JohnInOttawa

Good feedback @geert_2, thank you! Your reflections on alternatives make sense. My thinking in this case was to have the part come off the printer in a state where, after curing, it would be good to go with minimal post processing. Your points on the weaknesses introduced by the infill echo a similar engineering concern on shear lines. I did consider alternative placement, there are some constraints on doing that, such as printing a sloping surface without a big alias effect and a full length bore for a rod. That said, I am looking into mold options, there are a few threads here on filament choices, around here it looks like I am down to moldlay or printable wax. May have to do a bit of trial and error there. Thanks again, appreciate your help! John

Good afternoon everyone. Just wondering if this will work or if it is a very bad idea. I have a model that I need to be strong and relatively ridgid in more than one plane. it's pretty tall, just about the entire height of my UM3 volume and narrow enough that I am worried that significant leverage could result in a break along a print line. I really don't think infill geometry is going to do enough for me. I was recently working with some low viscosity, relatively low temperature curing epoxy on a woodworking project (stablising spalted maple internals for a table) and it occurred to me, what if I printed a grid infill and, before I got to the point where I started to skin the top, I paused the print and filled in the infill columnar gaps with this epoxy. If this worked, I would further like to experiment with suspending reinforcing fibre or steel wire in the epoxy columns, much like rebar. I will, of course, make a test run and fill it with the expoxy once removed from the print zone to test for watertightness and to make sure it doesn't just melt everything, but I thought I'd see if anyone here has tried such a thing. Would it do as I expect, and harden into may vertical bonded expoxy rods, or would it ultimately fail? John

This is a great read, thank you for putting it together. Eliminating or bypassing the load paths that can track along a 'weld' joint feels to me like the holy grail of FDM printing. Technologies like MarkForged have made significant improvements, but only in one direction, AFAIK there is nothing yet that can provide this advantage in more than one plane short of a sintering/annealing process of some kind. All that said, the print core concept seems to me to allow for the use of just about any technology in a print core bay. Right now we are using only FDM heads. Maybe one day we will see a laser reheat/sinter ability or continuous fibre cutting process incorporated into a 'print core'. That, to me, holds some of the greatest promise as design for additive manufacturing starts to point the way toward execution options. Cheers John

This is a great thread, thank you gr5. Just a question on the .25 programming. I see the second line references E32350 As the other nozzle offsets seem to match their diameter, the trend led me to expect E32500. Is the nozzle actually a bit undersize? I also presume, since cura can't handle 0.6 AA yet, the gcode to program an AA hardcore to 0.6 would just screw stuff up Is that correct? Thanks again John

Can someone walk me through the specifics of this plate? Would it have an integrated heater, or simply replace the glass? I know it can't be this simple, so let me ask the dumb question: If the plate has no electronics connected to it, what would stop someone from milling a high quality alloy plate flat and going with that? John

Great to hear! Enjoy! Cheers John

I'm confused by your description of the 3mm gap. Did you test the travel with power off? Can you physically slide the blocks until you hear each limit switch click? Do you feel a change in resistance to movement before you get that click? Maybe if you can post a picture or two of the position of the slider blocks after an attempt to home that would help. John

Welcome! First couple of questions: Is this happening when you try to home the printer, or does it happen just during a print? If homing is working fine, but prints are hitting this issue, then it may be a setting thing. Assuming it happens at homing, then read on.... I have a UMO, not a UMO+, and the problem you describe sounds similar to something you can get into with CNC construction, so let me offer the following: My first guess (and it is only that) would be that the cross slides are going past the limit switches so you are getting a collision with a hard item, like printer structure or a rod. If this is the case, then the shaking you are observing may be belt teeth jumping on the pulleys or the stepper motors stalling. So it might be good to troubleshoot the limit switches, mechanics, signal, setting. Now, my comparator is UMO, not a UMO+. so I am assuming the limit switches are the same mechanical ones for both. If that is true, I would start troubleshooting with the power off, confirm you can move the print head manually with little force, then move it manually to its limits. If your room is quiet enough, you should hear the limit switches clicking when they are made. If you don't hear the click when you would expect it, slide the print head where you would expect it to stop and have a look to see if the limit switch slider are positioned as they should be. You'll need to check this on both ends of the X and Y axis. If the mechanics are correct, then I would check that you have the positive limits wired to positive inputs and aren't reversed, as during zeroing the printer will hit a stop then back up slightly, but only if the switch is where you told the printer it would be. If wiring is correct, then settings, I believe there are reversed axes on the UMO+ as there are on UMO, but disclaimer again. Your setup guide will help. Not sure if any of the above is of use, hopefully it will at least get you started. Others who know more will likely get you closer to a solution quickly once they join. Cheers John

I don't equate legacy and obsolete. Legacy products may still be in production and will get support for in service problems, but new design work is scaled back. As a comparison, the Airbus 320 (not the new engine option) is already considered a 'legacy' aircraft, so it is hard to get new engineering done on it, but new ones are still rolling off the line. John

