IRobertI

You shouldn't feel insulted, ahoeben doesn't know you or your skill level and didn't have much to go on, so it's often better to start "at the bottom" so to speak. It's not uncommon that the seemingly simplest things are the problem. (I've been working with tech support for 3d printer for the past 6 years or so, trust me, it's not uncommon 😄 )

In these cases I usually go the nuclear option and delete all profiles and start fresh. From within Cura, click Help->Show configuration folder. This will open up a folder that contains all the settings. Close Cura and then delete everything within the folder that was just opened. Re-start Cura and it will re-create the missing files. Note that this will erase any and all settings you have done in Cura.

It has happened a few times that cores have been programmed incorrectly. It's possible to re-program the core on your own and that would probably get you back to printing a lot faster than contacting your reseller to have it exchanged/fixed. See this thread:

You might want to have a look at the end of the bowden tube and check that it hasn't been cut at an angle causing it to form a gap between the coupler and bowden.

A picture of what it looks like would be helpful in figuring out what's going on. If I were to guess I would say that it is supporting something on the inside of the circle? In that case it can be "Support horizontal expansion" that is causing the support to poke through to the other side of the circle.

Yes it has been approved. Usually posts never get beyond a couple of hours old at most in the approval queue (depending on holidays, time zone glitches when moderators from different parts of the globe are around, people being busy with work etc). How far is "too far"? Is this something that has started happening recently? Do you remember if you have changed anything lately that coincides with this starting to happen? Sometimes when loading in new material it can get stuck on the transition between the bowden tube and the PTFE/TFM coupler but that can usually be remedied by cutting the filament at an angle. Just re-loading filament that has been retracted after a print shouldn't really pose a problem since it will already have a bit of a point to it. Is it possible that the bowden tube isn't seated fully all the way?

Most likely the plastic right above the heater block is preventing the print core to compress the way it's supposed to in order to be removed. What usually works in this situation is to use a heat gun and _carefully_ heat things up until the plastic is soft enough to allow the core to move. I usually heat things up, try to squeeze the "handle" of the core together as you would when removing the core normally, heat, squeeze, heat etc until I can feel it start to move a little bit. At that point I push the nozzle against a heat resistant surface while also squeezing the handle and that will usually be enough to allow the core to slide out. The biggest risk when doing this is applying too much heat to the black parts of the core causing them to melt a little bit. But with a bit of patience it's very doable (I've done this many times).

Hmm ok. What I would try next would probably be to swap the connectors around so that the X motor is plugged into the Y output and vice versa. Obviously this will cause the print head to slam into the wall since it will move the wrong way, but before it does it should show you if the problem is the motor or the stepper motor driver.

What a lovely sound hehe. Yeah, this is not an old belt problem, something else is going on. What's the tension like on the short belts? Is the belt on the left hand side motor very loose? What does it feel like if you push the print head around manually, smooth movement or is it difficult to move? (If the head is completely stuck the motors are probably still turned on, flip the printer off in that case). Did this start suddenly? Did something happen just prior to this?

To get access to the motors you have to remove the plastic cover(s) that hide them. These are held in place by plastic tabs that slot into the case. All you have to do is pull them out, it can seem a bit scary, but you're unlikely to break them. Putting them back is a pain in the arse though, I usually snip off the tab at the bottom of the cover to make it easier (that extra tab isn't necessary, they'll hold in place just fine without it). Then you just remove the four screws that hold the motor in place from the outside of the printer. If it's making creaking noises like an old wooden ship I would suspect the belts primarily though. Especially if the printer is a bit older. These are inexpensive but replacing them is a bit of an operation (ask your reseller for instructions). Expect to spend a couple of hours on that if it's your first time. The plastic sliding blocks can be taken apart but they weren't really designed for it so you'll likely snap the little tabs that hold them together so I would suggest buying a new set of those (they're cheap too). If you're able to post a video of the sound that would help to figure out what's going on.

Weight of print head, weight of gantry, max acceleration/speed/jerk possible with the drivers and motors that particular printer uses, how much ringing is produced due to different length/thickness/stiffness of rods/axes, lag time for extrusion etc etc. Many many variables other than the type of movement the printer is using.

These profiles are for Ultimaker printers at this point. You'll just have to hope that the makers of the CR10 or the community around it will create those types of profiles.

It already is?

That just means that the manufacturer hasn't gotten around to creating a profile for the S3. It takes a fair bit of time and effort to create these profiles. Granted, in this case it should be fairly straight forward to copy over the settings but it is what it is.

And if you mean that you just want to view a single layer at the time, grab both of the black dots of the slider and drag them towards each other to set how many layers you want to see at once.

For now, you can't. We're still very early days with the Material Station so that might change down the line. The station will pick the material that was loaded first if it needs to pick between two generic ones.

It is already approved.

Can you move the print head freely by hand (with the machine turned off)? What happens if you move the print head to the front center of the print volume and then start a print?

I have yet to find an easy way to remove them. Brute force seems to be the way to go 🙂 To get them back in place is also a pain in the arse. But I find that if you snip off the little tab at the bottom of the cover it makes it a lot easier since the cover is "over constrained" , to use CAD terms, with the bottom tab.

For the S5 I'm afraid you need to go through your distributor to get this handled. Only people who have been through the official training with UM are allowed to do this procedure on the S5.

Have you considered using magnets? Makes for a very compact way of keeping it closed. But of course it depends on how secure the lid needs to be, you still need to be able to open it after all 🙂

Start Cura, don't load any models, swap over to "Preview". "Auto slicing" with a full progress bar will now show in the lower right indefinitely (or until you load a model). edit: Load a model, slice, delete it. Preview mode will still show the bar to scroll through the layers of the deleted model.

Eww, the sizing of the pics went a bit wonky, oh well. Also, another thing I would love to see is a scalable interface. My eyes are getting worse by the year and the tiny text on a high-res monitor is getting harder and harder to read. Something else that has been bugging me for a long time is how slooow the settings are to populate. I display all settings and use search a lot (because currently that's the easiest way to find settings) and when clearing out the filter box it takes way too long to get all the settings back again. Similar if you click to use support for example, it takes a few seconds for the settings to show up so you can change support extruder etc. More than once I've clicked and all the settings have shifted in position as the new settings are being loaded in causing me to change something I don't want to change.

I haven't tried cranking on the screw to see what happens so I'm not sure if that would be possible. In general the screws on an UM3 are tightened fairly "loosely". For the head it's 0.3Nm IIRC. Doesn't feel like something that would happen though unless there's very little margin for error for the spring fingers of the contacts in the head. I can't say I've had any customers with this particular problem so it's a bit difficult to diagnose without getting my hands on it to be honest.

Yeah, I think the cable would be my first suspect as well. And by cable I mean more the contact and/or the individual pins in case one of them has managed to work itself loose. It's unlikely you managed to damage both cores so I would probably rule that out. And it's not really possible to assemble the head with the print head board in the wrong position causing a bad connection. And from the sounds of it, it's happening when the print head is homed, when there's the most stress on the cable.