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printrun/pronterface/prontrface download: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/

The units are not specified in STL files. It's not part of the STL specification unfortunately. Cura expects everything in mm. When you save from autocad to STL there are lots of options and one of them is to choose the units. Choose mm. It should remember your units for next time (I assume - I don't use autocad). There are posts about this somewhere on this forum by people who know autocad better than me - I read those posts but many months ago.

Some models have too many triangles in the STL file and there could be for example 300 line segments for the printer to print all within a space smaller than 1mm. This makes the printer slow way down for a few seconds and then speeds up again. So first look at the print in layer view and move the horizontal slider to one of the slow spots and see how many moves it's trying to do there. Is it just one or two or is it dozens? Is there a retraction there? Is it a non-extruding move? Look at it carefully in slice view to get hints about what the problem is.

Another thing to try - raise the bed temp. Default nylon print temp is 70C. I prefer 80C. 100C works just fine for Nylon. Having a higher air temp in the printer means the nozzle doesn't have to work quite so hard. Enclosing the printer helps a lot also. don't enclose the top for PLA, but enclosing it for Nylon helps a lot. I just use a large cardboard box that is big enough that it extends over the rear of the printer for the bowdens to come in. There is a huge hole back there for air to leak out but it still increases the air temperature a lot inside the printer.

Usually this is a loose cable but it might be other things. First check the silicone seal at the base of the print head. How worn out is it? Is it even installed? When two side fans in the print head come on, if the silicone seal isn't working well then that cools the nozzle too much - air gets inside the print head and the heater in the core can't keep up. Especially with higher temp materials. Then on the print head it's extremely easy to check the cable - remove the rear two screws in the print head - it looks like the print head will fall apart but really all that happens is now the rear access door - on top of the print head - can come off. Look inside. Put the print head in a front corner. Push down on the connector with a tool (maybe a pencil eraser?). Did it move down? If so wrap some tape around the cable for better strain relief. The tape will act as a shim and keep this issue from happening again.

Oh! I'm getting old. I forgot about the M42 command. That's good news as then you probably don't need to build your own firmware.

All UM3 printers have SD card slots. Do you have a chinese clone? Look at the photos in the link above again. Did you remove the bottom cover? Did you remove the micro-USB cable? Please show photographs of the red circuit board in the same area. Unfortunately, finding the SD card is the easy part. formatting the SD card with the right software and transferring the boot image in raw binary format (not into a FAT partition for example) is the harder part. The only other option is to ship this back to your reseller and they will do the same thing. The problem is that these printers are so often damaged with shipping that I don't recommend that.

Oh. Outdoor performance. 🙂 Well these are PLA and I have other outdoor PLA. I have a knob that gets a few hours of sun each day for the past 5 years and gets rained on (no protection from rain). It looks like the day I printed it. It's Ultimaker gray PLA. The postal number of my house (as in 15 Main street - the "15" part) is also printed in PLA then primed then painted black. That is a few years old but gets no sunlight and is protected from rain. Mostly. That still looks new. I'll report back in a few year (or sooner if the diverters start to droop as I suspect they might).

Cura outputs gcode. Not sure how you are converting. On the bottom right is the button to slice it, then the same button can be used to output the gcode.

Well it's really hard to tell. One issue is that the PLA doesn't seem to be cooling down enough when you get to the 3 "fins". So slice two of these parts so that it can do a layer on one part and then go do the other part while the first part is cooling a bit. This will make it easier to see what the other issues are. Is the fan working for this part? You want the fan blowing on the part and not the nozzle. Is it a good breeze? Feel the breeze with your fingers. Many people design fan shrouds badly. I'm thinking you might have too much back pressure for the fans to work and need to open up your shroud. Or maybe the nozzle cools too much when the fans come on. So you have zero retractions until you get to the 3 fins. So the second issue to tackle are retraction issues. What is the retraction amount and the retraction speed? Try at 1/10 current speed just to see if it's a speed issue. when building a cusom printer you need to examine all the settings (jerk, acceleration, max velocity) and find out where the steppers can't go any faster. This includes the extruder. Maybe when it retracts it's fine but when it tries to un-retract if fails and you get underextrusion. Feel the filament while it does the retraction. Does it feel like it retracted the right amount? Look over all the retraction settings in cura. Watch the printer print very carefully. Use reading glasses. Slow the printer down to see if it gets better. Try to see what's different when it "works" and when it doesn't.

not me. Here's what you do: 1) Get the UMO version to build successfully and install and mostly work. I don't mean use the builder, I mean build it yourself using arduino compiler. 2) Create your own fork of Marlin on github. 3) Make your changes or make the minimum changes until you get stuck. Maybe that means simply assigning a few pins. 4) At that point contact me and also @tinkergnome for advice and link to your repository so we can see what you did so far. git makes it easy for anyone to see your changes. Until you can build your own Marlin, you will be considered too "hopeless" to be worth helping. But if you get that far then the changes you need are pretty easy.