I second that motion. I can understand that the Ultimaker team has only so much time and resources to work with. Once a printer goes into 'legacy' status such that no new development will be occurring on it, then why not open source those things that the community would like to continue to grow but Ultimaker cannot make a case for? Now, that said, it may be that some of what we are asking to flow down from new engineering is still covered by patents, in which case I understand the restriction. Hopefully that would only affect a small portion of what the users could benefit from. John

Can you share some details about your printer, nozzle size, filament, print settings etc? It would also help to see this print in the position it was oriented on the plate. The gaps appear to be at their maximum nearly 180 deg apart. For example, if this was an UMO, I'd check the xy stepper belt tension first, then move up to the larger belts, and go from there. John

I think others have covered this, but on the multi-roll filament thing, my luck would have this happen at about 2 am. The ability to hot swap a roll would be outstanding and necessary for jobs where two cores are printing different stuff, but let me add an entry in the odd fellows' diary. Most of my big jobs so far have not been heavy support users and not multi-color, so I could, in theory run them with two AA cores, each fed with the same type of filament. So I can either print infill with one and shell with the other, (slow, but effective), or divide the model lower and upper into different 'colors' and merge them for a dual extrusion print using the same filament. Again, a kludge and limited to two rolls, but interruption free. What would be nice would the ability to swap the 'offline' filament spool without a big interruption in the currently active one. J

I agree with the comments. This looks like a great step up. The noise reduction would help guys like me. The poor UMO is going to really feel like that guy who always talks during the movie.... I don't mind the asymmetry in x and y. I suspect this is to protect resolution. What I've seen of the 300x300 implementations, there are a lot of strange little things that come of just a bit of flex on the rods, vertically or laterally. Most of my prints are long in one lateral direction. The price will take this off the table for me for at least the short term. And it is high enough that it overlaps with exotics like the MarkForged Mark Two. Very different printers with very different missions, but for someone who is running a business, it opens the dialogue of which capability is more important. A supersized UM3 with the same (albeit evolved) FDM only technology, or the ability to offer a different product, a fibre reinforced production part. Hard to say what price would be right, that is such a personal thing. Will you sell a ton of these? I think so. Do I wish I had one? Yes. Can I afford it? Not at the moment. Best of luck for a successful production run. Don't forget the UMO-UM3 crowd, I understand there are some engineering challenges, but if there are innovations that can trickle down, please trickle away (and for those who at or above are my 'silver' age, I mean trickle technology only.....) John

My 0.6 core - from the gr5 store, is for nylforce CF. That's their recommended diameter. Some of the wood and metal fill stuff prefers bigger yet. I haven't had a chance to really print anything with these though, too busy printing parts for my UMO belt upgrade, and sticking to PLA and nylon for those. J

Hmmm. You know, a product like this will need testers. lots of testers. Long term stuff. You really want to get it right. Yup. Safety first and all of that. Now, where are you going to find testers :-) John

This is fun and timely! I was just this week starting the hardware plan for 12 months out. Maybe a new player in that mix. I can see the reluctance to go with dilithium. But really, if being unstable was a serious ban to getting involved in 3D printing and disruptive solutions, this forum would be a very quiet place ;-) Agree with the scalability concerns. It is just my reading, or are there more reports of issues here wrt the UM3 Extended over the UM3 standard? If that's so, and this newest member is larger, some of the engineering development behind the new device might hold promise for the older machines. I'll look forward to seeing how print cores are implemented in the new unit as well. Congratulations to the team on a new milestone. Best wishes for a successful rollout! John

You might get a lot of different answers to your question. In my case, I bought one hardcore, then a second, and have a number of different sizes of everlast nozzles. At first I thought this route was going to be ridiculously expensive, but then I started reading about folks getting into trouble with their printcores, and of course my plan was to print CF, metal and wood filled material, all of which are either abrasive, prone to clogs, or both. So the first part of this. For abrasive filaments, you can get by with steel on the hardcore, but you will have to change the nozzle as it wears out. The good news is that you can do that and, depending on which hardcore kit you get, you will get some steel with it. If you do choose an everlast nozzle, you may find, as I did, that each of these exotic filaments has a preferred nozzle diameter. So, you will end up swapping nozzles a lot, each time risking a broken heat break, or you can do as I did, set up two hardcores, each one with a nozzle optimised for the filament you need. The second part, some of the exotic filaments are not fully supported by Ultimaker. So they might have issues, like clogging. Even if you are fine using brass, if the material clogs, depending on how bad it is, removing the nozzle might be the only way to save the core. Again, possible with the hardcore, not so easy for mere mortals with the standard Ultimaker cores. I'm not sure any of the above helps. I don't know where in the world you are, but I deal with George at the gr5 store and have been very happy with the support and the ability to tune products for what I need. Cheers John

Well, since we are wishing, I will repeat, give me a reason not to lust after a MarkForged. Either the ability to lay continuous fibre or at least reliably inset a CF plate and seal it (note - by 'sealing' I mean laying a border of filament to take up any space between the inset stiffener and the surrounding material) J

Has anyone tried to print this little guy with a woodfill or copperfill? Wondering how that might go.... Cheers John

Might be a bent bracket, there is a troubleshooting guide for that. You might also want to check out this thread Good luck!

