jonnybischof

I usually just take the last few meters off the reel and have them hang down freely. Didn't have any problems with that yet. edit/ I think it's pretty difficult to try re-reeling filament on a bigger spool or something. The filament may break into pieces from the stress (higher probability if the filament was kept very dry). I think having the filament hang around loosely will be the least stressful way. But maybe that causes problems with ABS or Nylon because it might soak in some unwanted humidity. I never had issues with PLA before...

I go to local stores - saves shipping costs I get my metal from metall-laden.ch (just around the corner from my office), and I'll be using a lot of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyoxymethyleneplastic from maagtechnic.ch (they're also not far from my office). I prefer POM over metal, because it is much easier to work with, but doesn't melt like other plastics. Also, it's very strong, much stronger than ABS or any printed parts... And because it's milled instead of cast - it gets even stronger (can do any wall thickness...). They also have PTFE and other interesting materials, but this stuff is pretty expensive. As for metals, I'm not sure yet. I guess I'll mostly be using standard aluminum alloys, whatever they have in the store

You have to, it's a German machine Very heavy (265 kg) and sturdy. There are simply NO vibrations when that baby is running I've placed a very small coin (0.1 CHF) on it's rim on the cross-table. Does not move at all when the mill is spinning... Haven't gotten around to actually using it, but I will make my first part with it by the end of the week.

There is a new feature in 14.03: You can specify different speeds for outer and inner shells. Default values should be 0.0 which makes no change (uses the specified print speed from main settings for everything). Maybe something's off there? I've just printed a few small parts with 14.03 and didn't have any issues... By the way, your album is empty.

Got myself a new mill as well. Though non-CNC. Real men mill by hand

True, they should give more information. I can do some measurements if you want me to. Got about 20 different color samples from them laying around. I believe they are 2.85mm +-0.1. Something to think about: Just because a seller claims that his filament is 2.85 +- 0.05mm, it doesn't mean that this is will be true in every single case. Usually, seller information is mostly BS anyways. I think that faberdashery just go the safe way and don't claim something they can't actually deliver.

I don't have any tech specs for the UBIS (There is NOTHING on the printrbot website which is.... strange...), so I'll guess it's somewhere near 40 Watts @ 24V (~15 Ohms) That means, for the UM1 (19V), you'll have about 1.3 Amps going through the wires. A 22 gauge wire should have no problem with that, but you may still want to get a thicker wire, such as 16 gauge. That won't make a huge difference, but you can increase the efficiency a bit. I suggest taking a highly flexible stranded wire, preferrably with a silicone insulation. The termistor doesn't need a high gauge wire. 24 or 26 gauge will be sufficient. Again, a high flex wire is the best choice.

Definetly try faberdashery!! I'd be very interested in seeing a comparison between those two suppliers... Thanks for your detailed writeup, very interesting stuff! How about the strength of finished printed parts? Are they stiff or do they bend / deform easily? I'm always interested in these kinds of specifications, because I use most of my prints for technical stuff where strength and stability are much more important than nice colors or surface quality... /edit: By the way, www.faberdashery.co.uk are based in the UK, and their filament is also made in the UK. They don't specify anything else than that their filament is "3mm diameter", but faberdashery filament has been tested and loved by many Ultimaker users here in the forums. By the way, I'm in no way related or affiliated with faberdashery. I'm just a happy customer reporting on a good product /edit2: One thing to note, which may be a bit of a drawback: Faberdashery filament does not come on spools, it's always in loose "coils" of around 50cm diameter. This is very good for the filament - much less stress than tightening it up on a spool. But it means you have to print some sort of "coil holder" (available on youmagine and thingiverse iirc). To me, this is more a benefit than a drawback, because of the decreased stress on the filament. But it makes it a bit less convenient to handle. Also, you can order by the meter instead of just "1kg spool, period". So you can get various sample colors for little money (they also have 10m sample packs). Makes it pretty easy for Cura to calculate the price of your printed parts accurately

Great... So there will be no more 3mm UBIS hotends which makes it pretty much useless for any new users... Isn't the UBIS supposed to be clog-proof? What good is it if it isn't, anyways? o.O /edit: That sentence sounds stupid...

Actually, I never ever have to re-level my bed There is no drooping, the z-stage is solid enough to stay where it is. BUT, I can't get it levelled perfectly at all. No matter how much I try, I always get stuck with one corner being too low, and it is not possible to raise it any more (the screw just sticks out in the air without the bed coming up). It seems to be a problem with my 3mm aluminum frame which I built to interface between the z-stage and the Basalt bed: It flexes as soon as there is too much force applied (by the springs, which I already replaced for bigger and much stronger ones) and prevents effective levelling. Also, the four point system sucks So - I will still try and make a more solid z-stage for the UM1, as soon as I get to it -.- But that has nothing to do with the Basalt bed - it's a really good thing for PLA, that is true. And, I don't have to re-level my bed frequently... Btw, just for the sake of completeness: I consider the bed "levelled" when there's the same amount of light passing between the nozzle and the bed surface on all four corners. I "measure" just with my eyes, and I try to get as little light as possible, just barely not touching the surface. And of course the nozzle must be clean at that moment - no filament sticking out. I think that's enough precision. With a flat and glossy surface, this gets much easier than with a taped surface...

