gr5

First - to answer your question - I strongly doubt such a feature exists. You can easily add brim in CAD so it's not really a critical feature. No one in this day and age should be using raft. Raft was used back in the dark ages of 3d printing. Are you having problems where parts aren't sticking to the print bed? If so please watch this video - yes it's long but I tried to pack it with useful information:

@ahoeben? Why is ahoeben white? I'll have to report this to forum admin...

Your flow is at 45.8% which is about half the normal flow. So having gaps between the walls as big as the walls makes perfect sense. If you want to increase flow try 110%, not 45.8%.

The UMO upgrade kit includes a 24V power supply (UMO uses 19V) and it includes a circuit that converts 24V to 19V for the "old" UMO board so the UMO board still runs on 19V but the small circuit that comes with the kit provides power for the new heated bed and also converts the pt100 sensor (part of the heated bed) signal to a voltage that the "old" UMO board can read. Basically the upgrade kit has everything you need. It does not modify the print head itself at all. As arjan says, you can also shove UM2 parts onto a UMO. The "UM2+" upgrade above is a different kit meant for upgrading UM2 to UM2+ but you could use it and a few hacks (and you'd have to buy the white UM2 PCB). You'd also have to buy a 24V power supply. Converting a UMO to a UM2 is an engineering challenge but certainly can be done.

The most important upgrade is the heated bed. Not just because it is heated but because the whole mechanical design is much better. There is a kit to upgrade the heated bed. Look around - someone might still be selling it somewhere.

There are 3 settings that affect gradual infill. We need to know what you set all three to. Please read this post - CLICK ON MY ICON JUST BELOW TO GET MY REPLY - DON'T CLICK ON THE ENTIRE TOPIC (you'll get that anyway but it will jump to my post).

Usually if you just print slower, those will go away. So try 25 or 30mm/sec instead of 60mm/sec. Another thing to try is to do outer wall first. In Cura it's called "outer before inner walls".

Well 20 divided by 0.1 is 200. So something is wrong with one of your numbers. Anyway you should know that typically the bottom layer is about 3 times thicker so having 2 slices fewer than expected sounds perfect. Look for "initial layer height" or something like that.

That tension setting screw looks quite wrong. I think it should be wholy inside the feeder. The hole in the top of the feeder is to let the screwdriver down into it to access the tension screw. Does that make sense? you can probably google something like "feeder assembly" and specify fbrc8.com or ultimaker.com like this: feeder assembly site:fbrc8.com

In cura go to PREPARE mode (near the top of the screen - a bit left of center). Then on the next row down to the left you should see your printer. Click that and select "manage printers" button. Now make sure your printer is selected and select "machine settings". Now you can edit things about your printer. In particular bottom left area should have "g code flavor".

If a smaller nozzle brings the layer back then the problem is that the walls are too thin. Period. Normally the wall needs to be double the line width setting. You can get away with thinner than this if you check the "print thin walls" option in cura. Did you try that? You still are limited with how thin you can go versus nozzle size. You can thicken your thin walls in cad or you can use "horizontal expansion" to make everything thicker or you can use a smaller nozzle. A 0.4mm nozzle usually prints reasonably well down to about 0.3mm line width.

It looks like your glass is not flat. Ultimaker uses tempered glass and the process of how it is made tends to give you glass that is not as flat as would be nice. It would be nice if the glass was flat within 0.05mm but that's hard to do. It looks like your glass is out by about 0.1mm (high in the thin areas). The most common error for tempered glass is "high in the middle". Kind of like a mountain. Or sometimes a ridge. However: 1) This looks fine - if you had let the part keep going you would have gotten a fine looking print (pretty sure) and the bottom would have been flat within about 0.1mm (pretty sure). Which is quite flat. The downside is that your part will stick LIKE CRAZY in those areas where it's so thin on that bottom layer. Extra squish means it will stick badly to the glass and you may have a little extra trouble getting it off the bed on that side of the print. But probably not enough to be a problem. 2) Yes the "active leveling" is supposed to do multiple point leveling (I thought?) but I guess not quite enough points. I would check with a metal straight edge to see how flat your glass actually is (it's possible something under the glass - say a grain of sand is bending it up in that spot. It's easy to bend the glass by a few tenths of a millimeter. If the glass seems perfectly flat (straight edge doesn't rock) then maybe you are right and it is the active leveling. Active leveling works better if the spring in the bed is weaker than the spring in the core so you could loosen the 3 leveling screws a lot which will reduce that spring force and might make the active leveling work better. If I'm right and it's the glass you could ask your reseller for a replacement. Most likely you can get a free one if you can convince them it's the glass. But I think this piece of glass, although it may be worse than average, it still looks like it's within acceptable tolerance.

