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nigel-johnson

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Everything posted by nigel-johnson

  1. I have a model that I have designed in blender and I've textured the faces. I have printed it successfully at shapeways and I was wondering how I can print it on my Ultimaker as it is only 2 colours. The instructions seem to suggest that I can only print 2 separate models. Is there a way to get my model into 2 separate models? Or, some way to tell Cura about colours since it supports texture supporting file formats. Oh, my model is very low poly, so complexes in mesh mixer isn't going to help unless I can increase the poly count without changing the shape... which I'm not sure how to do. It'd be really good if could somehow process the model, choose a base colour then for accents, choose a depth to print with the second head. Thanks Nigel
  2. The $149 price tag for Simplify3D would soon pay for itself in PVA savings. I love Cura and my Ultimaker and can't think of any other way to print, but I am considering switching to Simplify3D given this option (amongst others - variable infill for example, easier variable layer height, very exciting)
  3. I only upgraded to the 2+ about 3 months ago, and only been printing the last month, the PTFE coupler is brand spanking new. I have also been through several checklists regarding under-extrusion as well. The only thing I haven't done is put the spool on the floor. I'll have a think of a cooling option. Maybe air con is required sooner than expected, and a draft hood for the printer. I'll check out the feeder as well.
  4. Just in the last 2 days my impressively reliable, upgraded, UM2+ has been suffering from feeding problems, with the feed stepper grinding the filament. The filament spool is well aligned with no pull on the material and I have been printing at 60mm/s at 210C. I have had an acupuncture needle up the nozzle and done an atomic cleanout. There are no blockages and when I pull the filament out it's the perfect shape you would expect. I have increased and decreased the tension on the feeding stepper, and the feeding happens fine if the filament does not go into the hot-end, so it seems to be pressure related. I then upped the print temperature (230C), as well as tried it lower and it did get a little better, but stringing was a real problem to start with. Finally, I found that if I helped the feeding along with pushing the filament into the stepper by hand it fed fine as well. So my only thought then is that the printer is fine but it's a material problem. But, 3 spools of PLA have the same problem, All the spools have been used in the last few days without a problem. The only thing I could think of then was ambient temperature as it has become a bit hotter in the last few days. I then put the spool in the fridge for a while, and I got a reasonably good few layer out. I added a fan to the back of the printer and again, a few good layers. I used to live in the UK where the ambient temperature was rarely about 25, now I'm in southern Africa where it gets to 35 easily. I haven't tried nGen material yet, but I'm a bit confused and I use a lot of PLA. Is it likely that the PLA is softening enough to be causing a feed problem? Those of you that print in warmer climates, what steps do you take? I was thinking of a funnel strapped to the front of a desk fan to just cool the material as it goes into the feeder? Any help much appreciated.
  5. At the risk of getting flamed I thought I'd add my oar. I have read most of the previous 14 pages and it has been stated that the larger population of users print PLA, and want support material or a second colour. Most of the problems around this seem to be with the energy you pump in to each hot end and can effectively suck away from the support material, so keeping cooler is preferable - PLA and PVA both print cool? PLA and PLA both run at the same temperature. So it seems that a fair portion of the user base could be appeased quite easily? I can understand people wanting a blindingly fast machine, that prints the finest detail in every material with no need for support and in multiple colours, oh and all for under £100 but that is never going to happen. The UM2 printer is awesomely awesome at what it does, so it come as no surprise that there will be a compromise if you want to push one of the boundaries something else will have to give a little. As I mentioned, the UM2 is awesomely printing with one print head pretty much across the board. Why couldn't you