LesHall

Just had this silly notion of a Star Wars droid whose purpose in life was to be a 3D printer. Kinda R2D2 with an Ultimaker on top maybe? Perhaps an image exists of that or should be created? It's got me tickled ATM! Les

Hi Labern, thanks for your response. I like your idea of trying it first - a quick Google images search shows it working with light coloration in most implementations, but that does not mean that my filament (PETG at the moment) will absorb enough to color it, or there may be other factors. Ty for that idea. As to the overlapping of colors, I see what you mean by that. If you look closely at the way the four markers are held in place at an angle above and below plus two on each side, you will realize that they overlap minimally if at all. My guess is that that Nylon filament, which dyes with RIT dye, will absorb the Sharpie marker fluid better than others, but I do not have any of that material. Also the richest coloration I have seen yet involved cutting a hole in the back of the marker and running the filament straight through the marker! Silly but it works. Just resting the marker against the filament is likely to not color as richly. Fun project though, and I have all the stuff in my workshop to do it up right! (well, small servos would be a lower cost to purchase, it's just that the motors I have are steppers and they cost me nothing! Onward and upward! Les

Yes I think I will, I have been looking for a fun electro-mechanical project to use these parts I have. I'll send an email to the folks at mosaic manufacturing who make the Palette and ask about their software too. Les

The photo below shows an OpenSCAD "schematic" of a device that could, with proper implementation, colorize filament in any number of colors. As you can see it is just a concept sketch. There are many designs out there for colorizing with a single marker, and there may be such a design for using many markers like this sketch. If you know of one, do you have the link? I wonder if it can serve as a low-cost Palette of sorts? Les

Correct me if I'm wrong, IIRC slicers have always "straddled the line" when drawing outside shapes, so I had to add a "nozzleDiameter = 0.4;" parameter to my OpenSCAD files so that I could add or subtract it or half of it as required to make parts fit together. This was really annoying and led to many a failed print where a precision fit - or any fit at all - mattered. So it is with more than a little joy that I notice this seems to be no longer necessary with the latest Cura (2.3 at this time and forevermore I hope). One imagines that Cura is now smart enough to recognize the curvature or "outside vs inside" of a part and adjusts the print head to draw such that the edge of the part is reached and not exceeded. Thank you Cura developers - you made a (not quite yet) old man happy! Les

Yes, you are right Sander - it's the material and maybe the Kung-Fu-Grip of my out of tune extruder. All the materials - even PETG get deep teeth marks on one side of the filament where the feeder thingie engages. I need to adjust it lighter perhaps - how would I do that, do you have destructions for it? I am also happy to mention that all this difficulty with 3D printed conductive materials has caused me to reconsider my approach to the whole design. Just as necessity is the mother of invention says, I've recalled an earlier concept of wire forming, or wire art for my circuits. In this approach I use an insulating filament (currently PETG in my case) to make wire forms that exist solely for wrapping wire and component leads around (by hand). I have just designed a socket for a chip and tested it for fit and it fits beautifully first try - how often does that happen? This approach is more artsy and less expensive so I like it a lot. The purpose is to make musical circuits related to www.electro-music.com, my first love of forums! TY for all you do! Les

HI Sander, First let me express my thankfulness to y ou for all the dedication you put into this forum. I have recently coined the phrase "A 3D printer is only as good as the community behind it", and you are a cornerstone of this community. I think it's the extruder being too tight because when I first got the printer I took apart the extruder - without reading instructions (!) because there was a clog in the Bowden tube caused by the printhead wire bundle tangling with the filament. Also the Proto-pasta Conductive filament I am using is very brittle and kind of soft too because the filler material is some kind of carbon stuff. I was printing these same circuit structures with PETG and had no problems - quite beautiful prints too. Now I have cleaned out the hot end with cleaning filament which took forever as the cleaning filament kept coming out grey. Maybe that was the problem. Anyway I am trying the Functionalize Conductive filament which contains Graphene. It's much lower resistance. Will keep you posted! Les

Here is a photo of what my UMm2+ is doing to my Proto-Pasta Conductive Filament: I have tried twice to print it as you can see if you look closely there are two filament segments shown. Each one has the chewed up region in approximately the same place. When the first one happened I said "whoah!" and did my Gremlin erasing trick of wiping Cura clean of my system and reinstalling it from scratch (a fairly painless and quick process thanks to UM quality if I do say so!). Notice that them grip is like a Kung Fu Grip from an old 1970's action figure toy for kids! Hai-Ya! I think my extruder is wound up too tight! How do i unwind it so it can relax and chill out. Also what is the reason for the chewing up of the filament? Les

oops, thanks!

