Yes, you can reuse them. The tips by themselves (with the tube) don't have the heater built into them (unless they also discard the heating element at the same time). The Fortus machines use 1.75mm filament and normally have a .35mm nozzle tip, which is pretty standard sizes for RepRap machines. Stratasys does have a patent on the "thinwall tube" design that is their feed tube / nozzle design, buby Beekeeper - General
Make sure you use some strain relief on your heater bed power wires. Otherwise, they will rip off the solder pads on the PC board. It happens a lot. I drill holes in the heatbed and wire tie them, and also wire tie them to the printers main bed.by Beekeeper - Reprappers
Yeah, "slightly better" sounds better in technical documents than "negligible". The truth is that most poor print quality caused by belts come from loose belts. The low torque / speeds we use in 3d printing really makes it insignificant for most users. A lot of the cheap Chinese "GT2" belt/pulley combos have much more slop and stretch more with use. The GT2 belts quotes are from Gates belts usinby Beekeeper - Reprappers
Pictures are always helpful. Especially pictures of prints, they really tell a lot about how to tune a printer. If you don't have a SD card add on, I would recommend getting one for the sanguinololu. It will make the printer print more smoothly and stop blobs & bad surface finishes from data choking through the serial port. You should really check and make sure your belts, pulleys, limit sby Beekeeper - Reprappers
My #1 solution: Just replace the Ramps board, for about $40 on ebay. And install a relay board off of D8 Pins, as I have had a couple of mosfets burn up with no warning. #2 is: If the Ramps board still works otherwise, you could install a relay board and reset your "pins" for the arduino to power the heat bed off of D9 or D10like this one on ebay. You probably should install it anyway. I have haby Beekeeper - Reprappers
biswajitneog, Despite the negative tone of some of the posts, you have actually reached the right forum for answering technical questions to get your machine running. First off, what happened to the guy that built the machine? If he hasn't been fired, or walked off because he hates your boss, he would be a good source to find out what software / firmware is on the machine and if it ever workedby Beekeeper - Reprappers
The good news is that whatever style printer you choose, you can reuse the electronics / stepper motors and lots of the hardware if you choose to change from one style of printer to another.by Beekeeper - General
I don't think Thingiverse is dying, but I do think they have peaked and plateaued. If you look at the Makerbot official offerings from their own account, there hasn't been 5 items printed and posted out of all of their 18 offerings posted since the first of this year. Out of the 30,000 printers they sold last year, or 50,000 printers they sold totally, you would think that more than 5 items wouldby Beekeeper - General
Yeah, I agree with the "Myspace" syndrome. They have been coasting towards irrelevant for quite a while, but accelerated it when their "customizer" to balloon the number of "things" that no one will ever print. They brag about how many worthless things are posted. That by itself says a lot. Once they got bought out, they stopped maintaining it. I highly doubt that they have a person even checkinby Beekeeper - General
Thx Jebba. @OP, You should be thankful anyone would consider buying from anywhere in Ohio, since your name contains "Ohio" and you spend most of your posts pissing on everyone. It wrongfully gives a bad name to everyone in Ohio, and the US for that matter. The ABS plastic that Village Plastics use originates from China anyway, not Ohio. It's Chi Mei 947 ABS, and it is reprocessed into filament iby Beekeeper - General
@strantor, It depends on how much you print, and how small your work area's cubic volume is. A couple hour print here or there isn't a big deal, but run 1+ lbs of abs in under a day in a really small room, and you will smell the ABS. Although, I think hairspray is much more pungent (I still use Kapton /ABS juice with great success). Your comment reminds me of a junior high school concert I wenby Beekeeper - General
Jebba, your black ABS 5 lbs coils are out of stock and your 1 kg black ABS spools are also out of stock. Any idea when they will be back in? (Too Funny... as it is how this post got started in the first place, Ultimachine is periodically out of stock in their black ABS.) Also, are you going to stock spooled 5 lb filament? I buy filament unspooled when I have to, but prefer to have it spooled, eby Beekeeper - General
Well, PLA has a very low glass transition temp, so eventually it will warp on or in a car. I took some videos this summer of PLA parts warping on my Jeep's dashboard and seat. It was between 90°F (32.2°C) and 93°F with a partially overcast / partially sunny day. So I wouldn't recommend PLA for outdoors. Once the dash temp hit close to 130°F (55°C) the PLA parts warped like sticks of chewing gum.by Beekeeper - General
@aduy, it really depends on where you get it. In a perfect world, most filament suppliers would use natural ABS with the correct black colorant to make good quality black filament. They could then use the purgings, recycled ABS, or junk plastic to make the spools. Most extruders don't have their own injection molding machines (not to mention how many tens of thousands of spools it would take toby Beekeeper - General
