BFB discontinuing its whole line of machines. And now?

[Unfold]

Hi all,

So BFB discontinued its whole line of machines as of april 1st. The website is completely offline and now forwards to Cubify where you can access a very limited subset of support material. In their note on Facebook, which was not communicated anywhere else, they promised to continue to provide support for these machines but in my opinion that should include the forum. The forum is not accessible anymore (hence my effort to move somewhere else, here) even not with a direct link. The wiki still works because its a subdomain probably (wiki.bitsfrombytes.com). I am trying to dump the whole thing as HTML pages, plus I made an MediaWiki XML dump from all the pages.

I hope we can find a way to get some platform running as long as people are using BFB machines and exchange info to squeeze the most out of what we still have humming on our desks.

[Ioan Festeu]

Hi Dries,

Also I am waiting from 4 weeks a few rolls of ABS. Too bad that the forum is lost. I am almost sure is lost forever. And there are perhaps thousands of Rapman and Touch users. 

[Unfold]

Hi Ioan, So someone found its way to the group :)

Actually the forum was not lost and I managed to get a read only backup of it ;) Somehow the alternate www port 8080 was not forwarded to cubify: http://www.bitsfrombytes.com:8080 (still works but only for couple of pages). Everything except the secure login worked so I managed to make a static html backup of all the posts. So I just need to find a place to host it. I know Bogdan also made a backup of the whole website when I told him were to find it and he dumped it online: http://elco.crsndoo.com/bfb/www.bitsfrombytes.com:8080/

I think I have a slightly better copy of the forum only but still need to find a place where to put it. 

Also the wiki is still up: http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php/Main_Page

What's sad is that I could't login to get into contact with a couple of frequent posters there to coordinate an effort to preserve the community…

So please if you know people who frequent the forum, send them over here!

All the best,

Dries

[Sharon Morrison]

Hi,

I don't check the forums too often... but I do want to stay connected to other BFB owners.  I have a Dual head Rapman 3.1 with a replacement screen.  It works fine for hobby use and my daughter's school projects (my youngest teenage daughter has done a couple learning projects on 3-d printing for school).  I've only done a little two color printing with Axon - the purging makes a tremendous mess and is SLOW.  I am eagerly awaiting dual color printing with KISSlicer.

[Samson Wan]

I thought the announcement was some kind of April Fools joke. Sadly it's not and I just when my rapman 3.2 temperature starts showing the wrong temperature, I can't use the forum to figure out what's wrong, or even buy the part I need.

It's really good you've managed to save the wiki!! They really have let down their following.

[Unfold]

Hi Sharon, welcome. The whole purpose of this place is to be able to get in touch with other bfb printer owners.

Are you using KISSlicer with your rapman? How does it work, difficult to setup?

[Unfold]

Hi Samson,

Similar here, although everything pointed against it being a joke…

In regards to the temp sensor, can be many things, how do you see it is wrong? The wiki is still available from the original link http://wiki.bitsfrombytes.com

If you need a part just try to email sup...@bitsfrombytes.com and see if you can get it that way. Or go to http://cubify.com/legacy/ and click on the 'Support: submit a ticket' link next to Rapman. You should be able to get replacement parts.

[Anar]

I'm in...
Thanks Unfold for the initiative !

KISSlicer and the Rapman are working great together IMHO !
Lonesock owns a Rapman an originally wrote KISSlicer to drive it so they make a wonderfull couple.

Anar  

[Unfold]

Thanks Anar!

I should check KISSlicer out than. I'm always put off by the color scheme :)

Is it working out of the box or you need specific settings? Does it work with a BFB 3000 too? I guess it does since its not very different apart from the build volume and two extruders.

[Thomas]

Hi folks,

just wanted to respond, too ... After dusting off my RapMan 3.1 there were some problems but no BfB forum! Not very pleasant and quite disappointing move but I guess there's nothing we can do about that.

Even better you're trying to connect old users/customers to get some information flowing again, thank you!


Best regards
Thomas

[Anar]

Yes check it out, it's a great app !
You should be able to find ready-made settings in the download section with some for the BfB3000.
If not, tell me as I must have some.
Anyway configuring a new printer and a new material is fairly easy when you're familiar with your machine and know how to drive it best.
You will probably also find a lot of info regarding the 3000 on the KS forum.
Note that KS 2 heads printing is a pro feature.

Anar 

[Jason Miles]

Unfold,

Thank you so much for making a copy of of the BFB forum.  I was a long time lurker on the BFB forum and really appreciated all the information provided and used it often while troubleshooting my dual head Rapman.

If you can figure out a way to host the information on the old forum it will be very useful to me.  I tried to use the Bogdan's backup and could not perform any searching and was not able to locate the links I had bookmarked in the old forum.

How for example would I modify this url to redirect to Bogdan's backup?

www.bitsfrombytes.com/forum/post/axon-2-multi-material-gcode-problem#comment-17893   Would it just be http://elco.crsndoo.com/bfb/www.bitsfrombytes.com/forum/post/axon-2-multi-material-gcode-problem#comment-17893?

