Is the Ormerod a good beginner machine ?

I am shopping for a 3D printer, and from hours of googling, the Ormerod does not look too bad for the price.

Is is a good beginner machine for a technically competent person ?

Also, if new materials and extruders become available in the future, is the Ormerod a solid platform for future upgrades ?


Thank you, and sorry if this has been asked before, I could not find any information.

The Ormerod is my first 3D prrinter
And I have done very well with it
So in that respect I would say that yes it is a good first 3D-printer for a technically competent person

There is already an expansion board for it that lets you drive more hotends and extruders. I have not tried that myself though.
The printed parts that comes in the kit is PLA so if you want to print a lot of ABS you should prolly replace the once close to the hotend with ABS.
I have not tried ABS yet on mine, but as fare as I know it should work fine. Also seen that some people has tryed Ninjaflex.

It is also a very open platform so modifying it for your needs should not be difficult
iamburny and dc42 has also made a exilent webinterface and firmware for it!

In my department we have three 3D printers - a Makerbot, a Mendel and an Ormerod. My son has an Ormerod at home. The Makerbot is setup to use ABS and the Mendel is printing PLA. Looking at the design structure the Mendel and Huxley look more stable than the Ormerod - but, they seem to have larger footprints. The Ormerod is compact, but the adjustments to get a flat looking bed are not well designed. There are, for instance, no adjusters for getting the Y-bars parallel and there is little to stop the X-axis arm from twisting. I would probably factor in a metal x-axis arm upgrade and a new bed power supply (at least for ABS) - or a secondary heater between the bed and MDF support.

The web interface works well on the Ormerod and since we have upgraded the firmware it has been relatively stable. I went for the Ormerod because of the upgradability - and because RS had them in stock at a good price. It does work, but I very rarely leave it printing unattended (does anyone?). I once left it printing overnight at home and got remarkably little sleep although the print did work flawlessly.

The Ormerod is a prefectly decent printer, and the whole experience is a great introduction to 3D printing - but, it is definitely not plug and play - it is more 'fudge and fettle'.

Thank you for the quick replies.

I can see that the forum here is active, so I have decided on a reprap machine.

I just found someone close to me selling the MendelMax1.5, which I will take a look at tonight.
Otherwise it will probably be the Ormerod from RS.

Thank you for useful answers !

I wouldn't say that the Ormerod is a better or worse beginner machine than any other RepRap model. Equipped with the Duet, it is a bit more "future-proof" than most others, but there are some "teething problems" with it (being a fairly young design), many of which are easily remedied by printing some parts.The major remaining issue as I see it is the MDF bed support, everything else I can easily live with (though I do love dc42's improved IR sensor).

That said, there is really no RepRap that is suitable for a beginner in 3D printing that isn't willing to tinker a fair bit with it and spend some time learning about it. They all require some calibration and maintenance, and for that to go well, some understanding on how things work. But that's all a good learning experience.

Some more "ready-made" printers (thinking mainly of Ultimaker and Makerbot) are probably a bit easier to set up and get going, but they are by no means maintenance- and issue-free, and they do cost a lot more while not really performing better.

Walter,
Do you mind saying where you are from?
Maybe one of the Ormerod Community is also near to you and you could experience one first hand.

Lloyd

I haven't read the above posts, just seen the heading.
No..... go for the Maplins machine..... I got talked into the Ormerod and think it's crap now.
I use my own design of fan duct that allows 360' of 100mm bridging, and DC42's ever progressing firmware, which combined make the machine just about pass able.
If I had the choice now, then I'd go for the Maplins product.
Here you get average support, but it depends if Ians looking or not.
Secondly if you order replacement parts, then they don't look at the orders, and you have to message Ian to nudge Sally, and it seems to depend if she has the hairdressers that day as to when your order will get put through.

I did enjoy designing my BigBlue 360, and DC42s firmware, but will never ever trust a probe other than the extruder it's self... The probes are ALL crap! with both RepRap and others trying to spin money off people. It's Pissed me right off, because while I've kept my designs free of charge, others have used it as a cash cow.
And further more the items I bought for the ormerod HAVEN'T improved it.
The only thing I have found that works 100% is the X and Z microswitches.

I am in need of another machine now, to cater for demand.
My second machine will be a Maplins. Then when funds allow I will be scrapping the Ormarod and using the bit for a cnc miller.

It's a crap design. Floored from the start by having an arm that is supported from just one end.. Terrible design of bed. Crap design of fan duct, And very poor Firmware from the beginning. I spent months upgrading it.

I think that sums it all up........ I wish I'd never seen it!

