duesentrieb

Sounds cool. Worth a journey, I think. Which is the most interesting day? There aren´t that "many" speakers and one of them I have seen already two times... so I think one, max two days will be enough. This fair is part of the rapid tec, isn´t it? Anybody an idea where to find a good but affordable hotel in Erfurt? Never been there before. According to the website Ultimaker will also be represented. Will you guys be there or is it just iGo3D? Let´s see if I get a day or two off and we can drink a bear, Ian. Regards, Philip

Hi, that was exactly what I was thinking, take a quickprint profile, change some values, and go back to quickprint. Well I think it does not work this way (or at least it did not with the Versionof Cura I was useing at that time). When you take quickprint, you can only make these changes directly in the quickprint window. (ABS, PLA, diameter, support, that´s it). If you want to change sth. You have to go to the full settings and print from there, respectively save to SD. So it does not work the way you tried. The good news is, that default values in "full settings" are the same as in quickprint, as far as I know. So take these and tweak only one, max two values and see what is happening. When you change to much, you cannot see exactly which value effects what. And document all your changes and results. That´s the easiest and fastes way to learn, I think. I have an excel sheet where I note most of my prints and their settings. Helps a lot. Happy printing ;-) Philip

Thanks for your answers. The places are hard to reach with a soldering iron from the inside, and from the ourside... won´t look that good. But the idea is good. Silicone, is also possible, same with Ponal. Bought some on Thursday, none waterproof on course... :mad: But waterproof wouldn´t work... Mhm what about clear varnish?... Will go to the hardware store next week. Not yet sure what to buy... Philip

Hallo Carsten, habe einen Ultimaker 1, da sind nen paar Dinge anders. Ich beschreibe einmal wie ich´s beim UM1 lösen würde. Wenn das Material sich nicht bewegt, obwohl der Extruder sich dreht, dann hat das Extruderrad sich meistens ins Filament rein gefressen. Da ist dann eine richtige Kerbe drin, weshalb man das so von Hand auch nicht vor oder zurück bewegt bekommt. Wichtig ist, dass du bevor du das zu ziehen versuchst, die Düse auf ca. 180°C aufheizt, sonst klebt das Filament im Hotend fest. Beim UM1 wird das Material mittels einer Feder gegen das Extruderrad gedrückt, welches das Filament vorantreibt. Diese Feder lässt sich aushängen, dann kann man das Filament von Hand rausziehen. Ich weiß nicht ob das beim UM2 ähnlich leicht möglich ist. Wenn das mit aufgeheizter Düse, rückwärts bewegendem Extruder und leichtem Ziehen nicht geht, würde ich schauen, wie der Mechanismus befestigt ist, der das Filament gegen das Rad drückt, diesen vorsichtig lösen und das von Hand rausziehen. Wie gesagt, ich habe KEINEN UM2, hoffe das gibt dir trotzdem nen Ansatz, wie du das Problem lösen kannst. Viele Grüße, Philip

Hi everybody, it´s my girlfriends birthday. She loves flowers and pink. So last night I printed this vase on my UM: It´s a Double Twisted Vase by FabLabMaastricht http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:37327 From the inside it looks very spikey. It looks great. She total loves it, me too. Only problem is, it is not completely watertight. In one layer some drops come out. Has anybody an idea to repair this print? I am thinking of melting the PLA locally a little bit, but how to do and not destroy the print? Or painting... Anybody done sth. like this before and got experience with this or other tips. Your help is very much appreciated. Thanks, Philip P.S.: It´s printed with the spiralize feature which is absolutely awesome for vases. Joris great idea, Daid well done.

Hi Alnavasa, the design looks pretty good. Which program did you use to create it? The original Ulitmaker fan does not supply enough cooling. I tried one simple fan duct, printed it out of PLA. Worked well at the beginning, but during an 30 hour print, the aluminium plate on the hot end got to hot so the duct was deformed, bent down and collided with the print and touched the printhead. So when I came back I had a ruined print and a half molten fan duct.... I would strongly recomend to print this out of ABS. I went back to the standard fan for one week, then I tried foehnsturms idea of the cross flow fan. Which works great for PLA. Best prints I did until now. Very simple. I love it. http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/3890-the-crossflow-fan-approach/ But I am also very interested to hear how your cooling system performs. The cross flow fan has a small problem with overhangs on the lee side of a print and it is louder than a small fan. All the best, Philip

Done. I am curious what the product you make of it will look like. :-)

Hallo Markus, freut mich, dass das hingehauen hat. Es gibt am Anfang so ein paar Dinge die muss man erst lernen. Wenn man das weiß ist alles halb so wild. Es ist auch normal, dass ein paar Ausdrucke nicht hin hauen. Dann schaut man was schief gegangen ist und tastet sich langsam an optimale Ergebnisse ran. Das bed leveling und der optimale Düsenabstand zum Bett sind zwei so Dinge. Die Unterstützung durch das Forum macht ne Menge aus. Viel Erfolg bei deinen Ausdrucken. Viele Grüße, Philip P.S.: Ich könnte jetzt nicht mehr bis zum Wochenende warten...

