jonnybischof

Ok, just realised that you can do that Maybe you should consider buying only the metal parts as you don't need most of the other stuff: http://e3d-online.com/E3D-HotEnds/3mm-Bowden-V5-Metal-Only You only need to buy a 30x30x10mm fan and a tube fitting, which should both be easy enough to find. You can't use the 12V heater cartridge - it would get overloaded. You might use the thermistor (with a custom firmware only!), I don't know whether the thermistor or the thermocouple would yield better results. /edit: You can get the fan and tube fittings from E3D (in the spares category).

I have never tried printing directly on Aluminum. But printing directly on glass without any glue or hairspray should work well, as many people have reported so. I print directly on a Basalt bed which is not exactly the same as glass, but should be very similar. Definetly try abandoning the use of any kind of tape. Maybe you need gluestick or hairspray for some prints, but I believe you should get good results even without them - if you take your time and fine-tune your temperatures. I usually make parts with large flat bottoms. If you have a very small bottom area, then you might need something to stick the print down. I noticed that the first few lines usually don't stick well, but they start sticking better after 2 or 3 lines are next to each other.

I only tried printing PLA on Kapton once - it did not stick at all. Try not using Kapton tape, you should get better results. I'd try printing on just the bare platform - you might need to play around with both bed and nozzle temperatures until it works.

Beware of the fearsome beast! Guess you're not going to put this up for downloading? I'd love to put some of these around my appartment and put a "beware of tigers!" sign on the door

This has nothing to do with quality. If the product is specified to run at 12V DC (plus minus something of course), then running it at 19V DC is simply running it out of it's specifications and thereby "probably going to damage the product". It may or may not work, but it's definetly unwise to do that. The voltage specifiaction of a transistor doesn't have anything to do with quality either. Lower voltage transistors usually have a lower On-state resistance (higher current capability, better efficiency) than their higher voltage pendants... Instead of using 24V fans you could also connect two 12V fans in series. That's almost as unprofessional as running a 12V fan on 19V, but it should work if the two fans are the same model and there won't be any danger of damaging the fans. By the way, my 12V Noiseblocker fan also works on the UM1 at 19V. Usually at 100% fan speed. But I have already noticed deteriorating performance. I'd guess this comes from the high ambient temperature around the fan, but it may also be that the fan's electronics overheat from the 19V supply voltage...

The fan actually does run from 19V (probably PWM'd down to 12V RMS maximum because a 12V fan shouldn't survive 19V for long). If you add two fans on the same transistor, then you also double up the inductive load on the transistor, which is what probably blew up your transistor. Adding a freewheeling diode (something like a 1N4001 would do fine) should help. You might just end up blowing up the replacement transistor as well if you don't add one.

It depends on whether you have a thermocouple sensor (like the UM original hotend) or a thermistor (E3D standard if I read the description correctly). What did you buy exactly? /edit: Note that the standard kit also uses a 12V heater cartridge, but you need a 24V cartridge. So first of all, please tell which kit you bought exactly.

I can't get the hang of these github repositories... I always find only the mechanical drawings for the electronics, but the schematics are only in the .sch format which are useless to me. I thought there was a PDF somewhere, but I can't find it anymore o.O

I'd say that is the main issue. I only tried printing with glue once. It did not stick at all, not even a little bit You might need to fine-tune your bed temperature. There can be slight differences even between 1°C steps. The material will only stick if the bed is not too cold, but also not too hot. If you think you found an acceptable temperature, you should still experiment with slightly higher or lower bed temperatures, it may get even better And one more thing: Generally, you want to keep the bed temperature as low as possible (while getting good results of course). This will minimize shrinking and also draw less power. Don't underestimate the power consumption of a printer that runs all day long...

More info please... There shouldn't be any problems copypasting anything on this site (except if you want to copy text out of a picture ) Maybe it's a screen-related problem: The "problem sits in front of the screen" kinda problem

If anyone can make the new NSX model printable, it would be greatly appreciated By the way, this article has popped up somewhere on the forum before..

Can't you just flip the part upside down? Depends on the details which may be there... I usually try to avoid any overhangs where possible, but if it isn't possible I integrate the support right into the model. This can be a problem if you need your model to be "clean", for example in order to have it CNC machined in the future. So, maybe you'll just have to make a "prototyping" model and remove these supports for final production... This is how I would support the outer contour of your model. Just a quick & dirty sketchup, but you should get the idea: That's my dirty replication of your model Make a second lip on the outer contour, just 0.4mm wide (single pass line for the printer - check with Cura that this does get printed, you may need to define it like 0.41mm wide or something). This should show how the support works. Basically, you don't have an overhang anymore, but now it is a bridge that should print well. Support needs to be broken off after printing which is very easy because it's only a single pass line.

Actually I never thought about whether it was doable or not - I just set it to 0.03mm and it came out fine I was wondering about something similar. There may be models where you'd want to get different layer heights for different "stages" of the model. Like: make the base with 0.2mm layers, but the details that come on top of the base with higher resolution. Or of course, have a model which consists generally of high resolution, fine layers, but only the bridging layers are solid 0.2mm. I haven't tried it but I guess bridging at 0.02mm works pretty badly... This shouldn't be much of a problem, as there are other features that also create large flow fluctuations (like setting different speeds for infill and shell. Never tried that though). But it is of course a lot of work to actually implement such a feature...

That depends on the type of filament... The UM blue should print perfectly fine at 210°C or lower. I'm using 200°C at the moment with UM blue, but I extrude much slower (40mm/s with 0.1mm layer height -> half the extrusion rate!), so I'd guess 210°C could be ideal for you. /edit: Bed temperature also matters. For me, 60°C works well with UM blue.