adjust the mount and put 2 print heads on separated by a heat guard? Immediately you loose print volume, but the UM2 has oodles of volume. Knocking off 40mm in any/all directions is not ideal, but there is still loads, and I don't recall ever really taxing the volume - I know some do - compromise though. Oooooze - printing cooler addresses this to a great extent, yes this will probably mean slower as well. I don't know much about PVA but I seem to be able to keep PLA in the nozzle for a good 30 minutes at 190C when retracted. (found out by accident) Quality? I've seen this mentioned but no pics. I get lumps on a print because the combing didn't kick in and the printhead chose to run over my print, but I don't understand how much worse this would be since PLA on PLA is what happens now, PLA on PVA is irrelevant and PVA on PLA will dissolve off. Instead of using a generic adjustable wrench, why not use the spanner that fits specifically. Yeah, it'll be expensive to have all the options or the limited option choice may not suit, but people are crying out for something. Is there truly no scenario that you can put something together for, stick your name on it, and have Cura support it out of the box? Anyway it seems like PVA is a pain to use so why bother
  6. Ah, that's cool. It would be nice in the materials.txt file though as well :-P
  7. Hi there, personally I have never touched the retraction settings, I guess I could as I get some stringing and now some materials, for example bronzefill and bricklay are coming out that say don't use retraction for various reasons. With the advent of the materials.txt file, can overrides be added to this so that for "bronzefill" for example I can switch retraction off, of for "xxx" I can change the parameters. This seems like the best place for the overrides, since I can use the same gcode model and print it in different materials without having to fiddle on the printer or the settings in Cura. While you're tinkering in the materials.txt file stuff, can you increase the 8 character name limit, to at least a screen width Thanks.
  8. White is definitely one of the hardest filaments to print due to the additives. I'm not a keen supporter of upping the temperature because of oozing and i was finding that printing at 220C was still a problem with most of the filaments I was using. I tracked (a significant part of it) back to the spool holder and the tension it caused with the feeder. I now have a set of rollers at 90 degrees to the old spool holder and the filament goes directly off the spool into the feeder. The friction is so low that when retraction happens, a new 2.2KG spool rewinds as well. Anyway, I have not had any big under extrusion issues since in any of the filaments, but then I print slow - 20mm/s for small things at 195C for ColorFabb Naturel and if I have a larger object I use 210C with 40mm/s infill (still 20mm/s outer shell). I predominantly use ColorFabb Naturel for anything I don't care about the color of. It's a nice enough colour, but it's very predictable and easy to work. The ColorFabb Flourescent/Lime green and light brown are also really nice to print with as well. Leaf green and black are ok, but they do produce more uneven surfaces for some reason, certainly where there is a significant change between one layer and the next. The hardest to work with are the white and the exotics like glowfill and bamboofill. I have some clear XT, but I'm too scared to try it I have tried most of the PLA/PHA colours from ColorFabb but I haven't used them enough since working out the optimum calibration for my printer (and using the new spool holder). I hope some of that helps.
  9. @Didier, You understood mostly correctly, it's the first layer of the raft I'm having a problem with, not the actual print. The print comes out (and is printed) exactly as expected and configured. I may play with tweakAt, but I guess it would be set the temp to 235, then tweakAt 0 back to 195 for a 10mm/s. THe only problem would be the first thing it printed would be all over the place until the head cooled sufficiently... unless tweakAt takes into account the raft? @Daid, thanks for adding AutoTemp to the feature list, but is auto temping something that can realistically be done, or would it a couple of tries to fine tune it by the user and then just set a temp/speed profile. Auto temping, and I guess human setting would get flummoxed if you did a 40mm/s infill and a 20mm/s shells. Maybe profiles in Cura are the way to go? where you define speeds and temp and then apply these in the slicer?
