Belts and pulleys affecting quality

I keep reading about what makes the UP printer better quality than the Mendel. Some say it's the belts and pulleys but I don't quite understand how.

Are the UP belts and pulleys "higher res" with more steps in some way?

oops the up! uses either a threaded rod or, more likely, ballscrews and nuts. it's also not made by thousands of different builders, each with their own idea of "good enough".

once you have a printing 3d printer, it's almost trivial to upgrade however you want. a ballscrew upgrade would be pricy and take some time to design and configure. On the other hand, you might get nearly as close as a ballscrew upgrade if you just spend that same amount of time calibrating and refining your printer.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2011 01:22PM by Buback.

No the UP uses belts and linear slide bearings.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

nophead Wrote:
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> No the UP uses belts and linear slide bearings.


Then why is it higher res?

Zumba Wrote:
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> nophead Wrote:
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> > No the UP uses belts and linear slide bearings.
>
>
> Then why is it higher res?


Better quality control mostly, since the entire machine is made by one company and not assembled by the end-user.

I don't think it has better resolution. It simply uses a smaller nozzle than most people use on a Mendel and has better software.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Part of that is that the UP printer guys took models that had been printed in ABS, then scaled them by 100%, and printed them out. Since the model is bigger the layers look smaller in proportion, making the product seem more refined.

Also, the UP printer does print with a smaller nozzle and in thinner layers than the average printer. It also has a fully integrated tool path so, for example, they can have timing pulleys and belts that mesh perfectly, and can know the exact dimensions of both; the same basic idea applies to all the other components. There's just less uncertainty, which is important in an open-loop device.

Agree with pretty much all points...

The models posted by pp3dp are generally bigger - so the signal to noise ratio is favorable. I don't think they doubled the size (ref: cathedral playset) - but they def. used all of the 135mm build height.

I wouldn't call it higher resolution... Instead, I would call it higher precision (from machine to machine). Removing the user from the assembly process helps a lot. The Up! software also removes a LOT of uncertainty by using 1 flavor of plastic and being well tuned for it.

The user benefits from not having a bunch of tunable parameters. Since the mechanical, material and electrical systems are all well known - you don't need to be able to tune. Its REALLY hard to find a combination of settings that results in less than passable output. Significantly reducing choice helps.

This is most evident when you try another vendor's plastic. I had prints utterly fail using non OEM material. It wasn't until I dialed down the extruder temperature (and dialed up the platform temp) did I get results that are fairly close to OEM. But, I only get such results at very fine layer thickness, so it comes at the cost of print speed and part strength. The software has menus for more tuning parameters - they're just not accessible by the user (maybe not ready to roll out this feature?).