SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-15T21:22:33Z

scobo wrote:

Jrard wrote:
My printer now printing ovals!! I checked the x belt and it was alright. Y also seems right. What the hells wrong now! !?
Check your bearing mounts. I'll wager at least one of them may be broken.

Don't forget the shim mod. The pullies on the shaft have a slight side to side play. You can take and old credit card and cut shims out to place between the pullies and the snap rings and it should solve your issue.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-15T14:41:47Z

Jrard wrote:

My printer now printing ovals!! I checked the x belt and it was alright. Y also seems right. What the hells wrong now! !?

Check your bearing mounts. I'll wager at least one of them may be broken.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-15T14:30:08Z

My printer now printing ovals!! I checked the x belt and it was alright. Y also seems right. What the hells wrong now! !?

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-15T06:01:31Z

I agree with your perceptions Scobo - it's always a tradeoff between the dollars and the basic capability and for the price I believe it's a better than average investment. The construction and capabilities of the unit may look a bit different in a couple of years if the company pays attention to forums such as this and the value of the comments (both positive and negative) and if they don't we'll all be trying to keep the box alive by some means but by that time another "new" player will have taken their position in the field. I hope they do pay attention and that eventually the mix of existing things that work well and those that need further attention will end up with an even better product.

Considering the money that I didn't spend for one of those other "boxes" (with heated plates, closed off enclosure, etc.) there's a lot of latitude for working with what I have to improve those results. Wonder how many ft (sorry - meters) of filament you could buy for a that difference... wow!

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-14T07:11:40Z

I think the Da Vinci is hard to beat for the price given the build quality, ease of use and the fact it comes pre-built. Ok, there's one or two minor grumbles with it but overall it's a solid, well designed piece of kit.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-14T00:38:41Z

Lmay wrote:

My thanks to Scobo and Carl_M for adding their responses about the security risks with the FlashAir SD card - I wasn't absolutely sure of this potential but I also had not read of anything that prevented it from being done. If you think about the concept of why this card was probably designed and built to begin with it was probably far more about offering the 1-way convenience than permitting the 2-way options that would be necessary. I also doubt seriously that anyone at XYZ would be taking that kind of time to gain something so debatable as pushing a revised pc of software all the way up the route to the system they would have to reach! It's good to at least put the issue to rest and it opens the door to another option in convenience that a lot of manufacturers could consider as something sold with this feature built in - either by replacing the original SD card with one having a little more capability. Maybe we would see it as an "option of convenience" but they would have to push the price up again to gain that profit line, so who knows! Thanks again.

There are printers on the market such as Makerbot and some of the homebrew kits as well with Wifi built in. Including a camera to monitor it as we.. But these also will cost you $1500 plus. The Makerbot will put you back $3000.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-13T23:49:48Z

My thanks to Scobo and Carl_M for adding their responses about the security risks with the FlashAir SD card - I wasn't absolutely sure of this potential but I also had not read of anything that prevented it from being done. If you think about the concept of why this card was probably designed and built to begin with it was probably far more about offering the 1-way convenience than permitting the 2-way options that would be necessary. I also doubt seriously that anyone at XYZ would be taking that kind of time to gain something so debatable as pushing a revised pc of software all the way up the route to the system they would have to reach! It's good to at least put the issue to rest and it opens the door to another option in convenience that a lot of manufacturers could consider as something sold with this feature built in - either by replacing the original SD card with one having a little more capability. Maybe we would see it as an "option of convenience" but they would have to push the price up again to gain that profit line, so who knows! Thanks again.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-13T18:12:58Z

The wireless SD card is a wireless means of uploading files to the printer instead of an SD extension cable or usb cable. It also has the advantage (as would an extension cable) that you don't need to do anything with your gcode file apart from rename it to one of the demo files such as SAMPLE01.gcode, no header required. It's only the xyzware program that uses the header.
I'm still on the stock firmware but I believe you don't need to do anything to your gcode files with Repetier either.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-13T17:58:05Z

eriemaker wrote:

scobo wrote:
carl_m1968 wrote:
I have yet to see one that you could push data to. That was why I bought one to use as described here with the printer but I can't seem to get it to work both ways.
Is it the Flashair 2 you have ?
If so, you need to add the line "upload=1" to the config file on the card. That enables uploading to the card by typing "ip-of-card/upload.cgi" in a browser address bar.
Edit : As far as I can tell, this will also work with the original Flashair cards too.
Could someone explain the advantage of the wireless sd card over using the hacked firmware? Is it just a matter of preference and not having to have a usb cable ran? Also even with the hacked firmware do you still need to add the header to the gcode? I have not seen much info on the hacked firmware.

