donmilne

Maybe it's just that my eyes are getting older, but I can't agree that it's easy to "eyeball" the gap between nozzle and glass. I also firmly believe that this adjustment is crucial for print quality - the more accurate the better. I currently use a bit of paper as a feeler gauge (I use the same bit of paper every time for consistency!), but I'm thinking of going an even more rigorous route, i.e. I have a dial test indicator (for setting up a lathe) in my workshop and I've been thinking of how best to use it for this application - and whether it would do better than the paper.

Apropos of nothing much in the above discussion: I've discovered that a broad wood chisel - 30mm say - provided it is very sharp, makes a perfect tool to get semi-stuck PLA prints off the bed without damaging either the glass or the print. I expect it would work on non-PLA prints too, I haven't needed to try yet. Now I don't worry about using a little too much glue. You just give the edge of the print a rap with the chisel, bevel side up, and the print pings off.

Yes, there's not much travel in the levelling screws. What I do is tighten all three leveling screws most of the way before I do that first big adjustment with the front knob (to get the nozzle within 1mm of the plate). That way each corner just needs to be loosened in the second stage until it pinches your paper feeler gauge slightly.

I had a similar problem, though in my case the printer was merely at the other side of the room. What was the nature of the instability?

Well, it does mean that the seller would be in breach of contract if he promised this and didn't deliver. Whereas, if I buy "3mm" filament (+/- 0.1mm) and it turns out to be 3.1mm then I don't have a legal leg to stand on. Without a spec the value you measure doesn't mean much, since the value could be different next time.

I dealt with the strength of the parts above (see the "thin disk" pictures). The material is stiffer than ABS, but not as brittle as pure PLA. So overall strength should come somewhere between ABS and PLA, which is attractive assuming it doesn't have the shrinkage problems of ABS. Regarding the dimensions: I don't want to sound like "Mr Angry", but I've frankly had my fill of being burned by "3mm" filament suppliers! I want 2.85mm filament with good tolerances. The exact dimension may be important for print quality. I want the supplier to claim that is what they are selling me, as that gives me buyers rights. So if the seller doesn't publish specs I can hold them to, I'm not interested! :cool:

I should perhaps have emphasised the point of this thread, which is finding a good local supplier for those of us here in the UK. And, I need a supplier who can verify that their filament is good for my printer. I can buy ColorFabb from iMakr, but the listing shows it as "3.00mm" with no further details regarding the accuracy of that diameter or the specs of the reel. I've had enough of that kind of vagueness. If you're going to mention an alternative, please at least indicate which reputable UK supplier holds stock.

Conclusion Spectrum Filament still have a few teething problems to work through, but they are still the only good UK supplier of filament that I know of, meaning a supplier that knows their product and understands their market, and are not just shifting consumables made by someone else. They have also responded promptly to emails too. I'll certainly be buying from them until further notice.

First print Attempt 3. With attempt #3 I finally had a successful print, see pictures below. I would say that the print is of reasonable quality, and any loss of quality is not due to the filament - more likely it's time to level my bed again. I used the standard PLA printing temperature, and the same speed that I've used up to now. I did think I detected that the material was less solidly adhering to the bed than I was used to, hence the excessive glue you see on the glass for subsequent attempts! p.s. I've boosted the sharpness of these images, so the "grain" would probably be less obvious in reality.

First print Attempt 2. I was unlucky with attempt #2. A loop of filament left the reel and went into the void between printer and reel, then as it got pulled tight it hooked up on that little "ear" of filament sticking out from the hub of the reel (see first photo). So the filament jammed and the printhead ran out of material. I didn't take a picture of the jam as I was too worried about the print head overheating. In hindsight when I look at an Ultimaker reel I see the cleverness of their double-walled hub design - nothing sticking out to catch on anything. I've discussed this with Spectrum and they agree that their reel design needs to improve, and they expect that it will in due course. Ultimaker Reels have a double walled hub design. Another thing to note is that the Spectrum reel is deeper than an Ultimaker reel, so it would not be possible to get two Spectrum reels on the standard UM2 spool holder at the same time, which would be a problem if and when the UM2 Dual Extrusion Kit comes along, ditto PVA support.

First print. After changing the material in the printer I kicked off a test print of a small DC motor mount that I've been working on. However I quickly aborted the print after noticing that some of the old blue filament was still coming out. Still, that left me with a thin disk of material that was interesting in its own right. I found that while a thin disk of pure PLA would snap if I bent it like this, the Spectrum filament doesn't break. In fact it didn't even make a visible seam until I had worried it a bit, though I did hear cracking noises. I feel safe in saying that this material does seem to be substantially tougher than pure PLA. In hindsight any color other than black would have been better for photographic purposes, however I hope you can still see what's going on.

