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randyinla

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Posts posted by randyinla

  1. Nicolinux,

    When I loosened all of the screws around the entire box, not just the base, I could feel the box's squareness changing depending on which corner I put pressure on. I didn't loosen them to the point of almost falling out, but enough where the alignment of the sides/top/bottom could be manipulated slightly. All I can suggest is to try again and maybe get someone to help hold it down against a flat surface while tightening? I would think if you tighten the screws while being held tightly against a flat surface, you'd have a good chance of retaining the alignment. If you can reduce or eliminate the wobble of the cube on a flat surface, then you must loosen the 8 screws around the two linear bearings for the z-stage (behind the back white panel with the logo on it) and go through the initial z-stage alignment. Then do a normal leveling using the paper.

    To be clear, I think the printed adjustable feet are a great idea if the surface the U2 lives on isn't flat. But not as a fix for a wobbly U2 on a flat surface.

     

  2. The elefant project in the Netherlands recently used an add-on kit for the UM original which allowed them to print several meters high objects. So the technology for extending Ultimaker axes exists...

     

    I stumbled across their website with the live cams a few weeks ago. I thought the inverted UM originals and seemingly limitless Z height was AWESOME!!!!!!!!! Looked like they had a floating feeder system too. The feeder seemed to be moving on springs or rubber bands or something. Pretty cool stuff, indeed!

     

  3. I keep wondering how hard it would be to increase the Y length of the UM2. Remove the front panel, cut new, wider side panels. Longer rods/belts wouldn't be that difficult. But then what to do about a longer heated build plate and glass?

    Increasing the X seems more challenging due to the placement of the steppers/gears etc.

    I'm only talking a few inches. Like, from 8" to 12" so I could print full face masks/helmet or even shoe-sized objects... Aurora race tracks etc. :)

     

  4. I replaced my rear fan due to noisy bearings in the original. The replacement was from the same manufacturer and had the same amount of air flow as the original, just MUCH quieter. From what I've read around the forum here, some people already have quiet fans. Maybe it's a crap shoot as to the noise level on a fan by fan basis?

     

  5. Thank you, again, Illuminarti, for the used encoder! I look forward to receiving it.

    Here is a pic of my encoder button hack I have working at the moment:

    Ultimaker encoder button hack

    The first two buttons from the left control the cursor:

    Cursor up = push-right, push-left, release-right, release-left

    Cursor down = push-left, push-right, release-left, release-right

    The last button on the right is the select button

    Weird thing about the sequence is that for most menu items, those four actions = 1 cursor movement. For certain menus though, each button press/release of the sequence = 1 cursor movement. ie.changing temperature is faster because every 'click' moves the cursor.

     

  6. I printed the 14 piece version and love it! Did the axel and pinwheel in Colorfabb bronzefill and they look amazing! Threw the pieces into a rock polisher over night and they got really dark, almost black. I can now polish certain areas and bring back that lighter, bronze color.

    it would be nice if the three-pronged connectors used between the top three sections were also used between the "clamp" and connecting pieces, rather than simply relying on the pressure of said clamp.

    I've been trying to copy/paste that three-pronged connector to the other parts and can't find a good (and easy) modeling application to use! My 8 hours of Sketchup use are done and I'm not sure about spending $590 simply to get solid boolean operations. I can easily align the grenade handle and a donut cylinder in Sketchup, but can't access the 'subtract' solid option. I have 'subtract' available in 123D Design, but can't for the life of me get the two solids to line up perfectly to perform the subtraction!

     

  7. So I ordered Elmer's all purpose glue stick off Amazon and it works great for ABS (which didn't want to stick to my blue tape). I built an acrylic door for the front of my U2 and (for now) can place a cardboard box on top to create a heated enclosure (will convert to a proper acrylic cover soon). Not only have ABS prints stuck solid to the glue/glass (set to 110c), but they are not warping like before! I forgot and left the box on top and the door closed when printing something in PLA and it failed miserably because it got too hot for the PLA :oops:.

    Anyway, just wanted to give a thumbs up for Elmer's all purpose glue stick.

     

  8. My U2 encoder indicates it was made by Alps, but there is no model or part number on it. Does anyone know the part number for the main knob's encoder on the circuit board? I submitted a support ticket. Just posting here in case anyone knows.

