Show all posts by user
General discussions. For specific printers / electronics / fabrication methods / softwares, please see other sections.
Re: Taulman T-Glase - 10 years ago
This article (linked from the wiki) suggests the opposite. Sure, there are differences, but if they were that distant, PLA wouldn't be considered in several applications to replace PET. The PETT (t-glase) polymer as well as the blend that I have got seems to differ a little bit from the PET that is used as engineering and bottling plastic. A sample of PLA behaved much like engineering PET when Iby uGen - General
Re: heated build chamber - 10 years ago
I am totally with Ralf here. My chamber reaches ~45°C although it is rather large. I don't have built-in ventilation, though, and the walls are insulated with aluminium coated styrofoam (originally intended to be installed on the walls behind radiators as additional insulation). The Mendel layout works quite well, but I think we should move forwards a bit. If we were to implement Ultimaker-styleby uGen - General
Re: Heated build chamber - Fridge? - 10 years ago
About the smell & fumes: How about a carbon filter with flaps that close when the printer is in use and open after a print to purge the air? That way, the chamber stays warm at least.by uGen - General
Re: Taulman T-Glase - 10 years ago
I recommend trying Kapton tape + glue stick as print surface. It works very well for the PET I got from plastic2print (FormFutura seems to be selling the same filament) and PLA. As PLA and PET are rather similar in properties apparently, techniques to get one material to stick are sort of transferable. There are some differences in glue stick performance: UHU brand holds the parts extremely well,by uGen - General
Re: Taulman T-Glase - 10 years ago
For all of you who live in Europe, there is a PET filament available: plastic2print I have tried this product out, but to my surprise, it was rather brittle and I could extrude it at 170°C already (while the melting temperature should be at 270°C according to Wikipedia). Also, I couldn't get it to go into semi-crystalline configuration although the base of the prints was kept hot at >=60°C. Guby uGen - General
Re: What kind of grease for threaded rods? - 11 years ago
I printed some nylon M8 nut blanks for someone I worked with. He then tapped them to use them on his Z axis (very short actuation of <50mm. Runs lubrication-free and smooth on stainless threaded rods; while I don't have long-term and long actuation data on them, I think nylon nuts may be an interesting option. If you're lucky, you may also be able to obtain them from hardware stores, by the waby uGen - Reprappers
Re: Best 3D printer control board to upgrade to! - 11 years ago
One could augment the tracks with some wires to fix the problem, but I would have preferred a solution that works out of the box. All in all, this isn't too dramatic, just keep it in mind as a caveat. I think the Sanguinololu suffers from a similar problem on the heated bed output. The advantage this board has over all(?) others is that it natively supports Thermocouples. So if you want to use thby uGen - General
Re: Cheap Tools? - 11 years ago
Farnell offers student discounts (at least in Europe), so if you need electronics specific tools or micro screwdrivers etc, they might be a source.by uGen - General
Re: Best 3D printer control board to upgrade to! - 11 years ago
Ah, I see. I didn't see these reliability issues when I searched for opinions on the RUMBA (well, apart from the issues also existing for other boards like flaky serial connection etc.)... Looking at the RAMBo, I agree that it is indeed a very nice board and decently priced if one was to assemble the electronics from scratch. Well, more often than not, I have spent more than I initially wanted tby uGen - General
Re: Best 3D printer control board to upgrade to! - 11 years ago
@Coherent: Are there real problems with the RUMBA? Cause to say that you are displeased by the lack of support, well, it's a little bit strong to say if you are worried that there might not be enough users to provide support. No offence, I'm asking because I am interested in the RUMBA, so I was wondering if you were having real issues with the board. The RAMBo board is consistently at >=180$,by uGen - General
Re: Bushings or bearings? - 11 years ago
@KalleP: Unfortunately, the thermal decomposition point of PTFE seems to be lower than the melting temperature. So, no chance to get this working. There are other fluoropolymers like FEP that might work. Personally, I would try PET first, as there is already some filament available. Strangely, the melting point is far below the one found on Wikipedia, so probably, there are some variations (taulmby uGen - General
Re: Update on the E3D All Metal Hotend (Now finally shipping!) 