I recently bought some filament from "Spectrum Filament" in the UK, and I promised I'd let you all know how I got on with it. Well here's my report! First a teeny bit of background. I've had my UM2 printer about a month now, and so far I've found that the most frustating thing is finding a good source of filament. The printer was bought in the UK from www.imakr.com along with samples of several filaments - but it turned out that none of these "3mm" filaments fitted, for various reasons. The only filament I could use was the Ultimaker blue PLA that was bundled with the printer. I'm reluctant to buy any more filament from iMakr - how can I complain that it doesn't meet specs if the site doesn't make clear what those specs are? I next tried to order filament direct from Ultimaker... but I've said enough about that experience elsewhere. Not something I'll soon repeat. I then found the Spectrum Filament website. I should probably make clear that I'm not affiliated with Spectrum in any way, I'm just a customer. Spectrum seem to be a new player in the UK market. I was attracted by the fact that they give detailed specs for their filament dimensions, and those specs make them suitable for my UM2 (2.85 +/- 0.05mm). Also they stock a decent range of "ordinary" colors, in fact their website offers to make any custom color you want!. The filament has an "impact modifier" added a la ColorFabb, which they claim makes the filament tougher (less brittle) than pure PLA. The picture below shows an example of a reel of Spectrum PLA filament. See that it comes on a standard cable type reel, inside a light cardboard box. Note the little "ear" of filament sticking out, I'll be commenting on this later.

Is this quite a low res print, or is the lighting just exaggerating the grain? I think you can get better quality on a UM2. I found that a combination of taking extra care over leveling the bed, thicker wall thickness (1.2mm), lower print speed and of course 0.1mm layers all contributed to very satisfying looking prints.

I've looked at the 3d2print website before. They seem to sell 1.75mm filament exclusively? Btw, two reels (of three ordered) of filament from Ultimaker arrived here on Friday. It seems to have made good time once it was actually shipped. The problem seems to be that the website doesn't accurately reflect stock. To protect the companies image that needs to be fixed, and communications could be improved too. Happily this order includes the first reel of ABS that fits my printer, as I'm keen to have a go with ABS. No sign of anything from Spectrum yet, though it's possible I misunderstood what he was saying about delays.

When I first got my UM2 printer I saw the gluestick that came with it, and assumed I was supposed to use it every time. I lathered it on. You may remember that my first few posts was about the difficulty of getting the finished print off the glass. Everything else about the print at that time was default PLA settings, so the bed was heated as well. Then one day I started a print after forgetting to apply the gluestick. I was surprised that the print went perfectly, and popped off the glass much more easily once it cooled down. Ah! I thought, the gluestick must be for ABS only. Since then I didn't use glue and the part has become easier and easier to remove... until yesterday, a tall PLA print separated from the glass while it was still printing. I applied glue and it went fine... and was noticeably better stuck to the glass at the end. So, now I'm thinking that PLA does benefit from a thin coating of glue, but you only need to treat the glass every now and then, not every time. I.e. when you notice that the print comes away a tad too easily. I've skimmed this discussion. I was surprised about the bit about temps over 60C being bad, but it makes sense. I'm not sure why wood glue is being suggested. Surely you must be talking about white PVA glue, which is basically the same stuff as the gluestick. I can't immediately see why an optically perfect film is necessary, though it'll certainly be elegant. Obviously you don't want lumps of the stuff, but IMHO the heated bed will smooth it out anyway, within reason.

There's one further advantage that I think OpenSCAD has that I think should be mentioned. In two years time when half of the 3D packages listed above have disappeared from the market, I don't want to find myself with a hard disk folder filled with projects that I can't read. At the very least the file format must be open, and ideally readable by more than one package, and not just as a badly implemented buggy import function! Now .scad files are ASCII text, you can't get much more open than that. It fails on the import front - I'm aware of a couple of clone parsers, but there doesn't seem to be much incentive to develop them. Of course OpenSCAD is open source, so it can't really disappear. Also, if the worst came to the worst I could use the script as a recipe and follow it manually in another package. The important bit is that all those dimensions and ratios I spent ages working out should not be lost. How about the other packages mentioned in this thread? If they went belly up, how useful would your project files be?