So G28 has many different syntaxes. Typically: G28 By itself homes X,Y,Z axes. Usually you can specify which axis and even say something about calibration: G28 X0 Y0 Above would typically only calibrate X and Y axes. The "0" does nothing on most firmwares but on some tells the printer something about some offest I think. But there are many other syntaxes. So ask around to people who have the same printer as yourself - maybe your printer type has a forum just like Ultimaker does. Ask there.

You need to calibrate the lift switch. Go to the maintenance menu and run the lift switch calibration procedure. It takes about 30 seconds to do this procedure. Very simple. UM has a document to describe it but really you don't need to read it: https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360009256439/User-manual-Ultimaker-S3-S5-v2.4.pdf Here's documentation for S5 - very similar: https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011545039-How-to-calibrate-the-Lift-switch-on-the-Ultimaker-S5

Just set the line width to 0.1mm. Well - all the line widths. But that's all you have to do. Cura doesn't really have a nozzle width parameter (it does but it doesn't do anything other then set the line widths and it's hidden). It's called "line width".

I've heard worse noises but not this particular noise. I'm pretty sure it will print just fine but I assume it's bothering the nearby humans?

CAUSES FOR UNDEREXTRUSION UM2 AND HOW TO TEST FOR THEM AND REMEDY THEM One can quickly check the feeder (it takes seconds) so I would always do that first. The feeder on UM2+ and UM2 can push with 10 pounds (5kg) force easily so first thing is to lift that lever (if um2+, if um2 regular do move material) and insert filament so it is only part way into the bowden (e.g. half way). Then move the filament with "move material" command in menu so the feeder is energized and then pull down on the filament under the feeder. You should be able to pull with 5 to 10 pounds force without it slipping. Then have it move the material up while you pull down. 5 pounds force (2kg) is enough to make decent prints at moderate speeds listed below but you need 10 pounds (5kg) to print fast (e.g. 0.2mm layers and 60mm/sec) As far as underextrusion causes - there's just so damn many. none of the issues seem to cause more than 20% of problems so you need to know the top 5 issues to cover 75% of the possibilities and 1/4 people still won't have the right issue. Some of the top issues: 1) Print slower and hotter! Here are top recommended speeds for .2mm layers (twice as fast for .1mm layers) and .4mm nozzle: 20mm/sec at 200C 30mm/sec at 210C 40mm/sec at 225C 50mm/sec at 240C The printer can do double these speeds but with huge difficulty and usually with a loss in part quality due to underextrusion. Different colors print best at quite different temperatures and due to imperfect temp sensors, some printers print 10C cool so use these values as an initial starting guideline and if you are still underextruding try raising the temp. But don't go over 240C with PLA. 2) Shell width confusion. Shell width must be a multiple of nozzle size (in cura 15.X. In cura 2.X it doesn't matter as much but still makes a difference). For example if nozzle size is .4mm and shell width is 1mm cura will make the printer do 2 passes with .5mm line width which is possible but requires you to slow down much more to make a .5mm line out of a .4mm nozzle. If you really want this then set nozzle size to .5mm so it's clear what you are asking Cura to do for you. 3) Isolator - this is most common if you've printed extra hot (>240C) for a few hours or regular temps (220C) for 500 hours. It gets soft and compresses the filament under pressure. It's the white part touching the heater block. It's very hard to test when not under full pressure (spring and bowden) so sometimes it's best to just replace it. Also if you notice parts of it are very soft (the blacker end where it touches higher heat) then it's too old and needs replacing. 4) Curved filament at end of spool - if you are past half way on spool, try a fresh spool as a test. 5) curved angle feeding into feeder - put the filament on the floor -makes a MASSIVE difference. 6) UM2 only: Head too tight? Bizarrely MANY people loosen the 4 screws on the head by just a bit maybe 1/2 mm and suddenly they can print just fine! Has to do with pressure on the white teflon isolator. 6b) UM2 only: Bowden pushing too hard - for the same reason you don't want the bowden pushing too hard on the isolator. 6c) Um2 only: Spring pushing too hard. Although you want a gap you want as small as possible a gap between teflon isolator and steel isolator nut such that the spring is compressed as little as possible. 