gr5

So I'm not sure what the issue is with your part. It looks reasonable to me. Glossy black shows up the tiniest of defects because of the large contrast between a reflected white light and the blackness of non reflected light in the black filament. So there is a large possibility that whatever defect you are seeing exists in the other colors but is much more difficult to see. Perhaps you are new to 3d printing and have overly high expectations. Perhaps your issue can be easily fixed. But I don't know what the issue is. I'm trying not to be condescending - I simply don't know exactly what your issue is. Perhaps it's the staircase steps thing? That is controlled by the slope of your part and by the thickness of the layer slicing. Now I think it looks like you have a brim? Did you try disabling the brim or try removing the brim to see how the part looks without the brim? Is your issue with the part the brim itself? You really need to be specific as I don't really see a serious defect. Because I don't know what to look for.

@MariMakes

What is "SR30" and what is "Labs extruder"? I know maybe 100 materials but not sure what SR30 is. And is "Labs" a manufacturer of 3d printers?

Are you using the octoprint plugin for cura?

do you have windows, linux, or mac?

fbrc8.com assembles all the ultimaker printers in the USA and they have their own support department. They have every part even if not mentioned in their web store. But I'm sure they won't ship outside USA. If you know the part number, any reseller can get you the part. I'll send kman a direct message to see if he can reply to this but you could contact fbrc8 directly and I'm sure they would help you figure out the needed part number so you can then contact your local reseller.

This issue seems to have been solved. A firmware engineer piped in over on another topic here:

Sorry that I don't know much about Cura not starting. I'm using ubuntu and it's fine for me. There are 2 different appImage's for linux - did you try them both? One has "modern" in the name, the other doesn't.

Did you look at the log file? There's tons of known issues with simple fixes related to things as diverse as operating system, graphics drivers, bad configuration files, etc. Please post your log file.

You mean you have a bunch of nozzles or a bunch of clogged print cores?

is it worth it? It will take an hour of your time to swap out the nozzle so if you work for a company that is spending probably 100 euros per hour on you (includes benefits, taxes, etc) it probably is cheaper to just buy a new one. Ultimaker wants you to think of them as a consumable, like filament (you should certainly be thinking of them as cheaper than filament if you only replace them once every 10 spools). But if you are on a tight budget and don't mind spending the hour to save 100 euros... how to change... The nozzles are super long (the threaded region alone is probably 2cm) but you can get them through aliexpress. On youtube search for "um3 ultimaker 3 core disassembly" to see my not-fantastic video on how to take them apart without damaging them (they are delicate). unclogging There are many ways to unclog a nozzle. For example hot and cold pulls. tiny needles. There's even an option in the maintenance menu to help you do this. Or you can take it apart as per above video and once the nozzle is separate you can just burn it all out. I don't recommend getting the brass red hot but if you do it will weaken it but it's still plenty strong even untempered.

If it's still paused this very moment, then I'd contact support immediately. I don't know if they work weekends, plus it's already 7pm in Netherlands but they know more about this kind of thing than myself (and probably more than Dustin although he knows a lot). They will probably email you back around 8am Europe time. They all speak english quite well. Click the 9 dots in the top right of this page, choose "support" then at the top click "submit a request" and then submit a case.

By the way, the way to clean up the head is; 1) Heat up the cores if at all possible. This can't be done if a core popped out or if a wire broke but try to heat them up to normal printing temp. 2) Use some kind of heat gun to warm up the plastic and pull it off with thin metal tools such as needle nose pliers, small screw drivers, etc. 3) Be extra gentle around the print core wires. It takes around an hour (I'm told) if you have the right tools.

You are more likely to break a core. The wires going to the heater/temp sensor are a bit delicate since you can't solder them. fbrc8.com can sell you any portion of the print head. But again, it's pretty tough. You have to email them first as not everything is in their web store. They built your printer so they have absolutely everything.

