Hello all, 
I have a qu bd two up hand me down that ive been wrestling with for a while. Its slowly coming along and prints are getting better....

My next venture with its is to install an e3d lite 6. It currently has the anubis, which seems ok but its been through maybe 4 people and the hot end inside and out looks rough...

I figured while im at it and since i have to update firmware i might as well upgrade to the mega 2560 and the ramps 1.4 sheild (currently has the black board). Im pretty new at this and have been reading a lot. Any thoughts guidance or whatnot on upgrading firmware? Install? Firmware that works best? 

I also went ahead and ordered the proximity sensor mentioned in this article

https://www.instructables.com/id/Enable-..._page=true

I would very much like to have the auto bed leveling. I made a 1/4" aluminum bed and y bed and added the qu bd silicone heater pad to the bottom. Nice and stout! Heats nice and even and the thermistor is only off 2 degrees!

I would be more than happy to share any experiences i have going further. The qu bd gets a bad rap but people are expecting to much from a plywood printer. It truly is a fun little learning experience for my son and myself. And anyone with a knack for tinkering and engineering should have all kinds of fun with it. Its more than paid for itself with the education in 3dprinting its given me and the boy, and almost everyone in our circle of family and friends.

Thanks! 

Ben

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Brett
Founder
mimicEducationalRobots

We've been adding sensors to our product offerings like mad lately, and I've finally got documentation of all the new commands up. Check out the link below for a summary of everything we can do now.

https://mimicrobots.com/pages/robot-h-qu...ence-guide

Brett
Founder
mimicEducationalRobots

I want to bring some solutions which could help fix the BEAN's issues. I will also try to convince the manufacturer to implement those fixes as they have been receptive to my technical suggestions in the past and have in fact already adopted 1 of them (change of material for the VAT). Take note I am also posting this on the negative video review update at YouTube as I've been unable to post even a very short version at Indiegogo even after trying for days, the post button does not work, when queried Indiegogo didn't help but gave me a line about how projects are not garanteed (when I was actually reporting a technical bug of their website & asking them if they can post my message for me (they didn't). I hope Indigogo won't become a part of the problem but we will see as I emailed them again to fix the unresponsive post button.

How Kudo3D can fix the BEAN :

It is the responsability of the manufacturer to test the longevity of the LCD under the conditions it will be used before finishing the design so it will be fit for use. Kudo seems to have done measurements for temperature (maybe not as sophisticated (?) as in a photo from students who measured it with an IR cam on an unrelated LCD printer). Perhaps they could have asked more questions to the scientific team of the LCD manufacturer & say they will remove the back of the screen & polarizer & shine UV LEDs through the back, in a metal box of size X plus electronics producing X amount of heat, etc, & they would tell them how long it will last for that application.

I understand LCDs have a shorter life when you beam UV through them but only 100 hrs is not acceptable. Aren't there higher quality glass LCDs instead of acrylic which could last longer ? If it's a problem affecting the liquid crystal fluid could it also be that heat from UV rays causes the acrylic cover of the screen to bulge & create internal voids ? Or separation of the chemical components of the LCD ? Maybe Kudo3D chose a type of UV LEDs that emit too much UV radiation ? 405nm UV curables are not true pure UV resins but also absorb wavelengths near UV. Could t those other near UV wavelengths be used in more qty to cure resin rather than use pure UV LEDs that use only UV light ? (a combination of near UV & UV). In combination with a resin formulation with a peak more in the non-UV spectrum ?

*** There are ways to fix the Bean. 5 things need to be fixed. So i want to offer ideas Kudo can use which could fix the Bean & make it last for years. 1- The screen seems to last only 100-400 hours (black spots ruining prints/supports). 2- The VAT leaks. Resin seeped outside 3DMN s printer. Another backer s printer got fried when resin seeped into the electronics. 3- The software/control board seem unable to print more than 2 parts at the same time. 3DMN tried & the system froze. I bought this machine to also make batches (my files average 40-60mb or more), 1 of the reasons to buy a LCD printer is because it gives max res from edge to edge of the built area. There are chips that can be used for the controller/slicing with more power to process batches. The fact that SLAcer & Kudo3D slicer only allow 2600 layers or else it crashes will stop me from printing several of my parts: at 10 microns they require 12000 layers. 

