jonnybischof

The list is far from complete, actually I just got some very nice G11 fiberglass plates to make my new build plate with. More updates on the complete Z-stage will follow soon. I can do only one thing at a time.. The Original Ultimaker actually doesn't have any spacers between the pulleys and the bearings. The UM2 does have these. I'm thinking about a solution for that. Actually I don't think that having spacers is necessary. But I'm going to make a little tool to help with the installation, so that all the pulleys can be mounted with the same distance from the walls / bearings. If your slide back and forth inside the bearings, you should think about stabilizing them. That's not supposed to happen, but it's possible and it is a known problem (I heard something like that from the first UM2 users). I'll make some rod-endcaps which integrate a pointed setscrew to hold the rods in place. Will take some time though, but it's one of the next things on my list.

- Print very slowly. 20 or 30 mm/s (I always do 30mm/s) - Use "minimal" printing temperature (see below) - Use 100% fan speed - Make sure your extrusion is very well tuned. No overextrusion, no underextrusion "minimal printing temperature": This is heavily dependent on your material. Some PLA is hard to print at all below 200°C, while there are sorts of PLA that print perfectly at 180°C. You'll have to experiment on that... /edit: Your part will look a lot better with small layer heights (not the text, but the top face of the model). 0.06mm or even a bit lower should be optimal. I'd suggest starting at 0.06mm and tuning your settings. Then you can go lower if desired. /edit 2: The text is really tiny. The inside part of the "A" for example can't be printed, it's too small. You can probably print this "well legible" with well tuned settings. But if you want it to look really good, you'll need to make it bigger. You could use a "stroke font" which has a defined line thickness. Make it 0.41mm thick and embossed instead of engraved, like yellowshark suggests. This may or may not work, it's not really a strength of FDM 3D printing... /edit3: One last thing: With Cura's "layer view", you can see how the printer will actually print the part. You can see a lot of things there without having to actually print the part.

Da ist definitiv ein Mikroschalter verbogen! Der sollte etwa so aussehen: (Quelle: http://www.tamiyausa.com/images/product/470/75016/header_75016.jpg)

Wie sehen deine Retraction-Einstellungen aus? UM1 oder UM2? - Modifikationen am Feeder-System? Ich hab sowas schon gesehen, als der Drucker beim Retracten kurz pausiert, um das Filament zurück zu ziehen, und dabei etwas Plastik ausläuft. Somit passiert das dann immer beim Retracten. Benutzt du Cura? Welche Version?

Welcome to the community!! Usually, printing the first layer works best with the fan off. After that, you shouldn't crank up the fan from 0% to 100% in an instant as that may "shock" the plastic and make it warp right off the platform. But that depends heavily on the material / brand / production batch.. As for good fan settings, someone else should answer as I only have an UM1 with different fan setup.

Hast du "enable combing" aktiviert? Wenn ja, probiere einmal, das zu deaktivieren. Dadurch müsste der Drucker dann öfters "retracten", könnte aber zu einem besseren Ergebnis führen. Wenn du in Cura die "Layer view" aktivierst, dann siehst du vermutlich viele dünne, blaue Linien. Das ist "travel", sprich der Druckkopf muss von einem Ort zum nächsten springen, ohne zu drucken. "Combing" macht, dass der Drucker dabei versucht, nicht "aus dem Teil hinaus" zu fahren, sondern im Innern des Teils zu fahren. Bei deinen dünnen Wänden könnte das solche Probleme verursachen. Wenn das nicht hilft, könntest du es mit Cura 14.01 versuchen, statt der neuen 14.03. Es gab da ein paar grosse Änderungen. Ich hatte das Gefühl, da gibt's ein paar neue Fehler, welche in 14.01 nicht waren. Auf jeden Fall bleibe ich bei 14.01, bis die nächste Version erscheint...

This is a typical problem with Sketchup... After some time I learned how to prevent these red surfaces (inside planes or double planes at the same place) already while modelling. Selecting the whole model and using the "smooth edges" command (I don't know if that's translated correctly, I'm using the german version. See screenshot below) will reveal all "double planes" which occur mostly when you're doing very small surfaces. The lines will not disappear if there are double surfaces. By the way, this smoothing tool doesn't change any geometry, it just makes lines between surfaces disappear, if the angle between the surfaces is less than the angle specified (I leave this at 20°). I prefer making a clean model over using the "patch-up" tools, because these don't always work as intended. For example, I'm doing parts right now which will have some structures that are entirely enclosed within the part, because I added supports which make it print better, but lead to that effect. Cura will just ignore these inside structures with "fix horrible" activated. But the structures are necessary because you're supposed to remove the support after printing and then they won't be inside structures anymore...

