nick-foley

Misumi replacement (higher quality): PSFJ8-348

Hmmm, yeah, mouser has their smallest one at $88/unit... probably a little above what it is worth to me... Maybe will try a large axial fan...

Is anyone using a crossflow fan that can be PWM'd? The Silverstone ones I've been using for the past few months are fantastic at constant full blast for PLA and XT, but I would like to be able to turn them down for using materials which have worse layer adhesion like ABS and PET+. Suggestions?

mcmaster carr

Stepper driver in the X is failing or is tuned too low to overcome gantry friction, so you're skipping a few steps when it makes a fast travel move and catches a slightly-warped-up edge. Options: 1) Try increasing the current slightly, if you feel up for it. You can find guides online that give reference voltages, I tune by ear and feel and it works great. 2) Or, decrease travel speed 30-50mm/s so you have less aggro hops around the build environment. 3) Get yourself a heated bed to stop the warping. (This is a worthwhile upgrade.)

To anyone using this hotend: After making iterative improvements to the printhead over the past few months (This is the 24th version!), I have just posted to Youmagine a significantly improved design. It adds strength where it matters, removes material where it doesn't, and should generally be more usable + more reliable. One important thing to note is that excellent layer adhesion is important for screw boss strength. Use a good PLA, hot, or know what you're doing in another material. Youmagine Link: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/ubisxultimaker-printhead

This looks like Cura overfilling the buffer with overly-resolute toolpath data. Try reverting to 14.01. Nothing seems weird about your original settings, apart from the temp being a 10-ish degrees too high.

If you put your material cost into the preferences section of Cura, it does this for you for each print.

Yeah get rid of the support entirely, unless there is some stuff hiding in it which we can't see. You shouldn't need it. Looks like a little stringing is happening, so there's probably room to drop the temp a few degrees as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Lube-Spuer-Oil-4-Ounce/dp/B000UKUHXK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1404659653&sr=8-4&keywords=super+lube Been using this oil for several months on my X and Y axes... superior to mineral/sewing machine/3-in-1 oil in every way. Lubricates better, dries less quickly, doesn't leave any gummy residue when it does, doesn't attract as much dust.

Fusion 360 is only free because autodesk is testing out a new business model, trying to pull some marketshare from SW, and trying to capture some of this newly emerging consumer/prosumer 3D modeler market. As someone who has spent far too much of my life in Solidworks, I am surprised by how good Fusion 360 is.

Tried Fusion 360? Very very (incredibly) powerful (and free, for the moment) parametric CAD. Similar to Solidworks.

Heated Bed + Blue Tape. Edit: According to the later posts, they changed their formula... old stuff was good on hot blue tape. No idea with the new stuff.

What is the reason the (ludicrously patent-pending) makerbot extruder upgrade isn't a good choice for use on a UM? Does it work well with 3mm filament and the increased extrusion pressure of a bowden tube?

I bet your steps per mm need to be calibrated in firmware. Using a ruler or calipers, accurately measure the result of a square you're trying to print that is 100mmx100mm. Adjust your steps based on the factor that print is off. Is this a UM1? UM2? Homebuilt machine?

I've done the same thing with my laser cutter and a bed of granulated sugar.... It's fun, but a laser cutter is not the right machine to use for anything other than a fun experiment in 3D printing. Something purpose built can be a lot faster, more precise, more cost effective.

Maybe clogged. Could also be other problems, but a clog will be the easiest to fix. Turn the temperature of the nozzle up to 240ish and let it sit for a minute. Then feed material through the nozzle for a while, at least 50mm of filament. See if any mess other than clean filament comes out. If filament doesn't come out, or it comes out cleanly but you continue to have printing problems, it is likely you will have to take apart your hotend to learn a little more about the problem, though it is also possible that you need to make some adjustments to your material feeder mechanism, either the tension on it, or the way your filament is spooling. The clog is the easiest though, test that first.

Torx generally means Star. Also, look up screw extractors/ EZ outs.

Turns out my initial guess was wrong and the problem was indeed a broken wire inside the hotend. Worth noting though: When a Mintemp error is raised, the machine stops reporting both temperature for the hotend and temperature for the heated bed. This should probably be considered a bug within Marlin, as it makes diagnosis more challenging than it should be.

Was in the middle of a long print today when the machine abruptly stopped with a MINTEMP error. Restarting the machine keeps the error up in the Ulticontroller, and all temp readings are 0. I would guess that this isn't a faulty wiring issue, for two reasons: 1) I've dealt with wiring-related MINTEMP errors before and this is very persistent - not intermittent/flickery at all, and 2) I have a heated bed, and both the hotend and the heated bed stopped reporting their temperatures simultaneously. (Unless a MINTEMP error caused by the hotend prevents the heated bed temp from being reported... anyone know?) The machine is a little over a year old, but it's been a serious workhorse and is probably approaching 3000 hours. My guess is that something with the mainboard or arduino has gone south. I have other arduinos I can pop in to to test, but is there anything in particular with the mainboard which might have failed and caused temperature readings to stop working?

Why doesn't a tight-fitting skirt work for your use? (Sounds a bit weird out of context...) You say you don't need the skirt before each print, just the first one (since you want it to print all as one group in the beginning), so it stands to reason that your extrusion is going just fine in between prints (otherwise a skirt before each print would be beneficial), and so if it's going just fine, it shouldn't matter if it prints a tiny skirt before each individual print or not. The skirts after the first one should be completely irrelevant, as long as they are only offset a few mm. The printhead size should be your only limiting dimension on packing your objects closely together. Unless of course you're worried about overall bed leveling, which, if you're genuinely trying to run production on, you probably can solve more easily and efficiently in ways other than printing a large skirt first. I can certainly see cases where a group skirt would be better, but the problems you are sort-of describing just seem like they are easier to solve in other ways...

Like I said previously, you're getting fixated on an arcane technical aspect of a solution instead of clearly stating the actual problem you are having and asking for help on how to solve it. Also not clear if you're printing in Nylon or T-Glase (PET), which have different bed adhesion strategies.

Yeah, while I may not always agree with every feature Daid chooses to prioritize, focus-grouping/crowd-sourcing product features is a certain way to end up with mediocrity.

I think most of us come from the country of the Internet's, where if you ask questions like an entitled prick, your going to get responses that treat you like one. Cura is open source and is not software you paid for. Unless you fix the particular issue you're concerned with yourself (probably actually easier than you might think) or hire someone who knows python to fix it for you, your right to make feature requests like they are the ten commandments is pretty limited... Moreover, i think you're generating a lot of ill will towards yourself over an issue that is extremely easy to solve. There are plenty of ways to prime the nozzle and make sure your bed is level, which is all it seems your trying to achieve from your group skirt.

Also cranking the temp up to 240ish and ramming filament through by hand can sometimes take care of clogs without disassembly.