yellowshark

Yup I have suffered from elephant's foot but not for a long time. No doubt it will happen again. Not sure what causes it, probably too hot and/or too fast, or wrong nozzle to bed gap. I know when I did have the problem I reduced the horizontal dimension of the 1st layer by 0.5mm which removed the problem

You need to print more to increase the time it takes to print a layer - extra models to print (concurrently) and movement time between the models. Yes you can just print 1 and with z-lift wait for 9.5 secs before printing again - but you may well suffer from filament dribbling from the nozzle and being deposited on your next layer - but by all means try it if you want to, it may work OK. Dimensioneer's idea is a good one but I do have some caution in that it takes time for the extruder temp. to drop and stabilise so I am not sure how effective it will be. You did not say what your print speed is? I suspect that irrespective of Dimensioneer's point oyur are printing too hot, which will help your cause. With 0.1 you probably should not be above 200c. I print .15 at 30 or40mm/s using 190c max and I suspect that 40mm/s itself may be too quick for that model, unless it has been scaled up in size - if it is what I think it is I would be printing at 20mm/s with a temp. down to around 180c, nor more than 185c

What is your layer height, print speed and extruder temp. ?

...oh to print more than 1, right click the model in cura and select "multiply object" which will then let you input the number of copies

That may work but I have no experience of using the plugin. But I suspect it will not. The problem you have is that as you approach the top cone your layer time is not long enough for the current layer of plastic to cool before the next layer is laid down. To fix it... a) make sure your fans are running 100% b) print at least two copies of the model concurrently - Cura/tools menus/all at once. You may need 3 or 4 of them c) set your minimum layer time to 10 - Cura/advanced tab/COOL minimum layer time d) turn on z-lift - Cura/expert menu/open expert settings/COOL tick cool head lift

When I started out I looked closely at the Mojo; I decided it was a bit too expensive but importantly for me, at the time, it only printed in one colour. There is no doubt in my mind that for thinner more intricate parts it produced a better result than FDM printer. When I started out I looked closely at the Mojo; I decided it was a bit too expensive but importantly for me, at the time, it only printed in one colour. There is no doubt in my mind that for thinner more intricate parts it produced a better result than any FDM printer and I was looking also at output on the UM and Makerbot stalls at the UK print show. It is also plug 'n play which FDM printers are not - i.e. a beginner can get great results from day 1. I have not watched the video or read the article but I have not seen any models on this forum that match the quality you can get from the Mojo - based on face to face viewing at the show and demos at a Mojo supplier. I love my FDM printer <3

And, printing thin layers is difficult for the 1st layer - set your 1st to .300 and once you have perfected it then if you need to go thinner give it a try. I run my 1st layer at 20mm/s; go faster at your peril. Once the first layer is printed turn your bed temp down. I normally print my 1st layer at 65c and turn down to 50c, I have seen others that go lower. I assume you have your fans turned off for 1st layer.

.... oh and if you remove your nozzle you should repeat the process after replacing the nozzle.

Bed levelling and nozzle to bed distance are crucial in getting a decent 1st layer. When you have done it and think it is OK, it won’t be OK. You need to do it slowly, carefully and probably redo it several times. For the nozzle to bed distance I have a calibration test routine, using a standard cube. I have a z-offset in the start gcode routine which makes it easy to adjust the nozzle to bed distance automatically and accurately. I use a binary chop style process to adjust the distance. On my printer I need a z-offset to allow for the glass plate; I do not know how it works on the UM2 with a glass plate. If you do not need a z-offset then just set it to 0.0. So… Having set the distance during levelling using the standard sheet of paper, and assuming my z-offset is 7.1mm I will print the test cube (1st layer or 2 only). Then I add 0.04 to the offset and print again If 7.14 gives a better result then I add another 0.04 If 7.18 gives a better result then I add another 0.04 etc etc If 7.22 gives a worse result then I subtract 0.02. If 7.20 gives a better result than7.18 I will try 7.21, meaning either 7.20 or 7.21 is the correct offset Referring to the above, if I find that 7.15 is worse then I go the other way, setting the offset to 7.10 etc etc

Makerbot My printer which cost 5,227 usd

I have no problems sharing the orders i'm getting via 3d hubs publicly, I am extremely interested, is this your full time job and does this cover your operational costs? how many orders do you get? I should say first of all that we are in this to make a profit, although we do have a community spirit! We now do a lot of work for a local podiatrist who is into giving a better solution to people on low incomes, by providing custom insoles rather than off the shelf standard sizes, which are considerably cheaper. We take a fitment measured to each individual and produce it for him at the price of a standard stock insole, or lower if necessary. Onto your question… Full time job – No moving to yes. The business has been setup for my son who is a mechanical engineer in his last year of college; it will be his full time job. I was extremely lucky a couple of years ago to be able to take very early retirement. My son does the design with Solidworks and I do the printing. We share the selling and I do the financials. My wife does the marketing and administration. I do not take any money from the business, it all goes to my son. My son has limited time and I have other things I want to do with my life so it is not a full time job, but it will be for my son when he finishes college in the summer. Operational costs: In truth no, not everything is covered. The cost of design and 3D printing/tools is covered + profit. Sales and administration are not covered – but right now they have a low spend. The work I and my wife do is f.o.c to help my son get the business up and running and earn some money. No. of orders – extremely variable; this really is by design right now due to limited time. We do some selling but not that much, most of our work to date has come by word of mouth and currently we run at about 40% production capacity – which allows us to take on emergency repeat business – last year we had a very late order on a Sunday evening to produce some wrist straps (which hold a motion sensor) for the British Elite swimming squad who were leaving for Japan on the Wednesday. We will always want to be able to provide that level of service so will always run below 100% capacity. The volume of orders will change from the summer onwards – we hope!! – once my son is full time. Our medium term plan is to grow to four printers, not necessarily all FDM. Excluding the podiatry work we normally get one to two orders a week; some weeks we will have nothing but that gives us a slot to do some R&D/testing and printer maintenance if needed. We do design, prototyping, production and we get quite a lot of repeat business on the production side – which is a volume business not a one off. This of course is easy as we have all the relevant print settings and filament and know how we will produce it. Originally for us we had assumed that our work would be some design and prototyping but in reality it has been design and prototyping leading to production and repeat production business, plus further repeat design and prototyping business for other products or existing product modifications. Hope that helps.