The Ultimaker Stores sales unit continues to confound me. Yesterday I emailed them again, asking them to confirm that they had cancelled my order since I'm going to be buying from Spectrum from now on. Today... they sent me a despatch email. D'oh! This is hopeless incompetence. I'm really glad that I bought my UM2 from a UK agent, I certainly will not attempt buying anything directly from Ultimaker again. On the totally opposite end of the competance spectrum (pardon the pun), I got an email from Spectrum Filaments today apologising for not being able to ship my order right away (that would be the order I made on Monday!). And in compensation they're sending me a complementary selection of four free filaments!! Now obviously they can't do this for everyone or they'd go bust - and for all I know they'll turn out to be 1 metre of each. They are aware that I communicate my findings on forums such as these and clearly want to establish a reputation for quality and caring for their customers. All that is understood... but the comparison with my Ultimaker Store experience is still quite stark. And in fact they had gotten in touch to explain the delay and suggest alternatives before they knew anything about me. No question who I'll be using in future. I expect to post about the filament itself next week.

My issue with Ultimaker was not delivery time, it was failure to keep me informed. I'll happily (well ok, maybe not happily) wait 4 weeks if I'm told up front to expect that. But, when it's all one black hole of vagueness and my emails get no answer... that's when I get pissed off.

Actually, in the time since I made that last post I turned up a UK site called Spectrum Filament who claim to manufacture their own filament, the specs look right and there's a good colour range. Downside: only PLA at the moment (though with a plasticiser, so not as brittle as pure PLA). I've just ordered a small range of colours, I'll report back with how I get on.

Not finding an obvious supplier in the UK I decided to try an "experimental" order from Ultimaker themselves. I have to tell you that I'm extremely disappointed - the experience has been entirely slipshod and amateurish (*)... what size of company is Ultimaker anyway? (*) To be specific :- [*]I checked through the online store, and found very limited stocks of "plain" PLA and only one ABS. I didn't want to wait for the March ETA for more stock (this was mid Feb, and I was quickly using up my one bundled reel of PLA), so I ordered what I could: black PLA, white PLA and the one ABS option. [*]I got a quick email acknowledging the order and referring me to the attached invoice. There was no attachment. I brought this to the company's attention and got a "how unfortunate" message... The same email had promised that a despatch notice and tracking info would follow. [*]About a week later I noticed that I still hadn't received the despatch notice. I asked for an update and got another "how unfortunate" message, and a promise to look into it. [*]About a week after that still had no despatch notice, and no reply to my query. I emailed again, asking for concrete info this time - no more platitudes! That was last Thursday. No response so far (Monday). [*]Today I cancelled the order. No response so far. I have to say that this is the sort of incompetent processes I expect from one guy working out of his garage, not a professional business. Does anybody know if Colorfabb have their act together any better?

I thought people might like to see what I did next with this capability. For an outdoor project I wanted to make a pulley and a bracket to hold it. This will be bolted on to a chicken coop and guide the raising and lowering of the pop hole door. I originally intended that I'd use a steel M6 bolt as the pulley spindle, but then it crossed my mind that PLA might be preferable: it won't rust, and I can make a custom bolt that perfectly fits the application. See below :- This time it was an M6 bolt and two nuts so they can lock together and still allow the pulley (shown) to turn freely. From the thread above you'll see that M10 worked well. I was concerned that the finer detail required for M6 threads might be pushing the capability of the printer, but in fact they came out near perfect: not up to professional standards, but probably as good or better than I could do with a handheld tap and die in my workshop. Below is the completed bracket, pulley and spindle. All designed and printed from scratch this weekend. Sorry guys that the pictures continue to be so crappy. Photography is not one of my hobbies, so this is done using the phone in my camera, and not very good lighting. Still, hopefully you can see everything you might need to. My UM2 continues to produce excellent quality ever since I had to re-level it after the stuck filament episode. All these prints were done in Cura without support. 1.2mm shell, 25% fill.

@Truckle: download OpenSCAD, it's free and quick to install. It will excel at "engineering" shapes made from boxes, circles etc - and if you have any wood or metal working experience then the idea of "fix this rectangle onto that cylinder at this distance from the end" ... will come naturally. Unlike the perverted mouse activities found in 3D CAD. And the result will be parametric, meaning in practice: easily scaled in any dimension to suit future similar jobs. Some people are nervous about scripting, but really it's a doddle: if you are capable of writing down a list of things to do to make a part, then you can just as easily write it as an OpenSCAD script. What OpenSCAD would be bad at is art, i.e. objects with non regular curves, horses, faces etc.

Regarding the comments about EOL character in Windows: that's actually an issue with Notepad rather than Windows per se. I strongly recommend that you download the freeware Notepad++ app and using that for all your text file viewing and editing. Among other things it's agnostic when it comes to EOL conventions.

Damn. So no Klein bottles on my 3D printer then...

I agree, especially if you spray some lacquer on the outside for added UV protection. Actually, bells ringing in my head... a lot of outdoor ABS objects are gray (e.g. IP5x box), while indoor objects are white. Doesn't the gray signify a UV resistance treatment? I'm thinking that it might be useful to stick to existing standards - and know what the treatment is!