IRobertI

Congrats on a job well done, Sander. I know it must've been pretty nerve-wracking the past few weeks

I will send you a PM in a little bit @xpandedreality.

Is that short belt actually tight? It looks to me like it's way too loose. If you pinch the two sides of the belt and push them together, can they touch without excessive force? I'm betting they can. If so, loosen the four screws on the motor, push it down and then re-tighten. But I kinda doubt it's the belt causing the skipping in Y unless you hear the belt skipping when it happens. I had a machine in the shop a few weeks ago that also randomly skipped around in X or Y (can't remember). I tried everything I could think of including lowering all the settings for jerk/accel etc, wrote some simple gcode to make the head shake back and forth to try and trigger it reliable and so on. I finally replaced the mainboard and everything worked fine again. So one of the drivers was probably a bit toast.

Speaking of temperature. I can see some burned bits in the pictures. Is this coming from plastic stuck on the outside of the nozzle or is the material being cooked inside it and causing it to clog up? Have you seen any chewing marks on the filament after it fails? As in, if you look at the filament after a print has failed, has the feeder dug a small hole in it? Also, if I'm reading things right you have only tried with one of the cores? Could you try printing with the other AA core you got with the printer? Or even with the BB core. Just to rule out the core being at fault.

I have it on my machines too. I'm guessing your machine is plugged into an ungrounded socket as well?

What is your favourite go-to material when you need something that will handle most of what you throw at it. And you can't say PLA

Could you tell us more about how you determine things like layer bonding and the like. Is it purely by feel or do you also send parts off for "proper" ISO standards testing?

I know that you were experimenting with different PVA blends long before the UM3 was announced. But I'm assuming that wasn't the only type of support material you tried. Are you still experimenting with new types of support materials or have you settled in on PVA and improving that as much as possible? And if you've rejected other types of materials, what has been the primary reason(s)? Nasty solvents?

It's not the material itself, it's the temperature. Any material you print at a higher temperature will make the PTFE coupler degrade faster. How quickly is a bit unpredictable as it depends on exactly how hot you're printing, how fast your fan is cooling the PTFE and even how many retractions you're doing. The PTFE will die eventually, regardless of which material you print (including PLA), it's considered a consumable. The UM2+ uses a different kind of material, called TFM and it also uses a spacer instead of a spring. This combination lasts quite a bit longer than the PTFE+spring combo. So I would suggest you get a TFM+spacer when you need a replacement. It's important to get the spacer instead of the spring. You can find a reseller here: https://ultimaker.com/en/resellers?c=US Here are instructions on how to replace it: http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/56-replacing-the-ptfe-coupler

Did you buy the stepper motor to go with it as well? The stepper in the UM2 is a 400 step/rev motor. The one that is used with the new feeder is a 200 step/rev motor.

Cura is probably getting very confused about the zero thickness wall. Check the xray view and I'm betting you'll see a lot of red problem areas. The model should be a proper manifold solid, not a surface body, to slice properly.

This feature is already in cura through the following settings: . Support infill extruder Support interface extruder Support roof extruder Support floor extruder Obviously it will not work on prints where the support material gets trapped inside the model if it can't be dissolved.

IIRC this is because those areas are being treated as a top surface and cura is trying to meet the top thickness criteria by adding more infill. So if the model allows it, reduce the top thickness and it will remove those extra lines.

@nzo when that post was made we were on a completely different software platform.

Interesting that it seems to start happening where you have some retractions starting to happen more often with the small islands. What does the filament look like? Is it flattened at all?

This is not delamination, that's something else entirely. That's when the model splits apart at the layers. This looks like it could be what you might refer to as a "thin wall" problem causing cura to not fill in the model all the way. I've written about it a little bit here (but I should probably go through it and update it...): http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/30-getting-better-prints#solid-layer-fill Try looking at the layer view in cura and see if you see the same thing there. If you do, try experimenting with the wall thickness or line width (small modifications). Another option if wall thickness isn't critical is to use "Horisontal expansion" to make the model slightly thicker or thinner and see if cura fills things in better then. Or if overall size isn't critical, try scaling it up or down by a percentage or two. This all implies that you see the same "error" in layer view. If you don't, I would maybe suspect backlash.

