gr5

If line width is 0.4mm and wall thickness is 1.2mm then you can set horizontal expansion to 1.2mm and you will get what you want on the walls. This won't affect the top and bottom however. The height of the final part will be the same as the model which is probably not what you want. To clarify - any walls that are not horizontal will be the way you want. Only walls that are 100% horizontal will be off. I guess it's more complicated as there is a setting called top layers and associated settings that can put extra printing underneath a sloped wall. And bottom layers which can put layers above a sloped wall. Hmm. It's complicated. Another solution of course is to create the mold in CAD. Most CAD programs allow you to do "binary" operators which include "subtract" where you can create the exterior of the mold and then subtract another model from that to get the mold.

OMG! There it is. UM2+C branch, S3/S5 branch, UM2 branch, and UM3 branch. Thanks, @sj3fk3

Okay! It's time to print something useful! If you can't think of anything walk around your house looking at everything until you realize, "Hey I could use this thing here in the kitchen to hold this other thing". And yeah you can probably buy it for £2 but why not design it and print it yourself!

The stepper motors are almost indestructable. As long as the air temp stays below 60C (I should hope so!) those steppers last forever. There's no chips in the stepper. No transistors. Just the motor coils - nothing else. it's almost impossible for a stepper to "stop working" briefly. It's either the wiring or the stepper driver. Newer stepper drivers are very fancy and can shut off if too hot but usually only for a fraction of a second. But every stepper driver is different so I don't know. There are so many new types of stepper drivers that I am not familiar with. If it is pretty reliable on the first layer then heat seems likely. If it's much more intermittent then electrical connection seems likely. Although as Greg says it could be a trace or solder connection on the board and the board heats up as you print causing things to expand and some connection to open up. For example one leg on the driver chip might not be soldered and just barely touching. When the chip heats up it no longer makes connection. If this is a brand new printer I'd ask the place where you bought the printer for a new circuit board. Or just pay for one.

@pflaumino - obewan had no trouble. Instead of posting the STL, please post your project file. go to menu "file" "save...". The resulting file contains not only your STL but the scaling, positioning. Also it has your machine (printer) settings, your material settings, your profile used, and settings that you overrode. Please post that here.

Some of the older printers I think had a different kind of plastic that gets old and cracks maybe? Not sure. But contact your reseller as they may just give you a new free set made from a different kind of plastic. Even if it's the same plastic I'm sure it will work like new for many months.

Another thought. There are 2 bowden tubes and an electric cable going into the print head. On UM3 printers it's a common problem that the electric cable works it's way loose. There are 4 long (very long) screws at the top of the print head. Remove the rear 2 and the head will still hold together but let you remove the panel towards the back on top of the head. Push down on the connector - make sure it's seated all the way and put it all back together. Giving the cabling inside a little bit of slack. Some people put a shim around the cable so it can't slide up and down. Maybe some tape or some paper. Or just don't worry about it unless it happens again.

This is very strange stuff. Never heard of any of this before. There's 3 boards under the printer. One is for the display. The other 2 each have a computer. The smaller red one, made by Olimex, has a powerful cell-phone like computer on it running linux. The white one has an arduino type computer on it and runs the steppers (and more). They communicate through some kind of serial interface (I think USB). I think there is literally a USB cable that connects them together. I'd check that cable - unplug it and plug it back in. On both ends. But... lights going out? I think the white board powers the red board so I don't see how it could lose power without the red board losing power and the display also going dark. The display is controlled from the red board (not 100% certain but pretty sure). The quickest (and most expensive) option is to just replace both of those circuit boards. I'd ask your reseller how much that would cost. If you only replace one, the white one seems more likely to be the problem (from your description).

There's a lever on the feeder to open/close it and when open it allows filament to slide through. Did you close the lever so the feeder can start pushing the filament? When it starts "printing" feel the filament to see if it is advancing into the feeder (it may backup briefly as well - those are retractions - that's normal). I suspect you either forgot to close the lever or didn't put the filament all the way into the print head.

Take a photo please of the issue and since I'm pretty sure you are in USA email the photo plus your printer's serial number to support@fbrc8.com and I think (not certain) they can send you a new part of the feeder - the portion that is worn. It might even be free. I'm not totally following your description but some of these issues they send replacement parts for free. Even if not, it's probably very inexpensive.