With the hacked firmware the machine works like any other machine. In fact I am not sure that the original software will still work on it. I use Repetier host to directly connect to it and control temp and movement real time if need be. You know have direct access to temperature and motion control of all axis. Also I would not call the firmware hacked. As with all open source printers there are different flavors of firmware. This is just one flavor so far. yes you could call the machine hacked but it really is not all they did was reverse engineered it then created open source firmware for it.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-13T17:44:07Z

scobo wrote:

carl_m1968 wrote:
I have yet to see one that you could push data to. That was why I bought one to use as described here with the printer but I can't seem to get it to work both ways.
Is it the Flashair 2 you have ?
If so, you need to add the line "upload=1" to the config file on the card. That enables uploading to the card by typing "ip-of-card/upload.cgi" in a browser address bar.
Edit : As far as I can tell, this will also work with the original Flashair cards too.

Could someone explain the advantage of the wireless sd card over using the hacked firmware? Is it just a matter of preference and not having to have a usb cable ran? Also even with the hacked firmware do you still need to add the header to the gcode? I have not seen much info on the hacked firmware.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-13T04:52:01Z

carl_m1968 wrote:

I have yet to see one that you could push data to. That was why I bought one to use as described here with the printer but I can't seem to get it to work both ways.

Is it the Flashair 2 you have ?
If so, you need to add the line "upload=1" to the config file on the card. That enables uploading to the card by typing "ip-of-card/upload.cgi" in a browser address bar.

Edit : As far as I can tell, this will also work with the original Flashair cards too.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-12T23:47:35Z

scobo wrote:

I haven't had the Flashair card long but, as far as I can tell, the default installation only makes it available on a local network.
When you connect to the card, you no longer have internet access untill you connect to your router again unless you configure the internet pass-through function of the Flashair card.
I've also blocked the xyzware software in my firewall so I don't think there's much chance of anyone or anything gaining access.

I am curious about this as well. All of these WiFi flash cards I have seen regardless of brand function only in one direction. You setup your network and program on the PC you want the card to transfere images to. Anytime the card is in range of your network the program sees it and pulls any images from it that are new. I have yet to see one that you could push data to. That was why I bought one to use as described here with the printer but I can't seem to get it to work both ways.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-12T17:22:00Z

I haven't had the Flashair card long but, as far as I can tell, the default installation only makes it available on a local network.
When you connect to the card, you no longer have internet access untill you connect to your router again unless you configure the internet pass-through function of the Flashair card.
I've also blocked the xyzware software in my firewall so I don't think there's much chance of anyone or anything gaining access.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-12T16:27:50Z

Several weeks ago I had a case of the fingers working before the brain was engaged - I turned on the computer and the first thing that came up after the typical startup programs loading was this prompt for "the upgrade" (the one from rev-J to what I called rev-Hell) mostly because after reading and re-reading all of the various prompts and suggestions on this site for reverting back to "rev-J" or earlier - I pretty much wasted the next 4+ hours before figuring out all that was needed to get back to the same place that I was before saying "Yes" for that "upgrade." I know a lot of people have gone thru much of the same routines and know what I'm referring to - so now when I read the message above about how easy it is to use the FlashAir SD card - they're right, it's easy to upload the files to the card this way but isn't it also opening the door to allow some additional access to the existing XYZware again? I'm not inclined to ever let that happen again so my choice is to limit that possibility by never having my internet access open on this computer while the printer is turned on. If the folks at XYZ want to dink with the software that I prefer to have they're going to have to work hard to get to it. That probably has some ramifications to my inclination to call for support, but I'll make that tradeoff pretty easily. So it's back to the stone-ages with my hand on the switch - but at least it's my hand, not theirs! I just installed the SD extended cable connector and it routes along the side of the cabinet and makes it easy to access the SD card that way. I know that everyone has their options and reasons for picking them, but in this case making it tooooo easy for me may also work that way for others! It's not about being paranoid - just PO'd!

Had I known what was in store behind that "update" I could have made a different decision but it didn't work out that way. It's a sad note to think that we all bought and paid for a product from a company that we should have been able to trust (they would have gained so much more if that were true) but now we have to choose our own options for our own reasons - I hope everyone will choose them carefully. Thanks.

Re: How to get best quality prints from XYZ Da Vinci 1.0

2014-11-12T09:46:58Z

Here you go .... https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ccfylx20cfuuhq/XYZmod.zip
Unzip and move it to your xyzware folder to replace the stock xyz.exe file.