jonnybischof

Imagine the owl saying "I'M BATMAN!!!" :mrgreen:

Looks like something that is useful for FabLabs where there are multiple printers and multiple users at the same time. But for home use? I don't see any benefits. (Gotta admit, I didn't read through the entire website..) The standard "generate GCode on the computer, put it on the SD card and print from the card" way is very simple and efficient. I want to stand next to the printer and check that everything is going well for the first minutes anyways. As for managing multiple users / projects: You can use multiple SD cards, or make a folder structure on the SD card. The Ultimakers can read and interpret folder structures.

That's how it's supposed to be Some companies take more time, others less to switch to lead-free. I did my apprenticeship using leaded solder, and I have a hard time using the lead-free stuff (which is why I just don't use it ). At least when I do reflow-soldering, I use lead-free, no problems there

These joints should be quite easy to solder. If they're not, you probably have a bad soldering iron, or bad tin (or both). Proper temperature control is essential when you solder electronics. If you put a 400°C soldering iron (which is what many electrician's soldering irons run at) to a PCB, you could actually kill some components. And you will burn up the soldering tin too fast and never get good results. I have a Weller WHS 40D, which is a medium-priced, but quite well built electronics soldering station. It has only 20W, so it's not useful for beefy solder work, but even that usually works more or less. Next thing: Keep the tip clean - always put some tin on it when you're done soldering. Use a wet sponge or copper wool to wipe the tip after every 2-3 joints soldered. You need to clear the soldering tin from the tip every 10-20 seconds (by wiping), because the tin will get brittle and useless when heated for too long. Use normal Sn60Pb40 tin with solder flux core, and set the temperature to 360°C. Don't use any special alloys with copper or silver in them, and don't use lead-free solder (unless you're trained to work with that stuff). Unless of course you want to sell the stuff you soldered, then you'd have to meet RoHS restrictions. Don't turn up the temperature if it doesn't work well - that doesn't help. If it doesn't work, clean your tip and use fresh soldering tin. The thing with these solder joints is: The pins take a lot of heat until they bond well with the solder. Try putting the tip of the soldering iron to the pins without touching the PCB. Wait 1-2 seconds to heat them up. Then touch both the tip and the pin with the soldering tin. It will flow down inside the PCB hole, heat up the hole quickly and bond well. You don't need to ever touch the PCB - that way you'll put minimal heat stress on the electronic components on it. If you put the pins into a socket (or breadboard) for soldering, you only have more metal to heat up. It's better not to do that. I use a "third hand" (you can get these for 10$) to hold difficult pieces together. Just make sure it doesn't grab the pin you're soldering. /edit: You can "revive" most old and blackened tips using "tippy" cleaner. (Stannol Tippy is the brand name, I don't know how else to call that...). It is a soap-like little brick. You put the hot soldering iron into it for a second, then clean it. It will be almost like new... The tippy says "leadfree", but that's ok anyways. Afaik the fumes from the tippy aren't too good for your health. Do that in a ventilated room and don't take a deep breath when you're melting the stuff

I thought the heat generated by the heated bed was sufficient to keep the chamber warm enough. Keep in mind that if your motors are inside the printer (means: If you didn't convert to direct-drive), then you have to be careful not to heat up the chamber too much. If your motors get too hot, they will fail. It's better to put the motors outside if you want to enclose & heat the build chamber anyways. Now, a quieter heater... The heating element itself shouldn't generate any noise. Only the fan does. If you swap the fan for a standard PC cooling fan, you should get much less noise. Note that the fan mustn't get hot or it will fail, too. I doubt that using a 500W heating element is necessary - there are other components inside the printer that shouldn't get too hot, too. 50 - 60° C air temperature is about the maximum recommendable level. And it doesn't take that much to get there.

It doesn't have anything to do with temperature measurement - but it's the same thing in the same place so I thought I'd call it that Actually, knowing the precise value of VIN is not that important - the only parts that directly use that voltage are the motors and heaters. Bot work well over a "wide" voltage range. It might be useful for the electronics to be able to sense whether the power is present or not, because there could also be only USB power which makes the electronics work, but not the motors and heaters. But afaik that feature isn't used, because there is no error message when you try to make the printer work without external power (other than USB). Anyways, I'll toss it from my Arduino shield (see http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/9332-new-part-day-silent-stepper-motors/?p=95630) because it makes no sense.

