Ultimonster

Introduction / Background

In August 2013, a heavily modified Ultimaker 3D printer was put up for sale on the Ultimaker forums (inthis thread).

Member Daniel Sjöstrand (1025) saw this and started a crowdfunding campaign by using the Facebook Stockhom Makerspace members group and the Stockholm Makerspace forum thread.

The machine was succesfully funded in only two days (1299EUR + 38EUR PayPal fee = 1337EUR) by around 20 members. Members: Feel free to add your full last name if you want:

The heavily modified Ultimaker

Funder	Amount (SEK)
Daniel Sjöstrand	1000
Gustav G	500
Erik C	1000
Lars S	1300
Niklas S	500
Niclas S	500
Göran R	1000
Johan E	1000
Andreas V	500
Anders P J	1000
Petter K	500
Anders Henschen	500
Robban E	500
Erik D	500
Dennis J	300
Hans A	500
Erland L	500
Stellan L	600
Mecki G	500
Axel Svensson	500
Sum	13200

We still have some money to purchase extra accessories for the printer. The currency rate at time of purchase was 8.76 SEK to 1 EUR, so 1337EUR = 11 712 SEK. This means we still have 13200-11712 SEK = 1488SEK to purchase spare parts / upgrades etc for.

Specifications

• Ultimaker rev.3 from Feb 2013.
• UltiController with custom firmware (version?).
• Heated aluminum bed with silicone heat pad
• Active cooled full-metal E3D-style hotend
  • 2.85/3.0mm filament size
  • 0.4mm nozzle size

Print settings

It would be nice if we can keep track of print settings and results here.

Andreas first prints 2013-11-26

Used Cura 13.11 (on my laptop) and printed two small (~4x4x2 & ~8x5x2 cm) gingerbread cutters with 3dverkstan PLA filament. Very happy with my first print on this machine, except maybe retraction so a few strings had to be cut off afterwards.

• Basic: Layer height=0.2, Shell thickness=0.8, Enable retraction=Y, Botton/Top fill=0.4, Fill density=30%, Print speed=50mm/s, Print temperature=210, Bed temperature=60, Support=None, Platform adhesion type=Brim, Filament diameter=2.85, Flow=100%
• Advanced: Nozzle: 0.4, Retraction speed=40, Distance 4.5, Initial layer=0.3, Cut off object bottom=0, Dual extrusion overlap=0.2, Speed travel=150, Bottom layer speed=20, Infill speed=0, Minimal layer time=5, Enable cooling fan=Y
• Start g-code: http://pastebin.com/SYAEtuP9
• End g-code: http://pastebin.com/urSF5dci

Troubleshooting

Hints from Daniel S:

• The biggest risk for getting a big jam in the extruder is keep the extruder warn too long without running. Then the heat can spread upward and make a blockage.
• When changing between ABS and PLA you need to make sure to remove all ABS-remains to avoid jamming. Some manual extruding may be necessary. The easiest would be to have two 3d printers: one for PLA and one for ABS.

Also see:

• http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Troubleshooting
• http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Jamming

Change Log

The below is a Change Log which we all should use while putting the Ultimaker into operation and learning it. After the major work has been done, this can be moved to a "history" section and instead we should put up instructions for use here.

Date	Description	Who
2013-09-15	Around 5-10 of the funders gather to put the printer into operation. Instructions from the seller (Markus) were followed on how to unpack it: zip ties are removed, sewing machine oil is applied to XY rods and XY gantry and the Z screw is greased. White filament on a big roll marked ”ABS reprap gmbh” that was included in the received package was mounted and fed into the Bowden tube / hotend. It is very finicky to get the filament into the entry of the Bowden tube (needs to be improved) The ulticontroller was used to heat up the hotend. We got plastic out at around 240 degrees Celsius, but before this the temperature was manually turned up to about 270 degrees (the default ”preheat” profiles for both PLA and ABS had been set to 292 degrees Celsius. We should ask Markus about why this is pre-set to such a high temperature. Is the temperature probe off by chance? Or is he printing with higher-temp materials as well?. We fired up Cura and saved the existing configuration that was for the reprap Huxley on the Desktop of the ”3D Printer laptop”. We ran the ”first run wizard” so that Cura can perform some self calibration and have correct ”default settings”. We changed the nozzle size to 0.5 (not knowing that it is most likely 0.6 or 0.7mm nozzles that has been delivered). We got some plastic out and tried to level the platform. We had some problems with the XY belts interferring with the screws next to the wooden frame and they were not parallel to the wooden fram, which they should be. After a while we noticed that the ”X” rod had shifted (most likely during transport) and after unscrewing we could shift it back into proper place. After a while	DanielS