Hi guys – new Ultimaker owner, and I’m having some issues with my prints. The bottom several layers of my prints are flared pretty heavily, so much so as to be unusable without some tedious hand-finish work. There’s also a groove in the side of the prints where the nozzle makes the movement between the inner and outer layers of the perimeter. I took some photos which shows the problem:
http://i.imgur.com/VTuMI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZFNxw.jpg
These objects are sliced with the default settings in Cura and printed using Printrun, I haven't played with the advanced settings yet but I think I should be getting better quality.
Things I have tried:
I leveled the bed using a dial indicator, as best as I can – it’s within the flatness of the acrylic build platform at least.
I measured & set the filament diameter – roundness is quite good, while diameter varies only a bit from 2.79-2.81 mm; I used 2.80 as the average.
I zeroed the bed using a fine-adjust Z axis limit, a .0005” (.012mm) feeler gage fits with slight interference, while a .0015” is very snug and deflects the bed slightly. I did this in the center of the bed where objects are printed as there is some irregularity in the bed flatness, a “potato chip” shape if you will. But unless I’ve done something wrong, the center of the bed is flat and zeroed.
I checked the extruder steps per mm as per the first-run wizard, and it’s quite close, within a few mm. I didn’t alter it from the default value.
I adjusted the Z-axis zero, if I raise the nozzle higher on the bed it’s improved a bit but I can’t raise it very much or the parts won’t stick, even with 2 layers of blue tape.
I’ve also tried temperatures from 190-210, printing speeds from 30-75mm, and two different batches of filament. Cooler and slower has some improvement, but it’s not perfect.
Deleted/reinstalled Cura, and tried it on a 2nd machine (both are Win7 64bit). Same result.
I also note that objects are undersize – the 20mm calibration cube is ~19mm on the upper layers, and an M3 screw / nut won’t fit in the holes per the design:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:24809
Is it possible somehow I’m not getting enough plastic extruded past the first few layers somehow?