So here are solutions Kudo can use to fix the Bean: 

1- Glass LCD screens instead of acrylic to help survive UV rays. I don't know if the black dots are from degradation of the liquid crystal or voids created by heat expansion of the screen + suction or a combination. Most LCDs have an operating limit of 50 degrees C (some go up to 60 C). Kudo should add a temperature sensor linked to a fan to add more cooling when the LCD nears 50. I have seen low cost temp sensors including an IR sensor board at 18.59$C. Some PC fans come equiped with a temperature sensor cable. If the problem is liquid crystal degradation I see only ONE solution : Kudo should offer a discounted kit to convert the BEAN into a daylight resin printer : Royal blue LEDs instead of UV, & sell resin from Photocentric, ThreeBond, or Bucktown (though I would avoid the later: aliphatic resins are more toxic/allergenic). Doing this could add years of life to the LCD (as i cannot spend 3000$/year to replace LCDs).

2- The living hinges of the VAT are ways too fragile, like on throw-away shampoo bottles. Kudo should use real hinges with pivot to survive frequent cleaning & FEP film changing. Kudo told me that would be for a next version of the VAT. I hope they will do it, very soon.

3- The VAT leaks. Resin leaking into the electronics & a dead printer after 100 hours is unacceptable. The VAT design is poor: ithave a gasket. Kudo must fix the VAT by creating a new version with a neoprene/silicone gasket. I read the VAT is supposed to flex a bit. If it does I can see how resin can seep between the screws & Teflon. They should also make the VAT frame more rigid

4- The Pi &/or software needs more memory/computing power to slice more than 2600 layers & let us print more than 2 models at the same time. Lots of chips can do that. Seen people replace the Pi chip & solder a more powerful one. I am sure a company could make Kudo a short run of upgraded spec Pi boards, it is an open board any manufacturer can make. Offering these upgrades could fix all the issues & make the BEAN a success. If Kudo does not I do not see anyone who would pay over 1K+$ for the FAB as it will have the same problems. So I strongly urge Kudo to apply those fixes or better : go for daylight resin conversion, the only one that may guarantee a long screen life. The Titan 1 had a leaky VAT & they fixed it. Kudo can do the same for the Bean then they will be able to sell many more + the FAB. With a gasket + real hinges the improved VAT will bring new clients rather than demands for reimbursement. That + turning the Bean into a daylight resin printer. 

As for my Bean if ever Kudo does not produce a kit to convert it to daylight resin, I plan to convert it to blue LEDs myself (& hope I will not fry anything while soldering as I am no electronician. Will have to tweek the software too, though it is not my job, Kudo should do it) & I will design my own 3D printed improved VAT with gasket which i will sell to Bean clients to increase their printer's life. I am already working on preliminary designs. My VATs should last at least for a month or more with plastic. If not I will go to a different material which will be more pricey but should last for years. 


UPDATE, after reading Kudo3D s update:

I now understand part of the reason for the short life of 2 of the backers screens maybe due to shocks/pressure during shipment, the screens are probably mounted tightly, I don't know exactly how as I do not have my printer yet but even if they are glued with silicone it is not hard to believe that shocks during shipping mig cause damage. There are 3 other issues that can affect the LCD : heat, UV rays & suction force like Kudo said. There is also another important thing they pointed out: exothermique reaction. Adding 125ml of resin in the VAT to use as heat sink when building thicker parts is a good engineering solution. But adding more resin could lead to leaks/overflow as the VAT tilt ? It doesn't solve everything, just a partial issue. As an aside: LCD mask 3D printers are not a new technology with unknown screen life. The 1st ones started to appear in 2014-2015. The life of the screens Kudo should have tested under the condition it will be used given they had almost a year to test it on several printers. So they should know its longevity by now. They had quoted me a life of 1500 hours for the screen & LEDS several months ago by email. So the discrepancy observed on at least 3 printers screens that lasted only 100-400 hours is huge.