  10. Hi I'd like propose a change to the way temperatures are set when using an Ultimaker2. Currently they are defined per material but I do not believe this is the right place for that. Temperature defined the flow rate based on the materials ability to absorb the heat energy. Material then, has a 'resistance' to absorbing heat. Naturel PLA/PHA from ColorFabb has a lot less impurities and additives than the same material in white so resists heating less. This can be as much as 5 degrees in my testing. The required flow rate is actually defined at print time, when I know the speed and quality I want to print at. For example. Printing at 10mm/s I can print naturel PLA/PHA at 195C Printing at 40mm/s I need to print the same material at 215C If I print Naturel at 10mm/s and 215C I get a load of ooze and a very messy print Printing at 10mm/s in white PLA/PHA I need to use 200C So my suggestion would be to enable base temperature control in the Cura interface. I'd also suggest a delta override in the material. For example, in Cura I want to print at 10mm/s and 195C. In the material I use Naturel, PLA/PHA with no Delta. I can also add a PLA White with a 5C delta. This means I can control the print temperature when I define the actual print, and then the material defines any adjustment required. This also reduces the number of materials I need to define, and given there appears to be an 8 character limit for a material this also means I don't need to use codes. Comments/thoughts/suggestions?
  11. UM2 for info. I have been printing smaller objects at 10mm/s with a raft in ColorFabb Naturel PLA/PHA at 195C. All good. I needed an STL with multiple of these parts printing with rafts so I used the same formula I have been using for ages... On the same day I saw an upgrade was available for 15.02.1 - I upgraded. I went to print my mutli-part print. When the raft first layer is put down it is too fast for the 195C and the feeder clutch pops a lot. I noticed that the first layer was WAY faster than 10mm/s, so I went to plan B - 40mm/s print speed, 20mm/s outer shell, 20mm/s first layer, 215C. The clutch is now popping every 20-30 seconds... Cranking the temperature up to 235C seems to help and then I turn it back down to 215 for the second (first diagonal) layer. It seems to be just this first raft layer, I haven't tried a very small single object to see if the rest of the raft layers are slow, so next I will, but the model parts are correctly being printed 'fast' with 'slower' outer shells. Have I missed a setting? I can't find anything in the raft settings to control the speed?
  12. I have had loads of problems with bronzefill as well as the bamboofill, and generally all to do with under-extrusion. My UM2 doesn't do 'small' at the best of times and intricate is also a struggle - cuz it's small. A few things that helped me (but not yet to the point of having an intricate bronze print as good as regular PLA) are in the ramble below. I note you have some experience - more than me, so apologies if anything sounds like I'm stating the obvious, but maybe it will help someone else as I couldn't find any info at first either :-P flow rate - yep, I use 108%, Colorfabb recommend 104 to 108 because nozzle swell does not occur in bronzefill, but again this does absolutely kill "intricate" :mad: First layer - Originally I found that the difference in one "click" on the bed levelling process moved the print from having no adhesion to no extrusion. So I used the no adhesion 'click' and adjusted the bed screw underneath at the back until the paper had resistance. Now all prints have the elephants foot but generally nothing comes off the glass until it gets to under 45 degrees and I don't use tape or glue any more. Also, still slow the first layer down. For generally PLA I print first layer and outer shells at 20mm/s and the rest at 40 at 205 - 210 degrees. With bronzefill you want material flowing pretty much all the time, so like you I print at 50-60mm/s but the first layer is usually 30-40mm/s. Temperature - as with @skint, I can also print at 205 during a usual day with a warm room, but overnight prints are usually done at 210-215. The absolute worst thing is to come back to half a print with dark brown spikes... which leads nicely to... Atomic cleanout - if you're not familiar with this, learn it now, and use it often. The exotics seem to kill my machine if I don't get it exactly right, and even after a successful print in bronzefill I still suffer from clogs if I don't clean out regularly, and rarely get 3 prints in a row. Switch off retraction and increase travel speed - bronzefill doesn't ooze as much as regular PLA but the constant pulling and pushing of material led to a load of under-extrusion for me. I use a travel speed of 250mm/s to reduce the time any oozing has to occur, but generally the nozzle seems to arrive primed and ready to print. Alternatively increase the travel speed and set the minimum travel distance to be big so that it never really retracts, and add a z-hop. Your UM2 will sounds like its having a real party in it's pants but I get a much better top layer generally with the z-hop - no drag lines which I was getting even with combing enabled. Not sure of the benefit in bronzefill though. I found that the filament path around the back of machine, tight winds on the spool and the 45 degree angle into the bowden grinder caused a lot of pressure. I designed and printed a set of rollers for the filament spool and the filament feeds directly off the spool into the bowden feeder now without any twisting or routing. There are a lot of these out there, so I'm not going to sell you on the benefits of mine, but you really should use one with bearings in - when retraction is occurring the spool actually rewinds - that's a lot less friction than before. Loading and unloading of new filament has also seen significant improvements because of this. With the setup above I can get some really great prints in natural PLA, and good prints in some of the colours, but bronzefill is still not up to the standard I would like, although compared to the first prints I tried, well, at least I can finish a print now :-P Hope some of that helps.
