Want to buy, got the newbie fears

[DavidF]

its at 45% now, but i have to get going to work so no pic of top and bottom until tomorrow. But as stated before those areas where the print goes from infill to perimeter not touching is more of a slicer problem than a machine issue.
Teaser pic of the print showing how badly I need to dust the rostock..
[img]http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g446/davidflowers1/Mobile%20Uploads/20150126_141603.jpg[/img]

[J_Man]

Also noticing the cubes do not have corners. Instead they are rounded. Is that by design or the machine turning corners into rounded surfaces?

[DavidF]

Also noticing the cubes do not have corners. Instead they are rounded. Is that by design or the machine turning corners into rounded surfaces?

Thats typical of all extrusion based printers. You can minimize it by going with a smaller nozze, but you will never totally get rid of it.

[J_Man]

Hmm... here's what I mean here. This is a box I made with a removable top. Using this Thingiverse file:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:144255

The edges are pretty sharp. Lid fits nice. Wasn't really a lot of clean up needed. Of course it's white ABS plastic so it;s hard to get a nice shot of it. But that's what I mean but the corners.

[DavidF]

Im not really seeing it. How big is the box you printed? Maybe it is just optical? The cube im printing is 1" square.

[J_Man]

This is about 1 and a quarter squared. Not that much bigger.

[DavidF]

Box on thingiverse is 40mm so that would be 1.575" unless you scaled it down some. Thats a pretty big difference in scale.
Think of this, your extruder pumps out an extrusion from a round hole, lets say your extrusion width is .45mm, that would make your corners have a .225mm radius to them theres just no way around it. Even if your extruder only put out a single dot, it would still be round.

[J_Man]

Yep I scaled it when I was printing. I just used the program the printer had. It lets you scale up or down by the mm. I opened it in zbrush too and had messed with the opening to make sure they stayed wide enough.

[DavidF]

Never played with z brush. Thinking i should check it out... sounds interesting.

[Earthbound]

Roundness of what are desired to be sharp corners is mostly a function of nozzle size. As mentioned above, corners can't physically have zero radius on an extrusion printer of any make. Lower limit will always be about half the nozzle diameter.

What can can also make a difference is printing speed. High printing speeds can lead to corners getting rounded off. Somebody showing off the high speed capability of a delta printer will have trade to off some corner sharpness. But at the speeds a cartesian printer moves, the delta is also precise. Rounded corners caused by excess speed are the result of the fresh extrusion cutting the corner when the head changes direction.

[J_Man]

I'm starting to get decent with designing. That's why I wanted something better to print my ideas out with. I have been pretty well happy with the UP! Mini other than it's low resolution. I figure it's pointless if I'm getting something new to settle on 100 microns with me currently at 200 microns. That's the main reason I keep looking at the Rostock Max. The only other choice I figure would be an Ultimaker 2 and that's above my price range and I hear it's more hype than anything.

[J_Man]

The UP is a .4mm in size. I'm still new to 3D printer technology and really don't know all the differences. As far as I know, that's it for the UP, you can't upgrade it to better. If you do, you risk clogging it up every time, but you'd still be at 200 microns I guess even if you do. From my understanding of the printers anyway...

[DavidF]

Im not familiar with the up mini, but why wont it print at 100 micron? What happens if you try to? Abs, pla, neither one?

[DavidF]

Throw some abs in that sucker and try it, im betting it can do it in abs....pla might be a different story. Just slow the printer down to 10mm/sec when you do and it should manage it just fine.

[Earthbound]

After reading what very little information is on the product website, I found some specs on Amazon. Looks like UP! Mini uses proprietary software. So the 200 micron limit could be a limit of the software. Seems like layer height is limited to 200-400 micron range (.2-.4mm) as well. It claims ABS capability, but says bed only heats to ~50C.

[DavidF]

After reading what very little information is on the product website, I found some specs on Amazon. Looks like UP! Mini uses proprietary software. So the 200 micron limit could be a limit of the software. Seems like layer height is limited to 200-400 micron range (.2-.4mm) as well. It claims ABS capability, but says bed only heats to ~50C.