Hallo Markus, die Riemenspannung KANN man einstellen. Du legst den Riemen in den Holzblock mit der Messingbuchse, schließt den Riemen und schiebst dieses kleine Holzteil mit der Schraube rein http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultimaker/6244577512/. Durch Anziehen dieser kleinen Schraube spannst du den Riemen. Wenn du die so stark angezogen hast, dass du damit die 6mm Stange festklemmst, dann sind deine Riemen zu stramm. Steht in einem Satz so in der Anleitung "The clamps will also create more tension on the belts", allerdings gibt es kein Foto wo das explizit gezeigt wird oder gesagt wird. Sind die Punkte 5-10 der Anleitung. http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Ultimaker_rev.4_assembly:_Extrusion_head Nach dem Zusammenbau hat ich mit meinem UM auch Probleme mit der Leichtgängikeit. Habe die 4 Schrauben dann nochmal gelöst und mich ganz langsam an eine ausreichende Spannung ran getastet. Um die Spannung zu kontrollieren gibt´s ja das Video. Über die Schraube, kannst du deine Riemen quasi stimmen wie die Saiten einer Gitarre. Hoffe das hilft dir weiter. Achte dann noch darauf, dass die beiden 6mm Stangen exakt rechtwinkelig zueinander ausgerichtet sind, sonst kann das zum Klemmen neigen und die Ausdrucke haben keine exakten rechten Winkel. Viel Erfolg, berichte Mal. Viele Grüße, Philip P.S.: Meine Riemen sind weniger stramm als in dem Video gezeigt, vom Ton her tiefer, druckt damit aber optimal.

No big surprise, the Conrad 3D printer sucks. Conrad is a retailer. Means even if they put their name on it, I doubt that the engineering is done by themselves. I think they buy this printer from China, maybe it has been manufactured and engineered exclusively for them and to their specs. So the real producer will be a small or medium size Chinese Company in the Shenzhen or Guangzhou area. To save costs, this printer has been produced in a larger batch and shipped to Germany by sea. Shipping takes about 3 months. Means they are slow when it comes to improvements or updated version. For "customer service" you simply produce 10% more than your expected sales and replace defect units. No repair. No people who really know about 3D printing. These Chinese Companies are fast. The speed is amazing. Problem with this kind of China deals is quality assurance. And how to control the quality of a product if you don't really know it? Most likely they will only have a China head office in Hong Kong like all the others and maybe some regional offices. But that's it. I doubt, that there is any real expert for 3 D printing in the company. They rely on their Chinese partners. Problem with the Chinese is, they learn fast and are many. They are big and slow and don't know what they are doing. Ultimaker is small, fast, loves and understands their product. That's their chance. Just my 5 cents...

For PLA I use 50°C on glass covered with a dried solution of water and PVA (wood glue). Works very good most of the times. For your setting I don´t know the optimum teperature, but if it is too hot your first layer does not look that good. And waiting half an hour until your HB has reached the temperature is way to long. You can speed that up with a heat gun. For finding the optimum temperature I would start with a temperature which works well for you, print a small object, lower the temperature 5 degrees, print again and so on. Until you found the temperature at which the object does not stick well anymore. Increase the temperature 5 or maximum 10°C and you have your optimum temperature.

"Bang Bang" mode means simply switch on/off. temperature set to 50°C: if temperature <50°C ON if temperature >50°C OFF With PID you can tweak the behavior of a closed loop control much more precise by adjusting three values. But it requires some experience to get the right values. Done that on an electronic pressure control loop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller Anon I like your idea of useing the small relay PCB board for disconnecting the HBP second supply when turning off the UM switch. But I am a little critical about the rest of the wiring. If I remeber things correct, the reason not to use the original Mosfet directly is, the power plug can´t handle the current, nor can the switch and also the circuit paths cannot handle it. You don´t use the power connector, but the switch and also the circuit paths... I think that might get hot when useing it over a longer time. Jason said sth. like this and it´s also in the UM wiki. Correct me if I am wrong. I would prefer connecting another MOSFET and leave the original PCB as it is. The Meanwell Power Supplies look very good. That´s what I was thinking about. More expensive but safe for sure.