7) clogged nozzle - the number one problem of course - even if it seems clear. There can be build up on the inside of the nozzle that only burning with a flame can turn to ash and remove. Sometimes a grain of sand gets in there but that's more obvious (it just won't print). Atomic method (cold pull) helps but occasionally you need to remove the entire heater block/nozzle assembly and use flame. I found soaking with acetone does not help with caramelized pla. Even overnight. Maybe it works on ABS though. Simpler cold pull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u07m3HTNyEg 😎 Temp Sensor bad - even the good ones vary by +/- 5C and bad ones can be any amount off - they usually read high and a working sensor can (rarely) fail high slowly over time. Meaning the sensor thinks you are at 220C but actually you are at 170C. At 170C the plastic is so viscous it can barely get out of the nozzle. You can verify your temp sensor using this simple video at youtube - on you tube search for this: mrZbX-SfftU 9) feeder spring issues - too tight, too loose. On the black UM2 feeder you want the tension such that you can clearly see the diamond pattern biting into the filament. You want to see at least 2 columns of diamonds. 4 columns is too much. On the white UM2 plus and UM3 feeders you usually want the tension set in the center. 10) Other feeder issues, one of the nuts holding UM2 and UM3 together often interferes with the feeder motor tilting it enough so that it still works but not very well. Other things that tilt the feeder motor, sleeve misaligned so it doesn't get a good grip. Gunk clogging the mechanism in there. 11) Filament diameter too big - 3mm is too much. 3mm filament is usually 2.85mm nominal or sometimes 2.9mm +/- .05. But some manufacturers (especially in china) make true 3.0mm filament with a tolerance of .1mm which is useless in an Ultimaker. It will print for a few meters and then clog so tight in the bowden you will have to remove the bowden from both ends to get the filament out. Throw that filament in the trash! It will save you weeks of pain 11b) Something wedged in with the filament. I was setting up 5 printers at once and ran filament change on all of them. One was slowly moving the filament through the tube and was almost to the head when I pushed the button and it sped up and ground the filament badly. I didn't think it was a problem and went ahead and printed something but there was a ground up spot followed by a flap of filament that got jammed in the bowden tube. Having the "plus" upgrade or using the IRobertI feeder helps you feel this with your hand by sliding the filament through the bowden a bit to see if it is stuck. 12) Hot weather. If air is above 30C or even possibly 25C, the air temperature combined with the extruder temperature can soften the filament inside the feeder such that it is getting squeezed flat as it passes through the feeder - this is obvious as you can see the problem in the bowden. The fix is to add a desk fan blowing on the back of the printer. Not an issue on the UM3 or UM2 "plus" series. 13) Crimped bowden. At least one person had an issue where the bowden was crimped a bit too much at the feeder end although the printer worked fine when new it eventually got worse and had underextrusion on random layers. it's easy to pull the bowden out of the feeder end and examine it. 14) Worn Bowden. After a lot of printing (or a little printing with abrasive filaments) the bowden resistance can be significant. It's easy to test by removing it completely from the machine and inserting some filament through it while one person holds it in the U shape. Preferably i nsert filament that has the pattern from the feeder. 15) Small nozzle. Rumor has it some of the .4mm nozzles are closer to .35mm. Not sure if this is actually true. I'm a bit skeptical but try a .6mm nozzle maybe. 16) CF filament. The knurled sleeve in the extruder can get ground down smooth - particularly from carbon fill. 4 spools of CF will destroy not just nozzles but the knurled sleeve also. Look at it visually where the filament touches the "pyramids". Make sure the pyramids are sharp. 