kissandra79

So I was right in assuming that the design is partially flawed. Could you please tell me how I might solve my problem? Obviously I am one of the affected few and I have dis-assembled and re-assembled the extruder assembly more times than I wish to count. Any hack, suggestion or simply a pointer in the right direction is very much appreciated. Cheers and Regards.

My ultimaker constantly lets a little bit of the molten plastic ooze in between the bowden cable and the 'internal rim' inside the peek. As a consequence, it keeps "jammin" : ( I have had to repeatedly (atleast 14 times in the last 2 days) remove the entire extrusion unit and reassemble it, just to put the bowden cable back in its place inside the peek just over the rim. Every time, while doing it, I try to maker sure there is no space in between the internal rim of the peek and the bowden cable but somehow, for every 2 print runs the molten PLA plastic manages to solidify, that the extrusion motor starts pushing the bowden cable backwards. If it has happened so many times, I'm actually beginning to doubt that the ultimaker might be a defective design or I'm simply incompetent to fix it. I'm guessing its the latter. Could someone please tell me, how I might fix this? Or if there is something that is inherently wrong about what I am doing? Cheers and Regards

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't sure yesterday so I went ahead and used another new peek. Thought I kept the old one(the one in the picture) just in case. I'll try to clean it and reuse it..

Could someone please tell me if the peek i have is beyond salvageable or usable ? Here are some pics of it.. I feel like the left over bits of PLA plastic inside the peek at the point where the threading starts make this peek unusable. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Cheers and Regards

At the moment.. the "steps per E" is about 863. And from reading other posts on the forum it seems like I can enter a flat value of 890 or I can actually allow cura to do the calibration for me. I think I will try both methods and post the results. Thanks for the suggestion. Thanks and regards.

I tried using belt tensioners that was mentioned earlier. To a certain extent it did help with the tension of the belt because.. now when I try to pluck the belts I get a slightly higher pitched tone. Here is a picture of the belt tensioners... I tried printing the cube again to check to see if there was any difference in the top and bottom layers... because in the cube I printed earlier.. the top and bottom layers were of much much lower quality than the sides.. This time though, I used the skin setting and layer height at 0.1mm to get a much finer finish. The cube that I got this time, had a superior finish for the sides.. but almost no difference in the bottom and top layers.. Here is a picture of the top and bottom layer of the portal cube... As can be seen, the top and bottom layers of this new cube are not very much different from the top and bottom layers that I had printed earlier... Here is a picture of one of the sides.. As can be seen, the finish is almost too good.. My problem is.. i don't know what else to try to get a better finish for the top and bottom layers or am I expecting too much? I have re-aligned the X-Y axis. added the tensioners as I mentioned earlier and I try updating the firmware almost all the time just to make sure I have the latest and best version of merlin.. Could someone please tell me if I am doing something fundamentally wrong or atleast point me in the right direction? Thanks and regards

What is a belt tensioner? And could you please tell me what you mean by retraction? Is it possible to increase the tension on the X, Y belts without using a belt tensioner? Because I don't think I have it.

Yes, it is PLA plastic. Thank you very much to all of you that helped. With your help I managed to print the cube. I followed the suggestions and was able to get the companion cube from portal printed. I adjusted the platform height and loosened the black screw a little on the extruder drive so as not to flatten the PLA plastic and adjusted the temperature at 230 C. Finally..this is what I got. I am quite happy. It is quite close to the original... But one question though. Why is the quality of the print not uniform throughout the surface of the cube. For example the picture above is a picture of one of the sides of the cube. The print quality here is relatively smooth. In other words there is a good fine finish to this surface of the cube. But here is a picture of the top surface of the cube.. As can be seen, the quality of the top surface is not as good as the side of the cube shown earlier. However, the bottom of the cube is the worst.. It is supposed to look exactly like the other sides of the cube but as can be seen, the bottom surface has no distinguishable features what so ever. Instead it is plain flat. Can someone please tell me how I might improve the quality of the 3D prints? Cheers and regards

By visible bite marks.. is this what you mean? Problem 1 Could someone please tell me if my extruder drive is in the right configuration for a printing operation? Here is what I normally have during a print run.. As can be seen, the screw knob is screwed all the way in as you had mentioned. But does the black lever above the screw knob need to be downwards or upwards? In the picture above it is downwards. But I am not sure if that is the right way to run a print job. Either way, could someone please tell me what is the purpose of the black screw knob and the black lever that is situated above it? Problem 2 Another problem I have is that.. the first few layers are not sticking to the acrylic surface. After printing a few layers, the tip of the hot-end ends up displacing whatever has been printed so far. .. This is what happened when I tried to print the companion cube since one poster above suggested that a giraffe might be too complicated for my first print.. What is being shown here is the first few layers of the cube that was printed. As can be seen.. a lot of stringing and as a consequence it could not hold on to the surface. Could someone please tell me how I might solve this problem?

Thank you very much for the pointers. I'll try the suggestions and get back.

This is my first time assembling an Ultimaker. I am very very new to all this. Never 3D printed a thing in my life before. It's just the excitement that got me this far. Could someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I do not understand the combination of factors that lead to a good print. Any information in the right direction is very much appreciated. I tried to print a small giraffe. This is the STL of what I am trying to print. . I stopped the print in 5 minutes because this is what I got... Here are some facts [*:tbbn5anj]I am using Cura version 12.07 [*:tbbn5anj]I am using PLA plastic [*:tbbn5anj]The temperature of the hot end is set at 255*C [*:tbbn5anj]The XY speed is 3000 mm/min and the Z speed is 200 [*:tbbn5anj]The extrude rate is 5mm Here is a screenshot of the printrun application along with the values that were used in the failed print attempt These are the problems I am having [*:tbbn5anj]The molten plastic at the hot end comes out intermittently. If I manually try to extrude the plastic it seems like it works. But when the extruder drive takes over..the molten plastic does not come out at the hot end. [*:tbbn5anj]There is a lot of stringing [*:tbbn5anj]When I push the PLA plastic manually with my hands, the hot end seems to give out molten plastic.. but when I let the extruder driver take over, the hot end does not give out any molten plastic..

Could you please tell me what you mean when you say "make sure your rods are nice and square". By "square" do you mean that the X and Y rods must be absolutely perpendicular to each other?

I am a first time assembler of ultimaker. and i have thoroughly enjoyed the build process all the way till the part where i have to put in the X, Y axes rods and their associated belts. The problem is.. I am really not sure how freely or rigidly the extruder head must be able to move... right now.. i have assembled it in such a way that that the extruder head moves.. but the movement is a little tight for a typical human. Me in this case. Can someone please give me some rule of thumb, as to how freely the extruder head must be able to move over the X and Y axis rods..when the machine is unpowered. The thing is.. I still haven't assembled my ultimaker entirely yet. I'm just waiting to get this part right before I proceed. .. just in case I make a mistake in this part.. Thank You. PS: Thanks for the ultimaker : )

I went ahead and ordered it. Now patiently waiting to lay my hands on it. : ) Thanks to everyone for allaying my fears about whether I might be able to build it or not. I feel a bit more confident after I read your replies. So I went ahead to order it. Cheers.

Hi. I am new to the world of 3D printing. Yet I've been excited ever since I heard about it. And now I am looking into getting one myself. I've zeroed in on the Ultimake after reading various articles and posts. I have an IT background. So I am mostly into programming. Have dabbled with the arduino a little bit and have some experience writing assembly code on PIC microcontrollers. I would like to know if someone with my kind of background would be able to assemble the ultimaker merely from the instructions on the ultimaker wiki? Thanks.