gr5

I just looked at some of the design files for this - really good work. Quite impressive. Instructions for the feeder are fantastic. There are some clever innovations in this. I love that you included a bom with links to where to get the parts. This just seems very thorough. I see also that you included the firmware both compiled and git source code (so one can see the changes you had to make). Very impressive.

Yeah, replace the Z parts. I've never done it but you can replace the Z screw with a misumi bearing. I don't know the part number. Are you in USA? Getting a super high quality, extra expensive Z nut costs only maybe $5 I think and it's much better quality than the default bearing that comes with UM printers I believe. That's what people say who've replaced their Z bearing. If you google this list and misumi: site:ultimaker.com misumi bearing or site:ultimaker.com misumi nut Like that - you can find quickly a part number (trust any post by neotko - he has replaced these items and is a 3d printing genius). Looks like maybe LHFSW12? That's just looking at google search results - I didn't click on the forum topic. Oh - maybe that's the bearing and you need the Z nut instead which leads us to: There's also the Z rods and bearings. Those Z bearings have a channel with lots of ball bearings in them. When you had the z screw out it would have been good to slide the bed up and down and feel the resistance - see if there are bad spots. Sometimes the two Z rods are not parallel or some other strange thing. Usually the problems are with the z screw being dirty but it's quite possible it came from sticky bearings. It's also possible (less likely but it happens) that you are having intermittent underextrusion. This seems likely if it happens only on one layer and on the entire layer because it should happen more throughout and sometimes on only half the layer. But I've seen what looks like Z issues solved by simply cutting the speed in half and later diagnosing some feeder problem or a bad core nozzle, etc. More pictures for us are helpful to see if it's always the same spot and if it's entire layers or just the outer shell ocasionally and so on.

But are any of those a problem for your prusa? Maybe there is a slicer setting e.g. "uncheck to leave heaters on at end of print".

1) Did you look at this portion of the print in layer view to see if it switches between clockwise and counterclockwise? 2) Check for play. Push on the nozzle (gently) towards left, right, front, back. It should not move. Push and twist the head until it starts moving. It should not move before the steppers start to move. If it does - this is called "backlash" or "play". There I gave you two things to do - please report back. 3) Maybe more photos of the issue above would help as well. It looks like what you care about is only on the left side of the hole - is this true? Can you photograph from a few more angles and look at the photos to see if the photos are showing the issue well?

I don't remember seeing that before. It looks like you have something turned on that I don't. Do you have "infill wipe" turned on? Or anything with "wipe" in the name? There's a search box just above all the settings.

On the s5 start in the bottom menu thing (the bottom of the left 3 tabs). It's under "frame light". You can dim it while printing. I've done it many times.

not ringing for sure. Is this wall 100% perfectly vertically and horizontally lined up? Or is it tilted (for example wall leans inward or outward. If the model leans both ways this *could* be zebra stripes but I really really don't think so. The wall would have to have a very strange wavy lean to it to get this pattern. It could be infill pattern showing through but if soo it's a strange infill pattern (check that in layer view - see if the infill pattern touches the walls in this strange diagonal pattern). Instead I think it's just one of those weird oscillations where the head comes by and when it's thicker the liquid filament sticks and more is pulled out over the previous bump but in the direction of travel so it's slanted. It's kind of a vibration in the feeder combined with vibrations in the liquid pla in the head. The best fix for this kind of thing is usually to lower the temperature. You could play 2ith 3 different temps 1/3 of the way through the print and keep notes and see what happens. I would go into TUNE menu and lower by 10C 1/3 into the print and if that makes it worse go +10C or if it's the same or better maybe -20C or -15C at the 2/3 point of the print. or try MANY temperatures and use a sharpie to mark the layer where you changed temperature.

If you look at this area in cura layer view you can learn a lot. Cura slices your part and each layer has "islands". That hole adds an extra island. Above and below the hole it's probably printing say left to right but just left of the hole it's reversing directions (or the other way around but either way it is probably going the other direction to the left of the hole - you can check in layer view and use the horizontal scroll to see for sure). So that bulge to the left of the hole is probably related to changing directions and that implies to me you have a loose belt in the Y direction (assuming Y direction is through that hole). How you could possibly get a loose belt on a UM3 is a mystery to me because normally all the belts have hidden tensioners inside the blocks. But I'd check the Y belts. If you put the head in a corner (important) and pluck them and check the pitch with a guitar tuner they should be 80Hz to 130Hz. Anyway - check it out in layer view and see if I was right about the reverse direction. Maybe I'm wrong and that's unrelated. Oh - high friction can also cause this. Put one drop (no more) of light oil (any light mineral oil such as 3 in 1 or sewing machine oil but not WD40 which is not an oil) on all 6 rods up in the gantry and push the head around to spread this.