Thought about it, but I want to go all the way with an FPGA-based motion controller... I started designing the shield as a time & cost effective upgrade kit for UMOs. If you already have the Arduino Mega 2560 and don't want to spend a lot of money replacing all the electronics, then this is a good way to go.

Does anyone know what the fourth "temperature sensor" on the UMO electronics shield 1.5.7 is for? On the schematics, next to the Temperature sensors 1-3, there is another resistor divider (R3, R13, 100K and 4.7K), which make up a pseudo-sensor with a fixed 100K resistor instead of an NTC. It's connected to 19V "VCC/2" instead of the 5V "VCC" (from the Arduino). It looks like a "19V presence detect"... Do these need to be there, or not?

Would anyone be interested in a PCB design for a Marlin-based electronics platform with TMC2100 steppers? I've been meaning to make a whole new platform, but that will take years to complete. Meanwhile, this could be a quick interim solution. It seems that the difference is already worth it, even without the advanced features of the TMC260. It takes a 4 layer PCB to make a good design for a stepper motor, so I'd make a complete all-in-one platform like the UM2 electronics. It won't be as cheap as a Rumba, but it should actually come close to a Rumba + 4 drivers. /edit: Actually, designing this as an Arduino shield might be better. The ATmega2560 is an insanely expensive part, and it doesn't even have USB integrated..

Statt weglassen könnte man natürlich auch einfach einen feineren Grill machen. Ich habe da so einiges an Experimenten durchgeführt. Mein einfaches Fazit war, dass am besten gar keine Grills verwendet werden. Es sei denn, du hast einen Physiksimulator und kannst den Luftstrom durch den Grill tatsächlich optimieren, statt hindern. An der "Druckseite" des Lüfters stören Grills deutlich weniger als an der "Ansaugseite". Grills auf der Ansaugseite vermindern in den meisten Fällen den Luftstrom massiv. An der Druckseite ist der Einfluss deutlich geringer, aber er ist immer noch vorhanden. Die meisten "Optimier-Freaks" verwenden sogenannte Shrouds, welche zwischen dem Lüfter und dem Grill (bzw. der Gehäusewand oder dem Kühlkörper) sitzen und einen Abstand von 1-3 cm schaffen. Dieser Abstand minimiert den Einfluss an der Druckseite praktisch auf null. Der Shroud muss natürlich möglichst gut abgedichtet sein. Es bleibt immer noch: Kein Grill, wenn nicht nötig, ist das beste...

Beim USB-Druck ist die Stabilität des PCs wichtiger als das Kabel. Während der gesamten Druckzeit darf der PC nicht aussetzen, sondern muss konstant den GCode streamen. Meiner Meinung nach komplett sinnlose Energieverschwendung, einen PC über viele Stunden hinweg neben dem Drucker laufen zu lassen, wenn dieser auch bestens alleine zurecht kommen würde.

None that I know of. Your Google guess would be as good as mine... I've never touched dual extrusion myself - haven't needed it yet.

You should definitely be prepared to do a lot of tinkering until it works well.

Sieht recht nett aus! Ein paar Anregungen: Wird der Lüftergrill benötigt? Wenn du den weglässt, hast du (je nach verwendetem Lüfter) einen deutlich höheren Luftdurchsatz, da die allermeisten Lüftergrills den Luftstrom "brechen". Da an der Stelle keiner hinfassen kann, wenn das Teil läuft (selbst wenn - diese 12V Lüfter führen zu keinerlei Verletzungen), kannst du es wohl einfach weglassen... Wie siehts aus mit Vibrationen? Könnte es Sinn machen, zwischen den Teilen Gummidämpfer oder eine Gummi-Matte o.ä. einzusetzen?

Printing 0.2mm thick layers instead of 0.1mm improves overhangs (greatly). Yeah, it also decreases the surface smoothness, but your recipient might actually like the rougher texture..

Did you use a value of 115000 or 115200 (correct) for the baud rate? Not sure if it works when you use "odd" values...