PS.... I stopped designing for the Ormerod some time ago because I could see it wasn't going any where.
I am thinking about making my own design of multi-head. Simpler, more straight forward, which won't be anything like the current ones.
However, that's my winter project, and not going to get it done while I can fly the quad.

Get a Maplins.... I am!

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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

In reply to ChristofSchwiening.
Hi.... Iused to enjoy watching the Ormerod working away. So I agree about the watching.
Laterly, yes I normaly leave it unattended now.
It's not accurate, I can't trust that there will be a print I can use, but 75% it's ok.
I agree floored design. An X-axis that bends. I have my extruder feeder close to the Z axis, and there is never a hope of putting more feeders along there.....
It's a crap idea.
I might salvage the machine by improving the bed substantialy, and a second Z pillar, with belt driven drive.

But this is a winter project, not summer......

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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

In my opinion, the Ormerod is basically a sound design, but like most things that are sold at budget prices, it has a few weaknesses. All of these can be remedied. If you read the reviews of the Velleman kit sold by Maplin (e.g. there are several on Amazon), you will find that kit also has some weaknesses. So whatever you buy at this price level, expect to have to make a few improvements to get the best results. In the case of the Ormerod, these improvements will cost you between about £20 and £150 depending on which ones you go for.

One big advantage of the Ormerod is that the Duet electronics use a much more powerful processor than the Velleman does and has an Ethernet interface, allowing it to support a web interface, FTP etc.

I'm not aware of a multi-material upgrade path for the Velleman. I am already doing 2-colour printing on the Ormerod.

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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].

Just as a contrast to KimBrowns posts.

Where to start.. I of course dose not have anything else to compare with.
But my experience with the Ormerod has been thoroughly enjoyable.
I do not really recognize the all the problem Kim is describing. Maybe I don't have as demanding use cases?

I have replaced a few parts on my Ormerod that dose improve it somewhat, but even with all original parts I got very nice prints.
Most of my tweaks have been to get the Ormerod as silent as possible as I live in a one room apartment and have to listen to it constantly.
The latest version of the Ormerod (the one I have) have an adjustable bearing for preventing X-axis from wobbling. I understand that before that it was an issue.

My Ormerod makes really nice bridges. I have replaced the fan duct with iamburnys one piece fanduct.
But this was to allow for a smaller (thinner) fan that is much more quiet. Even with the original fan and fan duct the bridges looked really nice on my prints.
Although I have to admit that the fan I got was very noisy and created a lot of vibrations. Thus the reason I replaced it.

I also have experience with ordering replacement parts. And it is very positive! There was a packing error and I got the wrong parts first but it was quickly corrected

I have seen images posted on this forum of problematic prints. But as I do not have thous problems myself I would assume they are not actually related to the printers design.

As for the Z probe I must admit it could be better. I have not gotten dc42's replacement probe.
The original one is not accurate enough to rely on by itself for Z calibration. But I still find it useful, to get in the ballpark and then manually adjust it so it is perfect.

It took me roughly 12h to build and calibrate the Ormerod when I first got it. So I would definitely not say it's a plug and play printer. But then I was not expecting a plug and play printer ether.
Being a technical person who likes to tinker with electronics and on occasion even design electronics. It was a fun and learning experience for me

I of course looked at many different printers when I was going to get my first.
The deciding factor for me became the Duet board and it's network connect ability.
It allows me to have the printer fare away from my computer and still have as good control over it as if it was connected though USB.
I only bring it close and connect through USB when I upgrade the firmware.

Thank you all !

Again it is always a pleasure asking questions in an active and competent forum.

I ended up buying the used MendelMax1.5.
(The add may be active a few days [www.dba.dk] )

But I think from new, I would have chosen the Ormerod.
It technically looks more appealing to me.

I am from Denmark 8000-8700.

Thanks,

I'm not sure why Kim accuses some people of making their upgrades a "cash cow". AFAIK nobody has charged a penny for upgrades unless they are supplying physical parts - and the prices charged seem to me to barely cover the material and fabrication costs, let alone time and effort. All the design files for those parts are available for free, so if you believe that you could make them yourself far cheaper, go ahead. I work in electronics manufacturing, and bought one of DC42's new sensor boards because I would have had to spend a great deal of time making it from the design for very little money saving at all - PCB fabrication to a professional standard is not cheap. Meanwhile there are plenty of DIY printable upgrades that people have spent many man-hours of work to design and then shared freely - not to mention the huge effort that people have put into improving and debugging the firmware and web interface, all given at no charge whatsoever. Plus the hours spent on this forum to troubleshoot other people's problems and give sound advice.

