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pa9k

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Posts posted by pa9k

  1. To open an STL as a solid body in Solidworks go to System options and select Import second from the bottom on the list on the left side of the options window.

     

    Then at top you should see a drop box labeled File Format:. Select STL/OBJ/OFF/PLY/PLY2

     

    Below that drop box you will see Import As with the options for solid body, surface body, or graphics body. Setting it to wolid body will allow you to model with it as you would any other part.

  2. Hi Guys,

     

    Hopefully I'm just overlooking something but I do not see the option to scale a model in cura 3.3.1. On the left the only options are open, move, rotate, per model settings, and support blocker. I do not see the scale tool. Is there any way I may have accidentally turned scale off?

  3. Hello,

    I was hoping there was a way disable perspective viewing mode and have it be orthographic. This is very useful when trying to fit multiple large prints onto the bed. Provides a much clearer picture of the relative location of the parts.

    • Like 1
  4. I have done a lot of research into this and it seems to be caused by many factors and there isn't really an answer how to fix this.

    What I have done to minimize this is print a test piece of varying diameters (10mm-100mm for me). Then i measure the actual and compare it to the virtual size. This gives me a good idea of what size a hole will come out as and I adjust the model before printing.

  5. If your filament was grinding to the point of stopping, would you not want to have it pause the printer anyway instead of air printing and cooking the filament?

    I'm sure that was the intent, but I suspect the issue was that the filament would slip on the wheel causing the sensor to detect that the wheel is not rotating smoothly or as much as it should. This would then pause the printer thinking the filament jammed when in reality there is no problem other than the filament slipping on the wheel.

    Our z18's had this issue. We resolved it by adding and o-ring to the groove on the wheel that the filament rode in. This added much more grip onto the filament and prevented these false filament jam errors.

  6. Out of curiosity, I just tried the "optical sensor approach" with my mouse (standard Logitech mouse, with a red light), and moving short pieces of filament in front of the sensor. Then the movement of the cursor on-screen - or the lack of it - clearly indicates whether the mouse sensor sees the filament or not.

    Results:

    - colorFabb white and red PLA/PHA, opaque: detected very well, cursor moves smooth. These filaments have a rather rough surface.

    - Ultimaker pearl PLA: detected well. This filament has a smooth surface, but sort of internal glitter particles for the pearl effect.

    - ICE PET (or PETG, not sure), transparant yellow, smooth filament surface: detected very poorly: cursor jerks occasionally, but often no movement.

    - same ICE PET, but with indents from the feeder wheel: detected very well. Big difference compared to "undented" filament.

    - Ultimaker nylon, transparant clear (no indents): not detected at all, could not get the cursor to move, even not jerk. This seems too transparant to reflect any differences in light during movements.

    I conducted the same test with my Logitech Performance MX mouse using their Darkfield Laser Sensor.

    I tested the filaments I had on hand, both with and without feeder wheel imprints, which were Hatchbox PLA orange and black, Taulman BluPrint Nylon, and 3DXtech HT PETG.

    All of the filaments were detected by the sensor and resulted in nice smooth cursor movement.

    • Like 1
  7. I too am interested in this. Our Z18's (take it easy on me not my call) uses a idler wheel pressed up against the filament entering the feeder. That wheel has a striped silver and black sticker on the outside face (the face perpendicular to the axis.) This rotation is detected by an optical sensor. There is also a mechanical switch that is pushed back when filament is present and extends when filament is not there. I assume the wheel is used to detect clogs and the switch is used to detect running out of filament.

    I know the 5th gen makerbots had a lot of issues (we got one a month after release so trust me I know all about the issues) and a lot of them were from this filament detection system. But overall it is a really smart system and once they tuned it through firmware updates it actually works really well.

  8. Hello.

    I have built a acrylic enclosure for my 3 extended. I want to add a fan to it to circulate air through the printer when printing PLA. I was wondering if there is a hookup on the board for auxilary 12v power, and what kind of power it can handle. The fan I am going to install draws 0.45A or about 5.5w.

    Of course I can use an external power supply for the fan, but it would be nice to cut down on wires.

  9. Hi @gr5  (new here so hope this is actually how you tag people)

    That is correct. I don't mean to hijack this thread but maybe OP can find this info useful. After working with FBRC8 on this they suspect that the issue was caused by running faster print speeds and larger layer heights. I was printing at 80mm/s and 0.3 layers on the 0.4 nozzle. They suggested I up my temp by 5-10°. I have upped the temp 10° (from 205 to 215 for PLA) and so far (three hours in) so good but I'm not going to say it's fixed yet because before it was an intermittent problem.

    I will be doing a lot more printing in the next couple days with PLA and Nylon (Taulman BluPrint) and I guess we'll see if raising the temp fixed the issue or not.

    Edit: Forgot to mention that we have had this printer for about 6 or 7 months and are still using the original print cores.

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