I successfully managed to (almost) brick a printer yesterday due to this bug. After unsuccessfully trying to update a machine many times with both 2.6 and 2.5 I restarted the printer. This time, it didn't even boot up, just a black screen. Trying to update via cura now just resulted in cura waiting for a connection endlessely. Connecting via Printrun just produced garbage no matter which baudrate I chose. I figured I'd try burning the Arduino bootloader and see if that would get it to spring back to life. No go, wouldn't burn the bootloader (it just gave the very helpful error message of "Error burning bootloader" or something along those lines). Looking at the serial output it just kept spitting out the same row of garbage over and over like it was stuck in a boot loop or something (I tried every pre-set baudrate available). Finally I went all the way back to good ol 15.06 and bam, updated just fine. Next time I'll try to get the logs, I didn't really have time to mess around with that yesterday since the customer needed the printer quickly.

I do, if need be. Sometimes it's easier to to do it that way to get the level just right.

I don't really find I have a need for paste and hot air to solder anything. But I don't do a ton of soldering of course, I don't produce lots of boards were I need to assembly line the process. I really only break out the hot air to do de-soldering. How teensy are we talking? 0805 is dead easy to do, 0604 isn't much of an issue either if your eyes can keep up (which mine are starting to fail to do...). Packages like SOT-8 are also very easy as there's plenty of space between the pins. Finer pitch packages are usually not an issue either with enough flux. Look up "drag soldering". What most beginners think is that they need to do each pin separately, you don't. You put on enough flux and kinda wipe the pre-tinned tip in the general vicinity of the pins and it kinda just... works. Speaking of tip. Don't get the crappy pointy ones, they're useless. Get a chisel tip, 1.5-3mm wide or so (yes, even 3mm will work fine for SMD work). Skip the crappy lead free solder, it's harder to work with and doesn't offer any advantages. Get regular 60/40 solder, flux core, and thin. I use 0.4mm solder myself, makes it easy to regulate how much solder you're putting on a joint. As for flux. I would say get a random no-clean flux pen and also some of the gel type. See which type you like the most. The gel type can be nice as it can help hold things in place a bit. But it's more of a preference thing. Brand doesn't really matter all that much IMHO if you're just doing hobby stuff. Just make sure it's no-clean and made for soldering so that it's not too aggressive (such as the flux used for soldering pipes for example). Get some de-soldering braid as well. It can be useful if you have been a bit overly generous with the solder and need to remove some. If you find it's not working very well, soak some extra flux into it. It should already have flux in it, but I find it sometimes helps to add some extra (flux is a life saver in soldering). Also get some isopropyl alcochol to clean the boards when you're done (and before you start for that matter). "No-clean" flux means you can technically leave it, but it's sticky. I prefer clean boards. Oh, and get some tweezers as well. Very useful. I use weezers with a curved tip because I find that easier to use than a straight tip. But not all people like that so go with what makes sense to you. This series is very old and mostly talks about through hole soldering, but it's very very good. Worth watching: And here's one that's a bit more modern and quick paced: Don't be afraid of SMD soldering, people make it out to be something special, it's not. I find that it can actually be easier than through hole soldering sometimes. Oh, and always buy an extra or two of the components you need unless they're super expensive. You WILL fling them across the room when the tweezers slip, or drop them on the floor, and they will be gone forever. Finally, practice. Buy some super cheap SMD electronics kits from Ebay to practice on. Some blinky lights or whatever. Something you can throw away if it doesn't work when you're done and not cry about.

Sorry, no, I haven't.

Uncheck the setting "Ignore small z gaps". It will cause a small performance hit during slicing but shouldn't be much of an issue.

Personally I do it when the plate is cool. I find the glue gets a bit too messy if you do it when it's hot. If you want a very even layer, apply the glue while cold, use a damp cloth to spread the glue around and then heat the plate up. As the water evaporates it'll leave an even thin film of glue behind.

Polymaker does this via a sticker on the (transparent) spool. I'm sure there are others that do it as well.

It's the autoleveling doing small small changes to the height of the bed during the print.

The list will scroll quickly if you reach the end of the list and keep going. So, say you just entered the list and scroll upwards (counter clockwise), the list will then quickly scroll to the end. Does it only show this behaviour in the print menu or does it do it in other places as well? If you scroll on the main menu for example, does it keep switching around between the three choices "randomly"?