No idea if the bed leveler is getting in the way. If it is the steppers would make a HORRIBLE racket. It takes a lot of energy to stop the steppers from moving and if you succeed they shake and rattle and some people panick because they are positive that the printer is about to explode or something. If you didn't notice a lot of violent noise and movement, then "no I don't think the BL got in the way". More likely the X axis driver is overheating. Is there a fan on the circuit board that cools the 4 stepper drivers (stepper drivers are small chips the size of a small postage stamp but larger than most of the remaining chips). You can lower the current to the x stepper by say 30% and see if that helps. I don't know of those steppers can be controlled programmatically through the menu system on the printer? Or if there is a tiny potentiometer (if the later by VERY careful - turning it 1/8 of a turn in the wrong direction can blow up the stepper driver in about 1/2 second). Anyway it could be some fan that cools the PCB is broken. Or some wiring heats up, expands and stops connecting the driver to the stepper.

This looks like hardware issues. It looks like maybe the X axis just stops moving all together? I'd check the wiring to the X stepper. Well I assume it's X as it looks like the head stops moving left nor right and just moves in and out. Is this correct? Does it just move in and out but not left and right when it gets to this failure mode? While it's doing this if you shove it in the X direction (left or right) does it move easily as though stepper is powered off (after moving in X, cut power and try moving in X direction with power off)?

Neither of these "bugs" sound familiar but I rarely use support and when I do it's usually dissolvable. If you want someone at Ultimaker to take a good look at this, please first post your project files that demonstrate these 2 issues. Please post a separate project file that shows each issue. go to menu "file" "save...". The resulting file contains not only your STL but the scaling, positioning. Also it has your machine (printer) settings, your material settings, your profile used, and settings that you overrode. Please post that here.

Correction: 11mm. Read this thread:

In your first post I wasn't sure if you were showing before/after photos or what you were trying to show. But in this post the very last pictures is severely underextruded. Is it supported? UMO is notorious for underextruding as getting the feeder setup right is tricky. Please post a photo. The spring in the feeder should be compressed to about 13mm. Yeah - that's really tight. 1) I guess you should post your project file: go to menu "file" "save...". The resulting file contains not only your STL but the scaling, positioning. Also it has your machine (printer) settings, your material settings, your profile used, and settings that you overrode. Please post that here. 2) Please include photo of the feeder.

I've been around on this forum quite a bit and unfortunately I don't know much about this error. It seems to be somewhat rare maybe? Could you please say which error number it is? Is it 17? From reading this it sounds like the error only happens during homing? Anyway it suggests a few things to check. Although I'm wondering if you are getting a very similar, but different error? https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011573780-The-X-or-Y-axis-is-stuck-or-the-limit-switch-is-broken-ER17 Errors 16 and 33 also sound similar. I guess step 1 is to figure out which error number you are getting. Also regarding Z errors - look in the back of the printer under the print bed (just pull the bed up). Under the bed is a long screw that sticks down. Directly below that is a hole. Clean out that hole.

I opened your project, sliced it, looked at the gcode. I think it's pretty obvious what the problem is. Notice how Z is always increasing up until the layer that fails. Searching for "Z" only here is a few lines before and after the failure: G0 F120 X118.73 Y116.594 Z9 G0 F120 X124.952 Y117.032 Z9.2 G0 F120 X118.857 Y125.518 Z9.4 G0 F120 X109.074 Y114.165 Z9.6 G0 F120 X117.745 Y116.448 Z9.8 G0 F120 X125.854 Y109.449 Z10 G0 F120 X109.075 Y110.976 Z10.2 G1 F120 Z10.7 G0 F3600 X126.244 Y118.89 Z10.7 G0 X112.504 Y112.184 Z10.9 G1 F120 Z10.4 G1 F120 Z10.9 G0 F3600 X126.186 Y118.755 Z10.9 G0 X112.682 Y112.242 Z11.1 G1 F120 Z10.6 G1 F120 Z11.1 G0 F3600 X121.379 Y114.229 Z11.1 G0 X112.686 Y112.245 Z11.3 G1 F120 Z10.8 G1 F120 Z11.3 G0 F3600 X122.903 Y110.625 Z11.3 See the change at layer 10.4? Until then Z is always moving up before printing the layer. Starting layer 10.4 it is always coming *down*. You have play in your printer. In the Z axis. This is normal. This is why you should never use zhop. The only printers that can use Z hop without problems like this are delta printers. Google "delta 3d printer". Those printers move all 3 axes all the time so they are build to have zero play/backlash. So turn off zhop and print it agin.

The STL has an unordered (e.g. second triangle might be on opposite side of part from first) set of triangles. Each triangle also has a "normal". The normal tells Cura which side of every triangle is "air" and which side is "plastic". Some of your side walls in the design had walls that were backwards. Most CAD won't let you do that. Some notable ones that let you have the normal backwards are Sketchup and Blender. If you are using Sketchup in particular I can tell you how to never have "wrong" normals. Once you know, it's extremely simple to spot the problem and fix the problem in Sketchup.