Just for reference: I recently printed something with 0.03mm layer height: There is a huge difference in the top chamfer quality shown in the pictures. It turned out pretty much perfect, no more visible "stairs". BUT if you do overhangs with 0.03mm, you can get very bad results because the 0.03mm plastic is much more fragile than a "strong" 0.2mm strain. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it does require a very well tuned machine and a good quality filament.

Very interesting stuff guys!! A side note about using an aquarium pump: I've had to work with one (Innovatek HPPS, Eheim 1046 style DC pump) and I noticed that the thing is a HUGE inductive load. If you drive such a DC pump (not talking about 230V pumps here) directly from a laboratory power supply, then it will show something like 20V even though it's only set to 12V (inductive load...). The UM electronics will not like to be on the same power supply as such a DC pump! There is a simple solution: Use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_diode and a large http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_capacitor to tame the pump.

Higher resolution means more code -> bigger gcode files Are there a lot of circles in this model? /edit: I guess it's the chess piece from the original post? There you go - lots of circles

No doubt it does behave differently, because PLA, like any other plastic, is never exactly the same as some other manufacturer's PLA. There might also be slight differences between different colors of the same manufacturer. In the worst case, there may even be differences between different production batches of the very same product... If it's faberdashery, then it's PLA. They don't make ABS. PLA smells somewhat like pop corn or maple syrup when it's extruding. ABS smells like petroleum (inhaling these fumes is not very healthy, by the way). That's what I meant by "does it smell differently": If you compare the UM blue to the faberdashery black, is there a significant difference in how they smell when extruding? I'm asking that because I have a very good black filament from ProtoParadigm. But this one smells like ABS some times (I have never printed ABS with the printhead I'm currently using before so there is no remaining ABS from earlier prints...), so I guess this "PLA" may actually be a more complex formula than other PLA brands. If your Faberdashery PLA smells differently than the UM blue (I mean really different, not just a slight nuance because it will definitely be different by a slight nuance), then it's not really faberdashery black... ...which brings me back to a question I already asked before: Did you buy the faberdashery black from Faberdashery, or from a reseller?

If it's just 10m, you can use a long USB cable Preferrably take something with a built-in active repeater, usually more than 3m of cabling can lead to USB failure. And DON'T use multiple short extension cables - that will almost surely not work. You could try using a powered USB hub instead of a repeater, but that just makes it unnecessarily difficult There's also some more complex solutions, like USB to LAN and back converters, but even these don't seem to be very expensive... I have no idea if that would work without any problems, but theoretically it should.

220°C should be fine. Did you buy the filament from faberdashery directly? If you re-insert your blue filament and it prints like it's supposed to, then it's most likely a problem with the filament. Does it smell differently than the UM filament?

imho the best solution is to use a car DC/DC converter like it was shown before, and use it to power the entire UM electronics from the 24V PSU. This way, you don't change anything on the UM1 and don't have to worry about any effects this might have (like quicker nozzle heating, maybe even throwing it's regulation out of balance). Also, these car DC/DC converters are really cheap and easy to use: something that can also be recommended to less experienced users. As for my part, I'll just keep the two PSUs separate. There is no big benefit to replacing the standard brick as long as it's working fine, except that you'll save some space and one mains socket. What can be much more of a performance impact is using a good MosFET instead of a relay. Relays usually have contact resistances somewhere around 0.1 Ohms, while a good MosFET can have as low as 0.005 Ohms. That can be quite the difference if your heater only has around 1 Ohm resistance. You lose several % of the energy in the relay, while you lose pretty much nothing in a MosFET. As soon as I get to it (I hate that sentence...) I'll put up a simple little MosFET "relay" board that anyone can make for themselves and that works without losing any noticeable energy. Also, the clicking of the relay would drive me mad within a few minutes

As for my part - I won't be buying something that has such an uncertain availability. What if I need a spare part or replacement next month? Either they'll continue producing the 3mm versions, or not. But what they do atm is just BS...

I think it would be a great idea! Carrying the printer around shouldn't be a problem. I know it isn't a problem with the UM1. Shouldn't be much different with the UM2... You may want to put it into a good solid box for transport, but then you should be good to go!

I wonder why the default setting is 0.6 mm top/bottom thickness... I never ever got good results with that.. My preference is using 23% infill and 1mm or even more top/bottom thickness. That gives you a pretty strong part, but it's not the best choice for saving material..

If done correctly, there should be no problems switching between ABS and PLA. It does take some time, and wastes a bit of material every time - so you may want to switch as little as possible just for these reasons. Switching nozzles is quite a bit of work though, I doubt you'd want to do that every time you switch materials. Also, this would be a lot of unnecessary stress for the threads. If you are going to use your printer professionally and regularly, you might consider buying two printers - one for each material. This may seem exaggerated - but at some point your time will probably be worth more money than the printer: If you save a considerable amount of (work-)time, then using two printers without the hassle of switching materials, you may come out saving money in the longer run. And another possible good reason to have two printers: You have redundancy - If one printer breaks, you have another one that still works. Don't forget that it may take a few days (or weeks) until you get spare parts. I hope that'll change soon, but at the moment it's quite the problem for "business users". I'm doing something similar at the moment (setting up a second printer). But for me it's more a redundancy thing, and the fact that I need "quick output of multiple parts" capability.. /edit Ian was quicker than me But good to see that we had similar thoughts @Ian: We should ask Ultimaker for sponsorship for suggesting people to buy more Ultimakers