illuminarti

Great! Happy Printing! If you need anything, then, as my signature block says, please email the US support desk - support@fbrc8.com - and we'll do our best to help you as quickly as possible.

Aguirrem2 - I sent you an email with info about your printer. Please accept my apologies for the confusion.

:-)

I imagine it's probably just running out of memory, creating that many slices of a high-res model. How big is the STL file? You might try reducing the resolution of the STL first - there's probably more detail in there than the printer can reproduce anyway.

Perhaps you could post a photo to show what you mean? I'm finding it a bit hard to visualize the issue.

Ate you sure that your object has a flat bottom? It sounds like parts of it are hovering slightly above the bed, and so not printing on the first layer. A simple fix might be to use Cura's cut off bottom feature to sink the bottom of the print fractionally into the bed, so all the areas now touch on the first layer.

JR - I replied in your other thread, and PM'd you - and went and found all those helpdesk tickets that you mentioned and replied there as well. :-) So hopefully you are now reassured that indeed your printer is en route, and will be with you soon. I'm really sorry that it wasn't a more straightforward experience for you.

JRDesign - I'm sorry you didn't receive the shipping notice; your printer shipped on September 30th, and should arrive early next week. I'll PM you the tracking number.

We're still ironing out the kinks of transferring orders between the Mothership in the Netherlands, and the US operation in Memphis, but I'm pleased to say that all of the orders referenced above have been shipped. :-) I sent you guys tracking info via either email, or private messages here in the forum (envelope icon on the top menu bar of the page).

Also, iirc the motor doesn't get power until the extruder finishes heating, so you can just wait for the head to heat up a bit, so the filament is melted at the hot end, and then just pull the filament out of the extruder. Even with the reduced power, there's a fair chance that it will grind the filament during the fast forward part of the loading, if the spring tension isn't set just right.

Yes, you can push the bearing all the way in, and then loosen the grub screws on the two pulleys in the back right corner, and push them all the way to the back, while holding the rod fully inserted. Then re-tighten the grub screws - and that will keep the rod in place. That's probably what is causing the rough movement as well. At the very least, fix the pulleys first, and then see what needs to be done. BTW, front to back is the y-axis, so those long rods are generally considered the y-axes. Although the motor that attaches to that rod is, indeed, the x motor. :-)

Well, as I sip my first coffee of the day... Yay, finally, a US presence! It's been a while coming, but I think it will be great for the community on this side of the Atlantic. :-)

It could be some sort of oddity in the glass - slight surface eccentricity. Or perhaps it's something about the printer? It's consistent with the head moving higher or lower as it moves in the x-direction. And it seems quite a regular period, so I wonder if it's due to an eccentric pulley, or bent rod?

It's not something I'd expect to see, no. Basically you have some very small part of your object that sticks out 0.03mm (or less) below the rest of it. That's the part that touches the plate, but is too small to print. So the first layer there is nothing to print, and then on the next layer it prints a 0.1mm layer, but 0.2mm off the bed (if you first and regular layer height are both 0.1mm). You say '0.2mm first layer height' but your screen shots all show 0.1mm. I'd definitely recommend going with a 0.2mm or more first layer. Combined with the other issues you've mentioned, I'm wondering if you need to tighten up the tolerances in your STL export settings, so that the STL's have fewer of these 'slightly off' positional artifacts. What are you exporting the STL's from?

Your link points back at this page? The Marlin that ships with Cura is Ultimaker's fork: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Marlin But that should be pretty close to the original EriKZalm version it is forked from. Behaviors like homing one or both axes, and probably the fan behavior you mention, are just settings that can be set up in configuration.h before compiling.

If you are printing over USB, then you need to make sure that Cura is set to generate normal gcode, not Ultigcode - as the latter assumes that the printer will do various start-up tasks like heating and homing the bed which don't happen when printing over USB. You also need to make sure that the start gcode sequence correctly homes all of the axes before the print starts; until they have been homed, the printer has no idea where the head is located. On the Ultimaker², the only limit switches are located at the back left corner for x & y, and the bottom of the printer for z. Running the bed leveling wizard is essential to being able to know the correct z=0 position, as is the initial z-homing. There is a bug in the firmware at present, which will cause the bed to raise at the start of a USB/non-ultigcode print even though the bed may not have been homed yet so the printer is unsure of its true z position. Therefore, it would be best to run the 'lower bed' command from the Maintenance -> Advanced menu before starting any prints, so that the z-axis position is calibrated.

