How good is Ormerod print quality

Hi All

I am looking at purchasing an Ormerod next week however I am unsure as to what to expect from a quality point of view and whether I will be better going for another brand.

Please may you post some pictures bellow of prints from your reprappro ormerod printer explaining what modifications you have and how it helped? (links to videos of your ormerod would be useful too as these are few and far between on youtube search)

I think this will be a good topic for people looking to purchase printers and understanding what to do to make prints better, as I could not find a post like this.

Kind Regards
Josh132

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 02:15PM by josh132.

There are two modifications that are absolutely necessary in my opinion:

1. iamburny's Y-axis belt clamp (possibly together with dc42's spacers. Without this, I was unable to get the Y-axis belt (the one that moves the print bed) properly tight, which would lead to bad precision along the Y-axis. It would among other things cause "walls" along the X-axis to be very uneven (due to layers being in slightly diferent Y positions).

2. Strengthening or replacing the MDF bed support. The supplied MDF plate is way too soft and flexible. It will move about and flex downwards, the more the further out from the center you go. I was unable to get anything printing properly outside of the center area (maybe 7x7 cm), when measuring trying to calibrate bed levelling, it appeared as if the bed was "domed", with the center about 0.5mm higher than the corners. I could easily tell the glass plate was way "flatter" than that (<0.1mm from perfectly flat), it was all due to the bed support.
I started out by gluing on some 2mm plywood (see attached picture) which made it quite a bit better, but I then installed an aluminium one which made it rock solid. I saw some 3d-printed plastic supports somewhere as well.

Then there are a bunch of things of various usefulness but that aren't quite as critical, but lots of us seem to have them running. For example, iamburny has some neat helical gears to replace the straight ones (I got slightly less play in the Z gears with those) and an improved hotend fan duct, and KimBrown has a behemoth of a fan duct that I have printed out but not yet mounted.

Thanks for the advice I will definitely be printing those improvements, most likely all of the ones you suggested. I will get the plate made this week so i have it for next week too.

Would you mind adding pictures of some 3d prints that you have managed to get off the printer? also do you print in PLA or ABS, I am thinking of printing in ABS as i have used it before and it can be finished with acetone, not to mention you actually get more material (about an extra 150cm3) per kg than PLA.

Has anyone ever thought about making a case for the printer to sit in?
Is there a screen that can be added?
Has anybody had a play with multimaterial yet? (RepRapPro News)

This is a link to a picture of a cute octopus I printed in my ormerod in ABS normal layer height and i made a mistake and forgot to put the infill % in and it printed hollow. [www.thingiverse.com]

I see to have been lucky and have never needed to worry about the Y belt slipping. But I have now put on a aluminium bed which makes it a lot more solid.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 06:52PM by PaulHam.

Random picture of nautilus gears and some carcassonne meeple. Most of the rest I've printed so far (after getting the Ormerod into shape) is just test crap and printer parts.



You can see how the bed levelling was a bit off for the black part, the bottom layer (which is the one you see) is decent on one end and kind of crappy on the other, from the head being too far from the bed.


So far I've only been doing PLA, except for some small ABS test bits. That was before I fixed the bed, and without precise bed levelling it was very tricky getting ABS to stick to the bed. Should give it another go now though.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 06:58PM by jstck.

Those prints look pretty good to be honest, the octopus looks brilliant (would be nice to see it with a 0.1mm layer height).

I was planning on printing off that nautilus gear! however im leaning more towards a planitary gear now.

Very difficult thing to answer, as print quality is very subjective.
My very first snowman was great.... until I printed my 2nd and 3rd.
I imagine ALL other repraps must have the same learning curve and set up tweaks needed.
I am now printing parts for work, my machine is a proper 'rapid prototype' printer, so cosmetics is not something high on my priority, but saying that, the quality is far better than I expected for £600.

If your question was "how good is ormerod print quality out of the box" I would have to say not so good but if you invest a lot of time upgrading and adjusting it will print as good as anything I guess, just don't expect it to be an easy ride, if your main goal is to print and not spend your time tinkering you will be better of buying something else imho - some samples







Erik

more samples..

; generated by Slic3r 1.0.0RC3 on 2014-03-27 at 17:05:55

; layer_height = 0.24
; perimeters = 2
; top_solid_layers = 4
; bottom_solid_layers = 3
; fill_density = 0.4
; perimeter_speed = 60
; infill_speed = 60
; travel_speed = 60










[www.thingiverse.com]

Erik

Does anybody else have pictures of their prints please?

