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Hi Peter, Thank you for your post. How are the Ultimaker's working for you? Do you notice a decline in quality or reliability that you are interested in maintenance? If so, you could use this to determine if a certain part would need maintenance. There are indeed a couple of consumables, like the nozzles and PTFE coupler. Do you oil the rods ever? Clean the threaded Z screw? The belts and feeder have no specific numbers when they need to be replaced. If you need to replace belts you can see this in the surface quality/backlash in details and corners. Did you ever see any black dust under your belts, from rubbing against the pulleys? If the knurled wheel needs replacing, this usually shows through under extrusion in for example top layers of your 3D prints. (when the lines stop touching). In our resource pages we have listed a maintenance schedule , and I also found an older blog with some more specific tips on how to execute certain maintenance tasks. Hope this helps!

Hi @Maid_DeLa_Mer, welcome to our community! Looks like you had a problem with bed adhesion. When your print gets loose, there is a chance your model gets dragged along with your printhead and extruded filament is no longer deposited where it should on your 3D print. But instead is all being collected at the same place, creates a blob etc. We took precautions in the design of the Ultimaker to reduce these risks to a minimum, but unfortunately we can't eliminate it entirely. That is why you should be able to count on your reseller for the help you need. I would recommend to get in touch with them first, before you try to clean it. If your print cores or print head is beyond repair/cleaning, you should count on your reseller to get your Ultimaker back in working condition again. If you want to clean it yourself, you should heat up the PLA again and peel off the soft chunks. This can be done by turning on the print cores again, using a blowdryer or something down those lines. But I would recommend to first get in touch with your reseller, so when something (perhaps inevitable) breaks during cleaning, you have at least consulted your reseller first to try and clean it, and the damage is not just on you. Long story short; reason: Bed adhesion failt. Solution: Your reseller should help you without any (high) cost. Hope it helps, good luck!

Hi Robin, thank you for your message. I'll ask one of our experts to take a look at your logs!

Hi, it looks like you have a good understanding of when to use PVA and when to use the BreakAway material. I don't think there are any noticeable drawbacks in having it sit around, no more than regular PLA or your other build materials. Can you show some of the surface quality you got when removing your Break away material? Did you use a regular plier to pull it off?

In that case, I think you should choose the professional option. You are not always working. When you have a 3D printer in the office, but you occasionally print something fun for friends or family (or yourself), it does not eliminate your professional use and understanding of 3D printing.

That is still pretty good with a .4 print core. It's also a trade-off. If you are happy with this result for that size and time it takes to print, I'm not going to tell you to start using the .25 print core. If you ever need some better resolution, give it a try ? It will take a little bit longer and you'll have a more detailed print. It is a time - quality ratio. But if you have a .25 print core around, I would be curious to see what you will make of it and which of the two eventually would have your preference. Did you use the PVA as a raft? So it just lays on there? I could imagine that PVA is not that great with many retractions and on such a small scale it would need to retract a lot because it only needs to print small distances.

That is small @Alex L ! Did you print that with a .25 print core or with a regular .4 print core / nozzle? Perhaps it could be useful to share some tips how you can print that small. Besides the tips from @Stefania Dinea what can you do to print good small prints? If you want to print something that small it is usually recommended to print more than 1. Why? Because every layer you have extruded needs time to cool down. The filament is still hot and therefore somewhat saggy, and the nozzle is also hot. If you would print only 1, the next layer would continue to melt the previous one, and your model will end up beyond recognition probably. If you only need 1, you could consider to print a small pillar / tower next to it so your nozzle has to move from object A to object B. Make sure there is enough space in between the two models. It is also recommended to print with a .25mm nozzle or print core. With a .25mm print core, it is not recommended to also print very fine layer heights because the amount of filament you want to extrude would become so small this would be difficult to control through the bowden tube, and under extrusion could be expected. 0.1 layer height with a .25 mm print core would be a good starting point. So what do you gain? The nozzle size is mostly relevant for X and Y resolution. So when you would be printing a figurine, with a .25 print core you could probably detect facial features or details in clothes or details in vehicles parked. With a 0.4mm nozzle or print core, you can go down to 0.06mm layers. Which gives a smooth surface quality in Z, but is less suited for intricate details in X and Y. It is also recommended to print with low temperatures. Which exactly really depends on what filament you use, what speed you print at and what 3D printer you have. But generally, cooler than you are probably used to. These are the first tips that come to mind. Does anyone else have any more, perhaps from personal experience? Any settings you can share with your 3D printer / filament?

Every day new members join our community. Some pop in for just a few questions and others hang around for a longer time and become 3D printing experts themselves. But with so much movement, I thought it would be nice see where we stand today and gain some new insights. So, for what purpose do you 3D print?

Thanks everyone for helping us out! It's much appreciated. Your information has been very valuable @starbuck , you've been selected as the recipient of the free reel of filament! Congratulations. I'll send you a DM to exchange some more information!

How thick is your top surface? You should have approx 3 top layers. I don't think you should need to alter retraction length. Maybe you have made too many changes to your profile. Could you try a default profile with ironing turned on?