[Lots of pictures] - 11 years ago
Does anyone have some figures for microswitch repeatability? All the info I could find was not really useful - like "improved repeatability" or "high repeatability". So how high is "high"?by uGen - General
Re: Bushings or bearings? - 11 years ago
Besides, the Ultimaker uses brass bushings on the X/Y rods. And we all know how the output of those things look like. I guess partly, it is alignment that plays a big role in how well the bushings run and partly stick-slip (or, the difference between static and dynamic coefficient of friction). The bigger the difference, the more the bushing tends to "skip" or "stutter". PTFE for example has theby uGen - General
Re: Bushings or bearings? - 11 years ago
I am not sure how long they will last exactly when installed on a printer, but I have done some tests with un-anodized aluminium. Here is the original thread: LINK. Unfortunately, the photos in the first post are already gone since I uploaded them to imgur, but the follow-ups with the results are still there... I think that the bushings might last a very long while (several months of continuousby uGen - General
Re: Update on the E3D All Metal Hotend (Now finally shipping!) [Lots of pictures] - 11 years ago
About the Z-Probe: The hot end is electrically conductive and there are plenty of places to attach some contact to it, like right above the fan duct. So, if one was to take an electrically conductive plate like a raw PCB, probing with the hot end shouldn't be a problem. Just lower the Z until contact is made. The only thing that I am unsure of is how the plastic at the tip of the hot end will affby uGen - General
Re: Bushings or bearings? - 11 years ago
I am a big sucker for bushings. You don't need hardened shafts to run them on while bearings will wear out unhardened shafts (tracks where the balls of a LM8UU run on the shaft become noticeable rather fast). Since I am also interested in the original goal of RepRap, self-manufacture is rather important, so I made bushings out of UHMWPE, which run extremely well (no wear noticeable after some monby uGen - General
Re: Update on the E3D All Metal Hotend (Now finally shipping!) [Lots of pictures] - 11 years ago
I am also printing 1.75mm PLA without problems here. The hot end design I used before tended to jam horribly when switching from ABS to PLA even after a full purge, but I can freely swap around different materials without problem here. It's just great - works without fail so far and the nozzle also stays cleaner than the one of my old hot end.by uGen - General
Re: Threadless ball screw - 11 years ago
I am not sure if using this on a Mendel design Z-Axis is advisable for exactly this reason, but a moving Z table like I would like to implement shouldn't be a problem. In fact, the elegance of having one shaft as guide and the other as drive and support is somewhat appealing. If implemented on the X / Y axis of a Mendel derivate, this system might be a definite step forwards (although I tend to dby uGen - Reprappers
Re: Threadless ball screw - 11 years ago
I have made two of those things (had to design them from scratch because the original design didn't include the bearings I had available). At first, I was a bit sceptical - the bearings looked like they might slip on the shaft. But to my surprise, this system works really well if you angle the bearings so that only a point on the edge is in contact with the shaft (instead of a line on the side ofby uGen - Reprappers
Re: what does polycarbonate stick to? - 11 years ago
That's interesting. If you are successful, both standard materials and more advanced ones can be used without a heated bed which makes building a small, light home-use RepRap easier and safer. So a Tantillus with an all-metal hot end might be the ideal solution for 90% of what one would be likely to print. Do you know anything about fumes the PC might release when heated? In light of some recentby uGen - General
Re: what does polycarbonate stick to? - 11 years ago
How about glue stick on kapton? It worked with a lot of plastics for me. UHU seems to be the strongest, getting PET, PLA and ABS to stick extremely well. Taulman 618 also stuck IIRC, but pulled the glue stick layer up from the kapton. An advantage of glue stick is that the bottom layer becomes rather matte (which I like since the whole print looks more homogeneous).by uGen - General
Re: Botobjects color printer - hoax? - 11 years ago
This looks like an idea that I also shortly thought about. I pretty much discarded the idea because I thought that the plug from the melted plastic would be a pain to push in again... but seeing it work makes me want to try it out, too. Really nice idea because you save costs and weight with only 1 hot end! Extruding filament with widely different melting temperatures could be a little bit trickyby uGen - Developers
Re: Reprapworld PLA Filament - 11 years ago
After printing some black and natural PLA from RepRapWorld, I have to say that I am actually quite satisfied with the results. The black filament didn't cause any problems and yielded very nice results while the natural one had the tendency to snap in various places like MPower described. Apart from that issue, their PLA is nice. About the jamming issue: Both someone I work with and me have hadby uGen - General
Re: Marlin CoreXY functionality? - 11 years ago
Nice, maybe we will see more H-Bot RepRaps in the future. The Mendel design may have been a great solution for the limited possibilities back then, but I think we should boldly take steps forward in machine design. by the way, how is polycarbonate? I have heard great things like that it is warp-free, high temperature resistant and extremely strong, so it might be suitable for Tantillus-like prinby uGen - General
Re: Marlin CoreXY functionality? - 11 years ago
Ah, I see. Didn't expect the commit to be from 3 months ago and stopped looking after one month old commits. Thanks for the info!by uGen - General
Re: New extruder design on indiegogo - 11 years ago
Well, the price of these worm gears pretty much defeat the benefits. Another UK supplier, Belting Online has got cheaper worm gears (with wrong bore diameters). There are some steppers like NEMA 8 (maybe too weak?) or those cheaper tin-can ones with different shaft diameters. Maybe, if one is lucky, there is another solution than the bigger stepper motors we always use. Probably a matter of thinkby uGen - General
Re: Marlin CoreXY functionality? - 11 years ago
Oh, that is nice! Is it already in the main Marlin branch? I couldn't find the commit...by uGen - General
Re: New extruder design on indiegogo - 11 years ago
Extruding cooler also means modified layer adhesion. Black PLA from plastic2print will delaminate relatively easy when printed at 180°C, but yield very strong parts when printed at 210°C. Two things I like about the design, though: the use of smaller motors also means more compact printers overall and the worm gear helps in this regard. Too bad that worm gears are rather hard to find with fittinby uGen - General
Re: Sanguinololu Programming Help - 11 years ago
Yeah, give soldering the FTDI a go. SMD (of that size) isn't difficult. As long as you have a steady hand and good concentration, it should be finished in a few minutes at most. Tip: only apply solder to two outermost pads diagonal to each other, place the chip onto the right place and use the hot soldering iron to press the two legs onto the pads with the solder. Now melt some (very little) solby uGen - General
Re: Marlin CoreXY functionality? - 11 years ago
So is it safe to assume that the output quality is the same with CoreXY now? From what I have read, there were two bugs: one, in which subsequent layers were shifted to one side and another that asymmetric objects didn't come out right (one side was mirrored or something along those lines). I, too am thinking of building a (second) printer and am looking at the various designs with static motorsby uGen - General