Open Sourcing the Pegasus

[doobie]

Also, I'm not sure if you have seen this: http://hackaday.com/2013/04/26/cube-...bulk-filament/ or if it is even valid on the 3rd generation?

[fred_dot_u]

The Cube 3rd gen is a rather polished piece of consumer equipment. It certainly was designed well, with fully enclosed mechanicals, contoured plastic panels and LED workspace illumination. Dual extruders and closed source everything. There's a USB port for the flash drive (A?) and an unused USB printer port (B?) that is marked in the manual as "future use." With the general consensus that 3D Systems is giving up on this item, I doubt there's any future use involved.

[doobie]

Ahhh, has anyone done a tear down? Once you tear it down, and figure out the controller and can replace it you can probably do anything with it. Seems like there are some hacks (not sure if they still work as there was talk about Cube doing firmware updates to prevent them from being used).

[fred_dot_u]

I don't know anyone else with a Cube 3rd gen, and the forums for this item seem a bit quiet. The older models have some hacks but nothing new on the Cube 3, which is mostly the latest consumer grade printer.

The Pegasus never really made it to consumer grade, did it? It was a Kickstarter hack job that's lost the following it developed when it first appeared.

[doobie]

Yeah I don't think the Pegasus really made a name for itself mainly because of all the trouble people had during the kickstarter and I think people don't really want proprietary printers (materials/resin/filament/etc) these days for many reasons. I wouldn't buy it again today. I wouldn't even consider it. I *might* buy one from someone if it were really cheap and I get my code working well enough that I could use my software on it.

[fred_dot_u]

I have a continuing search/email trace on ebay for this printer and have seen prices as high as KS level and more recently, down to US$1600, which is still rather high for a printer with such a poor track record.

The Gizmo line of printers look promising, but I was burned with this KS campaign, so I'm not going to invest in that one.

If someone had developed an ideal release surface, do you think this printer becomes viable again?

[chooch]

My Pegasus only shined when I started using non-FSL resin. Here are a few prints I managed to get out after figuring out the right recipe for success:

Oblivion drone:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!se...A/EQ1HSe2UK4IJ

Human skull:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!se...g/xeK77-Y_AWEJ

Arc reactor:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!se...s/SYLqXtaEi40J

My printer still actually works today, it's just that I have to use PDMS coated vats.

Also, I'd like to refine and take out all the shortcomings of the printer that I need to compensate for when thinking about using it.

[fred_dot_u]

Cooch, I see you didn't specify which non-FLS resin you've used. Was it a matter of luck that it works with the Pegasus? Is the stuff you're using less expensive than the name-brand resin?

[chooch]

Cooch, I see you didn't specify which non-FLS resin you've used. Was it a matter of luck that it works with the Pegasus? Is the stuff you're using less expensive than the name-brand resin?

I used Madesolid's MS V1 black resin... it was $100 a liter on Amazon, which is less than FSL's. Not sure Madesolid still offers it, as they have had MS v2 for awhile and now they have Vorex resin, which is about the same price as FSL, but the Vorex is probably stronger.

[doobie]

Cool. I wasn't aware other resins worked in the printer! I'll maybe have to try it at some point. It would be nice if they gave us better control over calibration. For my Z axis I have four parameters I've set up for the lift: Speed0, Speed1, Speed2, SpeedL speed. You program the speeds for how fast or slow you want each step to be, on a lift it'll do speed0, speed1, speed2, then you can have it pause, then it'll lower at SpeedL. You can also control how far it moves up for each of the raise speeds. The lower distance is based on how far it moved up and where it goes on the down.

I'm trying to figure out how to calibrate it. I ripped up my PDMS on one of my prints; I'm not sure if I moved it too fast or too slow, I'm really hoping I didn't screw up the VAT itself. I actually tore through the PDMS coating to the VAT, so there may be stuck on resin in that area, which I'm not yet prepared to try to replace yet.