Hahahahahaha! I'm in Perth. No, the other one. I wish I was as close to you guys as you are to each other! Now you're gonna find out you're related. LOL. Pretty sure I played the Firefox arcade game too but my memory sucks. I do recall seeing the machine but that's all.
“it's so subtle I thought it was camera lens bend.”
Yep definitely real. It’s one of the problems with the design, like the Jawa crawler, the Nostromo and various other 70s/80s movie models - there are a ton of unexpected odd shapes designed to befuddle the eye, haha.
“Been reading the thread about the studio scale Narcissus you are involved with if I have that right, haven't got to the end yet!”
Haha, neither have we. There’s big news coming up fairly soon though, I believe.
“Printer is RepRapPro Ormerod 2, seemed to be the case if you didn't mind having to build it yourself from a kit and the fettling/swearing involved setting it up, and a few cheap mods afterwards, you can print as well as something 5 times the price.”
I had a brief look at the site yesterday (didn’t have much time, we’ve got an extra floor going on the house starting today – builders erecting scaffold right now – eek!) It does look interesting for the price. I’ve built one printer from a kit (Makergear M2) and it’s for sure the way to go IMO; these are not machines you can treat as if they were fridges or TVs. Building a kit gives you a great deal more familiarity with the stuff you’re gonna need to get familiar with sooner or later anyway, extended swears vocabulary included. :lol
“Also I know if anything goes wrong it's easy and inexpensive to fix myself. Plus the build size is pretty big, in fact I am going to mod it so I can print up to around 40cm high, currently about 19cm max.”
What’s the standard build volume? I could be interested in something larger too, looking down the track. The M2 is a good machine but only has 20x20x25cm, decidedly not the biggest on the market. Forces me to be smart about parts breakdowns though.
“custom firmware which has added some really useful print controls so you can change the print speed and extrusion while printing. I think it also runs smoother and tracks corners more accurately now.”
Now that I would love. You can do it via G-code of course but that presumes you know in advance that you’re going to need to. A proper (not G-code) pause function would also be pure gold.
“I have only been printing about 2 months so am still learning, things like silver filament looks cool, but is a bitch to get to stick to the bed, probably whatever colouring makes it silver also makes it set slower and behave more elastic than other colours.”
Yeah, they all have their own quirks. I’m still working my way through different colours; the consensus seems to be that clear PLA is easiest, with various other colours getting trickier and ABS a good deal tougher. (Are you using ABS btw? You’ll want to be unless you plan to mould and cast this? PLA has a lifespan, it’s biodegradable in the medium-term timeframe. Much easier to print though.)
Do you have a heated bed, and are you using blue tape or kapton? Hair spray? I stuck it out with nothing but the heated glass for months, which was stupid. I get much better results on kaptop, with hair spray – even for PLA. The other big mistake I made was ignoring everyone’s advice about measuring your filament. Reel to reel it really, really, really varies in thickness. I thought I could just eyeball it and of course I was dead wrong.
Definitely get a smaller nozzle. Mine’s .35mm so I can print details down to .7mm. I’m mostly using Cura at present, it does 90% of what I need and the visual interface is golden. I am really interested in your remarks about Slic3r as I gave up on it last year during their “we forgot how to generate support material that isn’t like rock” period. Might have to take another look.
“it's so subtle I thought it was camera lens bend.”
Yep definitely real. It’s one of the problems with the design, like the Jawa crawler, the Nostromo and various other 70s/80s movie models - there are a ton of unexpected odd shapes designed to befuddle the eye, haha.
“Been reading the thread about the studio scale Narcissus you are involved with if I have that right, haven't got to the end yet!”
Haha, neither have we. There’s big news coming up fairly soon though, I believe.
“Printer is RepRapPro Ormerod 2, seemed to be the case if you didn't mind having to build it yourself from a kit and the fettling/swearing involved setting it up, and a few cheap mods afterwards, you can print as well as something 5 times the price.”
I had a brief look at the site yesterday (didn’t have much time, we’ve got an extra floor going on the house starting today – builders erecting scaffold right now – eek!) It does look interesting for the price. I’ve built one printer from a kit (Makergear M2) and it’s for sure the way to go IMO; these are not machines you can treat as if they were fridges or TVs. Building a kit gives you a great deal more familiarity with the stuff you’re gonna need to get familiar with sooner or later anyway, extended swears vocabulary included. :lol
“Also I know if anything goes wrong it's easy and inexpensive to fix myself. Plus the build size is pretty big, in fact I am going to mod it so I can print up to around 40cm high, currently about 19cm max.”
What’s the standard build volume? I could be interested in something larger too, looking down the track. The M2 is a good machine but only has 20x20x25cm, decidedly not the biggest on the market. Forces me to be smart about parts breakdowns though.
“custom firmware which has added some really useful print controls so you can change the print speed and extrusion while printing. I think it also runs smoother and tracks corners more accurately now.”
Now that I would love. You can do it via G-code of course but that presumes you know in advance that you’re going to need to. A proper (not G-code) pause function would also be pure gold.
“I have only been printing about 2 months so am still learning, things like silver filament looks cool, but is a bitch to get to stick to the bed, probably whatever colouring makes it silver also makes it set slower and behave more elastic than other colours.”
Yeah, they all have their own quirks. I’m still working my way through different colours; the consensus seems to be that clear PLA is easiest, with various other colours getting trickier and ABS a good deal tougher. (Are you using ABS btw? You’ll want to be unless you plan to mould and cast this? PLA has a lifespan, it’s biodegradable in the medium-term timeframe. Much easier to print though.)
Do you have a heated bed, and are you using blue tape or kapton? Hair spray? I stuck it out with nothing but the heated glass for months, which was stupid. I get much better results on kaptop, with hair spray – even for PLA. The other big mistake I made was ignoring everyone’s advice about measuring your filament. Reel to reel it really, really, really varies in thickness. I thought I could just eyeball it and of course I was dead wrong.
Definitely get a smaller nozzle. Mine’s .35mm so I can print details down to .7mm. I’m mostly using Cura at present, it does 90% of what I need and the visual interface is golden. I am really interested in your remarks about Slic3r as I gave up on it last year during their “we forgot how to generate support material that isn’t like rock” period. Might have to take another look.