Anders Olsson

There's a bit of an improvement I think. I printed the Ultimaker robot and it came out better than my previous print. I still have problems with retraction I think (see the antenna) printed this @ .1mm And I call this one "Improvements since my projects went underground when the old forum closed"

The Vespel spacer was not my idea. First time saw it was in 3Poro´s post, here in this thread: http://oldforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/7024-teflon-spacer-replacement/page-5&do=findComment&comment=71524 3Poro seems to have disappeared since the forum change though, together with a major part of the advanced users and essential forum features like "direct link to a post"..

Regarding the RSB nozzles there are two batches I think. The first one has two marks on each flat surface, four marks in total for 0.4 mm, six for 0.6 mm and so on. The second batch has another system with only one mark on each flat surface. I don't know why it was changed as I am not really involved in this, hopefully swordriff will give you more details on this soon. I am sorry for not being so active here by the way. I just can not stand this new forum even though I have been trying hard to get used to it. Feels like I get a headache as soon as I try to use it. Give me the old forum back (or some other well established platform) and I will be much more active! Not posting does not mean nothing is happening by the way, it just means you / Ultimaker no longer have a preview on what is being done..

I see now why you might have some use for that super hard nozzle I tested mine with XT-CF20 the other day and 100 grams of it did not cause any measurable or visible wear (!) A TiN coated brass nozzle that I then used as a reference did not like the carbon fiber though, it is amazing how this material can wear metal nozzles..

There should be a warning there, like "Scroll down to HEATUP NOZZLE but do NOT select it". Just having the selector on the "Heatup Nozzle" option without selecting it means you can read the temperature sensor signal without starting the heater. You can then test the sensor by heating it with your fingers.

I probably spend a full working day on trying to get the E3D V5 extruder on a Delta Tower to work with PLA. My conclusion is that the E3D V5/V6 all metal design is not suitable for PLA. I tried all possible retraction and temperature settings, improved cooling, tried two different brands of PLA and one PLA/PHA. It just does not work reliably when you have a lot of retractions and the failure modes are exactly the same as when i experimented with a metal spacer and PLA in the UM2. In the end I drilled through the whole heatsink with a 4.2 mm drill and then made a new heatbreak with 4.1 mm inner diameter. I then lined it with PTFE tube all the way down to the nozzle, the same way the E3D Lite6 is designed: And guess what, now it works perfectly fine with PLA. You can feel the difference when feeding PLA manually, that sudden random resistance after retractions that used to be there is gone now. So I don't know what people do, but in my mind the non lined E3D V5/V6 are not suitable for printing PLA (and probably not flexible filaments too). ABS will most likely print fine though.

One of the 1.75 mm prototypes just found it's way into my printer and it appears to be working fine. So I guess it should not take too long before the 1.75 mm kit is ready for the market. There are some things to sort out though, the bowden tube for example. I am using the original tube, which works fine, but I think there will be a more suitable one once the kit is ready. If you urgently need this kit, I guess you could offer Carl at 3DSolex to help testing it. The unused one in the picture is the 1.75 mm version (I needed ABS for this print, which I don't have in 1.75 mm yet)

Try lowering the speed a bit, here is 50 vs 35 mm/s with my UM2 and the new nozzle: (sorry about the lens distortion)

It is probably not much of a help, but I use SEPA MFB30G12 fans on my UM2 and they work fine with PWM: https://www1.elfa.se/elfa3~fi_sv/elfa/init.do?item=54-216-61&toc=20906 The data sheet says 120 mA starting current and 70 mA operating current for these.

I am going to the 3DSolex HQ in Oslo today. If you are lucky, some kind of wear resistant 1.75 mm prototype will come out of this "mad scientists meeting"

Good guess, that is actually the only thread I am really following on the new forum

For some reason the post counter on the forum counts only new topics (?) and when you check the last 24 hours threads with multiple replies only shows up once. So there is no way to quickly compare the old and the new forum. To do a comparison, you have to go through each thread that was updated last 24 hours and manually check how many posts were made the last 24 hours. I did that twice, just out of curiosity, and ended up with the new forum having about 50-75% of the number of posts the old forum had per day, so it is worse than the old forum, but not as bad as 20%. The most striking thing if you compare them is that "Modifications and Hacks" is very quiet on the new forum. I am personally a bit fed up with Ultimakers habit of for no obvious reason releasing new software which does not work as intended and is missing important features that the old software had. I think a company the size of Ultimaker should have a more professional approach than this. I would most likely return if the old forum was reopened. This new forum simply does not attract me though, and I am not going to force myself to spend my time here. I am way too busy and there are not that many things posted here that interest me anymore.

