gr5

Nylon is difficult to print and you shouldn't compare the S5 with nylon versus the prusa i3 with PLA. But overall I agree with most of your comments. I think UM should come out with an "engineering" profile that prints with higher dimensional accuracy. Here are the steps I do to improve dimensional accuracy over default profiles: 1) Set all printing speeds to be the same - anytime you speed up or slow down you over/under extrude briefly. Slower speeds will give better results. I usually print at 35mm/sec (ALL 6 or so printing speeds) and 0.2mm layers and the parts are both accurate and gorgeous and just as fast as 100mm/sec (primary speed) at 0.1mm layers. 2) Disable jerk control and acceleration control. When enabled it prints slower and prints have more globby corners because it takes longer to slow down and overextrusion can be quite prominent on the corners. jerk control and acceleration control remove "ringing" which can be ugly but is too small to measure with a micrometer so in "engineering mode" or "accuracy mode" we should embrace the ringing in exchange for higher accuracy of parts. Back to nylon. Make sure you keep the nylon very dry. Even just printing it for a single 12 hour print in a humid (70% humidity or worse) environment is enough to degrade it and it needs drying again. I recommend 2 25gram dessicant packs stored with the filament that color-change when wet and recharge the packs in a microwave (very easy to do with some experience) every time they turn to the "wet color". I leave the spool in a 2 gallon zip lock with the dessicant and open the zip lock only enough to let the filament out and print it like that - spool in zip lock with filament leaving the small hole to the feeder. Nylon can be reset/dried by putting the whole spool on the heated bed of your printer at 95C overnight with a towel thrown over it. Or in a cardboard box. 100C can warp some spools a bit but the nylon will be fine. 95C is safer. Very wet nylon makes a hissing/popping sound and comes out snowy/spongy/foamy. Dry nylon comes out glossy and natural color nylon comes out clear when dry - bottom layer should be transparent. Also cover the front and top of the printer and use a heated bed temp of 100C to get the air temp up to 35C inside. Set the fan low to get good layer adhesion (default nylon profile fan speed is probably okay for S5 but much too fast on my UM3).

Barely any difference. You even get a sticker to affix a "plus" on the logo on the printer so people can't tell the difference. The former is ever so slightly better most likely because it probably has a 5th stepper driver on the PCB. Newer UM printers tend to come with the 5th stepper driver removed. Older ones tend to have the 5th. It's not normally used but if you want to upgrade to dual extrusion via the "mark 2" method, then having the 5th stepper for dual extrusion is great. Also if you upgrade you will have the "old" hardware left over hopefully and can use that to do the mark 2 upgrade.

Latest cura and latest firmware should be fine. You shouldn't need to downgrade. In the case above there are 2 entries with the same name name. If there really are 2 printers maybe it would help to rename one of them( maybe). If not, then definitely delete one of them.

For PLA it will get too hot - you want the air temp below 30C. But for ABS (or anything other than PLA) it should be great. You want air temp around 35C to 40C. This will work great for CPE/nGen/PET and nylon, etc. If the PCB under the printer gets too hot the first thing to have trouble are the stepper drivers. These have built in temp overload circuits and will shut down typically only for 1 second but enough to miss steps if it happens in X or Y and if it happens in Z typically the bed will fall suddenly about 1mm (or more!) causing an underextruded layer. In other words - worst case your part fails. The printer will not be damaged unless them temp gets really extreme. So the only modification (for non-pla) would possibly to add some cooling to the electronics under the printer only.

Well your attachment didn't work. THERE IS NO NEED TO PRINT TO DEBUG THIS!!!!!!!!!! Just look at the part in layer view. Don't waste time printing something and wait an hour to find out something you can determine in 2 seconds by looking at it in layer view. Your attachment didn't work but here is what you do - get it to fail again - best by loading the project file (assuming you saved the project). That will reload all the settings. Then confirm that it is printing the "tall skirt". If so then click on "custom" and click on the star to the right where it says "profile" (this is above all the settings). This will pop up a dialog that shows all your settings that differ from defaults. If you are on for example the "fine 0.1" profile then locate that on the left pane of this new dialog and click on it. Then on the right side it will show some of the settings that aren't default - you can tell because they are in italic and have a value in the "current" column. Then click on the "extruder" or "extruder 1" tab (whatever it says) and you will see more italic settings with a value in the "current" column. Figure out which one of those overrides you set that created the "tall brim" by changing them back to defaults, one at a time until the "tall brim" goes away.

