How fine can an Ultimaker print?

 Ultimaker impressive quality at smallest layer heights (40,50,75 microns)

I printed one famous treefrog on my Ultimaker for a friend and realized I have forgotten so far to speak about the overall quality you can reach with this printer.

It gets hard to feel the layers by sliding your nail (75 microns layer height).
The most prominent place where layers show up is between the eyes.
This print is not postprocessed (see the hair-like filaments not yet removed/sanded/burnt)

Review: what materials can be 3D printed?

What materials to 3D-print ?

Every now and then I am being asked about it, so here is a post on the many materials that can be 3D-printed at home.

Smooth transition, from carbon-fiber reinforced PLA to ABS

It is not complete and will expand with time. It is no buyer's guide either, nor a technical document. Read it as a short generic survey of usable materials. There is also a post dedicated to materials most suited to artistic goals.


As for me and many others, I print mostly with PLA filament (see below). Even though I have a set of other materials (wood, rubber, Nylon and so on), I did not test all the following myself, mostly because each material requires its set of specific time-consuming trials and errors to achieve good quality. Mastering all of them would take me months, if not years!

Short belt tensioner for NEMA 17 stepper motors

How to tension the Ultimaker short belts once for all?

Upside version of the tensioner

The short belts that drive the main rods from the X and Y steppers must always be kept tight. Otherwise the print quality really gets bad. Two symptom that are easy to spot is non-round cylinders or "bouncing" waves in the surface of the print.

The usual fix is to unscrew the 4 bolts, push the motor downwards with a thumb and tighten the screws very hard while keeping the pressure...

I just could not stand this anymore, so I designed this thing and this derivative (with an additional spring).

Auto shutoff at end of print

Kill your 3D printer when it gets lazy !

Given the heat a 3D printer can generate, even when idle, I would better kill it than let it powered unattended, both for the planet, and to reduce the slightest risk of fire. ;)

I stick here to the simplest and most straightforward modification, partly because it is already supported by the Marlin printer firmware.

By the way, the total cost is less than $10, and you will just need a few solder points!

Major wood FDM printing breakthrough !

Extremely efficient wood 3D printing system

This is incredible...

No need for a hot bed, no issue with massive overhangs, no stringing at all, no retraction, grinding nor feeding issues, not even noise, smell nor chemicals.

Free and easy sourcing of material, highly portable, robust, self-powered and auto-adapting printing system. And damn, they even master wood gradients and polygonal infill!

Now, on the downside: it comes without a user manual and the system is incompatible with g-code. And sometimes, it stings.

How nasty.

Poll: what are the features you added to your stock Ultimaker ?

What are your Ultimaker features?

Here is an on-going poll motivated by this post on the Ultimaker google forum. So please keep your comments for the forum!

I finally developed my own blogger poll system after failures with the official and restrictive blogger polls.

How to write a Cura / Skeinforge plugin

First, do you really really want to write a Skeinforge plugin ?

Preliminary notes: some sites such as wired link to this post, but you may like to read my less technical review about temperature gradients applied to wood first. Also, you could check this post if you just want to try it.

Now, read on if you are a programmer and want to write your own plugin for Skeinforge. Note also that Cura no more uses Skeinforge as it has a much easier plugin system (that cannot do as much as what can be done with Skeinforge though).

Indeed and contrary to what was being done so far, I did not want to manually insert the M104 temperatures changes in the file sent to the printer, nor stay close to the ulticontroller. So I designed a plugin for the Cura / Skeinforge software pair.

Since that was not trivial, I document the procedure here.

Wood filament becoming brittle after a while

Wood filament now brittle, lost all its needed flexibility !

When I started printing this morning with my wood filament (~2-3 week old), all kinds of filament issues appeared, while I had almost none before. I soon realized that the filament now is much more fragile than one week ago.

First I though I had temperature and clogging issues, since I was testing my plugin for simulating wood grain.

Update: seller answer, see end of post.

Shades of brown with wood filament, via varying temperature

Wood filament : changing temperature to get shades of brown, or tree-ring effects

Wood filament, temperatures from 205 to 240°, home made Skeinforge plugin

You probably want to check my first post about wood filament if you did not already.

This sequel shows how varying temperatures impacts the color of the filament (as advertised).

Robust bowden attachment with a blind rivet nut

Using a blind rivet nut to fix the bowden tube once for all

Blind rivets nuts give you a nut where you cannot reach the other side of the support.