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Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs


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Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

Even though almost every point regarding open source has been made already, I will add my tuppence worth.

Open source means the customer can trust the company. If the company is sharing their source, they are confident that they have got the product right.

I bought a UM2 since I knew that all the plans are available, so should they go bust I can still repair my machine. So the customer gets that degree of comfort as well.

It means that I can modify my machine based on the UM plans, even if it's just to build a camera arm/holder. Way more effective than reverse-engineering.

Open sourcing your product on an open source platform provides you with an ethically clean look. Even if you plan on taking over the world and subjugating humanity to your fiendish schemes, looking ethical will get you there sooner.

Lastly open source means getting free R&D. The best R&D is done by the users actually using the product and discussing the options. See the https://www.youmagine.com/designs/alternative-um2-feeder-version-two.

 

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Don't go the path of MakerBot. Born open source, then closed it...and there went the innovation. You couldn't give me a Makerbot device. Its land fill.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Don't go the path of MakerBot. Born open source, then closed it...and there went the innovation. You couldn't give me a Makerbot device. Its land fill.

     

    Amen to that. I went to the Euromold in Frankfurt last month and was looking for a printer that was able to produce better quality prints than the UM2. I was assuming that the manufacturers were showing their best prints. Either that was not the case or the UM2 is way better than I thought, and quiter of course which I greatly appreciate. You have to buy an industrial printer to achieve better quality.The Makerbot printers were not better than the other competitors, even the Z18 is not very good and causes many people headaches.

    I had a look at the zmorph printers from Poland which have dual extrusion too besides laser cutter, dremel mount, and so on. I have never seen any dual extrusion print that looked so bad. The only other option that I had considered was the Leapfrog Creatr HS. It was noisy and the print quality was below UM2. I can't remember if the nozzles were mixing colors but I was always looking for printers that were able to get large flat top layer close to perfect. There was not one printer below 2000€, The only thing that I like about the Creatr HS is the filament compartment inside the printer and the more stable z-axis.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Just wait a little more and see what our extruder kit can do! ;)

    PS. We should have news later this week...

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Looking forward to it. I would buy one even as a closed source product and without PLA capabilites as long as the most important parts can be bought elsewhere like the nozzle. And 250€ sounds absolutely ok to me for the entire kit.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Sounds awesome! I want one :) When can I order one?

    Matteo

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    @ Team Ultimaker:

    i think it is hard to see people copping your ideas and sell it for less money. I think you will loss people to these cheap manufacturer. But on the other side i think you will win people because the Ultimaker is an open source printer. I think the biggest advantage of Ultimaker is the community. 2 years ago, i had to deside which printer i will buy. I decide for Ultimaker and against Makerbot and i never regret my decision. A lot of people ask me and i always say the same. Your company have sometimes some problems with the contolling of the quality of the Ultimaker (e.g. packing list is not fitting) and the reaction time of the support. But overall your company is doing a good work. People who bought an Ultimaker on my recommendation have agreed my rating.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    @ Team Ultimaker:

    i think it is hard to see people copping your ideas and sell it for less money. I think you will loss people to these cheap manufacturer. But on the other side i think you will win people because the Ultimaker is an open source printer. I think the biggest advantage of Ultimaker is the community. 2 years ago, i had to deside which printer i will buy. I decide for Ultimaker and against Makerbot and i never regret my decision. A lot of people ask me and i always say the same. Your company have sometimes some problems with the contolling of the quality of the Ultimaker (e.g. packing list is not fitting) and the reaction time of the support. But overall your company is doing a good work. People who bought an Ultimaker on my recommendation have agreed my rating.

     

    Yes. I agree with you too!

    @ Creatr

    You dual extruder looks nice! Will you also have different nozzle size spare parts? I would like to try 1 mm for infill.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    I don't find it hard. Not one bit. I love that people do that. It keeps us on edge and will improve the total level of technology.

     

    If you look at being sustainable, I don't believe you can get quite as cheap as what UM does. Especially not if you still want to invest in R&D (which is expensive). Despite it not being quite visible, we have a lot of R&D going on.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    I know a few weeks ago or so Ultimaker announced its intention to have a dual extruder ready by Q1 2015. I haven't heard much since. How is that coming?

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Have to add my bit to this.

    I work within an engineering department for a multinational company. I spent many hours researching which printer to purchase. The three main reasons for choosing the UM2 where

    1. The Quality/Reliability of the unit

    2. The level of community support and feedback

    3. Open source.

    An Open source environment allows the a much richer and effective community support network which intern provides invaluable feedback to improve and innovate. That is unless you have millions to throw at R&D.

    If I was purchasing an inkjet printer from HP I couldn't care less if it was open source or not, because I know when I hit print to works. 3D printing has a long way to go before we can hit print and out pops your model.