I don't know much about grease. UM recommends one pea sized drop. I've never added grease except when I clean which is about once per year (and not done as well as I should). But to do a really good job of cleaning it's pretty easy to take the whole thing out of the printer. The screw is basically permanently attached to the stepper so you first have to remove the (larger) cover under the printer (with power off!). That's the hardest step but it's only 2 screws. then unplug the Z stepper. Then remove the 4 screws holding the stepper in place, then pull it straight out the bottom of the printer. Then you can put it on newspaper or something and clean thoroughly with WD40 and toothbrush without making a mess. Me, I'm too lazy and just clean the top part of the screw that's used for small prints as I mostly do small prints, lol.

Like Sander says, 80C is a point to worry. I know someone who was printing PEEK in an ultimaker and he had a custom bed at 160C and the *air* temperature reached 80C and I told him "you are going to destroy your steppers!" but he was lucky enough and didn't destroy the steppers with a 1 hour print. So I think you are safe. Since then he added heat sinks and fans to each stepper but he still prints with 80C air temp (yikes).

Another option ? spray the part with matte spray paint. Use any automotive primer. Then you can give it a coat of matte black. ?

It doesn't think you have a heated bed. Try going into machine settings and I think you can tell it there that you *do* have a heated bed.

Also know that you can use Simplify 3D for UM3. I don't have S3D and don't know much about it but there are people on this list who only use it. If you want more details, just ask on this list.

Oh - I just saw the prusa benchmark. That's completely unfair. The lighting is different. Either it's a matt black filament or you didn't position the light to maximize reflections. I see zero reflections on the benchmark. Remember - these tiny ripples are too small to measure with a micrometer. Too small to feel. The only reason you can see them at all is because the black filament is so shiny that it shows very very tiny changes in slope as either a reflection off a ceiling light or off of the ceiling next to the light and the difference of a tiny change in angle is the difference between black and white. Literally black and white.

Wow. Okay. I could talk for 3 hours about this. I was expecting something more severe. First of all glossy black filament shows up changes in surface angle if you hold it up to the light just right. You have to get the angle perfect to see these surface bumps. However it's extremely easy for a human to do this as we do it all the time. We just naturally are experts at holding something so the light catches it just right to see these specular reflections that show off tiny changes in surface slope. However if you tried to measure them with a micrometer you would have a lot of trouble. So one person's "horrible quality" is another persons "fit's so beautifully - the precision is amazing!". And again, dark glossy colors will show this the most. If you go with a matte filament you will have trouble seeing this or if you go with white or off white. With dark glossy colors you get bright reflections and in between the reflections you have vary dark so you get good contrast. These imperfections are pretty normal for me. I don't mind them. They can be removed but it's not easy. Okay - now to how to fix this (for black glossy). Well I would definitely try to find a filament that is less glossy (like carbon fill) but you can still improve all these. Issue #3, "ringing" is caused because of the tension on the belts and spring factor of the belts combined with the heavy head gives you a particular harmonic ringing frequency. The frequency is worst if you decelerate for half the period of ringing. You can fix it by setting the acceleration and speed such that you get a whole period of ringing. Think of pushing someone on a swing. If you push half the period (when they move away from you) then you can maximize the swinging. If you push equal amounts when they move away and also when they come back, the swing only swings once. If you measure the distance between lines and know the print speed for that wall you can divide speed/spacing to get frequency of ringing. Those look like 1mm and if print speed was 30mm/sec then your ringing is 30Hz. To cancel ringing you want ringing frequency = acceleration / speed. So if outer shell speed is 35mm/sec and ringing is 30Hz you want acceleration to be 1050mm/sec/sec. If you print at 100mm/sec you want acceleration to be 3500mm/s/s. UM3 can handle acceleration up to 5000 no problem. #2 The vertical lines in the last photo are almost certainly infill showing through. If you are only printing vertical walls you can uncheck "infill before walls". Or you can do more shells. 3 shells should hide this nicely usually. 2 shells might be enough. #2 The #2 arrow to "ghost lines" may be infill or it may be just a common oscillation related to extruder, print speed, resonances. If it's resonances, I have found lowering the print temperature helps a lot - right to the point of almost underextruding. You can play with this in the TUNE menu and keep notes such that you can test 10 different temperatures all on one part (say a cube) and use something to mark the part as you print it to know which layer had the change (like whiteout for a black part or a sharpie for a light colored part). If cooling doesn't help try slowing down also. #1 - I'm not sure what this points to. Is this the horizontal line? it could be underextrusion but more likely it's a dirty Z screw where the bed moves down too little on a few layer changes then suddenly moves slightly more on this layer change. Using thicker layers (e.g. .2mm layers) can help with this but best is to also clean the Z screw. A dirty Z screw will create lots of horizontal layer lines like this. Typically always in the same or similar spots. Since your parts don't seem very tall you might just clean the top half of the screw or top 1/3. I use paper towels and a screw driver to get in the cracks. Or you can use q-tips. WD-40 is okay for cleaning only - not for lubricating. I recommend some limited cleaning to see if it gets better. The Z screw is a triple helix so get all 3 grooves. It helps to have one person moving the bed up and down (with power off) while the other keeps something in the groove. In general printing slower and cooler will fix all of these issues but who wants to print everything at 10mm/sec?