First print: Just a Yoda, looks good. :smile: Second print: Double twisted vase, watertight, just one shell, done with spiralize, perfect. :smile: Third print: What the... :blink: :( :angry: :cry: Ooops... That´s what I found when I came back home after a six hour print... looked good at the beginning, but now it´s just a big yellow Bloooob. At 5mm height, the heated bed switched off, like on the other prints. But this one did not stick to the HB. Used a new mirror tile coated with a dried PVA, water solution. This time I wanted to have the PVA solution very flat, so I let it lean against the wall while drying... Next time I will use a brush again. Lesson learned...

Hi Andi, bought the HB from 3Dprinting_HK. I live in Germany as well and did not have any kind of problems with german customs. I ordered it, paid via paypal and two weeks later I got a parcel. That´s it. HB is as described and works very well. Only the wires could have been a little longer. I still have a beefy 12V Dell PSU, so I am operating it only with 12V and with 12V it takes too much time to heat up. Well I need a 24V PSU or 19V at least. But I want to have a closed one. I am carrying my Ultimaker around a lot. Loose cables might be an issue and there is not enough space under the UM to integrate the PSU... Anyone saw a good 24V PSU on ebay, completely closed? I haven´t tried a silicone heater pad, but maybe they are faster...

I measured the fan voltage of my UM1 some days ago. It was 19V when I set it to maximum with the Ulticontroller (255).

Did another test print. Mad Lords Voronoi Klein Bottle. Took 17 hours. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:145694 The result is good, but could have been better in detail. On the lower part there is no stringing. On the upper part there is. Why? Any suggestions? This print also confirmed that the lee has an effect on the overhangs and maybe the deflector plate improves the quality a little, but is not a perfect solution. So next thing to try is a small fan on the print head for the lee. First picture: Fan side Second picture: Lee side It´s not that clear on the pictures as it was in reality. @fns720: Hope you will solve the problem with ABS. If I understood the idea of the heat chamber right, it is kept at a temperature of around 70°C to optimize the merging of layers and improve overall print quality and minimize warping and irregular shrinking. So you need heat. On the other hand you need cooling for small details. The cross flow fan cools globally. Maybe a small solution which cools diretly at the nozzle with only a small amount of air will do the job. If you use the cross flow fan only to create an air curtain to keep the heat in the build chamber and therefore place it as high as possible, so that it DOES NOT or almost not cool the freshly printed ABS. I think the optimum would be to cool the ABS from more than 200°C to around 70°C, but not less. On Friday I am on a conference where they also demonstrate industrial grade FDM printers. Will talk to them and try to find out what exactly these machines do with heat management and if and how they cool. Let´s see.

Yes a fan would also do. Maybe I will give it a try. Mhm I run the cross flow fan at very low RPM (only 20%), I think a small fan needs a percentage to deliver sufficient air... The best way would be to be able to controll the fans independently via software... I am sure there is a simpler solution. First plug both in, see what happens, test it... Foehnsturm, I agree. A cross flow fan offers a global cooling, whereas a normal fan only offers a local cooling. Another thing I learned with the cross flow fan is, that it even provides more than enough cooling air at very low RPM, even if it is almost stopping because of low power. So cooling is not about getting the strongest fan with the biggest air flow, but getting a solution which brings the cooling air exactly where you need it. Perhaps it is a good idea to test a setting with a cross flow fan for general cooling and some kind of construction that cools directly around the print head... @fns720: Thanks for shareing your heated bed solution. Mine sucks right now, have a heated bed which should be a copy of the UM2 heatbed, and heat up very fast, but with 24V and right now I only have a big 12 PSU... The next heated bed is definitely a silicone heater... I haven´t found a good source in Europe, yet. I think it is good, that you tell us about your problems with the cross flow fan and ABS, because so far all of us have only used PLA, which works great, but ABS seems to be a completely different story. Perhaps the cross flow fan is not suitable for ABS. Looks like you need some cooling, which cools directly at the print head.