Here are some images of good and bad extrusion. This is a 0.3mm extrusion squished to different amounts. The numbers indicate how high the nozzle was above the print bed when printing the right amount of filament to get .3mm thick layer. 0.15 to 0.2 are perfect. 0.35 is obviously too high off the bed (barely sticks at all). 0.05 and 0mm are too squished (unless you want it that way - the part will REALLY stick like hell - it's amazing really).

When you print the next layer up it will be prettier. To make the bottom layer look better just get it to extrude less. If you are doing manual level then just turn the leveling screws such that the nozzle is farther from the bed. If it's autolevel then adjust the flow rate for the bottom layer. You are overextruding by maybe 50%? So if it's exactly 50% overextruded (150% of normal) then you want flow at 66%. You can set "initial layer flow" in cura. You can experiment on your printer while it's printing to find the best flow. Then stop the print. If it's autolevel then you adjust flow in the menus on your printer to experiment. While it's printing. If it's manual level then just adjust the leveling screws while it's printing.

It might not be the Z screw. I see the pattern seems to match the X. It could be you are retracting too much (or not enough). With the feeder open (no pressure on the filament) tug on the bowden at the top of the print head and the top of the feeder. The bowden should not have any play - it should not easily move up and down even 1mm. Even 0.1mm. If it does then you are putting the bowden in wrong. For the head it's easiest to loosen the 4 screws a few turns, put the bowden in and retighten until there is no play. If there is no play on either end of the bowden then use retraction amount of between 4mm and 4.5mm. Don't go outside that range. You don't want the filament to actually pull up out of the head - you want just enough for the filament to stop pushing so hard and rest on the other side of the inside of the bowden (at the top of the arc of the bowden).

When you print a cube are the vertical corners still so ugly? If so then it could be that the temperature is varying (you'd see it I think if you stare at the display for 5 minutes - it would have to vary by at least 5C but more likely 10 or 15C). Or more likely the grease is just very dirty and old. I'd remove the Z screw, clean it completely clean with WD40 over newspaper or something. With an old tootbrush. Then wipe as dray as possible and reassemble. Add just one dab of grease. A pea sized amount is enough to cover the whole screw. Or if you think it's fine and you think I'm nuts, just clean the top few inches (the section used to print your cubes). It's triple helix so stick a toothpick or something (covered with paper towel?) into each of the 3 grooves. If you clean one groove you'll miss the other 2.

Make sure "remove all holes" is not checked. It's in "mesh fixes" section. That alone would explain what you see. If that doesn't fix it then in the upper right corner of Cura click "marketplace" and make sure you are on the "plugins" tab and install "Mesh Tools". Then restart Cura. Now right click on your model, choose "mesh tools" and first choose "check mesh", then "fix model normals". Slice to see if better. If not then... in mesh tools try "fix simple holes" to see if that helps. If that still doesn't work please post your project file: go to menu "file" "save...". The resulting file contains not only your STL but the scaling, positioning. Also it has your machine (printer) settings, your material settings, your profile used, and settings that you overrode. Please post that here.

If spiralize is on and wall width is 0.6mm and line width is 0.6mm and your nozzle is 0.4mm (nozzle is not normally a cura setting) it will extrude at 150%. Your printer will try to squeeze out a 0.6mm line with a 0.4mm nozzle. You can do that but you may need to print slower than usual. It depends how powerful the feeder is on your particular printer. But on say an Ultimaker 2 you would have to print pretty slow but on the UM2+ you can probably do like 0.2 layers and 40mm/sec and 150% overextrusion. Just guessing without looking stuff up.

I don't know the answer. There used to be a feature called "joris" and then I think it was called "spiralize" and then possibly "vase mode" and now there is a "spiralize" option again in cura but I'm not sure what it does. At one point - before the year 2016, spiralize would thicken the base where it attaches to the walls. I don't know if it still does that. Both for strength and to make water tight. I guess I recommend you just make the line width a bit thicker so it overextrudes as it prints. I've never done a cup or vase so I'm not an expert on this kind of thing. And maybe try out "spiralize" but it might make your vase worse. Maybe try it on some very small prints (just half hour prints). I think most vases are done with a 0.8mm or 1mm nozzle and with a 1mm to 1.5mm line width which should make it waterproof and stronger as well but again - not an expert. @rooiejoris is an expert but I don't think he comes to this forum anymore.