yeah but isn't that the thing? No not really. If you are going to run a business there are a variety of fundamentals you have to have clarity on. What investment and working capital you need, cost and pricing (i.e. subject of the thread). What services are you going to offer. What type of contracts do you want. Understanding your target market and what is achievable and acceptable. How much risk you are going to layer across the various areas. Etc. So to be very specific - our target market and cost and pricing model that targets that market, does not address getting an order for 2,000 hours of printing from someone like Boeing. If such an order were to arrive we would have to step right back and consider how we were going to deliver it, what profit we wanted, the impact on current customers, what investment in additional printing capacity would be required and is that investment worthwhile if the order is a one-off, etc. etc.

Well I have to say you are both wrong. In my experience... The entire 'consumer' 3D printer market borders on a scam - is wrong There are no 3D printer that just work - is wrong. I know this from personal experience. You get what you pay for and paying 1,000 usd is not paying much. UM's are good value for money but you can spend a lot more on the same type of printer - which I did.

I do not look at the dashboard. I subscribe to the forums(maybe that should be sub-forums) I am interested in - probably about 75%, and then wait for the notifications.

... and if you want to run your printer as a business always try to get your customers budget and where relevant current cost. We made that mistake on our very first job where the customer wanted to redesign a part that had been injection moulded and prototype it. We charged circa 75eu. It was only several months later when we discovered that the injection moulding company had quoted 540eu + design :angry:

..... of course if Boeing came to us with 10 * 200 print hours, we would take a different approach!!

I think we take a different approach to most. We start by deciding how much revenue per annum we want a printer to generate. Then we decide how many hours per annum the printer will be printing production work. Dividing the former by the latter gives us our print time per hour cost target. Then we have a minimum hourly rate which equates roughly to the legal minimum wage – no point in earning less, you may as well claim benefits 8) . The hourly print rate we choose will be between the target and the minimum and there will be a variety of business related factors than will influence our choice. E.g. something that has very tight dimensional tolerances will probably be close to the higher end of the range, indeed we may price the work on the basis that we will probably have to run the print several times to get it spot on, i.e 2x or 3x target hourly rate. To the print hourly rate we add overheads, stuff like electricity and equipment depreciation. Then we add the material price at cost, I.e. we do not try to make a profit on the filament. We know how much a metre of filament costs and Cura tells us how many metres are required. We add a standard fifteen minutes to the print time to cover setup, sometimes we gain – print after another job using the same filament, sometimes we lose – first job of the day or maybe having to change filament with an atomic pull. Finishing work would normally be charged circa 40eu an hour. We may or may not add a charge for what we call “print consideration” which is needed for every part/model. How are we going to print it, in terms of orientation, settings, single part or multiple parts with post processing, to produce the shortest print time (cheapest cost to the customer). If we are designing the 3D model we do not charge as the “print consideration” feeds into the design process. Baby sitting – well we do a lot of that. We have a dispatch deadline for everything; if we had say an 8 hour print job and went back after 8 hours only to find the printer system had failed we would have lost 8 hours and almost certainly will miss the deadline. We do not charge specifically for babysitting, it is contained within the annual revenue we expect the printer to generate. Target hourly print rate is circa 13.5eu and minimum circa 8.70eu; complex prints where failure could occur may double or treble these. Overheads circa 1.50eu per print hour.

Thanks tinkergnome, doh I should have tried that

.... that is using 15.04.2

Hi I have just downloaded the swapatZ plug-in. For viewing the change in layer height, the plug-in instructions say to save the gcode and then load the gcode into Cura. But I cannot see anywhere in the menu system (especially the File menu) an option to load gcode; I can see save gcode and load profile but nothing else. Help please.

Sounds good to me @SandervG Lol of course on your banner, or whatever, you could have a pic of someone wearing a Nike sports bra and thong - that would probably attract some Bouncers

Yeah I suspect our approach is similar, if I am prototyping for someone I will use .200 or .300 and take my favourite filaments and test to death to get the speed/temp. spot on (and as low as possible) for those combinations. Apart from curiosity I have never gone below .100 (print time impacts costs) and have no data on speed/temps. below .100 - I don't envy you on those overhangs

Just to modify my view on Meshmixer vs Cura on supports. With 15.04 I used Cura supports the other day - first time in well over a year. They were great and just pulled away from the part like the brim does - even easier. Sure I need to do some more but on that one experience my view has totally changed, Cura supports rock

As a "forum contributor" I do not have any misgivings, providing a) I do no have to tick a box to get out of a thread I have viewed b) page load times are not degraded c) I have no idea how it all works, but you do not start displaying advertising boxes that display something I have recently viewed on Amazon - my greatest hate after semolina!

Lol you lucky people. I eventually gave up and accepted that I would never get t-glase to stick to my glass plate. That was about two years ago, maybe they have changed the formulation and I should try again.