I think this test will be useful, so thank you for taking the time and effort to undergo it. Might I also suggest you test Cura, which may possibly be the best slicer at the moment (based on what I have seen, and Slic3r seemingly getting worse with each new version). The results will certainly be interesting, perhaps Slic3r 0.7.2b might be the winner!by yydoctt - General
Where in the EU are you? I would go to webchat.freenode.net (IRC) and join the #RepRap and #MendelMax channels to talk to others who have/are self sourcing. There are lots of good links and great advice available. Others may give you different advice on which printer to build as well and may have more compelling reasons, they may also tell you 3D printing is possibly not the best technology forby yydoctt - General
Self sourcing is finding all the parts yourself - mainly locally, and ordering specialist parts such as hot ends and electronics. This can save you a lot of money over a kit (depending on how competitively priced they are and how long you spend shopping around for the best deals). Half sourcing would be buying a mechanical kit or several smaller kits and bringing them altogether (such as buying aby yydoctt - General
You can do a lot worse than an Orca, they are not a community favourite and their website has had a fair number of complaints on very slow shipments, but that's hopefully behind them now. I haven't seen any complaints in months (have a search of these and their forums). If you did want to go down the MendelMax route you could always consider self sourcing or half sourcing one, it depends on yourby yydoctt - General
I too use Slic3r but I understand why many people are not willing to give up skeinforge. For one, I think it is more dimensionally accurate. As you say the support is much better and the maths Slic3r uses is still not correct (according to Sound). Although having hundreds of options is not very user friendly, having those options is a good thing, the way they are linked and explained is however iby yydoctt - General
A MendelMax has one of the largest stock build platforms and is particularly easy to scale in the X direction, Y and Z are linked so will have to be scaled together. We are talking quite some cost to upgrade the bars to at least 10mm or replace them with linear slides. As far as cc/hr, it is very dependent on your speed and the density of fill. So you must choose strength vs time and speed vs quby yydoctt - General
Pikelo, I am saying your steps/mm are probably correct. Hole shrinkage is very common especially with slic3r. You should measure the head/bed travel and make that result your steps/mm - as this is more accurate than measuring printed parts. Then to counter material expansion you can try reducing the temperature during print or use a fan. Unfortunately I doubt you can do much about hole shrinkagby yydoctt - General
Have you measured bed/head travel as opposed to a printed object? It is far more accurate (provided you measure it accurately!)by yydoctt - General
26.5 - Plastic Expansion - steps/mm probably correct 16.65 - Plastic Expansion - steps/mm probably correct 16 - Not much expansion in this direction or steps/mm is off 7.2 - Hole Shrinkage - Quite severe (Slic3r?), you need to account for this in your models if your steps/mm is 100% correct. Try out this model to make sure XYZ are correct - read the description about material expansion:by yydoctt - General
Can you not vacuum form these shells? Printing at .5x.5x.5 in any quality will take considerable time and will take countless hours of tuning to be able to print at that size reliably. Printing parts this size will likely take a week with no guarantee of usable parts. There are printers which have printed huge objects such as chairs and boats, but the quality is poor unless you make the layersby yydoctt - General
I haven't read all of the posts but if I correctly understand then the answer is kind of. I use Solidworks at work, which has the ability to recognise features of some common formats, including STL. In this way it will allow you to edit the features it recognises, e.g. holes. I presume there are other CAD packages capable of this too. I often find it easier to remodel the object, but that of couby yydoctt - General
Idolcrasher - V2 has been around since last year and I found it quite clear to print from github. The announcement was on the RepRap blog here: Since its release I've barely seen anyone selling parts for the original Prusa. The RepRap wiki is useless, I've seen people complaining about it for years but the advice is to always fix it yourself, which is obviously no small task! The only way toby yydoctt - General
Fundamentally you can make a 3D printer that suits a variety of needs, but not all. Features like multi extrusion and platform size will always be a preference, a preference which will alter the outcome of the design. I agree that one printer could probably address scalability more successfully than we've seen so far, But there will always be preferences that one build cannot address. You're comby yydoctt - General
The Rostock is an infant at the moment, and when more mature should be able to battle with the best of them. However RepRap is not just one single direction, different criteria motivate different people to build different bots. If we are talking about Prusa in particular, Version 3 (i3) is just on the horizon, it is neat and compact and has incorporated some of the nicer features seen on some ofby yydoctt - General
