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nick-foley

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Posts posted by nick-foley

  1. Maybe I had not enough coffee yet today but I don't get the reason for stacking objects with a horizontal gap. I would never expect the upper object to have a clean bottom.

    Hovever, the way Cura deals with such situations might have some space for improvements.

    The bottom surface of a part printed with a raft turns out pretty clean, no? This is the exact same principle.

    It is useful when nesting parts, printing interlocking parts, or generating your own support material in CAD prior to Cura.

  2. When trying to print nested parts in the same STL, Cura doesn't maintain top/bottom thickness rules when things are stacked on top of each other but not quite touching.

    Here is an STL that shows exactly what I mean in a somewhat complex use case, but the basic principle is simple:

     

    Imagine I'm trying to print a cube with 2mm walls + top + bottom, and 20% infill. I dial my settings in to Cura, and I get that result.

    Now, instead, imagine my STL was actually two cubes, stacked on top of each other, but offset by 0.3mm or so... so that they could print in the same file, and pop apart like a part comes off a raft. I could in theory, print a huge stack of cubes in one print like this. It would be great.

    What Cura does in this case, though, is not what you want: Cura treats the near-touching tops and bottoms of the cubes as a contiguous volume, despite the 0.3mm offset, and doesn't print a proper top or bottom on either cube. The tops and bottoms of these cubes are an open mess of infill and not the desired & clean 2mm

    In the linked file, you can see this in the central part in which the small part is a functional part but also acting like support material for the larger part.

    I'm not sure if the Cura Uranium fixes this, as the layer view isn't showing infill paths and old Cura can't seem to preview new Cura's gcode files.

    If anyone has a fix for this I would be interested to hear it.

  3. It seems to be a monthly ritual that I bitch about Youmagine here.

     

    • Why isn't there a how-to guide for formatting descriptions and BOMs on the site? How do I turn copy into clickable links? Why does pasting a link cause the next word after the link to also become part of that link? Why can't I have links in the BOM???? Or at least why aren't they clickable?
    • Why do dashes turn in to lists in the BOM, but not in the item description???
    • Why did part of my item description become double-spaced???

    See all of this here: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/urban-puukko-v2-0

    And, semi-related to core funcitonality.... Why haven't you tightened up the design & layout of your item pages? The Tags, License, Social Media, Created, and Sharing areas all look like someone dumped a garbage can of generic icons and text on the floor. It's all wasted space and visual chaos.

     

  4. Really. When is your team going to treat this as a big opportunity and make Youmagine not suck?

    There are so many well-documented problems... I don't know that I've been able to use the site a single time in the past few months without hitting a 404 error.

    Can we start an indegogo or a gofundme so that you can hire another developer?

    There are so many ways to monetize this platform! You're basically the #2 player in the space and you are doing nothing to innovate... it is painful to watch. Allow people to buy my 3D prints (like a storefront for 3D hubs)! Allow people to remix/fork/collaborate! Allow people to offer design services! Do anything at all!

    Love,

    All of your hopeful and frustrated users.

     

  5. I saw the founder at a manufacturing conference a year or so ago. They have a strong pedigree, and a lot of enthusiasm. At the time, it was pretty clear that they didn't really even know what their true product direction was, and they definitely hadn't built anything.

    Hope they make something awesome though. Use SW daily and share your feeling. Fusion 360 is an interesting thing to check out. It already has at lot of cloud/collaborative/distributed features on top of a SW-familiar interface.

     

  6. All of the current Pi-based printer controllers (Octoprint, PrintToPeer, BotQueue) offer 'cloud' slicing of STLs on the Pi, using Cura in fact.

    Edited to add: Though I've used each of them for several months at a time, and still use Octoprint for several machines... cloud based slicing isn't really ready for prime-time at this point. Not because it doesn't work - it does - but being able to preview the layer view in Cura is too critical to achieving a high success rate when printing for cloud slicing to offer any net benefit. Maybe it will be worthwhile as slicers get slightly better and machine limitations get slightly relaxed.

     

  7. Yeah, in general, it looks like you are having some sort of extrusion related problem. Even your walls without overhangs are very uneven. Maybe there is a clog developing in your nozzle? Or maybe your extruder isn't set correctly. Or maybe something is up with your Z stage.

    I would try to solve that first before fixing your overhang problem, if it even still exists when extrusion is straightened out. Improving overhangs is simple - if everything else is working fine, just add more cooling to your printer, in the form of a crossflow fan or even a desk fan.

    Sorting out the extrusion problem will require more troubleshooting, but problems with extrusion will prevent you from addressing anything else about the printer until they are solved first.

     

  8. I've been using my UM1 with 1.75mm filament for a few months now. It is generally an upgrade, both in terms of filament availability and oozing reduction.

    There are a lot of ways to make this change though - I've gone through several iterations, all of them functional. His method looks solid, but if it's tripping you up, (and it seems like a bit of a project) you can also just purchase a pre-made 1.75mm filament extruder. I've used both of the Printrbot 1.75mm extruders (all metal and the beta geared version) and both work well.

