jumpmobile

Hi I have discovered a problem in Cura 13.11: When the nozzle diameter equals the shell thickness the slicer does strange things like leaving out walls on the 0.4mm test cube ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52946 ) or making no walls at all... Workaround: set the shell thickness to 3.99 instead of 0.4.

Hi I am currently running this routine: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52946/ It is about getting the printer to lay lines of exactly 0.4mm (=nozzle diameter) so parts get more accurate and fit to one another like this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:33204 I started by regulating down the flow rate but currently i am down to 40% and still getting thicker lines. I thought perhaps my setting of filement density is wrong. I am currently using 1080 kg/m³, based on the the german wikipedia-article that mentions 1.04 to 1.12 g/cm³, but that doesn't seem like a very accurate value to me. @Ultimaker-people: I am using black ABS from ultimaker (about 2 years old though). Could you give an educated guess about its density? Or ABS-density at all?

I use E3D and am currently using the standard PID-Settings UM-Marlin comes with... P 22.2 I 1.06 D 114 C 1

Yeah, the clicking isn't really that much of a problem. Sadly I haven't made any photos of the failed print. It was an impressive sight: a huge steaming pile of molten, burnt plastic....

independent contracting... sounds good *g* Okay, thank you all for your opinions about that. That really helped me a lot. @ IRobertI: I am going to print a large round object. about 500gr filament WITH 20% infill already. This is like the biggest thing i ever decided to print and I have no experience with such big objects.

Hi people I am currently dealing with the worst print failure i ever encountered. I use a heated print bed from german http://www.2printbeta.de/ which works fine. I am switching it off and on using a relais with a 24V and ??A rating. Last night before leaving i started a print of a huge ~350g Object. Calibration was okay and when i checked about one hour later the first few layers were looking neat. When I came back today at noon i was greeted by the stench of ozone, a huge pile of severly burnt ABS and coal-black (formerly blue) tape. I am still working on getting that stuff off my aluminium bed. I seems that at some point the relais that switches the printbed got stuck in 'on'-position which led the bed to overheat to 200°C (it is rated for 110°C, but still seems to work...). At first i was quite shocked and checked for any damages on my UM but everything seems okay. The belts, ABS printhead, ABS fanduct... everything seems to have survived without much damage. Question: Have you ever had the case of a stuck relais and overheating print bed? Are you using solid-state-relay (SSR)? And if you are: Are you using PID-stabilisation for the heated bed als well? Is that an advantage To prevent another disaster like this (it cost me about 150 grams of ABS and i only have half a spool left) i choose to turn to switching the power supply on and of instead of the heatbed. My 'electronics-guy' has told me that the supply can take it because i use a very good one that he took from an old scrap server, so it should be fine. But for the future i would use an SSR and enable PID-stabilisation if anyone here tells me that this is better than the current stabilisation.

Hey I have a friend who works for a small company (about 20 employees). He has asked me to print him a prototype of a thing they are going to sell. I am really curious to see if my Ultimaker is up to the challenge of printing something useful for the "free market". But at the same time I am concerned about legal issues and about the possibility of my beloved UM not being capable of doing real prototyping (in the narrower sense). Would anyone please post their opinion? Have you ever tried to make a protoytpe for work (or the work of a friend)? Is it unethical (or even legal) to take money for making a prototype (even if it is just for the filament)? Greetings Jump

Jep. I have a E3D-Hotend-heatsink with UM-Heatblock, Thermocouple and Heater so our hotends are basically the same. I have made only good experiences with this one. So for UM3: Switch to active cooling for hotends.

Hi amano Ich hatte das Problem früher auch. Ich denke, dass das daran liegt, dass zu wenig Plastik aus der Düse kommt. Versuch mal mit dem Drucker langsamer zu fahren. Wenn das nicht hilft dann gib Cura mal einen geringeren Düsendurchmesser (ich musste damals auf 0.32mm runter). Das ist allerdings nur ein Workaround und keine Fehlerbehebung. Das Problem hat sich für mich erledigt als ich ein E3D-Hotend gekauft hab' (Achtung Schleichwerbung!) Das hat eine sehr hohe Durchflussrate, weil es über einen Lüfter gekühlt wird, aber das ist wieder eine andere Geschichte. Bei mir wars damals schlimmer. Hier ein Bild: Edit: Es gibt auch andere Wege den Plastikfluss zu erhöhen. Cura bietet hierfür extra eine option an: "Flow%" Aber aufpassen: Wenn du den Fluss zu hoch stellst dann wird dein Vorschub zu schnell arbeiten, die Rändelschraube wird sich ins Filament fressen und du bekommst Löcher ins Modell. Also immer mit Bedacht an die Sache rangehen und nix übertreiben.... ;-)