That sounds good! What is it used for mostly, if you don't mind me asking? Do you mean you extruded the filament not printing on a bed, but just catching it from the air? Wouldn't it stretch because it is still soft / warm and it just hangs there? We do! I don't think we calibrate stepper motors, as they should all be good and consistent. But we do check them, and if they don't pass our calibration test and quality assurance, it is not going out until it does. @ghostkeeper, can you say a little bit more about the post processing script; post stretch script? I can imagine there also lies a partial solution here re the ID of holes. Do we know of a speed / temperature / layer height which is ideal for an accurate ID? I could imagine, a small layer height, at a low temperature and not very fast so the amount of filament you extrude is small and therefor cools fast and is minimally stretched along the nozzle tool path? @Jakeddesign , did you try this script as well? (it can be found under extensions > post processing > modify g-code.

And you probably want to go for the 0.25mm nozzles for your small prints. They're capable of achieving really fine results. Your extrusion volume will be a little bit lower (because smaller nozzle) but the quality will be really good. And for a small print the lost speed will probably still be acceptable

Hi @t-squareddesign , thank you for your post. Sorry to hear (and see) that your print got loose and some filament managed to squeeze its way up there. First of all, I would always recommend to get in touch with your reseller. Both when your printer is under warranty and when it isn't, you should be able to count on our help. Especially when this has happened. They won't necessarily tell you to get a new print head, they may be able to provide you with instructions on how to clean it. And if during the cleaning process your print core would get damaged for example, there is a fair chance you could get a new one when it happened because of this leaked filament, but perhaps not when you broke it yourself (during cleaning). That is why it is good to, before you start, talk to your reseller. Anyway, can you take out the silicon cover from your print head so you have better access to pull the filament off? If the silicon cover can not be salvaged anymore, you could just get a new silicon cover. They are not expensive. But, you do need a silicon cover in there before you start another print. This is important to prevent something like this happening again (without the silicon cover the problem would have been much bigger!) and you need it to prevent cool air from the fans, to swirl up in your print head and cool down your print core. This could trigger an temperature error, because it can not reach the temperatures it is trying to reach. Good luck, and make sure to get in touch with your reseller!

Hi @nachete, thank you for your post and welcome to our community! If I understand it correctly, you want to learn how to improve the surface of your print, correct? Is it only top surface or also the walls (sides) of your 3D print? From the first look, I would say your print doesn't look too bad at all so you're already doing a good job by the looks of it! If you're after improving the top surface, do you want the lines to disappear? Have you ever tried the setting 'ironing'? It is listed under 'shell', and generally it should give smoother top surfaces. Good luck!

Hi @digitheadman , welcome to the community! Hopefully, you'll be able to find some help here to get your Ender 2 printer working, but I think it is good to mention that Ultimaker developed Cura, mainly for Ultimaker 3D printers (and also made it free for others to use). The Ender is not one of our products, nor is Octoprint. We might be able to help with getting you sorted, but if Creality wants its users to be able to use Cura, it is up to them to provide the profile and instructions. We have developed the platform. While reading your post, I had the idea this may not be entirely clear, that's why I mention it. Unfortunately, I don't have the technical knowledge to help, but we have many experts here who do. Good luck!

Good question. I know we have some other architects around here. How small do you print the entourage you usually use in your projects? Do you 3D print people / trees, or do you craft them in another way? What about vehicles? And if so, do you print them white as well, or would you print the trees in green for example. Looking forward hearing what you do in your business!

Maybe @Tomhe and/or @KristelB have something to add to this?

Hi @FalmouthLouis , that is great news! I would be very curious to read those findings. Looking forward to the results, thanks for sharing!

Thanks, that is much clearer. Interesting. Can you tell me if your nozzle is already touching the glass when the procedure is about to start? Can you tell if there is an approx 14mm gap in the back as well? (top of the glass should be at 1.9/2.0cm height).

Yes!! The entourage will be a good one So I suppose there is a minimal scale you can work with then, and details that won't survive this are left out. ? Regarding the guide above, I had another question. I was looking through the past guides but I don't think I saw the reference where we decided this was going to be the scale. Is 1:400 an industry standard? What tolerances do you keep when you have divided a building up in parts, and needs to fit tight when put together? Do you also start with .3?

That is a little bit hard to tell from this photo. If you put your ruler closer to the corner of your bed (maybe even push a clamp aside) you have a better view of the reading on your ruler. And just to be sure, could you also include a photo of your print cores? Thanks!

Hi @HugoW, 230? That's a lot! What is the purpose of these parts? Are they prototypes or end use parts? Which Ultimaker/3D printer do you have? If you could switch to a .8 print core or nozzle that would definitely save you a lot of time. In Cura, what is the amount of walls that you have configured? You should find this setting under 'shell'. Good luck!

Hi @KnoxJA, no problem! Happy to help. When you moved the screws so there was a 14mm gap, why did you do another manual level? Did you do any more calibrations at this step? When you tried the active leveling procedure again, and the nozzle was impacting the bed. If you measure again now, what size is the gap? Thank you!

Ach, dat geeft allemaal niet. Hopelijk is er ook nog genoeg recents en interessants te vinden

Dit is wel een vrij oude thread waar je op reageert nu