danilius

I use Taulman Bridge, and have so far failed to share my findings, so I'm going to make up for that now. First of all, as @Ignatius pointed out, nylon is aggressively hydrophilic, so I have a kilo of silica beads, which I split into two. One stays with the nylon in a plastic bag, the other is kept dry in order to swap it out when the first lot is wet. I then dry the wet silica in the microwave (2 - 4 minutes until steaming hot, never, ever, ever, ever touch hot silica). Secondly, I dry the nylon with silica in a plastic bag for at least two hours on a hot radiator. When printing, nylon will bubble up even if completely dry, because it is very temperature sensitive. So, even though Taulman recommends 242C as a printing temperature, I print as low as 200C. I gauge the temperature by watching the nylon as it is extruded and listening for crackling. If it starts to turn into white foam and crackles, the temp is way too high. Retractions are fine provided your feeder is really tight, so I use Robert's feeder and tighten the bolt up considerably. Finally, I simply do not use the fan. When printing really small parts, I print several in one go, and keep them close to each other to reduce dribbling. Both 100 and 200 microns work well with Bridge, provided you up the temperature at 200 microns of course. Like all filaments, it takes some experimentation to get it producing the results you want. To get an idea of what you can expect from nylon, here is a part I printed at 100 microns:

I also bought the Ultimaker for its purported dual-head upgrade but have become resigned to the fact that they pushed the current design to the limits. If you want to maintain the same printable area, then making it dual-head is not going to be practical without a major modification to the overall design. Bear in mind the the only real goal of Ultimaker, like every viable business, is to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with that - we actually need Ultimaker to make a profit if we want newer, shinier toys to play with. So, it's not in their financial interests to make good in any way on the dual-head story since I don't think it affected sales at all. It was a lesson learned for them, which is a good thing as well. Now they are far more cautious about announcing anything until they are well and truly ready to go ahead with it. They are a young company, and learning the ropes on the job. Help them to help yourself - come up with a constructive idea and post it here in the forums.

@cloakfield, this is just awesome. Kids are going to go crazy when they see this! Truly beautiful work.

First of all, kudos to Ultimaker for doing this (I bought an Olsson bock a while ago). This simply reinforces my confidence in them as a company, and the open-hardware economic model in general. The fact that Anders was able to market his product in the UM forums (essentially getting free advertising from Ultimaker) ultimately resulted in a really smart decision from Ultimaker. Secondly, I after I installed the Olsson block I printed a different shroud, and for some reason no longer have to use the fans, even on small pieces. I have no idea why, but I have been printing now for over two months without the fans on, in PLA, nylon and ABS. Yes, I have had some stringing, but that's mainly because the parts I print are generally not considered fit for FDM printing (they break every possible rule in several places)

Flood away!

This is so gorgeous that I can't show the kids or they will start making demands...

Have you tried dipping in a thin ABS/acetone slurry? The acetone will coat the surface and smooth it as well as fill small holes. I have tried it before with mixed success, but didn't really have the time to fine-tune it.

Aaaawwwwwsome!

Your shell thickness should be a multiple of your nozzle. Assuming you have a stock UM, then you can have a shell thickness of 0.4, 0.8, 1.2, 1.6, 2.0 etc. and they should all work fine, except for the 0.4 which is just asking for trouble.

Things I need/want in order of importance: 1) Dual head for support 2) Robert's feeder or similar, essentially a latching mechanism 3) Olsson block or better 4) wifi or bluetooth for uploading files - hate the SD card - and preheating bed 5) automatic poweroff once the job is done 6) 300mm x 300mm print area or larger - height is less of an issue 7) Multi-head, so I can print with 0.15, 0.25, 0.4 and 0.8mm nozzles and support material in one job 8) motors on the outside 9) easily-enclosed build chamber 10) top-mounted screen with better wheel design 11) filament jam detection Things I don't need: 1) Spool holder - I use my own 2) Camera 3) USB printing 4) Wifi remote control of everything

Get an olsson block with an I2K insulator.

I am still in two minds about the effects of moisture in the plastic itself. Plastic does absorb moisture (nylon is aggressively hydrophilic) and currently I keep all my plastic in sealed bags with silica beads. I have seen them change from amber (dry) to deep green (saturated) but have not had the time to conduct empirical tests. Currently I have not come to any conclusion on the subject because of the sheer amount of variables involved. Ideally I should buy some new nozzles, clean out the olsson block thoroughly and print saturated and unsaturated filament in some kind of test, although what that would consist of (essentially a shape in which we can easily determine the effects of moisture) is anyone guess. Suggestions?

It looks like the shells are peeling off. Too low temp and underextrusion (usually both at the same time) are generally the cause. The simplest solution is to increase the temp, of course, and the material flow as well.

Sorry, you are right, longer - more pressure BTW, I usually print PLA at at least 200C.

Well this could very well be a temperature issue. The way the Olsson block will perform for a given temperature can be quite different than the standard one, so you might have to raise the temp for the equivalent print to the original block, and then the feeder will perform nicely. Another possibility is that the spring you have is simply not powerful enough, or you need a shorter yoke to add more pressure. As you can see by wandering around teh intarwebz, IRobertI's extruder with the Olsson block is simply the most sensible upgrade route one can take at the moment, it is a common combination, so you have done the right thing so no worries there!

Vast improvement on the photography, gorgeous lighting and of course the setting is really something stylish and and apropos.

Do you get the same result with other filaments?

Having printed several hundreds of hours worth of ABS both very small parts and pretty large (longest print was 65 hours), I think your issue is not so much the ambient temperature, since you are printing a smallish part. First of all, all the blobbing can be down to too much or too little fan. Weird, I know, but at the moment I print ABS with the fans off. Even really small parts. Next, the temperature does not have to be so high. Try printing at 30/mms with the temp at 220C - 230C, layer height 0.1mm.

So that's the best thing you can come up with for a clone army? Are you planning on subjugating us with laughter? Gorgeous work!

Oh, and I have python3-opengl installed already.

I did, and this is what I got.

Thanks! Worked perfectly. Of course 15.06 crashed without even a whimper. Oh well, I suppose there is a bit a wait still.

I have an Ubuntu 15.04 machine and currently run Cura 15.04. I would love to give 15.06 a go and provide some useful feedback, but definitely need 15.04 for production. Is there any way of having both installed on Ubuntu?

Beautiful work, @cloakfield. Horrible, rubbish photography, because we all want to see high-res detail of such great work! Get a decent camera, pleaaaaaasssse!

@neotko, that sounds quite plausible. I have been printing PLA with fans off completely and only had stringing issues when at high temp, no cobwebbing. Worth testing out this theory when I have a moment.