How do you mean, not very wide? Picture, please

I only read a few lines of the comments you linked, but I think I understand the two basic principles he's talking about: Open-loop vs closed-loop. Simply put: Open loop means "stepper mode". That means you set the moving direction of the motor and then "clock" through every single step. Means if you want the motor to turn 90°, you put out exactly as many clocks as it takes steps to turn it by 90°. The clock frequency defines the rotating speed of the motor, which makes it "jerk". It is difficult (but possible!) to generate a smooth rotation in open-loop mode. Closed loop means that instead of controlling every step yourself, you build a hardware that will automatically commutate the motor coils, effectively converting your stepper motor into a brushless DC motor that can be controlled with a simple DC voltage, or of course PWM controlled DC voltage. You will need an encoder in order to be informed about the rotation, and you need to react to the motor's rotation instead of "directly programming the amount of rotation in steps". This makes the control circuit much more complicated - expecially for "stop-and-go moves" which are pain to control with BLDC motors - but in turn makes the motor's movement much smoother because it will always commute in the right moment instead of jerking from step to step. Closed-loop mode is also a lot more energy-efficient and develops the greatest possible torque. You can force-stop the motor by hand, it will stop. When you release it, it will continue to turn. The machine doesn't care but instead resumes operation. If you force-stop a stepper, then it will lose steps and not move to the intended position when released again. I've toyed around with a very nice hardware which supported both modes. For your reference: This control board costs pretty much the same as a whole UM1 kit. In my limited experience (I only had the chance to do a single 100 hours project myself, but I did have the time to try out both modes for it), I'd say that closed-loop mode is probably not useful in a 3D printer because you need very precise control over short amounts of rotation, which is the strength of stepper mode (open loop). You don't usually need to build up a constant amount of RPM over a certain time, but instead you will rather move "10 steps left, 300 steps right, 50 steps left, 100 steps right". Closed-loop mode has it's main strength when you define a target RPM and regulate the output voltage so that it keeps on this target. If the motor rotates at 100 RPM target speed, and you change the motor load (increase friction -> increase necessary torque), then the control circuit automatically regulates power in order to stay at 100 RPM. An open loop motor on the other hand would just rotate with the set speed. If you increase the load, it will at some point lose steps and become slower. No regulation present. But that is nothing that would be useful in a 3D printer... Imho stepper mode is the way to go with 3D printers. You can simulate a closed-loop system with open-loop mode, basically by adjusting your clocking frequency in a way that makes the motor accelerate and decelerate as it would in closed-loop mode. I believe that is pretty much what the Marlin firmware does, and it doesn't seem to do it too badly... An FPGA would be a very nice thing to have in order to get a flawless multi-motor control. For professional closed-loop applications, the FPGA is pretty much a must-have anyways.

Okay, 190 MB is huge. I guess that's the problem here It's definetly not a hardware issue, but I doubt Cura even uses hardware acceleration (or does it?)

The E3D is all about not needing a PTFE tube... I wouldn't switch away from the Ultimaker hotend if I didn't think it was necessary. I think that the Ultimaker hotend, being built out of several different components that all touch the filament, is just too unreliable. I've had problems with clogging over and over with the UM hotend, so now I want a "solid state" solution which will deliver steady and reliable performance. It can't be that difficult...

2 Fans are not by definition "too much weight". You can add a lot more weight to the X-Y carriage if you really want to. But a lighter carriage gives you many benefits which may not be so obvious to see. Accelerating and decelerating a certain mass requires a certain force. The lower that mass, the lower the required force. This means less stress on the belts, and less backlash or ringing when you abruptly change the moving direction of the printhead (which happens all the time, just think about infill printing...). If the motor starts skipping steps, then that is only the worst case. That doesn't mean it gets "worse" even before the motor starts to fail. I don't know the details, and I haven't done any measurements. It's just the general direction in which you want to go. The fact that printing at lower speeds gives you a better printing quality does have something to do with the fact that lower speeds means lower acceleration forces. It's by no means the only thing affecting the print quality, but it is one of the factors. Having two fans is usually an improvement over having only one fan. But it shouldn't be necessary to use two extreme-power fans which sound like an airplane passing by. Using a good fan duct is more important and a lot more elegant solution than to just use brute force. Having two fans is not about doubling the airflow, it's about making your cooling solution reach every corner of the print. In other words: You need an appropriate fan duct Also, if you use strong fans, you need to take good care that you don't cool down your nozzle, or your printer will simply clog and fail. Again: A good fan duct and maybe even isolating the hotend with silicone or Kapton tape will give better results than just blowing with as much force as possible.

