spend here. And the thin-wall-fill is done combined with the normal sparse and top/down infill, so it doesn't to it separately moving all over the place when the rest is done, but while the rest is also printed.

As I'm also doing some changes on the Cura GUI... well, "some changes" are that I'm merging the project planner into the main window, adding better object selection for it, and updating the 3D view a bit. The code is currently a huge mess. For the technical people, I'm switching from the fixed-function depricated OpenGL code to VBO's with Shaders.

We're working on better dual-extrusion support. And I'm pondering to add support for having a "multi-part" objects which you print with 1 head, but different parts at different settings (making dual-extrusion nothing more then a multi-part object where one of the parts has a different extruder as setting). The AMF file format might play a big role in this.

But this is long term planning, so be happy with the current 13.03 release :wink:

 

Thanks for the response, and I'm glad to hear that most of my biggest issues with SF will most likely eventually be addressed. Looking forward to trying the 13.03 release, and thanks for all your hard work.

 

[Following all topics (and even all forums) automatically]

I want Google Group digest mode-like behavior, where every so often (daily is fine) I get an email with all posts since the last email grouped by thread.

I have figured out how to follow a forum, but that only notifies me daily of new topics. I haven't found a way to be notified of all new posts without individually following each topic. Is there a way to do this?

I do a lot of my reading during my commute during which internet is spotty, so loading up a mobile version of the forum isn't practical but reading content via email works great.

 

[Progress update on the new Cura slicer]

I'm excited for this new slicer. As far as feature requests go, there are quite a few of mine implicitly included in my slicer thoughts post from a while back: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/ultimaker/lawrence$20johnston%7Csort:date/ultimaker/5C1uAUz6JvE/KufYdLe3OuAJ

Some excerpts from the linked post (things that I find KISSlicer does better than the current Cura):

* KISSlicer has a nice feature where it will print several layers of semi-sparse infill (much closer together than normal sparse infill) before top-skins, which tends to make the top-skin print much nicer with lower infill settings (e.g. ~20%). In Cura you have to increase the top/bottom thickness to get the top-skins looking as nice, which affects both top and bottom-skins and prints more completely solid layers.

 

* KISSlicer supports printing upskins covering only part of a layer better, as Cura (i.e. Skeinforge) will usually make significantly more of the layer solid than really needs to be so.

 

* KISSlicer supports varying speed based on the extrusion kind (perimeter, top/bottom-skin and support, sparse infill). This is great for reducing print time by speeding up sparse infill.

 

* I prefer KISSlicer's support in that it generates sparse support up until a couple layers before it's needed and then switches to denser support up to where the print will rest on it. Saves filament for basically no downside.

 

* KISSlicer produces the full number of perimeters for large (and/or supported) overhangs, whereas Cura seems to go into some sort of bridging mode and only produce a single perimeter no matter how many are configured.

 

* KISSlicer's stacked layer implementation is such that the stacked layers do not lie directly on top of one another if the object is not perfectly vertical (it prints the same perimiters it would if you'd configured layers of half the size, but only prints infill every other layer) whereas Cura's just generates layers that are the thickness you configured but prints the perimeter twice at half thickness (so the two perimeter layers always lie directly on top of one another, even when the object is not completely vertical). I prefer KISSlicer's implementation, as the outside looks much better any time the object isn't completely vertical. Cura's implementation might have a small advantage in that the infill is always touching both stacked perimeters, but in most cases I would prefer the outside looking better.

* KISSlicer has a crowning feature, where it each layer it will attempt to fill in small gaps where there's no room for infill but the perimeters don't quite meet up. In concept, this is awesome, and in implementation, it's often awesome, but occasionally it can be a PITA. Especially for an object which has a lot of these tiny gaps on each layer (a half-sized octopus, say), there can be easily a half dozen or more tiny jump-prime-extrude extremely small amount-retract-repeat sequences each layer which travel all over the model which take up a lot of time and tend to slightly over extrude plastic in those areas due to the time spent priming and retracting. I do need to mess around a bit more with the crowning threshold setting to see if I can improve this. [NOTE: It sounds like you've already come up with your own solution to this, but I'm listing it in hopes that you can avoid the issues with KISSlicer's implementation, though even comb + retract only on jumps will help significantly I think.]