@Dkdaigle could you explain in more detail please? Show exactly where it works and doesn't?

Definitely turn off brim for this part. Also I agree that the issue is probably "coasting" and so it may print just fine. Or maybe you need to turn off coasting or tweak it a bit. I have never tried it myself.

Note that the 3rd fan (on UM2 and UM3 and S5) doesn't spin up typically until temperature of the head gets above around 40 to 60C. If it's a UM2 the most common failure for the 3rd fan is in the cable connectors just above the print head. Not the fan itself. It's easy to slide up the black netting and jiggle it until the fan starts spinning and then you can typically fix the connector. If it's a UM3 the most common failure for the 3rd fan is the connector inside on the top of the head. It's very very easy to fix. Remove the very long screws on the rear of the head (just 2 screws) and the rear half of the top plate comes off easily and the rest of the head stays together (don't loosen the front 2 screws, lol). Then you can see the cable and connector and push it back in. If it was loose then add some tape for a shim around the cable so when you put it back together it's held more tightly and won't come loose again.

Maybe? It can bend pretty easily where the green line is pointing. This is even weaker on the Ultimaker cores. I drew the red and blue lines as best I could but it's very hard to tell. The distance between the red and blue lines appears to be about 1mm. This looks like it might be close enough to print just fine. When you do the XY calibration it calibrates the positions of the two nozzles very accurately. However if it's bent too much then the bottom of the nozzle is not flat and "top" layers won't look as good (they'll have grooves/lines a bit worse than a level nozzle). This angle might not be enough to cause quality issues. So it *might* matter. It *might* be crooked. You can probably tell better than me. Only look at the red heat sink to where green arrow points versus from where green arrow points to the tip of the nozzle as that's the only place where you will see an issue. Ignore all the plastic parts and ignore the top steel trumpet part. Those can all be crooked and don't affect the alignment. Also be sure that the core seated properly although I think it's pretty hard to screw it up. The metal "cone" just above the green arrow by maybe 4mm slips into a conical hole in the print head and it just kind of snaps nicely into place. I'm sure you can send it back to carl at 3dsolex and he'll send you a refurbished or new one. He's pretty good about that sort of thing (for people in USA send it to me, not Carl). Or Carl might suggest "bending it back". I don't know. At some point if you bend it too much back and forth the hole inside where green line points will no longer accept 3mm filament. Also it gets weaker each time you bend it (it's steel). I looked at my hardcore in my UM3 just now and it was centered. It would have been better if you took the photo from directly under the nozzle instead of under the rear of the print head. But still it looks off despite that.

If the glass breaks then send it back maybe. Or threaten to. I doubt it will break though. I have been printing on glass since the Um2 came out a few years ago. All 7 of my printers have glass. Haven't had to replace one yet. I've had a few chips come out and had to flip some over. Hopefully your reseller will have some extra by then. Keep bugging your reseller for now or contact a larger reseller in the area. I know two people who - as part of their process - take the glass off as soon as every print is done and put on a fresh glass and start the next print while waiting for the previous print to cool. They have both been able to get spare glass for the S5 but one of them I think got non-ultimaker glass from some 3rd party.