You shouldn't use two 40x40x20 mm fans. That's a lot of weight for the printhead. If you really need to do that, you will probably have to print very slowly in order to prevent having problems with ringing or even skipped motor steps. It seems most 12V fans don't have a problem with19V supply. I'm using a single Noiseblocker Blacksilent fan, 40x40x10mm, with very low airflow (same duct as mentioned above, but only left side part). Works well enough for my blocky technical prints. I always print at 35mm/s speed. Takes long, but usually gives good results.

Oh I will look, and if it looks bad, it goes back to the manufacturer. If I ever get it in the first place. The British post sucks.

How large is a large STL file?

Interesting to see that there are this many "similar" hotends on the market... I keep reading about how people have to ream, polish and clean these hotends inside. What's with that? I'm definetly not going to lay my hands on the insides of the E3D hotend! First, I don't have the tools, second, I pay a premium price for a premium product (they do state that in the online-shop: "High quality surface finish"). Any experiences with that? I still haven't received anything from the post (#°¦@|¢!!), seems I have to investigate -.-

"travel" is when the printhead has to quickly "travel" from a point to another, without putting out any plastic. The easiest way to see what it means is, if you imagine two columns next to each other. The printhead will need to "travel" between the two columns in order to print both of them. If you set your travel speed too low, then you will get a lot of stringing, because the difference between "print" and "travel" is mostly a difference in speed. The slower you print, and the faster you travel, the less stringing you get. But you shouldn't go higher than 150mm/s for travel unless you know that the machine can handle it (needs to be well calibrated and running super-smoothly). As for the "cool" settings: No need to change anything there imho. For ABS, you would need to change a lot, but for PLA this is usually the best way to go.

The newer versions still add a Brim inside, but only for relatively larger openings, and only a few lines, not the full amount of Brim until the whole opening would be covered.

And of course 0% infill, or you'll get the square infills... Just remember to put "solid infill bottom" back on after having sliced the tyres! I thought my Cura was broken for some time until I realised that I deactivated the "solid infill.." settings

You should definetly use Brim! Helps a lot with these small parts, so that they stick to the build platform better. If you print them all at once, you may just have to place some more than you actually need, until they get enough time to cool. I don't know if the "cool head lift" feature could be of use here?

Brim is an option that you can select in Cura. Brim will add some lines of material to the first layer, in order to make it larger and therefore make it stick better to the platform. It's easiest to just see it for yourself in Cura's "layer view". The brim will be colored differently from the rest of the model (is it still light blue? I didn't like the new layer view so I switched back to 14.01). Cristal is the spanish word for glass I never had any success with gluestick - someone else should answer that... /sidenote: Does anyone have experience with Polyetherimide (PEI) plates? I've read that it works like a charm, makes both PLA and ABS stick when heated, but the parts pop right off when cooled down. No tapes, no Kapton, no glue. But the stuff is really expensive so I'd like to hear something from more experienced users...

Just don't forget that you can't make the profiles longer than 200mm, and that they will easily break if you apply force to them. Narrows down the effective uses quite a bit...

You will have to activate "full settings" (Expert -> Switch to full settings...). Then go into the expert settings (Expert -> Open expert settings... CTRL+E). There you will find the "cool head lift" feature in the "Cool" settings.

I'm investigating similar problems on my machine. It could be electrical interference on the temperature sensor wiring. I have that strange problem that my heated bed temperature keeps dropping after a few minutes, but when I touch the sensor wiring it normalizes, then after a minute or so starts dropping again. Going to take some time until I can really say what's happening - I'll have to hook up my oscilloscopes to take some measurements. Having electrical interferences can lead to bad readings which will toss the PID out of balance. Or, it could of course simply be a bad configuration as Dim3nsioneer says.

After having used the new 3D view for some time, I also have to say that I preferred the automatically generated still previews. You should consider making a separate tab for the 3D views, instead of including it in the pictures section...