    While making a hinged door for my U2, I decided to take off the whole front panel to have an easier time attaching a magnet to keep the door closed. In doing so, taking off the front panel of the U2 box, I didn't notice that the shaft for the main knob's encoder was attached to the round semi-clear plastic housing that was bigger than the hole in the front panel. As a result, the shaft pulled right out of the encoder and the inner parts of the encoder went flying all over my table. My encoder is now a 1/2 of an encoder.

    In the meantime, I figured out how the encoder works (pretty cool, actually) and temporarily connected momentary push switches on a breadboard. So I can move the display cursor around and increment/decrement values, albeit very slowly :)

    Thank you for any help!

    -=Randy

     

  9. I am very happy to report that my build plate seems MUCH more level than previously possible!

    After adjusting the box's squareness, I then followed Chris's suggestion; took off the back plate around the z-stage linear bearings, loosened the 8 screws on the linear bearing plates (again, don't take any screws out) and realigned the build plate to the now (more) square inside bottom. I didn't have any calibration thingies or dice or anything else... then it dawned on me that the three thumb screws provided by Ultimaker for fine tuning the leveling are RIGHT THERE! I unscrewed them and used them as the three calibration devices. Worked great. Put it all back together and ran through a typical leveling routine and printed that hard to print piece a second time (it's a propeller protector for a quad-copter that spans the far back left to the very front right of the build plate). This time the back left first layer looked identical to the front layers! Flat, slightly pushed into the tape, not laying on top. I have printed three perfectly so far.

    If your box is wobbly, with one corner obviously rocking a millimeter or more, do not simply print out adjustable feet or put a piece of folded paper under it. It needs to be adjusted to be made square and then the z-stage re-aligned to this new squareness. It is NOT difficult to do B) The only thing I would suggest you watch out for is to NOT loosen the screws that hold the stepper motors in place. They are close by the frame screws and are the same type of screw, but there will be four of them in a perfect square, outlining the stepper motors. I'm not sure if loosening them by mistake would cause the motors to move or not, but I do know they don't need to be loosened to adjust the squareness of the box.

    I also replaced the noisy tiny fan just behind the print head so now I can't tell it's even on except for the lighting!! It's like a brand new machine! Looking forward to tightening up the belts and making a front door for the box!

    Thanks for everyone's suggestions in this thread (and other threads).

     

  10. I loosened all the screws around the edging of the frame about a 1/4 turn and gently bumped my fist into the top 4 corners while pushing down all around. Within a few seconds of this, that front right corner stopped wobbling and all four seemed rock solid. I tightened the top corners first, starting with the front right, back left, front left, back right... testing wobble after each screw. If a slight wobble came back, I would loosen that screw again and bump my fist in each corner (tapping sideways and downwards) until it went away again. It was rock solid on the kitchen stone counters, rotating in all directions. I am back at my desk now and the wobble is gone. At first, I could still slide a single piece of printer paper under the front right corner with some resistance, but sliding the printer back towards the center of my desk stopped that from happening. It is MUCH more stable than before.

    I then ran through the menu-based paper leveling routine and printed a large, thin item that I've never been able to print before due to it warping itself off the build plate and it made it all the way through without coming up. For the first layer, done at .3mm, the lines were flattened out towards the front and still more like laying on top of the plate towards the back left, but a little more 'pushed in' to the tape this time. Also, I didn't have the blue tape back when this piece was failing to print... so it might be more the tape than any adjustments I made to the outer box.

    I plan on unscrewing the 8 screws to the linear bearings, re-leveling the z-stage tomorrow and printing it again. Might bring in my air bubble level to check how the rods are aligned too.

    My belts don't seem to be tight enough either. I saw someone's youtube video on belt tension for the U2 and they had a musical note when plucked. Mine were MUCH lower in pitch. I know this has nothing to do with my back left lowness of the build plate, but might explain some patterns I see in the side walls of my objects sometimes.

     

  11. Just re-read through the thread and I don't think shimming just the underside of the U2 box with printed adjustable feet or paper would do anything for the internal alignment. Reason being that the cube is out of alignment with itself, not that the cube is perfect and is just not flat on the bottom. I'm assuming the (laser cut?) walls of the cube are the exact right size and shape. The fact that my cube wobbles tells me it's not a true cube. By shimming under the high leg or shimming to lift under the low leg to stop rocking just rotates the out of alignment cube to stop wobbling on the table. Like Gr5 suggested, it would seem the front and back X rods would still not be parallel to each other.

