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.