Perhaps @smartavionics can help?

quick answer #1: Big printers are designed to print big things. I hate to say it but ideally you want a small printer for small things and a big printer for big things. I know this is beyond most people's budget. Personally I have an S5 and 3 um2go's and I use the um2go's whenever possible. But if I need support, or I'm printing nylon, or it's something large I will use the S5. Answer #2: If you are printing big things with the S5 you will hopefully be using the AA 0.8 nozzle with 0.4mm layer height mostly. Compare that in cura (choose AA 0.8 profile and set layer height to 0.4). Answer #3: You can almost always tune things and often can cut the print time in half. I don't know the specifics but a boring cube for example could probably benefit a lot from the gradual infill settings. Of course that's true for the lulzbot mini as well.

There are many possible causes. The two most likely where it prints first layer fine but not second layer are: 1) 3rd head fan broken. Is this Um3 or Um2? Either way there is a 3rd fan in the head - there are the side 2 fans but there is a 3rd fan. That must be spinning or you get this exact scenario - stops extruding after a while. 2) printing too fast. The first layer prints slower - at 20mm/sec. Try slowing down the second layer to 20mm/sec to see if that makes a difference. You should be able to print much faster than 20mm/sec but if you can slow it down and it starts printing fine again that's an important piece of information for us here on the forum. You can adjust the speed in the TUNE menu (for both UM2 and UM3).

1) Are you sure the filament makes it into the nozzle? Many times I thought the nozzle was clogged but instead it turned out to be that the filament was getting stuck at one of many places inside the print head (top of white teflon part is most common, bottom of white teflon). I cut the filament to a point (two cuts) everytime I feed filament into my printer. 2) Do you have a needle smaller than 0.25mm? I use accupuncture needles. I push up from below and then leave the needle in while I do a cold pull. 3) Try doing a cold pull on the nozzle alone. Hold the nozzle with pliers (careful - if it gets too hot (>300C) it gets soft and you can destry it with simple pliers). Put a drop of water on the nozzle then put it in a gas flame (gas stove is best, plumbers torch works also). Count the seconds until water boils completely (usually 8 seconds for me) that is temp to get to 100C. Then heat for that many seconds again. Then remove from flame. The nozzle cools much slower than it heats. Now stick pla into the nozzle hard and then hold it in there with small pressure as it cools. After about 1 minute you can pull the filament out. If you pull too early it's okay - grab the very thin string of filament and slowly pull on it and it will cool rapidly and get strong - the string will get thicker and you need to start pulling harder and also faster and you should get every bit of filament out. Inspect the nozzle hole with light. It should be very visible. 4) Consider burning everything out of the nozzle. I haven't done this in a few years but it seemed to help once. Cold pulls work better because it can grab any sand or dust or other particles out of your nozzle.

So I use openSCAD for certain projects and I've learned a few tricks by looking at other people's code. One is that at the top I have a bunch of "booleans" (variables that are 0 or 1) that turn on and off meshes. So for example I had a flashlight with a screw on top and I could "hide" the flashlight to export the top or "hide" the top to export the body of the flashlight. The booleans are used in an "if" statement that encloses an entire mesh. I also have booleans to do cutaway views - I'll have a huge cube() that slices something open to see the inside. This is helpful when tweaking the design on internal structures. I also have lots of variables to set things like hole sizes, part width, height, diameters, etc all at the top so it's easy to find something I want to tweak slightly (e.g. make all the screw holes 0.1mm larger). This way of embedding cura settings in comments is pretty cool. Whenever I slice anything with cura and print it (anything!) I save the project file (file/save as project...). When I reprint the same thing but a newer version or even just the same thing, I have the project file that includes all the settings for that item. Something like this incomplete code snippet. Hmm. Tabs got messed up. // visibility show_outer=1; show_inner=1; cutaway_outer=0; cutaway_outer2=1; if (show_outer) { difference() { union() { // stuff here... } union() { if (cutaway_outer) { translate([-outer_diameter,0,-u]) cube([outer_diameter*2, outer_diameter*2, outer_part_height+uu]); } if (cutaway_outer2) { translate([-outer_diameter,-outer_diameter,-outer_part_height/2]) cube([outer_diameter*2, outer_diameter*2, outer_part_height]); } } }