Things are awfully slow here (as they usually are in the beginning of summer), so I still only have one prototype. If I am lucky however, I might have a few more prototypes later this week. It will be 3 mm versions though, since I don't have any 1,75 mm nozzles available that are suitable for modification right now. Swordriff is working on it too, but his batch might take a bit more time. So if you would be able to use a 3 mm E3D-style nozzle, which is a bit shorter than the UMO-nozzle, I might have one soon. If not, you have to wait a bit longer.

Funny, I have not checked this thread for some time but I have been thinking of building something almost exactly like that lately After playing with a Delta Tower past days I have to admit that I am slightly in love with that concept too though That is quite surprising, but on the other hand we have tested an aluminum version of the Olsson block and came to the conclusion that aluminum is not a good choice. A brass block seems to be the most reliable option when using brass (or stainless steel) nozzles.

The original block is 5 mm thick and the Olsson block is 5.5 mm You could actually check page 2-5 of this thread. There were a lot of discussions about the dimensions of the block early on and gixxer had a similar idea to what you are suggesting (and I explained why that will not work with the original fan shroud).

Nope, that was not correct for precisely the reason that you explain, sorry for that. I guess we are looking at around 100 posts per day or so (?), but there seems to be no easy way to find out. Is the post counter on this forum is probably only tracking new threads? (the numbers are quite low) For what I do, the main issue, apart from the forum layout/functionality, is that many of the key users from the old forum seems to more or less have disappeared with the forum upgrade. I would really have needed quick response from those users in order to give input on and test new products. I have difficulties reaching this group now, but I am trying through the 3DSolex distributors network, which might work but is much more limiting and time consuming than the forum was. I guess the issue here is that Ultimaker is kind of "making a Makerbot move" by deciding for the users what they want rather than listening to the users. As an example, my instant reaction when you upgraded the web page to the new style long time ago was "My god, are they our of their mind, this is completely unreadable, impossible to navigate and all the important information is gone".. and a few seconds later "Ohh, luckily, they did not touch the forum at least". You can probably imagine my horror when, the forum first went offline unannounced for a week and then, came back unusable and with the new web page look (which you now have managed to improve a bit now though) The thing is that, by deciding what the users want rather than focusing on what the users say they want, you make an important statement. This statement will automatically shift focus to the basic (new) users, with an additional group of really devoted Ultimaker fans hopefully hanging on. A large share of the advanced users who used to like Ultimaker for its openness and willingness to listen and be flexible though, will now no longer have any particular reason to stick here or stick to Ultimaker. I think this is what I am seeing when when browsing through the new forum. The broad variety of rather advanced and very different new projects that I saw on the old forum seems missing and most of the replies are either on advanced topics created before the forum change or on simple questions buy new user. It is one way to move on of course, but unless the forum gets back this group of advanced users it provides very little for me really. New products that I am working on will appear for sure, but I am focusing on platform independent solutions now days and the development process will not be available here since there is no particular reason for me to spend time here if the group of people I want to reach has diminished. That is the hard truth from my perspective. The situation might change by time though, but in my mind touching the forum was a really bad move by Ultimaker, the worst to far, even worse than the premature announcement of the UM2 dual extrusion. (Remember that, we saw very little demand from the users for a new forum) Whether things recover or not, no one can tell I guess. I would have moved back to the old forum long time ago though, not to have to find out.. Sorry for almost writing an article, I just happened to be in the mood of writing

Have you seen the Builder 3D-printers? They already have a rather neat "two filament to one nozzle" solution. Have a look at the spare parts here: http://3dprinter4u.nl/product-category/3d-printer-parts/