The validation wasn't properly recorded - you were still showing as 'Validating...', but I've just promoted you into the main Member's group... hopefully you can post images now. See this if you are unsure about how to post pictures: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4525-how-to-upload-an-image-to-the-forum/ Try cleaning the nozzle using the 'atomic method' and see what happens: Remove the filament from the printer, and then remove the Bowden tube from the print head by removing the blue retaining clip from the white collet on top of the print head. Then press down the collet, while pulling up on the Bowden tube. Using the Maintenance->Advanced->Heat Nozzle menu on the printer, heat the nozzle to 250, and then looking down through the print head, guide a piece of filament through the print head, through the white teflon piece and into the nozzle. Alternate pressing and pumping the filament back and forth in the print head for a few seconds, and see if you are able to get it to extrude. Then reduce the set temperature to about 85 degrees (assuming you are using PLA), and wait for the nozzle to cool. You can then pull up sharply on the filament, and it should pull straight out of the print head. If the filament breaks off near the print head, just repeat the heating and insertion process. You should be able to pull the filament out with a good impression of the inside of the nozzle, and possibly even the 0.4mm nozzle exit. Look for any signs of dirt removed with the filament, or apparent obstructions inside the nozzle in the shape of the mold that you pull out. Repeat the process a few times until the plastic you pull out is clean and the shape doesn't suggest any debris is left inside the head. Then reattach the Bowden tube, pushing it down through the collet, and making sure that it seats all the way down into the white teflon piece that is held in place with a spring in the lower part of the print head. The tube should go into the teflon piece by about 2 or 3 mm. Then, while pushing the tube down, carefully pull up on the collet, lifting it up around the tube, so it locks it in place. Replace the blue retaining clip. When you are are done, the Bowden tube should be fully seated into the white teflon piece above the nozzle, and shouldn't move as you tug gently on it.

In order to upload images, you need to validate your email address by clicking the link in the email that was sent when you signed up, I think. Not sure what is happening with your printer. You seem to have very poor extrusion. Some things to check: 1) Is the knurled wheel on your extruder properly attached, and not slipping? Use a permanent marker to mark the sleeve and motor shaft, and make sure they stay aligned 2) Did the filament get ground up at the start of the print? What version firmware is on the printer? Make sure you have the latest version - 14.07. If the filament is ground, remove it and cut off the damaged part. 3) Try the atomic cleaning method to get any gunk out of the nozzle. Where you perhaps previously printing with ABS? In that case, be sure to heat the nozzle up to ABS temps and try to flush lots of PLA through the nozzle dueing the 'hot' phase of the cleaning.

Welcome, John! I'm glad you are loving your new printer. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask, and be sure to post some examples of your work, once you get up to speed. :-)

The tube is 1/4 OD, 1/8" ID. I personally like this variant on the retaining clip: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:46157 It's a touch deeper, and holds the collet on the top of the Ultimaker² printhead nicely (it doesn't need the zip tie in that application). It's especially useful if you have early/worn top piece on the print head, so the collet can ride up a little bit higher than the thickness of the standard clip.

Yes, that's fine.

Yes, the gap should only be created by the positioning of the threaded part of the nozzle block inside the isolator nut. The white ptfe part should always sit directly on top of the brass part, inside the isolator. If it isn't all the way down inside, then you end up with a gap between the two that plastic can expand into resulting in leaks and clogs. However as you screw the nozzle block up and down inside the isolator nut, then you are also adjusting the level of the ptfe coupler on top of the nozzle piece, and hence the gap visible above the isolator nut. If the visible gap is too large that means the nozzle is quite high up compared to the base of the fan shroud, making it more likely that stray plastic will curl up behind the shroud, form a mass around the heating block. If the gap is too small, then the block can get pushed down against the fan shroud, forming a heatsink that can make it hard to maintain proper extrusion temperatures evenly in the nozzle.

I dont think Cura is changing anything when it imports it... but on that last example above it looks like even the straight edges end in curved corners. While the native CAD format might have things perfectly aligned, the STL doesn't necessarily. It has to approximate the curves, so it might approximate the lines that approach them too, to keep things smooth. The CAD package knows that the wall is, by definition, 1.6mm thick. The STL doesn't. It just knows that there are two surfaces that are defined by a bunch of triangles, and on average, the centroids of triangles on one face are about 1.6mm from those of triangles on the other face. Cura doesn't even know that. It just knows that it sees a bunch of short line segments that are cross sections of some triangles. The triangles and the lines are in no particular order. But it looks like the short lines can be laid out end-to-end to form two longer lines. And then it can see if it can figure out how many passes of the head it can fit into the space between those two lines. The slightest of rounding errors during the process of interpreting those short lines could cause Cura to give suboptimal results. The aim of the slicer is to get those two outside lines in the right place. Once it has done that, it has to do the best job it can of filling in the inside, based on what it has been able to deduce about the shape. There are basically no guarantees that it will do what you would like/expect it to do. If you can instead define the shape as solid, and then just use the shell thickness to create the loops, you are providing far fewer constraints that the slicer has to try and work within, and so you are more likely to get what you want. But if you define the thickness of the shapes within the STL, and then tell the slicer to interpret that and fit the lines in the way you want, then you are relying on everything being perfect, or having the same tolerance for error at every stage, in order to give you what you hope to achieve. So yes, it should work, but it's perhaps not totally surprising that it doesn't. If you specify a 1.6mm wall, but the slicer ends up thinking that it's about 1.5999mm thick, then it has to decide whether its ok or not to put 1.6mm of plastic into that space.

Yes, it's the same encoder, from the same board :-)

Yes, welcome, smorgana! I'm glad your first impressions are good. It's a great printer, and I'm sure you'll get some great results. And Maker Faire is definitely worth attending. I'll be there with gr5 at the Ultimaker stand, too. No idea what they'll be announcing though... * whistles nonchalantly *