Another suggestion: make the walls of the next VAT higher to allow for that additional resin as heat sink (& also add a real gasket + hinges with pivots).

If the LCD still survives no more than 100-400 hrs my request to convert the Bean into a daylight printer still applies & I still strongly urge Kudo to create a discounted kit to do so, allowing the screen to last months or over a year & it will solve most if not all the screen longevity issues. They are going a bit in the same direction I suggest for the VAT: theys are using a makeshift silicone seal & instructing us to create 1 each time we change the film. So it shows my request to redesign the VAT to include a real gasket plus real hinges is more  essential than ever. Along with a conversion to daylight printer.

Getting a custom liquid crystal able to resist decay by UV created by a big LCD maker might cost cost a lot, so i do not expect that to happen soon. So my suggestion they convert the Bean into a daylight resin printer is the only practical one to ensure a long LCD screen life.

So in recap :

1- New VAT design with gasket to fix leak risks (neoprene, silicone, nitrile, flat laser cut gasket type or o-ring type including single or double o-ring).

2- New VAT design also including real hinges with pivot rather than fragile living hinges.

3- New VAT design including the improvements above plus Teflon coating like cooking pans on top side to prolong life of the plastic in contact with resin/cleaning agents.

4- New glass LCD instead of acrylic (for UV printer version). If that can help to buy time before black spots appear. Maybe use one with an oleophobic coating like the iPhone to diminish suction force on the screen ? If it makes a difference.

5- Temperature sensor coupled to small dedicated fan for the LCD screen to provide active cooling when screen temperature nears 50 - 65 degrees.

6- Chip with more computing power for the Pi board so we can print batches & heavy CAD files without the board/slicer freezing up. Either a custom series of more powerful Pi made for Kudo or a different more powerful board (many out there including many that can handle 4K).

7- Maybe add higher walls to the VAT to avoid spills if we use the additional 125ml of resin in the VAT for heat sink purpose to reduce temperature of the screen.

8- And the most important : Convert the Bean to a daylight resin printer with new royal blue LEDs & use daylight resin to fix most of the LCD screen longevity issues. And of course add all the other improvements which are relevant to a daylight version, this will make the Bean a success with a long life.

(Re-posted to make it a sticky thread)

Hi All,

If you are using gmail, and perhaps other email services, you may have noticed that the account activation email that you receive from this site includes a warning like:

"This message may not have been sent by: fabric8rsite@gmail.com"

This occurs because the email is actually coming from the fabric8r.com domain, but is claiming to be from our gmail address. Google recognizes this as a problem because this is one thing that people do when they are trying to impersonate someone else in order to get you to give them information. For example, if the email came from some random domain, but claimed it was from 'accountmanager@yourbank.com', then you should be extremely suspicious.

The fix for the problem would be for us to use Google's email servers to actually send the message, instead of sending from fabric8r.com. Sounds easy, right?

Well, it is. Except for one small detail. Our current hosting provider does not allow us to use Google's email servers with the hosting package that we have. They have a good reason - if they allowed that, if any site hosted by them started sending spam, they would eventually be blocked - and that would affect any other site hosted on the same server. So to protect all of their customers, they don't allow it.

What I will have to do instead is juggle our email addresses such that the activation emails don't claim to be from our google email anymore, but the address that does send the email forwards all replies to the gmail account. Sigh - also not hard, I just have to do it.

In the meantime, the warning text will still appear in the email. In this case, we are claiming to be ourselves, not someone else, so the warning may cause concern for no good reason.

(New postscript: I have not had time to try to fix this, so the problem remains.)

   
   
   

thought i would post something here . i used open sourced software from github. its a java based app that performs gcode . it has an x y and a servo for Z . what i learned from this is how to assemble a micro controller board with stepper motors . a bit of soldering and assembling scrap . took me 4 dvd drives to make this . 2 epic failures . 12 cans of beer . i think i developed a bald spot too . where im going with this? building my own cnc and fdm printer . possible laser co2 . guess ill update as the project comes along . when will this get done? when i have gathered all the components . 

plans and resources available on youtube and indestructibles.