It's easy to see the faults and shortcomings in a product you have used a lot, and to believe that the grass must be greener elsewhere - because obviously the glossy adverts for another product sing its praises and detail none of its faults. I have not used the Maplin product, but I have looked through its instructions and looked at the photographs and do not foresee there being any big difference in the experience between that and the Ormerod. I have twice ordered parts from the RRP web site shop, and all have arrived painlessly within a week. The Ormerod is a hobbyist product, which my company bought purely as a "proof of concept". For professional use we will now be spending several thousand pounds more, and will then expect something that works out of the box and requires no modifications. I would also not be surprised if I had to pay extra for software and service contracts.

Dave
(#106)

Well said Dave, I think Kim must have got out the wrong side of the bed when he made those unwarranted comments.

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appjaws - Core XYUV Duet Ethernet Duex5
firmware 3.1.1 Web Interface 3.1.1
Ormerod 1-converted to laser engraver, Duet wifi
OpenSCAD version 2020.07
slic3r-1.3.0, Simplify3D 4.1.2, Cura-4.4.1

It does seem Kim really has fallen out of love with the Ormerod project, and it is just that, a project, an ongoing development.

I bought mine for a bit of fun, i love electronics, mechanical things and engineering in general, so it seemed ideal. I was expecting to have to tweak things, ok the raw product had flaws - the bed support, probe and possibly the firmware were all suspect. I have bought both of Dc42's probe kits, the first one sort of worked, better than the kit one but the second one really nailed it, perfect zeroing every time and built to an extremely high standard at a good price.

I picked up on the bed support from another member who had a one-off made in aluminium and it worked, ideas were bounced around and having engineering as a hobby, I decided to take the risk and get some cut, these were passed on to members at very little above cost, I was not looking for cash gains, just to help out other users, I am still making and selling these at the same cost, a lot of the time postage is more than charged so I lose a few pence, so what.

The x-arm kits were another forum suggestion, the drawings were on here and again I took a chance, these cost more because they are far more involved, they are laser cut and then CNC drilled and tapped. Yes I had a problem with the first few and I took a heavy hit in the wallet to rectify this as fast as I could. The benefits of this kit are not as big as the bed but they have been very well received by those that have them so they can't be bad.

I don't think anyone here is using the ormerod as a cash cow, it wouldn't work, users would just go elsewhere.

My ormerod does what I want, it's impressed a lot of friends too, one of which has since bought one, it's not perfect but at this price point it's damn good.

As for velleman, well, I built one of their amplifiers once, about 15 years ago, it cost something like £400 which back then was a fair amount, it then needed a few hundred more spending on it to replace cheap tatty components with quality units to get it to sound anywhere decent. Would I buy another kit of theirs ? Probably not.

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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.

Well said Dave, I couldn't agree more.
There are plenty of things to improve on the Ormerod, which I did, and which I expected. I've worked with the ultimaker (v1) and am now building a mini kossel, and they come nowhere near the ease of build and setup of the Ormerod.
Given the price for the MendelMax on dba.uk it's the most logical choice, as the Ormerod will cost twice that at least. But for those that want to start with a new printer, the Ormerod is worth considering.
I see the Ormerod as a good basis to build upon, and the multi-extruder is next on my upgrade list, followed by upping the height of the printer.
The only thing I see as a serious weakness is the X-arm. Despite fitting DaveK's aluminium version of it, it's not as good as I would've liked, which has nothing to do with the quality of the aluminium version. It's just the single ended support on the frame that leaves room for improvement.
For those that want a more production ready version of a printer I would suggest an Ultimaker (the new one) or a Felix 3. But even with those printers you're likely to go for (future) upgrades.

Hello guys,
I am so happy with this printer kit.... now I have 5 Ormerod printers!

Ormerod as a cash cow?
Kim..I'm confused ... please explain how to make a pile of legal money with a 3D printer!.... I'm really interested.


thanks to all
Dario

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Ormerod 187
Firmware Electronics: Duet 0.6
Firmware Version:1.18.1 (2017-04-07)
Web Interface Version:1.15a
Slic3r 1.2.9a and Simplify3D 4.0.0
[www.dropbox.com]

Indeed very we'll said Dave. My thoughts (in this order) on seeing Kim's post/rant were:
1) Whoa - are you drunk?
2) Poor Kim - someone's spoofed his login and logged in as him to rant - he must be so embarrassed
3) What a shame that someone who has contributed so much to the forum has come to feel like that...best sell it quick and leave then. Also that he is "bang out of order" with a number of well meaning individuals who are just trying to help - they deserve an apology IMO

For my part and for what it's worth after all the previous fine comments, I bought the machine as a hobbyist because I wanted to learn just what this whole 3D printing lark was all about. My Ormerod has let me do that in spades through building it, getting it to work and improving it to a point where I am producing a print quality far beyond what I thought possible for such an affordable machine. I bought it for fun and use it for for fun, with very occasional chances to do something useful with it