Did some more test prints with the cross flow fan and they are absolutely awesome. Best prints I made so far. I printed out an ultimaker handle, with more than 7 hours and with almost 22cm a large object. https://www.youmagine.com/designs/ultimaker-handle No warping at all. The bottom is absolutely flat, the PVA could be spread more evenly, but that´s it. No problems on the lee, absolutely sharp contour, very good and smooth surface. Have a look yourself. It also works for very small parts. Printed the retraction clip. Perfect. Every detail was right. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:46157 A more complex part: Ultimaker minimum printhead. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:154845 Good quality. A little warping, turned out the heated bed at 3mm, that was too early. My fault. The detail grade is very high. No real defects, just some very small dents. Had the same idea like you Mad Overlord, but wanted to test it before posting. Yes, you have to cool the lee. A small fan is a simple solution. But I found an even simpler. I took a 8x8cm piece of 0.4mm Aluminium and folded it downwards. It´s attached to the printhead and directs airflow which is to high for cooling the part and has already passed the printhead downwards into the lee. Looks like this: With this setup I printed the Maker Faire Robot again, with exactly the same settings. This time the overhang on the backside looks very good. There are small, almost invisible imperfections, but that´s totally fine, I think. Have to test this setup for some more prints to make a real statement. What are good complex parts for test prints you would use? With the same setup I also printed out another hollow cube. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30171 First it looked great, but failed on the bridging. Maybe I had the fan running to low for bridging. It was only at around 20%, which seems to be more than enough for most parts. Anyway I have to test this setup with bridging a little more intensive. The more I test this setup, the more I like it. Two positive side effects I have noticed are, the cross flow fan cools the print, but also the stepper motors. After 5 hours printing they were still very cool, only the extruder motor was hot. The upper part of the hotend is actively cooled, this prevents a clooging hotend and maybe enables higher printing temperatures for the hotend.

I don´t like support material. Or let´s say support material how it is being created today in most of the times. There are more intelligent ways and approaches. Mesh mixer is such an approach. Illuminarti wrote about it in his blog: http://www.extrudable.me/2013/12/28/meshmixer-2-0-best-newcomer-in-a-supporting-role/ Something like this integrated in Cura would be mind blasting. We wouldn´t talk about support anymore. With the right adjustment and cooling an UM can even print midair! Have a look at Joris videos. Amazing. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:257327 Sometimes you really don´t want to print with support and overhangs suck. Gerald I like the idea of smart overhang slicing. But I don´t like the idea of changing the dimensions of the printed part. Most of the times I am printing functional parts. A sharp corner should be a sharp corner. If I wanted it round, I would have designed it that way. What if the print head would print the infill first, but in a pattern that goes along the solid model, line by line. If the overhang is way to big it would also be an option to print half of the overhang in layer one, then layer 2 and 3 first to stabilize the already printed and then go back to layer one? With bridging I made the experience that an UM can even print bridges of 4 cm and more, the printed plastic hangs like a rope directly after comeing out, but tightens, when the other pillar is reached because of cooling. Of course you need sufficient cooling for this. Regards, Philip

@foehnsturm: Thanks, that helped a lot. The first prints were all with 100mm/s. This time I lowered it to 35mm/s. The result looks much better. Did not know that it would influence the quality of overhangs that much, because the straight parts looked very good. The quality of the overhangs on the rear side is slightly lower. Yours seems to be a little better. So maybe it´s only a matter of tweaking the values. Sorry for the bad quality pictures, had to do them with my mobile. My print was done at 0.1mm layer height 0.8 shell thickness 1.0 mm bottom/top thickness 20% fill density 35mm speed 200°C printing temperature 50°C bed temperature 2.85 mm diameter 100% flow 0.4 nozzle size 40.0 retraction speed 4.5 mm retraction distance 0.3 mm initial layer thickness 150.0 travel speed 20 bottom layer speed 5sec minimal layer time expert settings: 0 mm minimum retraction travel enable combing 0 mm minimal extrusion before retracting 0.0 Z hop when retracting 0.5 mm fan on at full height 40% fan speed min 45% fan speed max 10 mm/s minimum speed Which values are different from yours? @fns: would be interesting to hear which values work best with ABS. Still got 2kg ABS black but did not print it on the ultimaker until now. Are you printing on heated glass with a diluted wood glue? Did you modify the ultimaker for ABS in any other way. I think the cross flow fan will help to keep the upper part of the hot end cool and therefore avoid filament jams. @ChrisR: foehnsturm has tried a lot of different cooling ducts and concepts before comeing up with the cross flow fan. Not sure if he also tried the aquarium type pump. If not maybe you can give it a try and report. I was thinking about useing a pneumatic tube, with some very fine orifices aiming at the nozzle and a precision pressure regulator, flow tube, needle valve etc. to precisely control the air flow. Got all the stuff, but before testing it, I tried this approach and like it very much. It´s much simpler and the results are very, very good. Just optimizing for the last few percent. Regards, Philip