Yeah And as a result of that, the number of posts on the new forum seems to be stuck at about 30/day (EDIT:not correct) , compared to the 170/day the old forum had. Not surprisingly, you can now see how ultimaker.com is dropping in the Alexa-ranking: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.ultimaker.com I just wish the old forum would have been reopened long time ago: http://oldforum.ultimaker.com Even if the old forum was not perfect, it at least offered decent basic forum functionality and had a readable layout. This new thing simply fails to attract me... and I keep missing the old forum... sorry to say Ultimaker (I know you spent a lot of time and money on this, but I can only be honest) The old forum chat is still working btw :-)

In fact, the first prototypes were actually mirrored by accident. If I had known when designing the commercial version they would cancel the dual extrusion upgrade, I would have kept it mirrored. But at that point I assumed many people would mount two blocks, so I redesigned it so that the sensor and heater are placed the same way as on the original block, which means it is protruding slightly more to the left. The reason for that, by the way, is that the heater has larger diameter than the temperature sensor.

It should not be more difficult to make them for 1.75 mm filament than for 3 mm, in fact 1.75 mm might be easier. If my tests turn out nicely, I will try to get something like this on the market as I said. There are several things that needs to be tested and optimized first though. But highest on my priority list right now is that the guy who payed the components and the manufacturing wants me to begin by using them for their intended purpose: Printing one of the few things that has potential to ruin them reasonably quickly. That, on the other hand, is quite a good stress-test

My new nozzle is showing promising results to far. Printing ABS based on Sabic MG94 (which prints really good), it appears to have potential of reaching surface- and overhang quality I have not seen before: Next up is the same plastic, but with a fair amount of really nasty particles in it. The nozzle is not made from tungsten carbide by the way, but of something which is equally hard And I did not claim that "no filament can wear it out", I said claimed "no filament that I am aware of that you can buy" can wear it out. My homemade filament is a different story, It should cause some wear, but hopefully not at the same rate as it eats brass

I think the combination of relatively high melting point for XT-CF20 and cooling fans are causing you the extrusion issues. Try printing with as little fans as possible and reduce the speed a bit! Here is a teaser of my approach to address nozzle wear by the way, I just post a photo and let you guess :-) If this continues working as good as it does right now I will try to make these available (through swordriff/3dSolex and dealers). First I need to make a few more prototypes for further testing though. Then, sourcing components and setting up manufacturing will take some time, so please be patient... and they will not be for free.. On the other hand, none of the filament that I am aware of that you can buy should be able to cause wear on them, so it might be worth the wait and cost for some users.

That picture is just a screendump from an ancient version of Pro Engineer, so nothing fancy at all

Here is the picture: The holes on the original and the Olsson block are equally deep, as swordriff says. The reason why the Olsson block is slightly longer is that there needs to be space for the nozzle-thread. This meant that I had to move the heater and the sensor slightly further away from the filament hole and extend the block a little bit.

Well, Ultimaker has quite a challenge in front of them if the goal is to bring the forum back to the popularity it used to have. We are seeing about 30 posts per day on the new forum (including this thread, which only exists because of the new forum) while the old forum had about 170 posts per day. I think the main challenge, apart from sorting out the bugs, is that many people had a bad start with the new forum and such feeling tends to stick with the design/look of the website. Selling a product that had a bad start is always difficult if it looks the same, even if it really has been improved. So one of my suggestions to Ultimaker was to make the upgraded forum look quite different, preferably more like a forum, to make it obvious that things has changed and to create a feeling that this is really something new. I don't know to what extent this will happen, but as I said, what I saw at least looked much better. If I was Ultimaker at this stage, I probably would have copied the old forum design and functionality more or less completely. That would be the safest bet as there were very few complaints about the old forum (apart from picture upload and search function). I personally still haven't managed to get a grip on how this whitespace blog-like layout of the new forum was intended to work. It is difficult to read, difficult to navigate, lacks lots of essential information and functionality that users expect from a forum and it is not inspiring at all to use for me at least. Those things (and post-eating bugs, slow server response and such) has killed my "feeling" for this forum and I have a difficult time enjoying it or motivating myself to use some of my rather rare spare time to contribute to it, sadly.. So, I try to stay optimistic, but I see a huge challenge for the Ultiamker team while the clock is ticking. I will be very busy coming month, so in any case you probably wont see much of me here before midsummer. But if Ultimaker comes up with something that is fast, functional and looks and works like a forum, I will most likely be back. That bug that makes the browser scroll up each time you press a key when you have written this much text in the reply box is still there by way..