Oh, and a Trespa HPL frame

There is no fire and forget with 3D printers. It's just not that simple. I'd prefer an actual ethernet LAN connection over wifi. Ethernet is more stable, and perfect for businesses (!). And you can always connect a wifi access point to an Ethernet port. You'll just need to accept that this means the electronics will at least get 50 EUR more expensive over the current platforms. My #1 priority would be a solid documentation for absolute beginners, teaching the basics about the machine, about Cura, about troubleshooting and about the necessary steps one needs to go through in order to get good prints. I know most of this is out there somewhere, but it needs to be compiled in one place and every customer should be made aware of this documentation. (I don't have an UM2, so I don't know what it's actually shipped with today...)

While I haven't actually tested a direct drive system myself (my build is almost finished, but still never tested...), the main differences are: + Better accuracy (because no backlash from the short belts) + Simpler build with less parts - More noise because the motor is directly coupled to the shafts - More stress on the motor because there is no dampening effect from the short belts (shouldn't be a problem). And then, there's the thing about flexible shaft couplers. I bought a few from reprap shops and I really didn't like them because they have very little torsional stiffness (you can twist them by hand). I bought MUCH better ones from Misumi (CPSX19-5-8), but these cost 26 EUR per piece. If you look at the drawings (at Misumi), you see that these couplers are made differently. The usual reprap ones are shaped like a spring, which enables them to twist. This might lead to a "ringing" effect in prints when the motors change direction rapidly. I said might - I haven't actually checked that! Just a thing that I observed on the parts themselves. /edit: It's not just plug-and-play. The short belts induce a change in moving direction - if you leave them away, you'll need to invert the x and y motors' direction. You can either do that by switching the correct motor wires on the connector, or by inverting the x and y axes in the firmware.

Make sure you have solid power connections - I'd make the 24V power line 0.5 - 1 mm thick. I guess you have a GND plane. You should also use good polymer capacitors for the drivers (one for every driver). For reference: I used a Panasonic 32SEPF68M (68 uF, 32V, ESR 25 mOhm)

You can find good GT2 pulleys on http://www.robotdigg.com. There are other sources, of course. But that's where I got mine from. I'd suggest switching out the grub screws for some stainless steel quality hardware, but that's just me being... myself. I don't know about the belts from Robotdigg. I got mine from Misumi (which are actually manufactured by Gates Unitta, a renowned manufacturer for belts in the automotive / racing and industry fields). IIRC (citation needed!), you will need 303-tooth (616mm length) belts for an UMO. I made my own frame, so I can't tell about the original one. You should also replace the slider blocks (for example with https://www.youmagine.com/designs/twisterblocks). /edit: Oh, and there's the short belts of course. I'd suggest to go direct drive, but if you don't want that you'll need to get short GT2 belts, too. No clue how long they need to be, though...

But you have to set that up yourself. Which may be a problem for unexperienced users. If what they write on the kickstarter page is true, then this looks like a cool thing for people who want to simplify their 3D printer setup as much as possible. However, I believe that you will still get the best possible prints when you learn how to work and tune the printer yourself, and take the time to make a good 3D model, optimize your slicer settings for your needs, and so on. Also, this Element will not be able to magically "dispel" the quirks and difficulties of a 3D printer's hardware. You still need to keep the machine in shape, oil stuff, tune stuff. The Element will hardly be able to keep your nozzle from clogging if something goes wrong, or untie a knotted up filament spool.

That can be a difficult task.. You could try adding a copper layer between the heater and the build surface. I doubt that would make a huge difference though. The first problem is that the build plate's temperature is only measured in one spot. If that spot is near the edge of the plate, it will be hotter in the middle. If the spot is in the center, the edges will be colder. If you were to make multiple heater segments, each with it's own temperature sensor, then you'd get a much more uniform heating. But that makes things a bit more complicated for the MCU. What's also very important, is that your build plate is evenly pressed against the heater - with no air gaps in between.

Glass plate... Glass plate... Glass plate? Can an infrared camera even measure the actual glass plate? Shouldn't it just go through the glass and display the temperature of the heater beneath the glass? Could it not be that the actual surface temperature of the glass is more even - and some 3-5K colder - than what the image actually reads? 20K differences are big though, this will surely not be equalized completely. I remember playing with a FLIR cam at my previous workplace - when you looked at a window, you could see your heat signature's reflection on the glass, but of course only as a very slight shade. Most of it just went through it.

Echt jetzt? Hab ich noch nie gesehen. Allerdings drucke ich nicht per USB. Habe das nur einmal vor bald 2 Jahren probiert...