Quote
josh132
Does anybody else have pictures of their prints please?

Very nice print dmould, is that ABS? It looks like it has been finished with acetone?

I will be using abs for that very reason on my printer. And upgrading all parts to abs too.

Quote
josh132
Very nice print dmould, is that ABS? It looks like it has been finished with acetone?

I will be using abs for that very reason on my printer. And upgrading all parts to abs too.

Yes, it's ABS. I give it just a very brief rub-down with a kitchen towel soaked in acetone, not anything sophisticated, but that quickly gets rid of any fine whiskers and gives the parts a slight shine. The inside of the box as shown in the second photo has not been treated in any way however - that's exactly as it came off the printer.
Dave
(#106)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2014 02:10AM by dmould.

This was one of my early test prints in PLA
Thin wall test with 0.24mm layers

Greg
PS it did not hold water!!!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2014 07:00AM by GregL.

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Ormerod #17

"How good is Ormerod print quality?" - It will do, it will do just fine..

284 gram green PLA from [3dfilaprint.com] (highly recommended, great service form these guys)

model: [www.thingiverse.com]

RepRapFirmware-059a-dc42.bin

; generated by Slic3r 1.0.0RC3 on 2014-05-15 at 21:21:15

; layer_height = 0.24
; perimeters = 2
; top_solid_layers = 4
; bottom_solid_layers = 3
; fill_density = 0.25
; perimeter_speed = 40
; infill_speed = 40
; travel_speed = 60
; nozzle_diameter = 0.5
; filament_diameter = 1.75
; extrusion_multiplier = 0.90
; perimeters extrusion width = 0.50mm
; infill extrusion width = 0.87mm
; solid infill extrusion width = 0.85mm
; top infill extrusion width = 0.85mm
; first layer extrusion width = 0.38mm





"Look at those snappers, will you!" (Romancing the Stone 1984)









Erik

..and Mr. White, same settings







Erik

"Alas poor Erik..... I knew him well....."

---

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

Quote
KimBrown
"Alas poor Erik..... I knew him well....."

A close shave :-)

Erik

ABS print, Mr. Green, 4 hour acetone sniffing






Erik

That looks great Erik! Were you heating the acetone the whole time?

Hopefully this image comes through - a print I did recently..


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2014 03:07AM by VortyZA.

Quote
VortyZA
That looks great Erik! Were you heating the acetone the whole time?..

Hi VortyZA

Was place in the sun, don't know how hot it got but is a dark color so...I could see the acetone condensing on the sides of the glass jar, all the way to the top

Quote

..Hopefully this image comes through - a print I did recently..

Oh its beautiful!, did you slice with slic3r?, on my print I see some fault in the structure of the infill at the outer part of both ears but the surface is perfect, so I guess its yet another slic3r fault

Erik

Quote
ormerod168

Quote
VortyZA
That looks great Erik! Were you heating the acetone the whole time?..

Hi VortyZA

Was place in the sun, don't know how hot it got but is a dark color so...I could see the acetone condensing on the sides of the glass jar, all the way to the top

Quote

..Hopefully this image comes through - a print I did recently..

Oh its beautiful!, did you slice with slic3r?, on my print I see some fault in the structure of the infill at the outer part of both ears but the surface is perfect, so I guess its yet another slic3r fault

Erik

Hi Erik,

That's a great solution - not sure why I never thought of putting the acetone it in the sun and just leaving it!

The elephant was sliced using Kisslicer. It had small issues on the underneath of the ear and above the legs - mostly because I printed with no support and those are outside of the tolerances (45 degrees etc.).

Re OP:
The changes I've made to the Ormerod since being built have been to lower the head so that curls or bumps don't catch on the IR sensor or fan cowling. I've put a bent paperclip under the bed on the belt which provides automatic tensioning (Hack #125423), changed the extruder to my springloaded one and the gears to iamburny's herringbone shaped ones. I also changed the glass to 6mm thick glass (broke the old one). I made a clip-on coweling for the fan so that I can choose to have the fan blowing or not - depending on whether I'm printing ABS or PLA.

I am so pleased with my printer specifically since the upgrade to dc42's firmware and that great webcode - the quality has improved a lot as has the ease of use.