I've only printed PLA for now (some ABS prints but these were never really good and I didn't put much effort into them), and just simply heating the bed has always gotten me good results. I don't use any kind of glue or liquid, nor tape. I sometimes clean the bed with a paper cloth and alcohol. But the most important thing is a good levelling: The nozzle must be absolutely flush with the build plate if there is nothing on the build plate (like tape or a layer of glue or something). The UM1's four-point levelling system makes this a real PITA. I don't know about the UM2, I believe it has a three point levelling system? Then, you need to find the right temperature for your material, and that means both nozzle and bed temperatures. I had to play around quite a bit until I found something that really worked (sharing would be of no use to you, because I have a different build plate and different filament...). And you need exactly the right amount of material flow. If you have underextrusion on the first layer, then it will fall apart when the shrinking forces start to show up. If you have overextrusion, then the plastic won't stick well at all (at least that's the case for me). This stands in contrary to printing on blue tape, where overextrusion just pushes the material into the tape better. That does NOT work with glass, instead the plastic gets smeared around which makes it stick poorly. Maybe need confirmation on this - that's something I observed but haven't actually read about before. For finding the right parameters, I usually do the following: Print something which has a large, square base. Make a simple 5x5 cm rectangle for example. and use a lot of brim (like 20 lines or even more). Then you can observe the print and adjust parameters if it's not coming out well. Always stay on the first layer until you get a very good first layer. Don't even try to print further upwards as long as the first layer is not good. You can set up your initial layer flow very well when printing the brim. Usually, the first few lines will slightly underextrude because the plastic can escape to both sides. But the third or fourth line should already be pretty much flush. You can play around with the flow settings while it prints, but you should only change the flow amount every 4 to 5 lines because it takes a while until it really adjusts. The printer might actually "carry" over excess plastic from previous lines to the adjacent one over several lines. This also applies vertically - if you have massive over- or underextrusion, then you can't adjust your flow rate within one layer, because you'll first need to fill up the gaps (or deal with the excess plastic) from the previous layer. You'll have to observe how it "develops" over several layers. From the first layer upwards, you shouldn't have too many problems anyways, as long as the print stays stuck to the build plate. /edit: note that I have a Basalt build plate, not plain glass. The Basalt is slightly porous which makes it better than glass in terms of adhesion, but this should not be a game-changing factor... /edit2: If your levelling is not good (which is the case for me - working on that...), then you'll probably have to go with different flow rates for the first layer and the following layers. That's bad, so better see to it that your levelling is very good in the first place. /edit3: Reading through all the sh..tuff I just wrote, I noticed this may seem like a lot of effort. But if you actually get it to work, then you can forget about wasting gluesticks or anything else and just hit the "print" button and get good results, which come off the build plate all by themselves as soon as it's cooled down all the way, and you get a very good surface quality for the bottom. There are probably some filaments which will just NOT print on bare glass no matter what - but for a good quality PLA this definetly works. Faberdashery for example is excellent: I've never had anything stuck to my build plate as hard as faberdashery filament, but it popped off the build plate as soon as it was cooled down below 30°C.

I've had a similar problem just recently. What you're describing sounds much like it.. In my case, the cable that connects the temperature probe to the electronics board broke (slack joint). The temperature reading just stopped because there was no more connection. The printer assumed that the temperature still was the same as the last read value - which resulted in uncontrolled heating up or cooling down of the nozzle, clogging and burning it up in the process. You may want to test that cable, too. Just to be sure. This is an awful problem because it's hard to identify. The easiest way to test the cable is to join the two wires together on one point, and measuring the resistance between the two wires on the other end. Should always be close to zero, but if it changes significantly if you move the wire, then you've got a slack joint and need to replace the wire. My advice: Use high-flex cabling, and use 0.25mm2 wires instead of something thinner. These are pretty hard to break... But I'm afraid this won't be heeded because hflex is like 5 times more expensive than standard cabling...

You are right! I checked that by adding another 0.1mm (1 layer) to my "bottom raft". This resulted in 2 "wrong" covering layers. Adding another 0.1mm resulted in 3 "wrong" covering layers. So it's exactly how you described it. I can't really think of any actual models where this could be an issue, except mine which is really unusual. It could affect vertical engravings, but only if they go deeper than the wall thickness. Other than that, I don't see where else this could occur. If you were to check every layer instead of just the one "X layers below", it would probably need much more time to slice models. Probably not worth making everything worse just to get one very rare bug fixed...

Not sure I understand you properly, but the model is supposed to be "hollow". Meaning it should consist only of planes (polygons) that define it's shape. The shape must be completely closed, much like a balloon. But there is no actual infill in the model.