If it's not sticking on the first layer it's usually because you aren't squishing the bottom layer enough. But clearly you are. So something is seriously wrong with your print bed. I think it has oil on it maybe. Try cleaning it with soap and water. Or some other solvent like isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol). But I don't what the surface is. Is that build tak? Anyway try to clean any oil or wax or grease off the bed using soap and water or similar. The first photo -- if that's the underside of the part then that *might* be normal. It's hard to bridge. If that's a top layer - if it was printed with the visible bottom of the "box" facing up (orientation shown in your photo) - then you have severe underextrusion. If so then the first thing to try is to raise the temperature to 240C and lower the print speed by 2X and then if that helps then experiment with other speeds and temperatures. You should be able to adjust both of these while the printer is printing so you can do several tests on one print and save time.

Even if it's "out of warranty" there's a good chance they will still honor the warranty. Especially since the problems started before the warranty ran out. Since you are in the USA I recommend going straight to fbrc8. Email them. See what they say. Tell them it's out of warranty but the problem is old.

Also try enabling combing for *every* layer and you can see in layer view if it made any difference. Again, light blue versus dark blue - one is retraction move - one is non-retracting move.

That doesn't sound right. Can you show a screen shot of one layer showing this? Make sure to include the blue lines (I think the blue are disabled by default). Also keep in mind that skin layers are any layer where any part of the layer is a "top" layer. So if you print a pyramid then every layer is a skin layer (I think - I'm not 100% sure on the definition).

You can also retract on layer change. Not sure if that will help. You can also turn combing off. When combing is on it tries to stay within one of your "spindly pieces" (let's call them islands) whenever possible and will not retract if it can stay within the island. But with combing off it will retract a lot more. I'm a bit confused about this whole issue - I have printed things thinner than this and not had this issue before. Although I had more cross connections - maybe it's more about the wobbling. Maybe lowering the acceleration will help? (less vibrations?)

zig zag already does alternate layers. Oh wait - you want 4 directions instead of 2? No I think you want zig zag. It's already a feature in cura. I'm not a fan of zig zag already. It extrudes the right amount on intersections but underextrudes in between because it only extrudes every other layer. So it's very weak.

By the way, seeing a photo of the part is not as useful as a screenshot or photo of the cura layer view. But the project file is perfect as I can look at the layer view myself in my own cura and also see all your settings and your parts and everything.

I got no ideas right now. So do this - do "file" "save project". It will save a .project.3mf file and then post it here on this forum or somewhere else so I can take a look at all your settings and so on.

@tinkergnome - any ideas on this? It shouldn't do this with ulticode, right? Find out what version of *firmware* you have. On the menu system of the printer.

Cover the printer completely - you want the air temp to get much higher. Around 35C is good enough and still safe for the steppers. Make sure fan is at the lowest value where it still spins (1 to 3% for a UM3, around 30% for a UM2 and so on). Nylon absorbs water from the air crazy easily. You might have to bake yours at 100C for a while but it looks okay - if it's totally too wet it will his and sputter and sizzle as it prints. But there is a point in between where it's quiet but it comes out foamy instead of normal. It looks fine in the picture though (hard to tell). Bed at 80C minimum - more to heat the air then the nylon. 100C bed is fine for nylon also. Layer heights at least 0.1mm. 0.15 better - that way there is more thermal mass to melt the layer below. Even if the cracks go away you might not have improved adhesion enough. Purposely break a part and if it breaks along layer lines you still don't have good adhesion - it should break along random lines - not layer lines - if you do nylon right. Actually a part this small - you probably won't be able to break it without some special tools so if it doesn't break despite your best abuse it's probably fine.

You know to check your part in layer view first before printing, right? Well the best thing to do is save your project to a .project.3mf file and post it on this forum or post it somewhere else with a link to where the file resides so we can see your model and your settings all at once. Or you could post lots of pictures of the model in normal view and in layer view as well. I'm thinking there is something wrong with your model possibly? I don't know - there are so many settings in cura!