Someone has to have hacked it by now..lol. ill see if i can find something. But dang, cant help him out on that print size any....

[J_Man]

Yeah the hacking scares me, hehe. I don't know enough to do it, and I guess what my reservations are on the Rostock. I have just stuck to the confines of the program. I haven't even tried a different program than what they shipped it with. I have it set to the full 200 micron and there's a second setting that I have selected to fine.

I have read about people changing the nozzle, but that's where I got the idea on my other post about clogging. That was the main issue I read. All I have printed with the UP ismABS since PLA is said to be more difficult and requires some temperature mods. They do sell a temperature selector, but that's also something I never bothered. My understanding is no matter what is done, you will always get 200 micron due to it hard wired per layer. But again, that's from my newbie knowledge.

[J_Man]

Oh and also the size limitation is 5 x 5 x 5... so that's another reason needing to upgrade.

[DavidF]

Does this mean you have never had a clogged nozzle that you had to disassemble? ?
Your going to be in for a whole new experience and a bit of a learning curve, but its worth it.

[J_Man]

Yeah the nozzle has never clogged on the Mini. It gets some melted plastic around the nozzle after every print, but I clean it each time. I never had to disassemble it at all.

[DavidF]

Yeah the nozzle has never clogged on the Mini. It gets some melted plastic around the nozzle after every print, but I clean it each time. I never had to disassemble it at all.

Well be prepaired to have to unclog one when you first get started on some high res prints. Its likely to happen at some point in time. Ive been very fortunate with the the v6 hot end and have only had one clogg due to bad filament.
It was easy to clear and did not require disassembly. Hopefully my good luck will continue.
You will gain lots of experience building the rostock, and a better understanding of what makes a 3d printer tick which will pay you back big time if you ever need to make repairs.

[Holy1]

That's utter nonsense Holy1. The towers are NOT "easily shifted", unless of course the screws aren't tightened down.

g.

It is not nonsense. The printer is tall and the top can be shifted pretty easily, the taller you go the more sway. If you tighten the screws too much then they will squish the wood and never tighten properly. I'm just saying to be careful when moving!

[J_Man]

This is the item I want to make. The ultimate goal. I made this example out of wood to show it and had intentions of casting it. After several attempts, I just couldn't get casting to work. I played around with it for about 5 years now. I figure now 3D printing might bring it to a reality. If I can get a pretty nice print from a printer, I can assemble it and do whatever I need to do to smooth it out the rest of the way. Spray paint alone does a decent job on my 200 micron prints. I figured if I could get 50 microns, it shouldn't be too bad at all. Of course the Rostock is suppose to give even better than that right? Isn't it at 20 or 25?

As far as the detailing I meant on the top and bottom of a print, here's a hoverboard I made that shows a good example of what I get now. It is painted and some of the lines are covered, but it comes out solid with no gaps and no fudging with the software.

Then going back on the corners. Here's something else I did from a Thingiverse file. The dog's ears while yeah the corners are not 90% angles, it's pretty sharp. I guess that's what I was saying is based on that cube printed, can the corners get more sharper than that? Does the Rostock give within the look of this dog's ears.

I know I'm being pretty picky and specific. There's just so many options and I want to make sure what I am getting into is all.


Joe

[DavidF]

The highest resolution i have managed reliably is 80 microns. Ive gone to 50 a couple of times but the print quality was pretty degraded. This is in the z resolution. XY resolution is governed by the nozzle size.
25 microns? Where'd you hear that b/s??!!
That may be the stepper positioning accuracy, but no way the print accuracy.
Have you downloaded the manual yet? If not do so. Read it carefully and make sure you know what you are getting into.
There will be a test on Friday

[J_Man]

I was told on another forum the 20 or 25 micron. They didn't know much about the printer... and obviously they actually knew nothing, and they refereed me to just sign up here. Read, ask questions, read the manual. Just all around learn what I'm doing before I buy. They're also the ones that said to get a Flashforge...