    Maybe if you contact him directly he'll put up something on Youmagine though.

     

  9. I have printed with it before (not Gizmodorks brand).

    You need to print with very very low fan, and keep the walls on your part very thin. It holds heat/stays molten for quite a while, so thick walls warp and sag like crazy.

    Likely a heated bed + heated chamber is needed for easy results. I printed a few things which were very functional, but the amount of effort needed puts it beyond my normal printing needs...

     

  10. I don't think POM is a great choice for a frame material (cost vs. stiffness isn't so ideal) but it does laser cut very well... it's probably the best thing to cut after acrylic. The part accuracy is great and the strength/slipperiness/toughness is fantastic. With our 90W laser we can get through 1/4", but that's probably around the limit. One thing to watch out for though - it has a clear flame! Burnt myself picking up some small pieces that I couldn't tell were on fire from the laser.

     

  11. Thanks!!!

    I don't know when you added this feature (been on 14.12RC9 for a while) but I love that it now pulls over the machine data from the previous installs! That was the main reason I wasn't keeping up with the beta releases, because I was tired of recreating several machines every time I moved to a new version.

    ...Now you just need to default to enabling retractions on long comb moves and everything will be perfect.... eh? eh????

     

  12. Yeah, this is a pain and happens any time you switch from PLA to a higher temp material. When I switch from PLA to PET/XT, if the hotend isn't meticulously clean, the temperature increase and polymer change seems to knock off every bit of residue which has built up inside the hotend and cause a clog in a matter of minutes. Sometimes, you can just push through it, but usually, it requires a few atomic pulls with the higher temp material.

    I just placed an order with PrintedSolid, but forgot to pick up some nozzle cleaning filament while doing so. I would hope that running a few cm of that filament in between material changes would make the swap easier. Will probably try it soon.

     

  13. If you're trying to maximize quality I would go a little slower. There is evidence of some ringing on your sharp corners. 30mm or 40mm/s is going to help that.

    Also lower the temperature as suggested.

    Other filaments (Pure PLA instead of the PHA) may be less stringy, and can take lower temperatures. Finding US suppliers of PLA which have as good of colors as Colorfabb is tricky though...

     

  14. Yeah, I had a few rolls of the Prototype Supply PLA, all with issues. The owner of the company was very proactive and sent me new rolls to try to solve the problem, but ultimately all of the rolls (Grey) printed about the same. The layer bonding was very poor at cool temperatures, and the printed parts were very brittle at high temperatures. We've gone through dozens of spools from almost all of the big manufacturers and never had a problem to this degree.

    My go to now is Gizmo Dorks for PLA. The name is dumb but the PLA is crazy cheap ($26/Kg), available on Amazon Prime, and the print quality & filament strength are the best I've ever used. We've gone through almost half of their colors at this point and I prefer it to Diamond Age, Ultimachine, Colorfabb, etc. The fact that it's cheaper is just a plus.

     

  15. Maybe test out using a different slicer. Cura is best-in-class, but for printing small things, its refusal to print walls thinner than 2X the nozzle diameter (it only plots there-and-back paths) becomes a major limitation.

    Also, try an even lower temperature? Printing tiny details is all about having perfect control of the pressure inside the nozzle, and keeping the temperature low can help with that.

     

  16. The UM stock extruder works fine with 1.75mm filament, you just need to reprint part of the bowden clamp and swap the bowden tube. PM me if you want more details, I haven't posted anything about the mod anywhere...

     

  17. The absolute most important thing when buying sheet material for laser cutting is that the sheet material is perfectly flat. Even a slight warp in your starting material will make the cutting process a nightmare and the resulting parts deformed in ways you do not want to have to deal with.

    UM birch ply is very high quality - dense wood, low rate of imperfections, very thoroughly glued plies. This is also critical in sourcing your material, as varying material properties lead to varying cut depths and kerf widths when lasering. Also something you don't want to deal with.

    I would use a particle board material before I would use low or medium quality birch ply when making a UM frame. The frame is very stiff by design, so you don't need a ton of material strength - you just need uniform, flat material. Melamine faced MDF or normal MDF could be preferable to anything but high quality birch ply.

     

  18. This is something I've searched for as well. I've used dozens of filaments at this point, here are the lowest gloss PLA's I've found:

    Reprapper.com White, Blue PLA - Not the greatest filament quality (I don't think it's pure PLA: prints a little smelly, sometimes has blobbing issues) but the finish is very matte, almost ABS like. It is cheap though, and very nice prints are possible.

    Gizmo Dorks Pink Rose - Good quality filament, cheap, satin finish that is halfway between traditional PLA and ABS. I like the color, but it isn't appropriate for all prints.

    I've used most of Diamond Age's colors, much of Ultimachine's, much of Gizmo Dorks, much of Ultimaker's, etc... I've also asked most of those suppliers about making matte versions of their PLA... apparently it isn't easy to do.

    Let us know if you find anything else.

     

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