17) Hot feeder driver. I've seen a more recent problem in the forums (>=2015) where people's stepper drivers get too hot - this is mostly a problem with the Z axis but also with the feeder. The high temps means the driver appears to shut down for a well under a second - maybe there is a temp sensor built into the driver chip? The solution from Ultimaker is that they lowered all the currents to their stepper drivers in the newer firmware. Another solution is to remove the cover and use desk fan to get a tiny bit of air movement under there. TinkerMarlin lets you set the currents from the menu system or you can send a gcode to lower the current. Ultimaker lowered the default currents in July of 2015 from 1300ma to 1200ma for X,Y,Z but left extruder at 1250. Other people (I think the support team of a major reseller but I forget) recommend X,Y,Z go down to 1000mA. M907 E1250 Above sets the extruder max current to the default - 1250mA. So try 900mA. This will only change until next power cycle so if you like your new value and want to save it use M500. You can just put these into an otherwise empty gcode file and "print" this and it will change. Or get tinkergnome marlin! You will wonder how you lived without it: https://github.com/TinkerGnome/Ultimaker2Marlin/releases M907 E900 M500 18) third fan broken. This tends to cause complete non-extrusion part way through a print. In the rear of the head for UM2 and the front of the head for UM3. Without this fan several things can go wrong. It can take a while as usually you also need several retractions to carry the heat upwards. There are a few failure mechanisms and I don't understand them all. One of them is probably that the molten PLA spreads out above the teflon and sticks to the metal in a core or fills the gap at the base of the bowden in UM2. Later it cools enough to keep the filament from moving up or down. 19) Spiralize/vase mode. This is a rarely used feature of Cura but you might have left it on by accident? In this mode the wall of your part is printed in a single pass. So if you have a .4mm nozzle and the wall is .8mm thick it will try to over extrude by 2X. This is difficult to do and may instead lead to underextrusion. 20) non-standard or bent fan shroud. Sometimes people print some fan shroud off of thingiverse or youmagine out of PLA or ABS. Some of these are great but most of them are crap. One needs to do good air flow modeling. Also if it's PLA it will slump and direct air differently. Air directed at the block or nozzle can cause severe underextrusion and also sometimes HEATER ERROR. Put the original shroud back on or just turn off the fan to prove that the fan is the problem. 21) Firmware settings - for example UM2+ firmware on UM2 or vice versa will cause 2X over extrusion or 2X underextrusion. Downgrading or changing firmware can mess up steps/mm and other settings - so if you updated firmware and then problems started then do a "reset to factory settigns" which corrects all the steps/mm values. 22) too many retractions (this causes complete failure) - if you have too many retractions on the same piece of filament you can grind it to dust. 10 is usually safe. 20 is in the danger zone. 50 should guarantee failure. You can tell cura to limit retractions to 10 per a given spot of filament. Do this by setting "maximum retration count" to 10 and "minimum extrusion distance" to your retraction distance (4.5mm for UM2 and 6.5 for UM3 and 8mm for S5). 23) Brittle filament. Espciallty with older PLA but even brand new pla can do this. If you unspool some (for example if it's in the bowden) for many hours (e.g. 10 hours) it can get extremely brittle and it can snap off into multiple pieces in the bowden. It's not obvious if you don't look for this. Then it starts printing just fine and at some point one of those pieces reaches the print head and gets hung up somewhere and the printer suddenly stops extruding for now apparent reason. This usually happens within the first meter of filament - once you get to printing the filament that was recently on the spool it should be fine from then on. 24) The "plus" feeder can have an issue where the filament doesn't sit properly for one print and it permanently damages the arm inside the feeder as shown by this photo - the hole is ground down asymetrically: http://gr5.org/plus_feeder_issue.jpg 25) Other feeder issues. You can test the feeder by putting the filament only part way down the bowden and with the feeder electrically turned on (or moving) pull very hard on the filament until it slips. You should be able to pull with about 5kg or 10 pounds of force before it slips. 4kg is acceptable. 2kg is a problem. If the stepper motor isn't engaged you can try going into the move menu. After a minute or so power is removed again from the feeder stepper. 26) Meduza - some people who install the Meduza feeder upgrade (2x the pushing power versus standard black UM2 feeder) make the belt so tight that the printer starts underextruding - typically as the circuitry heats up the extruder driver has less and less power and extrusion gets slowly worse over the course of 10 minutes or so.