  13. I think I may have just found it. It seems there is a new version 14.12.01 that my installed 14.09 didn't think existed. In this version there are useful buttons for the expert settings, and the solid infill top
  14. I see in other 'slicers' that it's possible to print solid meshes with zero infill and no top layer - effectively producing a vase structure. Infill is already controllable, can we have an option to not print a top infill layer? Thanks Nigel
  15. Thanks for commenting. What's the longest print you've done? I want to print about 100g and about 9 hours. I normally leave this overnight, but I'm not overly keen to keep checking back. I think I may print a reel insert to increase the inner diameter of my spare reel and feed direct... hmm.
  16. I'm kind starting to see what it's doing. If there is an internal hole in the base layer it seems to want to start on the inside - I guess kinda like it starts on the inside of shells. The problem is that either there is no retraction, or it sometimes goes well out of its way to find start point.
  17. Thanks for the feedback. It would be nice to maybe see it in the about pop-up, or a link to the release notes, or another menu item in the menu? Thanks again.
  18. I use print all at once, I don't think I've ever changed it from the default. I wouldn't mind so much if it moved to the bottom right, or top left, but it starts "inside" the print. Screenshot here: It only does this for this piece added multiple times. If I print a single piece, the first layer is exactly as I expect, and exactly like everything else I have printed to date: If I do the multiply with the next smaller piece in my jigsaw, it also prints as expected: When I print the outer ring pieces, they are also started "inside" the print. I have also tried creating this 18 piece part as a single STL but it still prints the brim inside and starts where it does above. The problem, I guess, is that there is no retraction after the nozzle prime, so it drags the priming ooze across the bed... though the base of the part.
  19. Hi guys, Laybrick is tricky to get in the UK and is quite expensive being so new. It doen't come on a reel which also bugs me. I've done a fair bit of research and everyone I see seems to think it's great and really easy to use. I'm using the following settings: Temp: 180C Heated Bed: 75C Print speed: 30mm/s Ambient temp: 20-25C I started a print and all was going reasonably well until a snap in the filament at the extruder driver. After several retries and cleanouts (atomic method) and temperatures and print speeds I was still struggling. At temps above 190 there was a bit of "popping" at the nozzle and the line skipped, so I've assumed the filament has absorbed some moisture - it has now been in a bag of silica gel for 3 days and I'm going to try again. I've draped the filament over an old reel I have spare so I'm hoping there will be less tension and pulling. so to my questions, what is the best way to feed laybrick? Should I put it on the floor and let it coil up? will that not twist and snap? Is putting it on a reel the best option? As a 3D printer noob, Is there anything obvious I'm missing in using LayBrick? Thanks all Nigel
  20. Has the release note section online fallen out of favour? https://www.ultimaker.com/blogs/news/categories/cura-release-notes If so, where can I look now? On the mac, after an upgrade the whats new window pos up in the background and I didn't see it for a while. thanks
  21. I have this STL https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7506286/lime%20piece.stl I need 18 of them so I either use the multiply option, or I load the piece 18 times. Regardless of how I get 18 of them on the plate, the print never starts at the point close to the print head. This means it drags the initial filament, and then prints over it. Why is this happening? How can I stop it? Layer height: 0.25mm Shell Thickness 0.8mm Using Brims Any help much appreciated. Nigel
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