    I understand why you want to protect your hard work and investment as a company but, I think the support and feedback you'd gain from involving the 3D printing community would far out way the losses from clones (and lets be honest if its successful you could patent the nozzles off it and still find a thriving eastern market based on your designs).

    This is not to say I'm not interested, cant wait to find out more about it! Just feel a little uneasy about purchasing a closed source item for such an open source printer.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Is it just my personal impression or does it take veeeery long until we see something convincing about this dual extruder setup? No video so far. Not even a picture of a print. This rises a question: is it real?

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Well they do want to "protect" their intellectual property...so showing it, might reveal it. And based on our replies, we've demonstrated that Open Source is the way things should be/stay.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    By the way I read it, they still have a few problems they are working on, and it seems like they are wanting it to work with PLA. This may take longer than they expected for them.

    I would assume that they could still show us some dual color prints though. Unless the quality is really bad.

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Hello Everyone!

    It's great to have such an amazing response for our dual extruder :) These a little bad news in this update: the company who was supposed to make hopefully the final prototype before production had some issues and didn't managhe to make the new parts. They said it will be ready next week - so that's some good news!

    Keep checking this forum thread as we'll be releasing a video of our dual extruder in action very soon.

    Sam

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    I would love to see the dual extruder! However, my printer is located in a small basement room and I only use PLA, mainly because of the smell issues. BTW - why metal hotends jam PLA?

    Waiting impatiently for more updates... ;-)

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    It's been a year since UM said a dual extruder was coming for the UM2 "in a few months," so I'm looking forward to seeing how well this alternative works. I'm guessing we'll see the official UM2 version shortly after the UM3 starts shipping. :-P ;)

    Seriously though, I'm a bit worried about the "no PLA" stipulation on this alternative since I mostly use PLA and PETT. I've never liked ABS because the fumes gave me headaches. If they can't solve the PLA problem, perhaps they'll offer a version that can't do polycarbonate, but can handle PLA well. I mainly want dual extrusion for printing alternative material support structures with my PLA and PETT objects.

    Other than filament feed issues that required some tweaking of the extruder casing with a sharp knife, I've been pretty happy with my UM2. I do get clogs occasionally, and wish the print nozzle was easily swapped, but overall I find I use the UM2 about 95% of the time while my other two printers sit idle. The output quality rocks. The large prints stick to the heated platform really well. Having dual extrusion would make the UM2 just about perfect.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Because there is interesting news:

    A German company called Multec promises a super-PLA having in the range, which surpasses even good properties of ABS. The material is called PLA-HT, and here there is more information about:

    https://www.multec.de/PLA-HT-Filament

     

    Markus

     

    Cool. I wonder if anyone tried that PLA-HT already.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    I hope it's nothing like Orbi-Tech's PLA90. Worst PLA I've ever had :D

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    I'm curious to how they define heat resistant. Normally you state a glass transition temperature since it's a thermoplastics. Do they really mean that they have a Tg of 90C? Then it would be pretty interesting but also makes me wonder what the recommended printing temperature is?

    I guess I'll have to test it and see :)

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Well the main reason it's not there yet, because it just doesn't print well. Slapping an extra extruder on it isn't hard. Getting it to print on par with the first head, that's the really really hard part. I think that a lot of people have a far to high expectation of how good the quality of dual color prints are.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    It's been a year since UM said a dual extruder was coming for the UM2 "in a few months," so I'm looking forward to seeing how well this alternative works. I'm guessing we'll see the official UM2 version shortly after the UM3 starts shipping. :-P ;)

    Seriously though, I'm a bit worried about the "no PLA" stipulation on this alternative since I mostly use PLA and PETT. I've never liked ABS because the fumes gave me headaches. If they can't solve the PLA problem, perhaps they'll offer a version that can't do polycarbonate, but can handle PLA well. I mainly want dual extrusion for printing alternative material support structures with my PLA and PETT objects.

    Other than filament feed issues that required some tweaking of the extruder casing with a sharp knife, I've been pretty happy with my UM2. I do get clogs occasionally, and wish the print nozzle was easily swapped, but overall I find I use the UM2 about 95% of the time while my other two printers sit idle. The output quality rocks. The large prints stick to the heated platform really well. Having dual extrusion would make the UM2 just about perfect.

     

    Hi Bill, been a while since I last heard from you.

    It is very pleasing to hear you are (still) enjoying your Ultimaker 2.

    What other machines do you have now a days?

    The PLA-HT kinda sounds like something colorfabb has as well.

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker 2 Dual extruder upgrade - Creatr XLabs

    Well the main reason it's not there yet, because it just doesn't print well. Slapping an extra extruder on it isn't hard. Getting it to print on par with the first head, that's the really really hard part. I think that a lot of people have a far to high expectation of how good the quality of dual color prints are.

     

    May I ask if the quality issues are mainly related to alignment of the nozzles or to oozing?

     

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