I was thinking of putting a test together on my MendelMax and Prusa to show my max speed vs quality (and hopefully get others to post their results). Some of the things I said were somewhat unfounded and I would be curious to see the result vs my expectations. I still think that infill speed can be set very very high if using multiple perimeters without impacting quality (as long as there is minby yydoctt - General
I'm sure you are aware that shrinkage is what causes warping and therefore you need to combat this force. There are several techniques and I'm not sure which you have tried or even what material you are printing with. Here are some suggestions: Increase bed temperature Increase first layer temperature (hotend/bed) Lower your starting height - perhaps you are printing your first layer too high Inby yydoctt - General
ttsalo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But this is after you either happen to own a > pretty fancy workshop or had the sheets custom > made for yourself somewhere? And if you're > building your machine quite literally on the > kitchen table, you're out of luck unless you want > to pay to get the sheets cut and accurately > drilled? > >by yydoctt - General
Although BotMill have improved since being acquired by 3D Systems, they are still to be avoided. Thankfully the kit you receive will likely not have many of the issues that they are somewhat infamous for. Keep chasing them! When you get your kit make sure to ask here for help if needed, we are rather sympathetic towards BotMill's customers!by yydoctt - General
It would be nice if reviews could only come from established members of the community, this seems more than suspect. Apologies if somehow it is not.by yydoctt - General
I don't want this to become a debate about achievable print speed and the quality impact that it has. As you say printing at 100mm/s is not twice as fast as 50mm/s, especially with that print over such a small distance. However, it should be safe to say that a Mendel can hit 100mm/s infill without an issue, depending on the number of perimeters that the resonance may overlap. Printing perimeterby yydoctt - General
Actually moving the print head at those speeds IS the problem, a Prusa cannot accurately move the head due to resonance in the frame. A MendelMax can barely reach 200mm/s with a decent acceleration, in which it too see's problems due to throwing a huge Nema 17 extruder 100mm and stopping abruptly. There is a lot of talk of the limiting factor being the extruder, but time and time again we see exby yydoctt - General
2.2mm is a huge retract, also suggesting that you have the hotend too hot (i.e. lots of ooze)! A 1mm retract is usually a good starting point and after some fine tuning can be reduced.by yydoctt - General
If the jam is not too bad then you can repeatedly heat the hotend to about 185, pushing in filament, reducing temp to about 80 and yanking it out. Repeat until you can see the nipple of the orifice of the nozzle on the end of the filament. If it's a bad jam then you're best off taking off the hotend and burning everything out. I usually use an allen key to push out the remaining plastic. Othersby yydoctt - General
In case you haven't seen this experiment: It's not what you are suggesting but similar. You could adapt this to inject dye to be mixed instead, though it does present a lot of problems no doubt.by yydoctt - General
billyzelsnack Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It is commonplace for people to post about their > printers going that fast, but it is not > commonplace for people to post the results of > their printers going that fast. Perhaps in these forums that is true, but on IRC it is certainly commonplace to post the result as a video or an image. A lot of resulby yydoctt - General
I'm pleased to see the work going into this, I am still a little worried due to the weight. I suspect there will be resonance in this setup, you also wont be able to reach the high acceleration the ultimaker boasts. It's not so much a problem, but a missed opportunity. For the record, it is becoming commonplace for RepRaps to exceed 100mm/s (Prusa's) and many cases 200mm/s (MendelMax, Ultimaker),by yydoctt - General
To get the most out of your machine you might want to consider a lighter option than a Nema 17 extruder (direct or geared). The motor in this 'thing' looks like it has great potential for bridging the gap between heavy extruders and oozing bowden cables. According to the description you could have almost three of these complete extruders (with hot-ends) for one Wade's extruder, I am yet to seeby yydoctt - General
Just tried Brim in Slic3r and I'm sold, was printing a 160x160 part (7 hours) without any lift. Good job! Two comments about Slic3r's integration: 1) Brim should be inside as well as outside the part. The part I printed today was a 5mm thick cuboid frame, which could have benefited from being 'Brimmed' inside as well as out. 2) The sequence for perimeters should be changed when Brim is being useby yydoctt - General
Looks like a nice machine, I'm glad to see that extruder attached to the head whereas others might be tempted by a bowden cable. It does however look direct drive which is a bit concerning as the lightweight XY head should lend itself to great speeds which may be limited by a direct drive setup. Best of luck, looks like it has great potential!by yydoctt - General
Also are you absolutely sure you NEED a larger print bed? Splitting the model may prove to be quicker and less hassle than printing extremely large single prints. With a heated bed you still may get warping (prints lifting from the bed due to shrinking, especially if you are going slowly).by yydoctt - General