@Johnny: Cool. If you do it please share your experience. BTW: make sure to buy some rubberjoint-belt for windows. (i don't know the english expression for it). In german it is "Fensterdichtband". These are cheap and will help you seal the box. I forgot them in the first post though (now edited). And just to be fair: This wasn't my idea in the first place. I just copied this from other people (see the thingiverse-link in the first post). @gr5: Jep, i got that wrong. Thanks! :smile: So let me recalculate that: Figure 2 on the second page of that paper: http://www.marplex.com.au/technical/A%20guide%20to%20ABS%20Pellet%20Drying.pdf shows a correlation between relative humidity in the air and equilibrium moisture concentration (EMC) in the filament. You can see that 0.15% filament moisture (general purpose type) relates to a 10% humidity. So what we need is not an air humidity of 0.02% but only 1.33%. That sounds more realisitc....

Have you tried yet? I am sooo curious.

I am no electronics person but i have seen that you have posted previously about yourself getting a new RAMPS board. Have you checked the jumpers that are sitting near your stepper drivers? For XY-axis all three jumpers should be in place, but for the Z-Axis one should not. See here: http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Electronics_build_guide Fabian Edit: I think this is what illuminarti meant by "wrong microstepping setting".

This is the continuation of my post on the water-content of filament. (original post here: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1711-tga-of-filament/ ) The stroy: I experienced that when mounting a new filament on my printer the first few prints generally have nice surface quality with little blobbing and neatly aligned lines. But after some days the quality lowers. Not dramatically but still visibly, the blobbing returns and retraction needs to be readjusted. The explanation: Everyone has water in his filament as you can see by extruding into the air for a bit. At some point the extruded filament will have a bend or a bubble. As you can easily imagine bends and bubbles in your extruded filament will cause an imperfection on your print surface. The quotes: Marplex (in own words "leading supplier of quality plastics in Australasia") provides on it homepage a variety of interesting paper on handling ABS plastic. http://www.marplex.com.au/technical/ This one is about water content and pellet drying. http://www.marplex.com.au/technical/A%20guide%20to%20ABS%20Pellet%20Drying.pdf For extrusion purposes they recommend a water content of no more than 0.02% (Edit: That value is wrong. should be 1.33%, see below). This is close to nothing, compared to the average air humidity of about 40-50%. The conclusion: I've been to the hardware store and got myself a plastic box, a hygrometer, foam-seal tape and some desiccant (calciumcarbonate http://www.uhu.com/en/products/moisture-absorbers.html ) I put everything togehter like this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:62826 ...just to see how low the humidity would go with the desiccant and voilá: after about half an hour the hygrometer showed 6% remaining air humidity. This is much more than 0.02% 1.33% but maybe we can see an improvement to standard stored filament. Next step is to compare quality of dry- and wet-stored filament. If that doesn't give the desired results then i will try reducing the moisture even further to the recommended 0.02% 1.33% Update (year later): - The next day the hygrometer showed 0% humidity. - Had problems with cracked filament (look for pictures in my galery). Haven't seen improvement to regular "humid" filament. - Dried filament is so brittle that it easily cracks even inside the bowden tube leading to friction and underextrusion. - Tightly coiled filament can lead to underextrusion even when not cracked. Final Conclusion: Only dry filament that was delivered on big spools like the ones used by UM (sorry for advertising). Humid filament is fine for printing. Greetings Fabian

That sounds good.... Luckily i have lots of cardboard lying around... Is the bottom of the prints okay, or is there still cardboard residues on it?

Cool! I thought about making my own nozzles with other diameters than .4 for faster or more accurate prints. 0.8mm sounds like a lot of flow. Please post some pics that show the quality.

Cura does not find the USB-port where my UM is connected. Still using Ubuntu 13.10. Also i am currently working through this script: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52946/#instructions and the small box 0,4mm was sliced wrong. There where only three walls instead of four. BTW this script was made for skeinforge. Does it apply to cura, too? I know that Cura was once SF-based but isn't anymore since 13.06.