Oh!!! oh!! a video is so helpful. yeah you have "spiralize" turned on. That only works for things like cups and vases and the way it works, it goes slowly up the layer as it goes around. This will give you much better quality because there is no layer change! Very cool feature. I don't do cups/vases so I forgot about this feature. You can disable spiralize and simulate the other parts of spiralize (the parts other than the gradual Z increase) by disabling infill and making sure you only have one layer of shell. But be aware you will likely have a "z seam" where things pause during the layer change. This is the main thing of "spiralize" because it is spiraling up your cup (moving Z as it goes around). Like a spiral. Instead of separate rings on each layer.

I'd just swap the cores to see if the error moves or not. If the problem moves when you swap cores left/right then it's a core. You can't use the printer unless both cores are able to heat up because that is required for active leveling. I suppose maybe you can skip the active leveling with the tweaker tool. Every um3 comes with 3 cores: 2 AA 0.4 and one BB 0.4. If the problem *doesn't* move then I'd suspect the cable going into the top of the print head. It's common for the cable to pull too hard. If you remove the rear two screws in the head then the rear half of the head pops off and you can see a connector. Push that back down hard. Also when putting together use some paper as a shim to hold the cable so it doesn't pull on the connector. You can get to the log file with ssh. If you are comfortable with ssh. But you first have to put the printer in "developer" mode which just lets you ssh into the printer. username/password root/ultimaker. When printer is in dev mode it shows the ip address on the display at the top. You probably can't get into dev mode until you fix this problem unfortunately. Once your printer is in dev mode, leave it there forever in case you get problems like this one again. Use journalctl to dump the log file (google it). For example to see everything logged since the most recent boot do: journalctl -b

You are doing fine. After you upgrade the hardware, you need to upgrade the firmware to the "plus" version. That's all there is to it.

A link to one of many of Joris' cool cups with z movement: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:75735 Note how the color moves up and down as it goes around. Because the Z axis was moving as it goes around. He did this in some kind of post processor plugin in the old Cura back in 2013.

It seems your Z axis is moving even on a single layer. Very strange. Did you really reslice an STL from scratch? Okay so why is the Z axis moving... 1) It moves on the S3/S5/S7/UM3 for level compensation but the UM2 series printers don't have that feature. And it only does it on the bottom 5mm or so. 2) Maybe there is a plugin that added some tilt to the cup? Joris created a cup per week for a year (52 cups) and a whole bunch of them have Z movements. On purpose. Because it creates a cool pattern. The Z movements increase more and more as you get higher up the cup. That's all I can think of. So I'm not surprised that the gcode of a cup has Z movements on a given layer. But if you reslice an STL in Cura the Z axis movesments should go away. Do you have the STL file of the cup? I'm thinking maybe not and you loaded the gcode into cura and then "resliced" but you can't slice gcode - you can only slice STL files.

I'm pretty sure it's aluminum. I doubt it will be an issue but I really don't know. I don't know if I have the same cracks or not (not home right now).

topic moved to here:

it's critical that the core is hot because if the filament is solid on the tip then it will level too high above the bed. Leveling sensor notices when the bed stops moving towards the head (because they have physically touched). So anything on the tip of the nozzle would mess that up. I don't have any great suggestions but: 1) You can hang out at the printer with a putty knife ready and after it finishes all the leveling points it pauses to reheat the bed and nozzles (the power has to be off during leveling as the EMF from that can mess up the leveling sensor). Clean the bed at that moment (you have maybe 3 minutes). 2) There is really only one spot that gets the most tiny bits of plastic. You can try to position your print to avoid that spot. 3) You can ignore it like I do and get a slightly different looking spot on the bottom of your prints.

Please post a picture of what you are talking about. Also it would be great if you can post your project file: do menu item "file" "save project" and post the resulting file here.

@Kev_Pe - I don't see any issues. Are you talking about the white spots/lines? Those are simply informing you where a loop begins and ends. You can hide those in the GUI if they bother you but it won't change the gcode and also the various colors (red, green, yellow, white) can be informative and helpful when trying to understand cura settings.