-Jason

[soli...@googlemail.com]

Hi all,

 

I am not a fan of Facebook and only log in occasionally - so you can imagine my horror when I went to the BfB website last night!

 

I can't say I am one tiny bit surprised considering the way that 3D Systems have been acting elsewhere in recent months. What does surprise me is that they think they are so clever and invincible that they will get away with this sort of behaviour without damaging their corporate image - or maybe they just don't care in which case how arrogant can you get?

 

I was really pleased when I first discovered BfB and as a result bought my Rapman 3.1 kit. It has served me well over the last 3 years or so and I liked the company and that fact that they were actually making a product in the UK. I started to get worried when Axon 3 came out without any support for the older hardware/firmware machines. It now looks like that is a dead end but hopefully the continued improvement in Kisslicer will be our saviour on that issue.

 

Well done and thank you for taking the initiative and starting a new forum.

 

Adrian

[Unfold]

Dear Jason,

No searching etc does not work (it's a static backup), a forum is nrmally stored in a database and the content is served through scripts that generate the pages. We just have dumped the html pages of all topics. For searching etc you need the original installation with database etc which is not going to happen... You could use a google search though, just add site:http://elco.crsndoo.com/bfb/www.bitsfrombytes.com:8080/eur/forum/ to your google search query and you wil only get results from the backup forum.

this is the correct translation of your bookmark, ad the part in red:

http://elco.crsndoo.com/bfb/www.bitsfrombytes.com:8080/eur/forum/post/axon-2-multi-material-gcode-problem#comment-17893?

[BJ Johnson]

Hi Dries,

Saw your PM on the KISSlicer forum and came on over. Great that you snagged the former forum content. Knowing [You Know Who—it starts with a number] (I'm going to not use any of their product or company names if at all possible), they'll probably get in our faces about the content being "theirs" and we have to take it down. Of course, if it's login-only, they'd ahve to find it and they'd have: a) less of a case and b) we can exercise our Copyright on our content and do with it as we please. Anything they want of theirs, they can have.

You notice that, as of this writing, they do not have a forum on the site that you get unceremoniously and rudely redirected to. Don't want to have customers driving our business! And we certainly don't want to have any of that complaining going on.

Already had someone unaware hit the KS forum asking for settings for their shiny new all-proprietary CX. My head shot right off.

[PenskeGuy]

Hmmmm, there isn't any way to edit posts in here. That's gonna suck. The way my typing is, I type about -2 WPM, what with all of the corrections. I have what I call Typing Dyslexia. Constantly transposing the same letter combinations. Usually, if there is a letter combination that alternates between hands, my left hand fingers fire first after I hit the initial letter of a word, so "the" comes out "teh" and I have to correct it. Inevitably, I miss one when proofreading and edit saves face. Gonna have to be extra careful in here.

Anyhoos, in order to keep things on-topic, there is the possibility of developing a firmware replacement for these machines, so that we can get the proprietary crap outta there and have the machines do what they are supposed to, without having to resort to a bunch of hacks and workarounds. Might require a total replacement of the mainboard but it sure would be great to have more control. Not bowing to what some programmer thinks should be and forces you into doing would make these machines really sing.

There's also a bunch of design changes I'd like to make to mine, as soon as this big job has been completed. Some of the things that they did really could stand serious improvement. Kind of a "What were they thinking" thing. Probably weren't. Look what they ultimately did.

[Unfold]

PenskeGuy, that is easier than you think. I have replaced the BFB PCB on one of our BFB3000 machines with an Ultimaker PCB + controller with Marlin firmware. The Ultimaker board is open source and just another variation of the RAMPS boards. It took some time to get the right configuration but that is not that difficult with Marlin plus we had to reroute and isolate the end stop cables because there was too much interference with the motor cables (looks like BFB suppresses that in the electronics). I did only one print with plastics, sliced with slic3r, with this machine because it is actually meant for ceramics so we haven't gone all the way in configuring and comparing the print quality with ABS/PLA. But all in all it's a fairly easy brain transplant...

Op zaterdag 11 mei 2013 22:38:12 UTC+2 schreef PenskeGuy het volgende:

[Jason Miles]

Unfold,

Thank you for the info.  I had not thought of googling, seems like this solution will work for me.

-Jason

[TetraLite]

Hi All,

Just signed into this group and am saying hi. I see one or two familiar screen names from the BFB forum. Here's hoping a good place is found to host a revival of the old forum (Google is so annoyingly intrusive).

I hope to soon post the settings I have come up with for the 3D Touch to use 3mm PLA from ProtoParadigm (I'm in the US and so is ProtoParadigm). I'm getting great prints and this PLA doesn't break as easily as the BFB stuff, in fact it doesn't seem to break at all.

Mark

[bob cousins]

Shame to hear about the demise of BfB forum, it was a good community.