Should be ok - that part is not critical for printing precision. It should be as air tight as possible (it's not 100% tight of course), just like the other one. But really nothing critical. It's definetly possible that the crash resultet in some axis misalignment (not necessarily a bent shaft, but maybe a pulley slipped out of alignment). I can't go into detail here because I don't have an UM2, maybe someone else can help you with this. At the moment, one of my gantry shafts is actually bent (probably happened when I manually forced the printhead around -> you shouldn't push the head but better the x-y blocks) and that does result in some noisy movement and bad prints (round shapes are... not so round...). But as I said, it's probably just something that slipped out of alignment.

Hi community, It seems I've found a bug in Cura. The issue is not fatal, but it's just something that's wrong so I thought I'd report it: This is the first time I noticed the issue, so it might be because of my "unusual" model. But all in all there is nothing wrong with the model - it's a very simple Sketchup model with very low polygon count and simple, clean, straigt faces. So, I've started putting a "raft" into my models, meaning I always fill out the whole base layer, covering holes or any kind of internal structure. This helps me a lot with base layer adhesion to the platform. It needs to be cut away after printing, but that's a small tradeoff for getting almost perfect bottom layers. Now, first of all - the pictures: What you see there: This is always the very same view, going upwards in layers. If I jump from layer 2 to layer 11, it's because layers 3 - 10 are identical to layer 2. The same goes for the other gaps (it's really a pretty simple model...). So, as you can see, I start with a clean and easy to print first layer. Then there's two holes. The lower one goes all the way through the model, whereas the other one will stop at 1mm height (layer11), making this one a completely inside structure of the model (because of the covered first layer). Now, from layer11 onwards it's supposed to cover the top of that second hole, which it does for layer12. But then there's layer 13, which is where the 23% infill starts for the whole model. As you can see, the covering of the second hole is disrupted for one layer. After that, it continues covering the hole until layer 23, making a 1.1mm top thickness but with the disruption at the third layer. This is no big deal, but it's a bug... I don't know what causes this, and where else it might occur, but there's a possibility where this may be more of an issue than in my case.

When it comes to standard parts (like bolts and nuts), I prefer normal steel hardware. It's 1000 times stronger, and even cheaper if you value your time It's still cool to see that it's possible to print working bolts & nuts, but in the end that's just for fun...

Shouldn't be a problem... Maybe reformat it with FAT32.. Easier to get? I didn't find anything below 2GB, and there was only one single 2GB product available...

Ueee I'd take one of those Chalets

This is probably a bit of a difficult print for a beginner. Did you print some simple cubes or test pieces to see if these come out fine? It helped me a lot for my first prints to just watch the printer do it's work on a simple thing where I could actually see if the result was what I expected. It's easier to get everything well adjusted with a simple form like a cube, because you'll see very quickly if it comes out nice or not.

Ich würd bei www.faberdashery.co.uk bestellen. Die haben so ziemlich die beste Qualität (ist auch nicht gerade das billigste Filament auf dem Markt!) und die beste Farbauswahl. "Original Filament" von Ultimaker soll auch ganz gut sein, allerdings hört man momentan häufig von sehr langer Lieferzeit bei Ultimaker...

Misumi does deliver world wide, if you can make an account from your company (they don't allow private accounts... :( ) Sad to hear about McMaster, their specs seemed pretty good.. One of the few to specify straightness (if Misumi does specify straightness, then I just can't read their specs well enough...)

Thanks for the update! I made some progress, too: I noticed that getting exactly the right amount of flow makes a huge difference in terms of warping: If there is underextrusion on the first layer, then the brim will not be strong enough to hold the part down (obviously). But, if there is overextrusion on the first layer, it will - at least in my case - also not stick well because the lines get curled up and messy. I have fine-tuned my first layer for hours now and I get pretty much no warping at all anymore. Except for two or three spots where the parts would lift very slightly. Other parts print with absolutely 0 warping. I never used any kind of tape, glue, alcohol or other treatment. Just the Basalt bed at 60°C (currently - this depends on the filament of course). I haven't tried many different filaments yet because I already found "my favourite standard filament" (which is black PLA from ProtoParadigm, bought from qu-bd). I'll only use faberdashery filament if I need a different color than black, and ABS when I need parts that resist a little heat. About aluminum: I got myself some MK3 heatbeds which are now laying around, waiting to be tested. As soon as I get around to do it, I'll test them. My first try will also be printing directly on the aluminum as that would be the easiest way. Maybe I'll mill the surface to be 100% flat, or put a glass plate on top of it, but I'll definetly try different setups. Anodising sounds interesting too, but I don't have the possibility to do that. Hope to hear from you about this

You can see the names of who likes a post. I totally have to demonstrate that right now... lol it really works

I've printed my working ball bearing with 0.2mm clearance if I remember correctly. Using an awesome filament from ProtoParadigm.