Hi Everyone,

When you first join these forums, you are placed in a special user group where your posts require the approval of a moderator.

Once a post has been approved, you are moved into a different user group that has permission to post without approval. 

I have to moderate these posts by hand, and I can generally only do it when I'm awake . Even when I'm awake, I may be working for a living. Unfortunately, I cannot receive notifications when a post needs moderation - I have to actually come to the forum and check manually. If you post overnight in my time zone, it could easily be eight or ten hours before I get the chance to moderate anything.

I added this mechanism because I can't often get enough information from a new users' information to ensure they are not a spammer or other evil-doer. It's not perfect, but for the greater good it's going to stay that way for now.

Just allow some time for your user registration and your initial post/s to be approved.

Thanks!
Administrator

Hi All,

I've recently spotted a kickstarter campaign for an inexpensive yet feature-packed robot kit - the Walrus v1.0 from Rabbit Robots:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/198...-for-peopl

I have a different take on this campaign from many others - I can definitely recommend it, because I already have one!

I had the good fortune of meeting the folks from Rabbit Robots at the Dayton Hamvention this past May. They are also the folks behind Rabbit Lasers (http://www.rabbitlaserusa.com/), where they sell laser cutting systems. At the Hamvention, they had both their laser systems, and their robots. I took one look at the feature list of the Walrus, did a double-take on the price, and bought one on the spot.

They had a number of models, but it turns out I bought the one they are now offering on kickstarter. My box has the Walrun v1.0 labeling on it, but I know they are always working to improve things, so what I have may differ slightly from what's on offer in the campaign.

I have another robot, a Sparki from ArcBotics. The main differences are that the Sparki was fully assembled (where's the fun in that? : ), and the Sparki uses stepper motors whereas the Walrus does not. The Sparki also includes a rudimentary gripper, which the Walrus doesn't have.

You can pick up the least expensive Walrus for $40 dollars. In my estimation, that is very inexpensive for what you get - the Sparki was $100 during its kickstarter, and now runs $150 on Amazon.

The Rabbit Robots people were very nice - we chatted for a while, even a little about this forum. I know they are for real, the project and robot is for real, and it's a fantastic little robot platform. I think teachers should be buying hundreds of these.

Go check it out - I think it's really cool.

EDIT: The walrus doesn't have a gripper, like I said, but it does have a front-mounted servo motor that can sort of hold things. I wonder if it couldn't also be adapted to actuate a gripper. I'll have to take a look.

Hello bean users . So i got my bean a few days ago . First thing i did was spend a day figuring it out . Looks like mine runs on a raspberry pi 3 . ramps 1.4 . So far my prints are limited to the SLAcer. I've bean only able to print out 25 um .025 mm . Anything over 2600 slices or so and it wont make a zip and crashes. Second thing i noticed is the thing sweats a lot . I constantly have to clean the inside of the cover. I've already replaced the Teflon on the vat due to me not calibrating it properly and had a few dozen prints stick to the bottom of the vat. I've also had trouble when i wanted to check my prints . I would pause and then resume . But that gave me lines on my prints . That all said can anyone suggest a better app? im so tempted to use marlin or Octoprint . I couldn't access the pi but i can sure take the card out and replace it . Ya they changed the login and pass.


Vat... been there bean that... be very careful with the darn thing when you handle it . its so delicate . I've already stripped one of the screws out. broke a piece off of it .  . 

Other than that it prints wonderfully . So silent . love it . Definitely  gona fool with it . Most likely replace the chip on the ramps board. Octoprint with the pi's built in wifi etc . add a camera etc.

Hello!

I'm backer number 336 on the kickstarter campaign for the Kudo3D Bean. In spite of the delays, and the lack of communication on the campaign, I'm really looking forward to receiving my printer.

I've already posted a couple of things in other areas on this forum (e.g. https://fabric8r.com/community/showthread.php?tid=8), but I hope this forum will become a popular central location to talk about all things related to the Bean.

So, welcome, everyone!

Stan