Since a few years ago I replaced my Rapman 3.1 electronics with a RepRap type board (R2C2 board in fact), and worked on its firmware. I made a few modifications to my machine, like heated bed, and adopted KISSlicer in preference to Axon. For a while I was using Axon with some patches to the Reprap firmware for BfB compatibility, but now I am using straight Reprap Gcode.

So I haven't had much contact with BfB for quite a while.

Recently my hotend started failing, so I replaced that with a Reprap one off ebay which also mounts to Rapman extruder. Now I find my extruder plates are breaking up so I am looking at replacing the Rapman extruder with a more standard Reprap extruder.

I did buy a new Reprap type printer, but it seems most of these kits are really a base set of parts which may eventually be used to make a working printer... I had it printing for about a minute until it broke, and it has been gathering dust for a while. The actual quality and instructions for Rapman 3.1 out of the box I now realise were pretty good. My Rapman 3.1 continues to be mostly reliable and 90% of what I need, so rather than just ditch I will try to upgrade it.

I wrote up a little of what I have done at http://reprap.org/wiki/R2C2_For_Rapman, but that is now quite out of date. Here I am printing with a Gen7-ARM board http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C57Tim6LcPA

[Stephen Buggy]

Did the BitsForBytes community ever find somewhere to restart? This forum doesn't seem very active.

[Unfold]

I think it dispersed and moved on. Not sure if we need it back same old, same old. With Bits from Bytes winding down there's not so much motivation for a community based on it. Eventually everybody will have gotten the most out of their BFB machines (partially why I wanted to get something up and running again to facilitate that) and replaced the machines with something else so it's a dead end story anyway IMHO. 

I think it's good that there is a place like this Ggroup to reconnect or ask very specific BFB technology related questions, plus I found it very important to make a backup of the old forum for the valuable info it contained (much being non BFB). Which we did and is hosted on a server from Bogdan (and I have a different backup on disc).

But if there is enough interest we can always see if it's worth setting up something better. I contacted all the people that I had email addresses from, mostely very active in the early days but not so much later on and there was no real interest in this group.

[Yahya Ahmed]

Anar,

Do you the profile settings for the BFB-3000 printer? Axon is not making the object solid and the printer quality isn't good. So, I tried KISSlicer but my printer (BFB3000) stops after it starts running the fans.

Printer :BFB3000 single head 
Firmware: V4.2.2
Filament: PLA 3mm 
Software: KISSlicer64
Thanks

[Anar]

Yahya,
as I told you by PM I will look as soon as tomorow which settings I still have (somewhere) and will send them to you.
I don't own a BfB3000 so I won't be able to test but I will be able to provide some help if they don't work.

Cheers !

[gael langevin]

Hi All,
Anar has contacted me concerning my settings for a printer BFB 3000.
I'm the creator of InMoov robot and I own a BFB 3D Touch double head with a homemade heated bed, printing on a FR4 epoxy sheet. I never use raft and barely need support as I design most of my parts without the need of support.
Linked are my settings. Certainly not the best one but they work for me. I need to mention that some of these settings are created but since I never used them yet, I never fine tuned them.
My heated bed is not a standard size so you will need to change that.
The settings that work and are tuned for me are 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 thickness.
The others work but might need to be adjusted.
Let me mention that I always tune my settings for each prints I make...

Hope this helps
Gael Langevin

[Anar]

Merci Gael !
Thanks !
Благодаря !

[Yahya Ahmed]

Thank you to  you all guys ( specifically to Anar and Gael langevin). I will (God willing) try the  settings today when I get home after work:) Thanks again  

12:29 (3 hours ago)

[Yahya Ahmed]

Gael Langevin I like your InMoov robot, it's very NICE. 

[Anar]

Yahya,
keep us informed how it goes when you will try the settings.
Happy printing !

[Yahya Ahmed]

Yh it worked well. Thank you so much for all your help guys I really appreciate it. I made a heated bed using MK2A and 3mm glass, but still I get warping problem. So, I just bought an aluminum plate to put under the glass to spread out the heat. I hope it works well.

[Anar]

So far, so good !
Regarding your warping issue, you should try to buy a FR4 epoxy sheet.
When using that you will reduce warping BIG time !
What can also really help is to pause printing after the first layer is finished and then stick places that are subject to warp with acetone using a small bush (the one used for painting artwork). With that trick (that Gael gave me) you can print big parts without any warping.

Happy printing !

[Yahya Ahmed]

Anar, can I get 1.6mm Fibreglass GRP sheet instead of FR4 epoxy sheet. The seller said “It meets all the FR4 specifications and beyond, what is your application for the sheet and I will check it will meets your needs.” Or can I used FR4 PCB and etch it using solution (I have it)? And also, do I need to heat the FR4 sheet or can I use it without the heated bed? 

Item:

1.6mm Fibreglass GRP sheet

Thank you and I'm sorry to bother you all about this. I'm new to 3D printing.