Ormerod development

Having purchased an Ormerod kit from RS and assembled it I found the following issues:

1/ the mechanical design was very poor, axis were not true and parallel (with no adjustment) to each other and lacked rigidity.
2/ the z axis sensor would not work in day light or under most artificial lighting hence calibration was a constant trial
3/ the bed construction, from 3mm MDF was inaccurate and flimsy
4/ the soft ware was not up to date and disorganised.
5/ the above points resulted in poor print quality and unreliability.

As a machine designer it would appear to me that the unit was being sold in an undeveloped state and from this forum it would seem that the development is being done on the run at the cost of and by the customers
I am sure that the unit has great potential if the time and effort require is invested, but as is I think it is more of a project than a usable machine.

I have since returned my unit to RS

Most definately a project, personally I find it part of the fun

It can be frustrating, annoying, exciting, educational all in one go, once the basic upgrades are made - bed support, firmware and probe board, the machine becomes very productive indeed, I can turn on, load up and leave it until finished every time.

I don't think overall rigidity is that bad really for such a lightweight machine.

Each to their own of course, just my views

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Another RS Ormerod Mk1 meets the world

Retired now but I used to make....
CNC Machined Mk1 aluminium bed support plates for the Ormerod
CNC machined X-plates and ribs for Mk1 & Mk2 Ormerods
CNC machined bed support arms for the Mk2 Ormerod.
Dual Hot-End heatsink blocks.

Your observations are all correct, Derek. For me it became a fun challenge to get it running - and given the price I was in fact pleasantly surprised that it was completely rescuable with a bit of effort. So many cheaper goods are fit only for the bin as they can never be made to work properly (I know I've bought plenty of useless cheap tin-openers of that sort!). Many new innovations were developed via the same route as the Ormerod - the Sinclair ZX80 was first deployed with non-functional firmware for example, which users re-wrote. Had I purchased old technology (a washing machine or drill-press for example), I would have been pretty cheesed off. But 3D printing is at the stage that home computers were at when Sinclair sold his ZX80.

Dave
(#106)

Derek, I'm sorry to hear you returned tour unit to RS. I don't have any major issues with the basic mechanical design of the Ormerod (your point 1), although I have had a few minor mechanical issues e.g. lack of adjustment of y-belt tension, and insufficient adjustment range in the x-runner bearing. However, I agree with your points (2), (3) and (4). I have been able to address all three, but it has meant a lot of extra work beyond just building the kit. If you look around, you will see that there are now off-the-shelf solutions to all three of these issues, as well as the minor mechanical issues I encountered (and others).

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Yes it's ashame you've thrown in the towel...
I must admit I felt exactly the same way as you, over the same points at one stage....
I was close to giving in. But then there was that nagging, but what if, and one of the nigles soon went.
I can't say how I felt when I couldn't get a good print.
But having stuck with it, and helping in the developement has been the real enjoyment.
As for poor printing... I disagree..... I'm printing at twice the original speed now, and getting great prints,
especialy since upgrading to DC42s firmware. Here's a little something I knocked up last night, on a moving ship,
with all the vibration, rattling and rolling that goes along with it.... And believe me, there's DETAIL in that lillte animal...
If you enjoy tinkering it's great.... If you want something out of a box, that makes poor quality prints, then PCWorld sell
them at 3 times the price.

But here's a little taster of what you can do with this machine, on high speed..... (this took 20 mins... 20% scale).

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Please send me a PM if you have suggestions, or problems with Big Blue 360.
I won't see comments in threads, as I move around to much.
Working Link to Big Blue 360 Complete

If you expect a 3D printer kit to be something where you just "put the parts together and it will work", you probably shouldn't get any kind of RepRap but go for something "more commercial" (and likely much more expensive). It will require some work to get it running right and you have to basically know a bit of what you're doing (or spend way more time doing trial-and-error), and it's certainly not something I would recommend to someone who isn't willing and able to tinker with it.

I got the printer up and running pretty well with the "default bits" (had some issues due to me not reading instructions and assembling it properly). Given that the Ormerod is a relatively new design there are certainly a lot of things to improve for "Mark II", but I wouldn't call most of them serious flaws. The exception there would possibly be the very flimsy MDF beds, but that only was an issue for me when printing large things (a few centimeters from the edges of the bed), around the center it still worked fine.

I've had my machine for about a month now and can say that I was surprised that the kit was'nt about four or five pieces, but more like a large Meccano set and took me about four days to assemble and a further three weeks to sort out which software to use and which hardware to improve.But really for the price I don't think I can grumble.
To be honest it has for me been quite a steep learning curve but well worth it (just my views).

I had a good look on these forums before I purchased and knew about all the problems (and solutions) before buying. I was torn between the Velleman K8200, the Ormerod or something like this.

Really glad I chose the Ormerod, I am having fun learning with it, and this community is great!

Regards,

Les