billdempsey

Another thing you could try is printing with a skirt of 5 at a distance of 0.0. I've been using that in place of a raft with good success and it's a hundred times easier to remove. I'm not sure this will help you, though. Looking at that piece, if you can get it to print on an Ultimaker, that will be quite an achievement. That looks more like a print from a liquid polymer or powder based machine (expensive.) Laying down stacked filament, like Ultimaker does, has some definite limitations on what you can print. I've had to redesign some of the parts I've made just so they could be printed with minimal bridging and spans.

My two cents: I found with the gold filament that too much heat also created plugging after a period of time. The problem is that the higher heat is conducted further up toward the bowden. In the case of the gold filament, I was able to reduce the heat from 220C to 195C and still get prints. But, the best way around this type of plugging is to have a fan blowing through the space between the aluminum plate and wooden bottom plate. It keeps the heat down at the hot end, where it belongs. It lets you run higher temperatures for finicky PLA without the plugging issues. I believe the link Snowygrouch gave will let you download a fan mount for this type of setup. Highly recommended!

It would be really cool if somebody at Ultimaker could test your existing PLA and post recommended diameter and temperature settings for each color/type. As for the silver, I apparently got a reel of the good gray/silver. It was the first spool that I could actually get decent quality prints with. My troubles were with White and Black. The white, in particular, was unusable. That's sad because I spent about $75 on it when you include shipping to the U.S. and the poor exchange rate. I also got a decent spool of the gold. It was a little more finicky than the silver, but still usable. I used up both the gold and silver spools already and I'm partway through the natural spool, which is still thick and gooey at 215C. It also strings much worse than the gold or silver did. At least, I'm getting prints out of it. I never got any successful prints from the white or black. They just plugged constantly no matter what temperature I used.

Which brand of super glue are you using? I tried Locktite brand at it wouldn't bond right.

I have the new one.

Bingo! Thanks Robert. The skirt was set at 10. Which meant 20 length was added, total. The piece is 182, so that's 202. Apparently 200 is the cutoff. After changing the skirt to 5, I got it to lay down the entire part, but I think my print bed is warped at the edge. The filament sticks everywhere except the right edge of the platform. If I raise that side of the platform using the screws, then it grinds into the surface in the area just right of middle. I'm going to try orienting the part a different direction to see if I can get it to print. EDIT: I turned the part so it was long front to back on the platform and it's printing perfectly.

The advertised print volume is 200mm minimum in every direction. Can anyone explain why 7mm is getting cut off the end of a 182mm long brace I'm printing? It looks like the print volume limitation is more like 175 cubed. I'm using Cura, btw. I also laid down a couple layers to verify the length that's being printed. It's about 175mm and it's missing the end. The blocks never hit the limit switches, btw. In fact, nothing is physically stopping it. I watched it carefully to verify. The printer just decides not to go any further and the connector on the end of my brace gets truncated.

Extreme shipping costs for the machine and any future parts, upgrades, or supplies. Shipping costs from the Netherlands, are horrible if you don't live there. In my case, I've spent about $600 total in shipping. I could have bought another brand printer kit for that.

In my case, it's fear, I guess. It took me forever to get my extruder working reliably, so I'm afraid to open it up.

Yeah, I tried super glue, too. It doesn't work well at all. I might go buy some Weldbond. It's supposed to glue just about anything to anything.

The first question is, what would be the best adhesive to put on the blue tape to prevent warping on large pieces? The second question is, what adhesive works best for permanently gluing PLA parts together? Or gluing PLA to other materials?

Try loosening and tightening the pulleys on the motors. Also make sure the short belts on the motors are stretched good and tight without rubbing on anything.

One more idea for shifted prints. Mine were doing that and I loosened then tightened the pulleys on the X Y motors. That stopped the shifting for me.

For the warping issue, set the skirt to 5-10 with distance of 0 in Cura. Then print with the fan turned off. (min and max speed 0 in expert settings) This works well for me for parts under 100mm. Once the parts get over 100mm, I'm still working out how to prevent the curl. If I figure something out, I'll post it. A heated bed would solve it, from what I've read online, but they are a pain in other ways. For now, I've been working around it by making big parts in segments which snap together.

I'd be really interested to hear how much an aluminum or steel frame would cost. I'm not a big fan of the slightly burned plywood look.

I had exactly the same thing happening on one of my prints. I loosened the pulleys on the X Y motors and tightened them back up. That got rid of the little offset.

Personally, I'd love to see a little handle attached to that small hole in the wooden gear. Then, we could turn the gear quickly using that handle to put new filament through the bowden quickly.

I gave that a try, but the discs separated from the part. How many layers thick are the discs supposed to be?

My latest print is a roller which will contain skateboard bearings to go on a steel rod for a filament cradle I designed. I'm liking the Ultimaker gold filament. Works well at 195C. Slightly higher if I crank the speed way up. Has anyone tried a spray adhesive on the blue tape to keep long flat parts from curling up at the ends?

Thanks for the tips Snowy. I'm going to tweak the bed height a little to see if I can get the big item I'm trying to print to stick better. The extrusion, in theory, should be ok. This filament has almost no variation in diameter. It's pegged at 2.85 wherever I measure.

That's pretty cool looking. I can't imagine how long it will take to print 50cm Z-height objects, though. Ouch.

I solved the warping. First I tried the skirt, which seemed to help a little, but I still got corners pulling up a bit. Next, I turned the fan off. When I print without the fan and with the skirt, it just doesn't warp. I'm pretty happy with the quality of the prints now. Here is an amplified iPhone dock I designed and printed yesterday. EDIT: I spoke too soon. I'm printing an item which is 190mm wide and at the very end, it still warped. Even with no fan and a 10 line skirt. Five hour print, so a little disappointing.

I printed that exact same shroud yesterday with no support and ended up with similar results. The filament measured at 2.90 average. I was using Ultimaker silver filament at 220C. I believe the temp is high enough, so I'll take a look at my extrusion settings. Glad to see this thread. Thanks!

Awesome! I'll try that! Thanks again Daid! I vote that you get a raise.

I'm getting warping on the ends of long parts, but a raft eliminates it. Sadly, taking the raft off is a major pain. I've seen other posts in the forums that using two layers of blue tape helps. I also heard wiping down the tape with acetone helps. Others say you should get a heated bed. Anyone have experience with any of those methods? What works the best? If I wanted a heated bed, where would I get it? Does Cura support it? Does it just connect to the Arduino board? Also, I'm looking for a U.S. source of high quality PLA filament that works well with the Ultimaker. Between the bad exchange rate and the high shipping, buying it from Ultimaker costs over twice as much. Any suggestions for a supplier?