Hi fns, yes I think it´s a flow related problem, but air flow related. Which settings are you useing for the fan? As you said without fan the structure is strong, but the edges are ugly, with fan on (100%?) the objects are brittle. So the truth lies in the middle. I think the cooling is so strong that the layers do not stick together very well. They do not melt into each other. Did you try to print with only 50% fan speed or less? In the expert settings in Cura you will find a menu for Cooling, perhaps try 40% as fan speed min and 50% as fan speed max. I haven´t tried ABS yet, but for printing PLA with 200°C this works very good. Hope this helps, Philip

After fixing some errors with my heated bed, I finally installed the cross flow fan and tested it. The setup is improvised but works for first tests. First impression: The cross flow fan is great. I made some great prints with it. I totally like it, but my setup and settings leave room for more. I printed out some 20mm cubes, the surface was perfect on all sides. Very fine print. I printed out an eggcup in a round design with a slight overhang. Came out great. Best eggcup I did so far and I did a lot of them in the past. The next test object was the maker faire robot. The one they used as test object in the latest 3D printer review of MAKE magazin. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40212 At the beginning the first one looked great. The legs are perfect, but when printing the first overhang, things got so so... The overhang facing the fan was very good and the ones on the side also. But the one on the backside was bad. It looked buckled. Next try, I turned the robot 90 degrees on the build platform, with its face faceing the fan. Much better. Both arms looked very good, but the overhang on the backside, its "ass" was still buckled. This seems to be because of the lee of the model itself. The backside does not get cooled as good as the front and the sides. All previous prints I did were with 20% fan speed. So next thing I increased the fan speed to the recommended 50%. The backside was a little better, but not yet perfect. Unfortunatedly at this speed the fan gets much louder, even a lot louder than the stepper motors. Conclusion: - Works good, but is still in process. - Print quality depends on models and is also dependent on their orientation to the fan. - Overhangs on the "backside" of models look a little messy. Next things to do: - Optimize the position and alignment of the fan, macbe add a duct which forms a small slit. - Find a way to run the fan at very low RPM <30% for noise reduction, but with high print quality. - Eliminate the problem with bad overhangs in the lee. I got some ideas for fixing all this. Let´s see how they work. I will add pictures tomorrow. Markus, any news on your cross flow fan? Regards, Philip

I changed my bed leveling also to three point, but I have one screw in the front and two on the sides. I also installed a heated bed, but no Alu plate yet. What are dimensions of the Alu plate? 220 x 220? Or a little bigger? What type of Alu is it the famous Mic-6? Mic-6 is hard to get in Europe, but after longer research and talking to specialized metal traders I found sth. which has the same quality and spec like Mic-6. It´s called 5080 or 5083, you can buy it online here: http://www.metall-kunststoffhandel.de/shop/aluminium-feinstgefrst-p-2134.html?osCsid=3a7f6797d76f68961e0ed88693b46260 What type of silicone heating pad will you use? Do you have a source in Europe for it? All sources I found are in China or the US. By the way, I like the printed cable chain you made for the heated bed. I think I will print one too.

Just ordered a cross flow fan at Conrad. http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/560546/X-Fan-Querstromluefter-Motor-rechts-DF43198-R-12-V-400-mA/?ref=home&rt=home&rb=1 I think it is the same Markus and ballanux are useing. I am excited how this fan will improve print quality. Regards, Philip

Hi, I have something like this mounted to the heatbed of my UM1. http://www.mtplus.de/3.html The size of 230x230mm is perfect for an UM. I print at 50°C, PLA sticks very good, after finishing the print, the plate cools down and the print releases itself at a temperature of about 40°C. If this is not fast enough, I can loosen the plate and bend it, the print simply pops off. The surface of the prints is perfect, much better than with blue tape. Maybe even better than with glas, because you don´t need gluestick, hairspray or anything else. In the current setup this plate has only one disadvantage, it´s flexible and because I attached it directly to the heated bed it is not 100% plain. So maybe I have to add an Aluminium plate between the plate and the heated bed. But this will result in longer heating times, but will also spread the heat all-over. If anybody is interested, I will take a picture of this setup tomorrow. Philip