All of the glue sticks at the office supply stores and such - anywhere they sell paper and pencils - those are all PVA. Don't worry about additives. elmer's wood glue is great. I'm sure the original elmer's glue would work as well also as it's mostly pva. Those glues are mostly PVA. Hairspray is mostly PVA - (this is a case where I don't like additives because I can't stand the smell after a while). If you use hairspray you need to remove the glass each time you spray which is extra work (you don't want pva getting on the z screw!). One coating of any of these methods lasts at least 5 prints if not 50. when parts start to stick too well then you know you need to add some more glue.

That should be a warning - not an error. In cura 15.X you can go into machine settings and you want "ulticode" style gcode. In reprap style gcode you set certain parameters in cura. In ulticode you set certain parameters on the printer. Here is an incomplete list: nozzle temp, bed temp, fan speed (on printer it's a multiplier so in ulticode mode you use both cura and printer to set fan speed and printer multiplies the fan speeds by it's set value - e.g. ABS I think is 50%), retraction distance, retraction speed. I forget what else. All of these should be in the materials settings on the printer. Anyway - don't think of this as an error. Think of this as an optional way to print. for example if you have 3 um2go's like I do, I have a different bed temp for each one but that is set on the printer, not the slicer. So I can slice once and print it on any of my printers. There's no "right way" or "wrong way" to do this.

That sounds like a draft shield. Make sure "draft shield" is unchecked.

Oh. And *ALWAYS* look at your part in cura in layer view as you would have realized that you aren't getting what you thought and you wouldn't have wasted any time and plastic on the printing step.

lol. Okay. I'm surprised it printed anything at all. Sketchup can allow you to sketch infinitely thin walls. Infinitely thin walls when converted to real life (3d printed) are - well infinitely thin and occupy no space and are kind of the opposite of solid. Normal cad software - that for making true 3d objects - won't let you do this. So sketchup is difficult to use but here goes... You need to specify in sketchup how thick you want your walls. And please pick something at least double the width of your nozzle or cura won't be happy. So you need to place more walls around your box and you need to put holes in it in front of the existing walls and connect them with a cylinder (even if the cylinder is only 1mm long). For example if you want a cube you only need 6 walls in sketchup to make a cube. If you want a box with no top, you need the same 5 outer surfaces, plus 5 inner surfaces, plus 4 surfaces around the top edge to connect these all together. Is that any more clear? Here is a nice article about 3d printing and sketchup. https://i.materialise.com/blog/3d-printing-with-sketchup/

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) when you add a post processing script it stays in cura forever until you purposely disable it. It's very handy if (for example) the script is critical for your particular printer. Or if you want to slice 100 different parts with the same post processing script settings.

There are many physical properties of materials but the most important one is strength and the second most important is modulus aka stiffness. transparent is both stronger and stiffer. Stiffer is not always better - it also means it is more brittle. If you drop a rubber ball versus a glass ball - the rubber which has a low modulus will stretch and spread out the load over time (only 100 milliseconds versus the glass which shatters in under 1 millisecond) and not break. Even though glass is stronger than rubber. Impact strength and brittleness and modulus are extremely closely related. Knowing the modulus and strength you can predict the impact strength (somewhat). I post these properties of both types of UM PC and glass and many other filaments here in this graph: http://gr5.org/mat/ The third most interesting property is working temperature which I try to capture in the second graph in the above web page. You can zoom into the graph and hover over any material for more details. It's log scale in both axes so read carefully.

Oh god. I feel your pain. But my first second and third thoughts are "get a real computer". I know this is very unhelpful and may feel mean but seriously: Get a real computer. Sorry. Your current display is designed for widescreen movies. Not work. On to a solution however. windows has all kinds of things to help with this but they are a pain. You can set up a virtual display. so you can tell windows that even though your display is only 800 pixels high - pretend it's 2000 pixels high. Then you can move the mouse (or use two finger panning if you have a touch screen) to the very top or very bottom and keep going to pan around. This will solve your issue. Google it.

Looking again - some areas clearly need support. Just maybe not this area that is failing. Too bad. I'd go with pva.