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The easiest thing to fix is that chimney which I agree is a cooling issue and solved by printing a tower or a second benchy next to the first to allow layers to cool a little longer. Everything else can probably be improved by printing much slower - like 20mm/sec if you want extra high quality. Personally I don't think the S5 is the ideal printer for the absolute highest quality looking PLA. The S5 *is* however really good for more exotic materials like Nylon. It's really good for print farms where you want to chain many printers together. It's great in an environment like a university or factory where you have lots of different people sharing the same printers. It's good for functional, mechanical things. And the S5 is great for printing PVA supported prints. But if you want to print small beautiful prints the um2go is slightly better and maybe consider smaller nozzles (like the AA 0.25 core) or switch to resin printers like the Form.

If you really want top surfaces to look much better you can look into the "ironing" feature set in cura but the default settings might not be ideal - the guy who invented ironing (neotko on this forum) recommends you extrude slightly (like 10% maybe?) while ironing. More here (concentrate on posts by neotko):

I think your bed isn't perfectly flat. If it's off by 0.1mm (thickness of typical paper) and if the bottom layer is 0.3mm then 0.1mm error is 33% different (over or underextruded) and it takes maybe 5 layers to finally reach equilibrium. Use a metal straight edge of some sort to check to see if your bed is a little higher or lower in that corner. Use a piece of thin paper (or a metal gauge that goes down to 0.05mm) as well to slide under the straight edge in different spots. Like @Smithy said - if you make the bottom of your part thicker it should look much better. Anyway this looks functional - like the inside of a box. Does it really matter for this area of this part?

during testing, just print 3 or so at a time until you figure this out, then you can print as many as you want. Your issue is major underextrusion. It *might* be related to stringing. You can try "print sequence" set to "one at a time" mode. That will help with stringing. It's possible if it strings a lot then when it's printing the actual part it doesn't have enough filament but I dont' see much strings so that's probably not it. TPU is tough to print as it's so flexible. I'd try printing at 1/3 speed just to see if that helps. In fact you can mess with this while it's printing in the TUNE menu and this is much more informative if you are only printing 2 or 3 of these at a time (faster feedback to know if it's working). Also with TPU people think it's crazy and will mess up the print but it doesn't: add a drop of oil to the filament below the feeder. The oil will end up in the bowden and the filament will slide through much more easily instead of bunching up. Also maybe increase the temp just a little - maybe 5C or 10C. If you increase it too much you will get stringing. Also adjust flow. You should be able to do this also in the TUNE menu on the printer live. Typically you want around 105%. Also maybe set the tension on the feeder to the smallest setting (all the way at the top). If you squeeze the filament too much when you ask for 10mm it actually only gives you 9mm or something because it's making the filament longer while it goes through the feeder and then shrinks again. Try flow higher flow values but if you go too high you get bunching and then completely failed prints.

You could have caught this issue in pronterface! I thought you said you had tried the same commands through pronterface. lol.

For others - support blocker is the next icon down.

The spring on the feeder? Oh - the spring on the rear of the build plate? I have one of the oldest UM3s and I also have that weak spring back there. That was on purpose. I think it helps with active leveling. The newer UM3s have a stronger spring but that weak spring was on purpose and I have been printing on my UM3 for... 4 years? I don't know - but a long time.

Once you have an STL file the next step, before printing, is to use a slicer. Cura will convert the STL file to a gcode file. The gcode file is what you want to print on the Ultimaker 3. Cura is free and here: https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura

Look at the setting "minimum layer time". It defaults to 5 seconds so it's going to cap the speed at a pretty slow speed. This is to allow the layer below to fully cool before printing the next layer above. Violating this by too much will result in prints that look like they melted a bit.

@AnnaAnimus - in Cura just above all the settings type "temp" in the search box. standby temp is not visible unless you have at least 2 extruders enabled. The temp is set I think in your profile. So maybe just manually put a lower temp in there. 150C for PLA might work well. If the filament curls and hits the nozzle it indicates you could use a cleaning (cold pulls - look it up). Maybe using a hypodermic scraping the inside of the nozzle tip. But sometimes you get curling even when the amount of cleaning needed is pretty minor and at the same time very hard to get completely clean. I don't worry about this so much - the initial wipe motion in your gcode should remove any balls of filament off the nozzle at the start. If not then maybe it's not leveling very well and not making good contact with your bed. Or maybe your bed needs cleaning (oils and dust can make it so that the PLA doesn't stick as well).

That video is really good. I couldn't see anything wrong. First realize that Erin is an expert at this and knows more about it than me. But I have fixed a few issues with leveling. If it passes the level sensor check in the menu, then the cables are probably fine. I know Erin says you should do the 14mm gap in that link she posted but in the video the nozzle touches the glass longer than what I normally expect. I'd raise the bed a few mm. It's important that the springs in the bed are weaker than the springs in the 2 cores. Because the level sensor is capactive and determines the distance from the print head to the bed. As it moves slowly towards the bed this capacitance constantly changes. It only stops changing if the nozzle can push the bed down a little. If instead the nozzle goes up into the head then it won't notice that the nozzle hit the glass. So weaken the springs by turning the 3 leveling screws several full turns to raise the bed (counter clockwise as seen from below). And try again.