Good afternoon everyone. I am about to apply some upgrades to my UMO, as follows GT2 upgrade Sleeves to permit open end caps TL Smoother (+ or - silent Step Stick, not sure both are needed) I know I will need to adjust my firmware for the new pulleys. Here's my issue, though. I bought this printer used, so don't know if the former owner tweaked anything already, so don't want to introduce a new issue. For example, the former owner put on a non Ultimaker heated bed which looks like it is relay controlled and has its own power supply. I don't know what, if any, changes were done to facilitate this. Is there a way to download the existing settings, or alternately can I connect Cura to this machine to read them directly? Thanks in advance for your help! John

Though this thread has been around for a long time, reading it today (for the first time), prompted a few thoughts. I'm not a super writer, so please forgive if the tone of this sounds like something from a church pulpit. It's the best I can do with the brain cells I have left. First, neotko. Genius. Second. Ultimaker. - The approach taken is understandable, Now, you seemed taken aback at the reaction of a creator when they find out indirectly that their concept is being implemented commercially, albeit with a modified algorithm. Their reaction is as clear to me as yours. There are no rocks really worth throwing here, but if I can add some perspective. From what I have seen here in my short time, the people who invest in equipment at the level that Ultimaker produces tend to be makers at the high end of hobbiest up to high end professional. After all, this is not some ali express kit. People in this community create a lot of stuff. Some of it is for sharing and open source, but some of it is how we choose to make our living. Whether one chooses to licence their IP, or add an open source creation to their CV is a personal choice, one that should be the creator's alone. Sadly, the notion of IP and patent poaching is a real threat. I've been hit on both fronts. Patent poaching has cost me 5 figures in the past two years alone. In another case, I have had my open source technical papers co-opted by a government department and published as their own without acknowledgement, even to the point where they decided the material should be protected, so I was approached by one of their cube farm residents to pull down my document from my file server, as it conflicted with their 'original'. Hmmmm. I am certain that others on this forum have had some level of similar experience. One only has to get bitten once to have a heightened awareness of what happens when an idea is being picked up without attribution. it's not so much how it starts, but where it leads, that is the kicker. Good intention or not, the impact can sometimes be equal. In this case, I can completely see how this evolved and why. No one intended harm, but that's not to say it didn't occur anyway. Is there something we can do differently next time ? Do we want there to be another creative 'next time'? I sure hope so. If so, we need to make that a positive thing. The sharing of ideas is good for us all. Ironing (son of neosanding) is a great example of how this works. That said, it seems completely reasonable to me that we all take the simple step of acknowledging the originator in the creative process, as soon as we decide to take their idea further. A private message is often enough, public thanks can be timed if the result comes to fruition, but that initial note changes the entire context from appropriation to collaboration. In time, the respect and IP protection that we offer one another will benefit every single one of us, from high end hobbiest all the way up to the creative team at Ultimaker, who, it seems to me, have some geniuses of their own. Maybe it should be part of the agreement when you sign up to join this forum. Who knows? Off my soap box now. John

I've had similar issues when trying to print a threaded coupler with PVA support. Sadly I can't offer an explanation as to why this happens, but to my eye with my model, and perhaps yours, it seems as though there is a bit of interplay between the support model and the primary one. Not the same as trying to print a two color model with two AA cores, but something along the spectrum from totally integrated to totally separate. In my case, the layers in the threads seemed to come out 'un merged' where it looked like interleaving between PVA support and PLA model layering, when I expected just PLA. I know your model is pretty complex and clearly benefits from support. Have you tried printing a partial version of it without PVA support to see if the surface texture is better (that is, in the areas that don't sag without support)? Also, and pardon the dumb question, but is there any possibility that age or moisture level of the PLA or PVA are a factor? In my case, I put both the PLA the PVA in a dryer for a day or so and tried again, though not perfect it did make a difference. John

What I find so good about topics like this is the visualization they evoke. Apart from the discussion on the particular way in which adaptive layers are currently implemented, there is a fresh look at the geometry of layers on difficult surfaces ( I consider a sphere to be such a case with XY geometry printers) and a perspective that may help shape the approach to a future printing corner case. And, nerd alert, I would love to know what software generated those mockups. I assume a CAD package, but certainly not mine.... . All the best John

I tried to open your project in cura, but it's picking up my settings. Can you tell me what line widths and layer heights you are using? Also, the cura model looks different than your photo. In cura (and your latest screen shot), the grey section has sloped sides, whereas in the first photo, the walls all look more vertical. What am I missing? J