OK so this topic is twelve pages long - I am not gonna read it all! I'm just posting a couple of kinky bugs I found using a UM2+ with Cura 2.3 on a MacBook (late 2013 top model). I edit my own MATERIAL.tzt files because I find the scroll wheel to be difficult to use for entering all of the retractions, etc. of a new material.I have noticed that whatever material is the last one on the list gets a 256mm retraction length in all listings (0.25, 0.4, etc.). The 256mm value gets clipped to 50mm. Then when it prints, each retraction goes almost half way up the feeder tube. There was another bug but I forgot. Will report if I recall it. Les

The modification is too extensive and has too many variables for me personally. Then again i'm timid about such things. I'd rather figure out a way to dowhat I want to d0 with one filament (which I may have done so) than to wrestle with mods. But that's just me. Maybe if we all express interest, Ultimaker will make future printers run on both filament diameters - as is the case with the competition (Taz for example). Les

Thanks both for the info, I'll read up on it and consider my options. It is all hypothetical at the moment... Les

Hi, I want to get a Palette so I would like to mod my UM2+ for 1.75mm, however I'm timid about doing the mod and stuff. There are lots of unknowns and information exists in multiple threads and such. If someone who has been there / done that would put together a purchase list with instructions, it might sell well... Les

Greetings fellow netizens of the hiveMind... I want to make a print that dazzles in response to color cycling of an LED strip. I'm thinking this must already exist, I'm just unaware of it, so if you know of it please point me to a web page. I've got an Adafruit neopixel strip, 8 LEDs long, that can create RGB light (that's R, G, and B light in narrow spectrums each if it matters). I also have Red, Green, and Aqua filaments in translucent PETG. Not blue, just aqua but close enough I hope. Also some processors to drive the LEDs including some ESP8266 chips on HUZZAH boards for making web interfaces. Anyway, long story short I'd like to make cool Christmas gifts by using the different colors of the LEDs to illuminate a dithered or otherwise color-mixed image so that a hypnotic effect or a motion effect or both is achieved. it could be sort of like a lithophane made of colored panels or somesuch... not really sure where to take this idea yet. Does anyone have familiarity with these concepts? Les

OK so this idea is rather silly, but it might be worth trying. I would like to 3D print my own filament. When you stop laughing I will explain. The idea is to print one filament on top of the other or combine more than two filaments into one striped small coil. This is a way to make some really interesting filaments. I'd begin by printing two colors and seeing if they mix in the hot end to make a third color. For example I have no orange filament for printing a pumpkin. I do however have red and yellow. So I print part red and on top of that yellow, and when I print with it I get orange!?! When this has been tested working, how about mixing filaments with different properties. Like for example how about PLA based magnetic iron from Proto-Pasta with PLA based conductive filament? Maybe the Proto-pasta conductive filament for a 30x higher resistance, or Functionalize graphene (similar to Black Magic graphene) for 30x lower resistance. If you have a wire that also has magnetic properties, what does that do? Does it make something useful or interesting? I'm sure you can think of other cool mixes. So: bright idea or stoopid idea? You tell me! Les p.s. can also add fillers this way, such as cupric oxide to make a semiconductor maybe?

Hot Dog! That did the trick. There was a folder called ~/LIbrary/Application Support/cura on the drive and I saved it's contents to an adjacent folder called cura_old, deleted the contents of the cura folder, then removed the existing Cura.app in the /Applications folder, emptied the trash, then reinstalled Cura 2.3 beta. It took longer to install, so it was doing something good, then it started up and I have three clean profiles plus the mysterious Y offset appears to be gone! Cura is live and in-action again! Maybe the keepers of the help would like to update their help instructions? Any way, thank you all for your help! My new saying, especially for people who ask me what printer to buy, is "A printer is only as good as the community behing it.". Well done (no, medium rare). Les

nice collector's items! I built the original Hackintosh SE back in about 1986 i think it was. People had done it with the 512K Macs so I had something to go by, though there was a lot of trial and error. It sure was fun! Les

i quit the Cura app, put it in the trash, emptied the trash, created .cura in my home directory, installed Cura 2.30 beta, and ran it... Same problem! Les

ok adding .cura back and we'll check out the results! Les

yes, well put - it should cover it, however in the new beta release, Cura apparently no longer uses the .cura hidden folder in my home directory. The reason I state that is I did delete that folder and it's contents prior to installing Cura and it never came back. For example: So yeah, it's different now somehow... Les

I am a Mac user Les

Hi everyone! So somehow some tricksy gremelins, most likely the local kids out pranking, somehow managed to dork up my profiles to the point that I can't print anything. There is only one profile - fast print and it's fubar! Ha ha very funny! This has been going on for quite a while and I'm really tired of it. Reinstalling Cura does not change my profiles at all So what can I do? Where to I get a clean profile to Import? Thanks in advance! Les