Yeah, I used to work at a very large injection molding company (for automotive stuff). They had specs saying that they could use "up to 10% regrind" in parts. Funny thing, I never saw 10% regrind, it was always either 0% or 100% regrind. What's worse is that it is nearly impossible to tell most black plastic from any other type of black plastic, once it has been reground. Black PET, looks like Bby Beekeeper - General
I don't have a recipe, we always farmed that stuff out. Vacuum metalizing was always a high volume production thing, very expensive to get one or two parts done (but sometimes you can convince a manufacturer to run some of your parts as "samples" for free). I went to some industrial auctions that sold the VM machines, and the prices for used equipment was horribly shocking - on the order of $30by Beekeeper - General
If you are going to plate the plastic, you better make sure that the parts are "watertight". Even after this, the acetone vapor smoothing is a very good idea to seal the rest of the small holes.by Beekeeper - General
I used to have injection molded helmet shells chromed plated. We used a "plating grade" ABS. I don't remember all of the steps, but they used to: 1. clean / wash the parts 2. dip parts in a mild acid for etching / further cleaning 3. wash / neutralize acid 4. Plate plastic with copper 5. Plate copper with nickel 5. plate nickel with chrome. The results were fantastic, but expensive ($30 per helby Beekeeper - General
University of Illinois has a whole lab of Makerbot Replicator 2's. They are not very good at making architectural models. They have a lot of problems with prints sticking to the warped unheated beds. Acrylic just isn't a good build surface. Bed leveling is a constant problem with them. Without a flat first layer, the rest of the print won't be great.by Beekeeper - General
I use mirrored tiles from Lowes, and clean them with Ammonia based generic glass cleaner and wipe down with paper towels. I heat the mirror to 60-70°C and NOTHING lifts ever.by Beekeeper - General
@Maker6066: Crispy1 is right, too much moisture is your main problem. They probably didn't store it in a plastic bag with dessicant. If they shipped it in a plastic bag with dessicant, either the dessicant wasn't moisture free to start, or they time in the bag was too little and not soon enough after it was extruded. On top of this, the plastic could be contamintated with garbage, or be poorly prby Beekeeper - General
Also, make sure all your bolts / nuts are tightened, especially the extruder.by Beekeeper - General
You should check your belt tensions and make sure they are quite tight (like a badly tuned guitar). Loose belts will do that. If your belts don't make a sound when you pluck them, they are too loose. Also, use a drop of oil regularly on each axis to make sure they run smooth.by Beekeeper - General
Yeah, 0.1 layer heights and 30mm/s speed lead to very long print times. Most printers are OK with 24hr+ print times. If your printer handles 6 hour long prints without any hiccups, 24 hours isn't that big of a leap. Don't underestimate what Ohmarinus says, everyone who has printed a lot of long prints has forgotten to check how much filament is left on the spool at some point. Finding out you diby Beekeeper - General
Yes, stepper motors can get quite hot when running. Stepper motors get even hotter when sitting still and under power. That's one reason to use the "Motors Off" button in Pronterface. Also, always disable them at the end of your Gcode with "M84". You can turn down the power going to them until they start skipping steps, then turn it up a bit (with the stepper motor trim pot on the stepper motorby Beekeeper - General
A couple of years ago, I found out the hard way not to leave PLA show parts on the car seat in the summer. I took several videos of PLA parts warping on my Jeep's dashboard this summer. When the temp outside was 90°F (32°C) and the driver's side door window cracked 1 inch (25mm). Once the sun hit the dash board, the temp would rise to over 55° and the PLA would start to warp like a stick of chewby Beekeeper - General
I have had a couple of people that use a standard non-Bowden extruder that have warped one of the PLA gears with the extruder directly over the hot end. In both cases, they lived in hot climates and printed in a non air conditioned environment. ABS works fine, but they wear out and develop slop in the gears sooner (which you can readjust when you catch it). I have used PLA parts for lathe fixturby Beekeeper - General
La electrónica que utiliza son los mismos motores exactos y controladores Arduino basado que se utilizan para la Prusa I2 o la mayoría de las impresoras RepRap 3d. Para el costo más bajo y más amplia gama de opciones, usted puede comenzar con un Rampas 1.4 que es compatible con un gran número de programas de software.by Beekeeper - General
Hi Daniel, I agree with A2 - Nice Printer, you obviously have spent a lot of time building it. You should purchase at least a couple of lbs of "good" filament from a reliable and reputable supplier Ultimachine, Lulzbot, and Makerbot (with a much higher markup) all purchase from the same extruder so the quality should be the same. The extruder w/Bowden extruder setup works, but with a direct driby Beekeeper - General
Hi, I am selling a couple of my very well tuned modified RepRap Prusa Printers on ebay. They have Marlin firmware loaded on them. They can run either ABS or PLA, and can run either 3.0mm or 1.7mm filament (if you put in a 1.75mm hot end). Currently, they are set up with 0.5mm nozzles and 3.0mm filament, but I can change it to a 0.35mm nozzle or for 1.75mm filament if you wish. I am located in tby Beekeeper - For Sale