Thursday 17th of August | Introductions

[SandervG 1,521]

Through this post I want to welcome all new registered community members to our forums.

It is mid-August and holiday season seems to be coming to an end. We had a lot of new community members signing up to the Ultimaker forums and I find myself in the office writing this post on a(nother) very rainy day. Got to love those Dutch summers!

Hopefully, everyone who just registered will be able to find what they are looking for here. We have a lot of knowledgeable users, and Ultimaker also puts a lot of effort in the resource pages. Feel free to check them out!

If you stick around, you’ll find yourself becoming one of those expert users yourself and knowing all about Ultimaker inside and out.

The moderators and I keep a close eye for new posts to make sure none go unanswered. We want to help everyone! But still, there are a lot of new members who go by without getting to know Team Ultimaker, or all the other gems in this wonderful community.

Hopefully this post will be a first step in getting to know each other better. Ensuring we can all enjoy our time here. With that said, welcome to the Ultimaker community! Each of you have access now to the countless of experts here and online resources available. Use it wisely 

A great way to get started is to introduce yourself. We would like to hear from you! Please tell us something about yourself, like;

 

• What 3D printer do you have
  
• Are you 3D printing for your business or personal use? Are you already working on a project?
  
• What would you like to learn here?
  

 

Since a better world starts with yourself, I’ll go ahead:

I’m Sander van Geelen, the community manager at Ultimaker. I have an Ultimaker Original+ and an Ultimaker 2+. I use them mostly for printing objects around the house that broke and I’m in the process of converting illustrations I like to make into 3D models.

Finally, what I would like to learn is what you fine folks are up to 

Without further ado, here are: @DJsSnowCones, @Drdave, @Limath, @Oatmeal0, @Morf, @paeteacher, @Fozzy, @jonathan9232, @loman, @OTeTe, @dwilleby, @kattyisis, @maxime78, @KevinWood, @tredog, @LesF, @AntonJohnsen, @griffnbarr, @clover3dworks, @CEV3D, @bobbyverlaan, @jdumas, @Emdjeee

I’ll also introduce our moderator team (your best friends):

@IRobertI, @Didierklein, @Flowalistik, @Gr5, @Neotko, @Nicolinux

Oh, and as a closing note; some links you might find useful:

Useful links to get started

Coffee corner

If you are looking for a guiding hand through the forums, check out this link

If you want to tag someone, write @ and their username; you should see: @SandervG

Looking forward hearing from you!

Edited August 18, 2017 by Guest

[kattyisis 0]

Thank you! My husband and I just bought an Ultimaker 3 after a failed launch with a resin printer. We are using it for cosplay stuff, D&D figurines, and whatever else might be of use or help around the house. So far, we've made some tiny things. He is currently working on a cosplay gun. Not sure what it is called right now.

I do have to say, after working with computers being a coder, web developer, and data inputer for 8 years, I am not whole heartedly impressed with Ultimaker's website or the user friendliness of it. I feel like it could be a bit more streamlined, especially in the troubleshooting area to actually show the steps that it needs to show as well as page interconnectability. For example, How to actually remove the Bowden tube, not just saying "push the tube in then pull the tube back out" (shorthand). I had some trouble with that and it wasn't until I went on YouTube after countless hours wading through the website that I figured out that it is just the TUBE, its not the entire connector with tube and how to put my fingers on the connector to press that down as I pulled the tube out. Just small things like that I feel would be a bit easier and I've seen it on more than just this occasion. The pages should probably be interconnected (i.e. ALL troubleshooting should be in the troubleshooting tab OR at least linked to in the page that relates to that particular issue) and not be all over the place. I feel like I am on the website far longer and far more than I should for such a small (very easily fixed) issue rather than searching for hours and then bombarding forums with similar questions.

I like the website overall, just feel like it could continue to be refined.

I really appreciate all the help and hope you hear out some of my frustrations as helpful criticisms to making things a bit more user friendly.

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @Kattyisis, thank you for your message and taking the time to introduce yourself! Cosplay is really interesting! Do you have a gallery somewhere to show what things you make? Hopefully the Ultimaker 3 will offer you more satisfaction than your experience with resin. Why did it fail?

Regarding the website, thank you for sharing your 2 cents with us! Its really helpful and will help us improve it.

In what scenario did you have to remove the bowden tube, or did you not find it described clearly enough? For example, in this page (clogged print core) there are photo's and images that should help you. Did you not find this content, or is this not conclusive enough for you?

Besides the actual content on the pages, we also have to make sure users are able to find the right documentation. So if perhaps this is the info you need, but you could not find it, that is also valuable feedback.

There is a team dedicated to make the site better and more user friendly. And your feedback can help us do so! (main focus being able to find content over making the existing content more comprehensive).

Edited September 8, 2017 by Guest

[nzo 16]

I enjoyed this short but very important sharing between you and kattyisis, sandervG.

Language; the words we use; can range anywhere between wasted mouth noises and clear, clean and accurate. I say this with all respect to those for whom English is not their mother language. (Google Translate is quite good these days).

We also have brains that are widely different in how we interpret the world. Some of us are mainly visual, some are auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory or a combination of modes. "I see what you mean" is a different mode to "I hear what you say", or "I don't feel comfortable with that" or "I don't know what you're talking about".

In my years of learning about therapy and counseling, I frequently came across couples where one seemed to be speaking French and the other in Russian. And they wondered why they were not communicating! .

I've mis-communicated like this many times and sometimes still do. The problem is amplified in the field of 3D printing and forums like this one. How many time have you read something and wondered what the heck they were talking about. The wider internet is like a dog's breakfast in this regard. Everything gets mixed up together, especially when it comes to teaching, learning and imparting understanding.

I may be correct in saying that 3D printing is very visual: videos, images, watching and visual terminology. But it's also olfactory (what the hell is that smell!) and auditory (I hear a grinding, spitting noise) and (touching that nozzle made me fall off the chair).

I frequently look at a post I've just carefully (or not) composed and think "What the heck have I just written!?". The requests for more information from responders to posts on this forum is huge. "Can you post a pic, a video, show me what you're talking about".

I'm aware whenever I learn a new field I need to learn the language of that field. This often comes slowly to newbies and can be immensely frustrating for those already very skilled in that language. And there's nothing worse than an experienced member snapping tersely at the author of yet another newbie question "Have you tried Google?".  Or RTFM!!!

I'm particularly impressed by sandervG, Geert and others who make a real effort to communicate. Yes, telepathy would make it simpler, but then we would have to put up with the self-talk head noises as well as the critical information

Edited November 24, 2017 by Guest

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @nzo, thank you for your kind message, it is much appreciated! I hope you find the forum and our community equally pleasant.

Something I also asked in the initial post of this thread, what do you hope to find in our community, or what would you like to learn @nzo?

There is indeed a frequent request for more information when someone asks for more help, this is partially to overcome subjective language sometimes or rule our 'false' interpretations. It is easy to mistakenly diagnose an error as a hardware problem, when in fact the material used is garbage, or the profile was not good. There is a lot of information in a 3Dprint which tells a lot about the source of the problem. Hopefully this community can contribute in passing on this knowledge to all users who are willing and open to learn it.

I enjoyed writing these introductory posts, unfortunately, the forum software was not with me, and many users did not receive a notification of the 'tag', and therefor never new about this post in the first place. Another reason why we're happy we are preparing for a forum migration to a new forum software and I can continue this young tradition.

(I'll tag @geert_2 here as well, so he has an opportunity to accept his compliments as well. By the way, writing '@username' allows you to tag someone.)

Looking forward hearing from you, have a good day!