Don't worry too much about the fumes. I recently boiled a large pot of water and the pot was teflon coated. After the water was gone we didn't notice and burned the hell out of that pot. Gas stove on highest setting. It stunk up the whole house but no one got sick or anything.

Steppers do not get old. It's not the stepper. With 4kg of force you can do about max 10mm^3/sec through a 0.4mm nozzle. Bondtech I believe claims 18mm^3/sec with a 0.4mm nozzle. Nozzles twice as large can pass about 4X material. Nozzles 1.4X can pass about 2X material. To calculate volume (I reported volumetric speeds - not linear), multiply line width (0.4 for 0.4 nozzle) by layer height by print speed. for example 0.4mm nozzle with 0.3mm layer height with 40mm/sec print speed gives you (40 X 0.4 X 0.3) - I'll let you enter the numbers in a calculator for practice.

I lost track of your issue - I just skimmed everything. Did you check the mesh? This sounds like mesh issues. If you have a tiny hole in your mesh - smaller than the layer height - then when it slices it might miss the hole and the walls are fine. But then if you change layer height a tiny bit, one of the layers might pass through the layer with the hole and now there is a massive section of the layer missing (or the entire layer). There are basically only 2 possibilities - your walls are too thin (set line width smaller to test for this) or your mesh has errors. Here's how to check your mesh: cura has a mesh tester and repair plugin - it detects all problems but doesn't fix them all: 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 choose "fix model normals" and "fix simple holes" to see if those help. netfabb free repair service is here (you have to create a free account first): https://service.netfabb.com/login.php Here's another service - drag and drop mesh repair service: https://3d-print.jomatik.de/en/index.php

It could be temperature or lack of oiling but most likely some new feature in cura is running up against all of your printers. There are a tens of thousands of non-ultimaker printers using the latest Cura (for example Creality printers) without this issue. But there are 400 parameters. If you go through them all I think you can pick out the 20 or 30 ones that could cause your issue. You probably know this but did you know there are about 7 different printing speeds in cura? You have to be aware of all of them. I listed a few candidate settings like infill pattern. There's also one - something about resolution - where Cura throws away some line segments if they are too small to matter. Is it possible that you are printing the same model on all your printers due to covid19 assistance? Like I said earlier, some models have too many sudden angle changes in very short distances.

When you double click on a zip file in newer versions of windows, it looks like you are opening a folder (but it's a little different - it's a zip archive). You can then double click on files there similar to a folder and they usually open in the correct application or you can drag and drop them onto programs and they *usually* open in that application properly: the operating system automatically unzips the file into the temporary folder and then passes that filename to the application. If you later go to the app (say microsoft word) and try to reopen recent files that were in a zip archive, it won't work because the unzipped file was in the temporary folder and has since been deleted. A LOT of applications don't deal with this very well (opening temporary files that were unzipped by the operating system and not by the user). I don't know why. I guess Cura is one of these programs. Please realize that Cura runs on 3 different operating systems with the same code. That's difficult to do and each operating system has it's own quirks. Anyway the solution is to drag the file out of the zip archive onto your desktop or into some folder and then drag *that* file to cura.

thingiverse usually downloads as a zip file. You have to remove the STL file you want from the zip file first. Could that be the problem?

This is caused because the printer is accelerating an axis at a higher rate than the printer can achieve. That is the guaranteed truth. HARDWARE This happens on several of your printers but 90% of the time the printer needs oiling (too much friction) or belt tightening (pulleys slip on shaft) or raising the current to the stepper (to get more torque) or lowering the torque to the motor (drivers overheat and shut off for 1ms). I have seen all 4 of these issues. Many instances of all 4 on my own printers and other printers. But for it to happen on all 4 printers seems unlikely unless none have been oiled recently or temperatures in your printing room have increased at the same time as probelsm started. FIRMWARE It should be impossible for Cura to send a movement that exceeds the printer's ability. Marlin lets you set max jerk and max acceleration and someone at the factory who designed your printers SCREWED UP. After assembling 100 printers they should run them at maximum speeds taking sharp corners (think printing the points on a star) and make sure the printer never skips and if it does they should lower max jerk and max acceleration. So if the problem is not hardware then it is firmware. SLICER It's easy to blame the slicer because a different slicer won't show off the problem. And because you can indeed fix the problem with slicer settings. Basically there is one movement somewhere at one particular speed or speed change that is causing this. If you insist on only playing with the slicer (because it's well, easier than fixing the damn firmware), then here are some settings you might play with: coasting - this changes the extruder speed to zero suddenly and even though the issue is not with the extruder, it can mess up the planner. I wouldn't be surprised if turning this on fixes the problem (with coasting the printer slows down more before the coast) or turning this off fixes the problem (firmware realizes it needs to slow down sooner for a corner). Infill pattern (some patterns have sharper corners) Speeds! The higher the speed, the more likely it's going to shift. Short line segments - not a slicer setting exactly but the code in Marlin is pretty crappy. If you get too many small angle changes in a very short segment (say change angle by 45 degrees for 0.1mm and then again by another 45 and then by a third 45 all separated by 0.1mm) - then Marlin might think it's fine to run through the corner at full speed as each change in angle is small but in reality they add up to a big angle change in a very short (1ms) time. Marlin is too stupid to notice this. This is particularly a problem with prints like "yoda" where you have complicated, rough, surface with tiny triangles in the CAD model. Look: the reason it always happens at the same spot is that there is some high speed sudden movement at that spot. It might look like an ordinary corner to you but maybe there is a speed change or coasting move or some other sudden shift that is just enough to cause a layer shift (likely an infill pattern). I've seen this many times - it prints almost everything fine and ALWAYS does a layer shift at the same spot. Yes it can be fixed in the slicer but it's not the slicer's fault. It's the crappy firmware. Try printing slower. Marlin is buggy. I've been through the code many times. It's a hack.

Regarding the 240C - I'm guessing there is some teflon in the print head of your printer. Teflon degrades faster at 240C (say 20 hours of printing) versus 210C (say 200 hours). But this is a inexpensive part that you should be replacing regularly anyway.