I for one am deeply grateful for those that have made upgrade parts available to us if we choose to buy them - those I have paid for have always helped enormously, and those that didn't were free anyway and that is part of the journey IMO to find out what your particular needs are and meet them

Over the 7 months I've owned it I've had about 3 weeks of frustrations and worry (and 2 of those we're in the first 2 weeks!) and the rest has been pure pleasure and fun, impressing myself, friends, relatives and work colleagues with what can be done

All in all I've no experience of any other printer but am 100% chuffed that I bought an Ormerod and expect to continue to enjoy it for some time to come...bring on multi-colour printing!

Quote
MrCrispi
All in all I've no experience of any other printer but am 100% chuffed that I bought an Ormerod and expect to continue to enjoy it for some time to come...bring on multi-colour printing!

At least two (probably three) of us on this forum are already doing 2-colour printing on the Ormerod (and so is RepRapPro). See these threads: [forums.reprap.org] and [forums.reprap.org].

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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].

You see, this is the thing - in the space of what, six months ownership of an ormerod, people have progressed to making multicolour 3d objects at home! Does that not sound amazing? I know it's going on in industry but this is just home users developing a machine that can create actual physical objects from code! And for practically pennies!

My machine does not do much, never thought it would but one use I have made of it is to print covers, component boxes, and guide pieces for a full-on CNC plasma cutter I built for my main hobby. These items would be unobtainable otherwise as it's all custom built but a couple of hours with openscad and the ormerod and I have enhanced my plasma cutter massively and for no real cost this to me makes the ormerod worth it's weight in beer at least

I was surprised at Kim's outburst as well, seemed he was on the ball when designing and printing his BigBlue duct etc, baffled?????

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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.

Really looking forward to multi-color printing
Will have to wait a few months before I can afford the upgrade.

Can only comment on the Ormerod as its's the only 3D printer I've had. For £600 inc the vat, it seems expensive, but I believe some people have tried to source the parts and can't do it much cheaper.

As to design, as many have commented the main weakness is the x arm. I glued mine together and it was dead straight for a while but I have now noticed its bowed around 0.5 mm where the extruder motor pulls on it. I guess the perspex is forming in the hot weather! Meanwhile the hot end pulls it too and the bowden tube also adds a torque that makes it twist. This means you cant really level the bed. It will always be out in the middle

As someone else commented before somewhere, the design problem with the x arm is that any misalignment of the runner that the ballrace runs along is actually amplified at the hot end. I could go for the aluminium x arm but rather keep drawing out designs of how to do it differently, mostly involving two linear bearings with the hot end between them and the extruder motor running along with it

The y- bed of mdf is also pretty poor but I glued some carbon strips to mine (thread about it somwewhere) and am very pleased with the result and that seems to have held fine.

Despite these things the support is very good both from the forum here and reprappro. Whether I went the best route I do't know, but I have something which definitely works and which I can pretty much rely on to make things I could never have done before.

Am also very grateful to everyone on the forum, DC42 in particular for his development of the firmware, which is excellent, even though I've never touched the web interface, but the improvements to the trajectory calcs helped me at a critical point!.

Perhaps one day there will be an Ormerod 2 with an improved x bed. That would be very interesting.

regards
Andy

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Ormerod #318
www.zoomworks.org - Free and Open Source Stuff

Quote
Lejoni
Really looking forward to multi-color printing
Will have to wait a few months before I can afford the upgrade.

Off-topic I know, but you can find a list of what you would need to buy to replicate my 2-colour dual nozzle conversion at [miscsolutions.wordpress.com]. If and when they release it, the RepRapPro single mixing extruder upgrade may cost a little less, because it won't need the extra nozzle and heater, and the original power supply is more likely to be adequate.

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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].

Quote
dc42

Quote
Lejoni
Really looking forward to multi-color printing
Will have to wait a few months before I can afford the upgrade.

Off-topic I know, but you can find a list of what you would need to buy to replicate my 2-colour dual nozzle conversion at [miscsolutions.wordpress.com]. If and when they release it, the RepRapPro single mixing extruder upgrade may cost a little less, because it won't need the extra nozzle and heater, and the original power supply is more likely to be adequate.

Thanx
I will prolly wait for the mixing extruder. Not cus of the power supply but cus it seams like a more elegant solution.
Also seen a video of someone mixing 3 colors and getting some nice effects from that
For economic reasons I need to wait a while anyway.
Will also be interested in your upgraded Zprobe then
As well as other upgrades.