Which firmware builder? This one:? https://bultimaker.bulles.eu/ Can you just check the "dual extrusion" box? If you need something different then you need to write your own code to decide when to turn the signals on and off. Which means you need to build from scratch. more details here: ============== source code is on github in several places. UMO was built from the erik zalm version https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin/ Yes, no commits since 2015 - but that's exactly what you want as that's the latest UMO firmware. There are instructions that come with the erik zalm download in the "README.md" text file. Basically you download and install arduino ide: http://arduino.cc/en/main/software Then copy the sanguino software as explained in README file. Open Marlin.ino file in Arduino IDE by double clicking it (not pde file as stated in README - I think that's old). Select board as "Mega 2560" as explained in README file. Go to "file" "preferences" and select "verbose output" so you can find your hex file. Then build it by clicking the check box in the upper left corner. At the bottom you will see it compiling Marlin. At the end of this it says where the hex file is. If you are currently connected to your UM through USB you can just click "file" "upload" and you are done! But you should locate that hex file and save it somewhere along with the Configuration.h file used to create it so you can recreate the same version with maybe one change. Also you can upload the hex file using Cura in expert menu. The actual ultimaker firmware is built with make file and doing it that way generates a smaller more compact firmware but doing it through the IDE works fine. I've done it many times. Alternatively you can build Marlin with somewhat more detailed step by step instructions the command line way (which I don't prefer): http://www.extrudable.me/2013/05/03/building-marlin-from-scratch/

Dirty Z screws are the usual cause of this phenomenon because it causes the bed to move "not quite enough" or "slightly too much" and this causes under or over extrusion which makes layers stick out or in. Also bad PID values can cause this if the temperature is fluctuating by quite a bit. By like at least 5 degrees from max to min temperature. Watch the temp while it prints. It may be that the temperature algorithm or the PID values changed on the latest Marlin upgrade.

It sounds like it's bricked. Please, do you know what version it is? I think it might show the version briefly on power up. You probably have the "stepping stone" version which was never meant to be used to print but meant to be used to upgrade to the next version. That version has this bug you describe. But if this is the absolute latest version that came out a few days ago, then it would be good to know this. How to unbrick:

I've also had good luck with any of the other versions of tinkerMarlin if I turn off geek mode.

It should be in "advanced" "preferences" "motion settings". Last item in there. I'm not sure if 16.01 has the invert axes, sorry.

I recommend 16.01 even though, yes, it's from 2016. Marlin for UM2 really hasn't changed much since the UM3 came out so 2016 is actually a quite good version. You can always switch again. A warning about moving *backwards* in versions - always do a factory reset after installing.

I glanced at the thingiverse link but there are dozens of stl files there and I'm not sure which one is fuselage3 and sorry but I'm just 1% too lazy to download it and open it into cura. Could you please post 2 photos - one of the part in prepare mode and one in preview mode so we can see what you mean? It's great that you posted the STL for people who want to experiment but please show the issue that you are talking about visually.

Made these 2 custom downspout diverters. Each one is a different angle. Used openScad to design. S5 to print. zero support was needed. Oh - also the brown barrel has a white hose clamp that I modeled in DSM and printed with Nylon filament.

The top looks fine. Do you mean you have a problem with the side of the print? You need to explain the problem better. By the way you can't print this part in this orientation without support - those 2 overhangs will try to print over air and the filament will just droop down. Did you create this model? Or did you download it? If you want to preserve those granite-like shapes and you want them on both sides then this will be a difficult print. If you want the side to be perfectly smooth then you can put the side you want to be smooth down and move the print downwards into the bed in cura. If you want all sides to be smooth then you need to get a better CAD model.

So is this tinkerMarlin that is doing this? Or Ultimaker Marlin? This exact problem has been reported quite a bit for tinker Marlin but I"m not too surprised if it's in regular marlin also. I recommend you go to tinkerMarlin version 16.01 and/or if you have tinkerMarlin (any version) it seems to crash less if you turn off "geek mode". https://github.com/TinkerGnome/Ultimaker2Marlin/releases/ Scroll to the bottom and hit "next" to find 16.01. Then click "assets". 16.01 with geek mode off seems to work really well. Even with geek mode on it seems to crash less than all the newer versions. There's a long discussion on this topic on github in tinkerMarlin in "issues".

Check that your side fans are both working and on 100%. When it finishes printing the roof of the larger part it suddenly is printing layers much faster on that smaller part and it doesn't have as much time to cool down between layers. So it's still pretty hot. One fix is to print two or 4 of the smaller parts at the same time so that each one cools while the other's print.

Does it squeak if you push it manually? If so then maybe you need to add some grease? if not then I'd run the cal procedure for that lifting mechanism.

F50 is 50mm per *minute*. Not second. So that's very slow. That's slower than 1mm per second. Yes that vibration/noise is EXACTLY the same issue as with zebra stripes. There are two great solutions. One is to short circuit a jumper on the UM2 board. There is discussion of this on this forum. The other solution is to buy a TL-Smoother. Read torgeir's posts and any posts mentioning tl-smoother or triangle labs.

But he wants 2 separate gcode files so can only have one loaded into cura at a time.