Yeah, if there is a second/third (?) batch then count me in, too... Will follow this topic. I think i'm switching to GT2-Belts and Pulleys.

I am still waiting for my hall-o to arrive, but in the meantime i was thinking about other ways to sense the nozzle-bed-distance for a specific point. Actually you don't need a hall sensor specifically. Ultrasonic-sound, capacitive- and induction-sensing are also ways to achieve that. I am currently working on an inductive-sensor, that works just like a metal detector. The advantage of inductive over hall is that you can -theoretically- sense the distance to any material you like and therefore do not need to replace your aluminium/acrylic bed with a ferromagnetic one. Also i hope that inductive sensing has a better resolution than hall-effect-sensing. @drayson: I don't understand. That bed-leveling system from Kuehling&Kuehling should work with any bed that uses screws for leveling. Is there a need to use clamps? Or are you printing on glass?

Okay, so the biggest problem will be to get it to stick to the bed. So Masonite and gluestick are the first things i will try. @Troy: Have you tried printing belt-pulleys yet? Thank you all for your the quick and accurate responses. I ordered Taulman 618 ( http://www.mexhibit.ch/#!taulman/cpzy%20)%20and%20will%20post%20as%20soon%20as%20i%20make%20my%20first%20experiences.

So if i print a round object a high resolution of my model will not only make my part look better but also speeds up the printing process? Or is this resolution something i have to set in the firmware?

Jep, this is also what I think is what happening with ABS. I bought one role of whit ABS and the first few prints where really beatiful, but after a few days things went bad. The surface of the prints got small -almost unvisible- imperfections and when I tried extruding in the air the string that came out had bends in it and also one small bubble. I really think that moisture in our filaments is causing us trouble. You can observe that this experience is made alot since there are many entries on groups and forums that start with " I bought a printer and the first few days/week it was really nice but now my prints don't look as well as before. What can I do?" How about a "dry chamber"? A box with silica-gel where one could store the filament without letting it absorb moisture. Fabian 1st Edit: Found this enlightening video on the use of silica-gel in a dry chamber: 2nd Edit: And a promising, low cost approach that also solves the dust buildup problem: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:62826/#comments

Bought one... Now searching for a piece of non-stainless, ferromagnetic, super even steel ;-)

Hey I intend to start printing with Nylon. Does anyone have special tips for me? Is this as easy as ABS and PLA or is there something i should know? Jumpmobile

P.S: Jensa hat damit schon Erfahrungen gemacht: http://flashgamer.com/arduino/comments/conductive-abs-from-repraper Er schreibt, dass es schwierig zu drucken sei, weil es ein "enges Temperaturfenster" braucht (allerdings schreibt er im nächsten Satz dass er es bei "230 bis 240°C" gedruckt hat und ein Temperaturfenster von 10K ist nicht eng..) Weiterhin vermutet er, dass das gesamte leitende ABS vom selben Produzenten sind. Er hat seines hier gekauft: http://www.repraper.com/goods.php?id=173 Und hier gibts dasselbe nochmal: http://www.makergeeks.com/coabs3dfi10.html das komische ist, dass die repraper beim Widerstand 10 kiloOhm/cm angibt, also ein ziemlich hoher wert, während es bei makergeeks nur 104 Ohm/cm sein sollen und bei Ulfs Quelle ist garnix angegeben. Ich finde dass das bis jetzt ziemlich nach Schmafu riecht, aber wenn Jonnys Erfahrungen nicht allzu schlecht werden und ich irgendwann Geld dafür hab' werde ich es auch noch versuchen, denn Jensa hat geschrieben, dass ihn das Verblocken des Hotends am meisten genervt hat, aber soweit ich das sehe hat er keine aktive Kühlung verbaut. Ich hab' eins von E3D vielleicht geht's damit ein bisschen besser. gruß Fabian

Krass... Okay, Jonny schreib bitte bitte bitte rein, was du für Erfahrungen damit machst. Wenn man damit elektrische Leitungen drucken könnte dann wäre das eine ganz neue Dimension für den 3D-Druck. Und für mich wahrscheinlich DER Grund mir auch mal das dual-extrusion upgrade zu kaufen. Gruß Fabian