    I'm going to loosen the frame screws and see if it just naturally shifts and re-aligns itself to my counter top. Since so many people seem to be having this issue, I wonder if some U2's were all assembled on the same surface at Ultimaker that happens to not be perfectly flat?

     

  12. I too have the same leveling issue, only my low corner is the back left. I first posted that I had this issue a few days ago. Sandor had seen my post and contacted Chris McAdam @ Ultimaker. (Thank you, Sandor!) I received a nice email from Chris with instructions on how to re-level the z-stage and a link to the Assembly Manual. I was just about to start the process of placing three calibration objects under the build plate (which seems to be flawed, making an assumption that the base of the U2 box is indeed level?) when I started reading this thread.

    The comments here prompted me to check if my U2 box was square and it is not! The front right corner is up off the counter surface approximately 1mm (the 1mm shim I use for bed leveling juuuuuust fits under that corner and prevents rocking). I took it into a kitchen with a lot of flat stone counter tops, in case my cubicle desk wasn't flat enough, and the front right corner is up off the surface there as well. I then rotated the box 90 degrees. Same issue with that front right corner. Rotated another 90 and another, and in every position, the front right corner footing was not making contact with the table top surface. If the counter was not level, then it seems that the raised corner would always be whichever corner happened to be in the front right position.

    I have a printout of the Assembly Manual. Should I loosen the appropriate screws around the entire frame, put weights on the four corners as suggested previously in this thread to ensure all four are touching the counter surface and then re-tighten? I would then probably go through the z-stage alignment, using the three calibration objects under the build plate.

     

  13. +1 for this idea.

    I know the design specs for the U2 are in a github repository, but what about the firmware? I thought about having a look around to see if I could add the ability to name material profiles myself.

    Even if you don't have the saving/reading from SD cards implemented yet, just being able to name them would be huge! Much easier to choose "ArchtectStone" instead of remembering that it's "Custom 12" :)

     

  14. The original Staples brand glue stick that came with my U2 worked nicely for me. Cleanup was a breeze running under tap water. Loved it. However, when it came time to buy another stick at my local Staples store, they didn't have the same sized tube. I opted for two of the larger tubes that had the exact same label as the one from Ultimaker. These glue sticks were horrible and nothing like the one that came with my printer. The glue in these locally bought tubes dried almost instantly, without even the slightest tackiness. Even when the build plate temp got up to 75c~90c, it still wasn't tacky and my prints wouldn't stick. Just wasn't the same as the original glue stick.

    That's when I decided to order a http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L4RCTDE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. So far, PLA sticks to the tape perfectly. Sticks almost too well as any warping can actually pull the tape up from the glass. Definitely don't put down tape on top of tape. It sticks well to the glass, but not so well to itself. Little side effect: The bottoms of my prints can have a fuzzy blue haze even after washing/scrubbing with soap and water.

    ABS, on the other hand, doesn't seem to like my blue tape at all. Haven't gotten one ABS print to stick to it. A friend is bringing me some kapton tape so I can try that with the ABS. Can't wait to build a plexiglass cover and door so it retains heat during printing, hopefully cutting down on warpage. Almost never want to try ABS again :-|

     

  15. I would not recommend laying flat on the floor without a turntable unattended, IMHO. I did this with the Architect's Stone PLA from Faberdashery and it got itself all twisted up, preventing proper feeding. All it takes is a brief slip of the pulled end to slide underneath a lower part of the coil and it binds up enough to stop the knobbed bolt from pulling it into the machine. Had I a turntable, maybe it would not have bunched up.

    As a quick fix, I wrapped the loose filament around a 1/2 empty regular spool and taped large cardboard fins on both sides to keep it from falling off. Worked great.

    I have since found a few different forked spool models on thingiverse/youmagine and plan on making one or two of those.

     

    You can put it on a turntable flat on the floor

     

  16. Good news that your U2 is now working! You said that you replaced the one rod yourself and that helped a little. Did Ultimaker give you details on what they did to fix the issue? Was it a bent gantry, misaligned metal bed or what?

    The back left quadrant of my build plate is also lower than the back right. I can clearly see that on the first layer, the filament is flattened out in the left and right front and back right, but round (like raw filament is just laying on the bed) in the back left. A lot of my first layer prints look like your pictures.

    If it was just misaligned, how do I re-align it myself?

    Thanks!

    -=Randy

     

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