Going back to 4.6 didn't help? I usually use version 4.0. There haven't been any crucial features I need yet. I have 4.7.1 also. Both seem to work fine. No bugs. I recommend only upgrading once per year or so or when some feature comes out that is very useful.

support placement. It has a dropdown with 3 or so choices. Support blocker is the bottom of the section of 5. I don't see any hover text anymore. Click the part. Click that. Click somewhere on the bed and a cube appears. Wait - I shouldn't have to describe this - there are youtube videos and other pages to help you with support blocker. Try some of the youtube videos. Please let us know which youtube video worked well for you by posting a link in your next post for the next person searching for this.

How many steps/mm do you have for the Z axis? How far is it moving the Z axis from first to second layer? What level of substepping do you have? What is the feedrate (F command) when it moves the Z axis? (maybe paste here the exact gcode that has the Z position and the nearest F command before that and everything between).

Watch it level. The nozzle should touch the glass and touch it briefly. The 2 things most likely to go wrong: 1) The nozzle never even reaches the glass 2) The nozzle touches the glass and keeps trying to push too long. If #1 then the sensor isn't working. Check wiring starting by opening the door and tugging very gently on the 2 wires. The sensor is in the part of the head closest to the print bed. If #2 then your bed springs are too tight or your core springs are too loose. Try loosening all 3 leveling screws a lot. To the point where the springs are loose, then retighten enough that none of the springs are loose, plus another 3 full turns, then do manual leveling then auto leveling.

Did you save the gcode files? You can get the settings out of the gcode files as well. If there are some still on your printer or hard drive somewhere then you can recover settings from those. There are a few ways. Personally I just open the gcode file in an editor and jump to the bottom of the file. There are a few lines at the bottom that say what profile you used and what settings overrides you used. At first glance it looks like gibberish but if you take a deep breath and calm down and read it slowly it's actually quite easy to understand. You can also import the settings from the gcode file into cura - I think it's in the "file" menu. Or maybe there's a plugin. I forget. Even better, if you saved project files, those you can just open and it loads everything.

I've never had this problem with my S5. What printer do you have? Do you have a material station? Do you also have PVA on the back of the printer? If so try moving it away from the printer by a meter and try again - then coil it back up and back onto the printer when you are successful.

@Vizitechusa There's lots of ways to disable some but not all support. That's support. If you change your display settings - right now you have color scheme: material color. Not very helpful. Instead make it "line type". Then you would clearly see that the thing you point to is support. 1) You can disable all support: "generate support" 2) You can set support to print only touching build plate: "support placement" to "touching buildplate". That will disable the thing you arrow as it's not touching build plate. 3) You can change the angle of what needs support or not. 4) You can use support blockers - click on your part and then there is a button on the left side to add a support blocker. Click that and click on your part then use the buttons on the left side to scale it, and position it in 3 dimensions and voila you can disable support for one small area of your part. 5) Lots of other support features

For the same reason there is a circle here. Something about your model has an extra wall here in the middle of the solid. That shouldn't be there. It's something in CAD.

100% I don't see how your latest post has anything to do with the first screenshot. There was a pyramid there but don't see that on these newer pics. Anyway... You must have put some very thin walls from the center to the spokes as those very thin red lines indicate "shell". I guess I would get rid of those walls. They look like you are creating your own support. Instead I would have layer 9 be a hollow cylinder for 1 layer (or two layers) that rests/connects to the tips of all those spokes. Maybe overlapping each tip of each spoke by 5mm or so. That way cura will slice it such that there is a stable ring all the way around on all those spokes. Then make the cylinder solid on layer 10 (or 11) as it is in your existing design. That temporary ring on layers 9 or 9&10 will create a nice structure to bridge across from the outer ring into the center post.

Next to the save button is a little down arrow. Click that for more options.

NO!!! You misunderstand. 🙂 When you build a new printer from scratch and install Marlin, part of the setup is to set all these values: accel, jerk, maxv, max_accel and for all 4 axes. I think you set some of them too high. You can't turn these off on the printer. They are mandatory or the printer won't function at all. It won't move. Let me summarize your question in my own way: "When I try to run gcodes slowly with 100ms or more between them, they work fine. When I blast them out to the printer full speed, the Z axis doesn't move" Sounds to me like an issue with jerk/accel settings. Also note that there is a bug in cura for some machines where it sets the speed too fast. Look for F values set to the speed of light (that's the cura default believe it or not if not specified in the machine settings) in the gcode. Also maybe you have too few steps/mm for the Z axis such that it won't move less than 0.2mm at a time. Wild guess.

You don't need to keep PLA dry but this will help a lot with many other filaments. Printing clear is tricky if you want it very clear. It's possible. One trick is to line up the infill with the sides (rotate infill by another 45 degrees). Also print solid infill. Also layer height matters and flow% and temperature (some clear materials get foggy if temp is wrong). eSun sells 2.85mm filament as well. Every seller that sells one size, sells the other size.

There was a known bug in Marlin about 10 years ago that is probably fixed in your version but possibly not.

It has to be something to do with the path planner and jerk and acceleration. When you do an E and/or X and/or Y move followed by a Z move that is a right-angle turn (in 4 dimensions - E axis is 4th dimension). 1) What is the last movement before the Z move? E axis? XY axis? 2) What is your vmax,jerk,accel settings for the last axis before the Z move and for the Z axis? As a quick check I would cut all the values for jerk,accel,max accel, vmax in half for the 2 axes involved (Z and the axis before). Safe values would be 5 for XY jerk, 1000 for XY acceleration, 100 for max V And cut those by 5X for Z axis. These are VERY conservative.