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davew

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Everything posted by davew

  1. I have a UM O+ with the heater bed. It has worked perfectly since installation until today. I turned the UM on and - nothing. I have checked power from the PSU into the Heater board and that is present but there is nothing at the cable that goes from the Heater board into the original power socket on the UM. Does anyone have any suggestions? Are there any tests I can do on the board to narrow the fault down? (points I can check voltages?) Can I get a replacement board? David.
  2. Thanks GR5, I have never printed via USB, always via the SD card but I might try the Marlin upgrade anyway.
  3. Occasionally my Controller display screen starts showing garbage characters. The actual print is still workign fine and the display works - you can see characters changing in the places you expect. It's just that the characters it shows are rubbish. Switch off/on cures it but it is a bit worrying! Anyone any ideas what might be going on?
  4. Based on the old 6 week schedule, there should be an UltiMaker evening Dec 2nd. Does anyone know if there will be one - and if so, where?
  5. Arrrhhhhh!!! I had kept the 21st free but I have to work the 25th :-(
  6. "Reduced Functionality" - aka 'Crippleware' :cry: It's a real shame they don't have a mid-way version - not the full bells & whistles for $7K per year but more than this very basic free version. Something for a few hundred dollars/euros would sell I think. Considering that 3D printing is supposed to be the 'next big thing', whoever gets a good, useable & affordable 3D drawing package on the market is going to do really well.
  7. I was able to import STL and Sketch-up files - though they also seem to be read-only. As far as I could see there is no way to edit or even scale the imported models.
  8. I think that must have been one of the 'stripped-out' features. I have searched all over the interface but can't find any 2D text tool. There is nothing in the help either :(
  9. Spaceclaim is now available as a FREE download. http://www.designspark.com/eng/page/mechanical The program is marketed by RS (aka Radio Spares) as DesignSpark Mechanical but it is basically the SpaceClaim program - a lot of the help documentation still refers to "SpaceClaim". I downloaded it last night and have been playing with it a bit. Like most CAD programs you need to be a bit of a concert pianist to handle all the mouse-keyboard combinations but the program does seem to be as powerful as Daid and the videos suggest. The only thing I have found it is lacking is support for text. By this I mean you can't create models of letters. I have got round this by creating base letter shapes in Sketch-Up and saving these as Sketch-up polygons. These can then be imported into DesignSpark and further manipulated there. Not a great solution but it works.
  10. I want to learn to use it - does that count as 'educational' ? :unsure:
  11. WOW! Using Sketchup is going to be even harder after seeing those videos :cry:
  12. I also use Sketchup for making my models and it does have some problems. The main one is it can't really handle single or sub-millimeter distances. The core code is designed for (american) buildings and can't reliably go below 1/16". If you are doing very small or accurate models it may be that the STL files are being corrupted when exported from Sketchup. What I do is create all my models in Sketchup using meters instead of millimeters i.e. if I want a 20mm cube I create it as a 20m cube. This way Sketchup can handle sub millimeters (as it thinks they are actually 1000x bigger) and you don't get rounding errors that prevent things lining up. When you export it, do so as Meters as well. The STL file format does not contain the units info - just the values. So my 20m cube just comes out as '20'. When Cura opens the file it assumes I meant millimeters and everything fits perfectly. If you already have some models, just select everything and use Scale to scale it up by 1000. Then save it again and export as Meters.
  13. I have been printing without any problems for a couple of weeks. Printed a couple of objects, one with infill, this afternoon. Then this evening tried to print another object I have just designed in Sketchup. Changed nothing in Cura, just started it printing as I always do. The result - when I came back to check after a couple of hours is basically 'foam'. There is almost zero adhesion between layers and the walls seem almost not to be there! I then tried some gcode from a couple of days ago, prints OK. Tried new gcode from Cura, more foam. Reset the profile to the default (except for layer thickness set to 0.2), more foam. Trying Cura Quickprint now and that seems to be OK.... Can anyone suggest what is wrong? Have I got the temp wrong or some other setting? I certainly did not mean to change anything! David.
  14. Thanks for all the replies! I was really just curious about what was causing it and if I should be worried, both questions have been answered I think. This example occured with a bad batch of PLA filament, the same print with a good batch had only a single 'growth' at each corner, not enough to really worry about. Many thanks, David.
  15. I have noticed that I often get what I am calling 'coral heads' growing next to vertical surfaces, particularly columns. It's very 'organic' and looks like coral to me! This is a particularly good (or bad) example, but there is often a single point column growing up and away from the base of the vertical surface. It's not a problem, it breaks away very cleanly, but is an interesting phenomenon! Is anyone else familiar with this? Is there a specific reason for it? Can it be cured? David.
  16. Ok, spend the afternoon dis-assembling, cleaning and re-assembling the hot end. Been printing for 1/2 hr now with no sign of oozing. Also reassembled the head the right way round this time :rolleyes:
  17. Having finished my build yesterday, I have done a couple of test prints and all is well with the printing. However I have noticed 2 things: Plastic is oozing out between the top of the heater block and the brass tube. It is not a lot, it covers the top of the heater block and does not appear to be getting bigger, but I wanted to get experts opinion on it: Is it dangerous? Can I live with it as is? What should I do to fix it? The brass tube is as far into the block as it can go, the nozzle prevents it going any further. The heater & thermocouple cables made it very difficult to assemble 'square', it is now turned slightly so that the tip of the heater cable is touching the fan shroud. The second thing is I installed the head back-to-front :???: . As far as I can see, the only problem with this is the fan is on the 'wrong' side and the print area is a bit smaller (it can't get as far forward as it should and the default bed size in Cura was pushing the nozzle over the bed leveling screws)
  18. Another new UltiMaker born in the Netherlands! Got it on Tuesday, built on Wednesday and Thursday, First print this evening. All went well, and for a first print at all default settings I am very pleased! I did the robot of course - it probably should be pre-installed on the SD card! A few points about the build - As many others have pointed out, the build instructions start out well but start to fail towards the end. There are a number of errors that are just unfortunate (putting the end caps on then having to remove them to put the axis rods in) but the later stages get very cryptic on occasion (using completely different names for the Z screw in consecutive steps). The big gap seems to be the step after you are finished - apart from how to level the bed there is nothing on how to actually use the machine. I could not even find any info on how to feed PLA into the extruder drive! I know there is lots of comments on everything in the forum but there really needs to a 'users handbook' - especially for the pre-assembled machines. Anyway, I hope that the coming months will be as sucessful as the first build seems to portend!
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