gr5

If you are in USA then you should talk to Erin at fbrc8 ( @fbrc8-erin ). She can fix any issue. So what error message are you getting? "too long to heat up"? That one? Erin would know this better but one common issue and very simple fix is that the cable at the top of the head gets half way unplugged. Remove the two rear screws on the top of the head and the rear half of the to of the head pops off and you can re-seat the cable and shove more of the cable into the head - preferably with a shim to hold it tighter like some blue tape). I took my UM3 print head apart last night for the first time (not completely but removed the top 4 screws and the side 4 screws) and there was a lot of gunk in there that I cleaned out. You may have bad contact between the gold plated spots on the core and the gold fingers that touch it or they may need bending slightly? I doubt this but it's a possibility. I would use q-tips with isopropyl alcohol to clean those gold contacts both on the core and inside the head (you can get to them without taking anything apart - just slide out the core and you can see them).

@SandervG - First of all did you know there is also a @s.vangeelen ? Who is that? Also please read post above. Poor guy wants to check most of the options - not just one in your survey.

Well for one you could print slower and cooler - that usually helps quality a lot - say 25mm/sec and 190C. Those lines are horizontal, right? Which means they are layer lines? If so it sure looks like you need to clean the Z screw - sometimes when the Z screw gets dirty and you ask to change the Z by 0.1mm it actually only moves 0.09 for example for a few layers then suddenly it moves 0.2mm. It all averages out in the end but you get these layer lines. So normally I'd say clean the Z screw and maybe try thicker layers. Often 0.1mm layers looks better than 0.05mm layers. Or are you talking about that dark line where the barrel connects to the... um... whatever it's called. That would be a slicing issue if that's what you mean.

I'm glad you mention this as I was going to ask you about that before you program it. Well UM would say to return it to your reseller but you can easily reprogram it. First put your UM3 into developer mode - it's in the menus on the UM3. Your machine needs to be on your network (wifi or ethernet) if it isn't already. Once it's on the network it will show the IP address at the top of the main screen. Next you need ssh which is built into linux and Macintosh terminal but not windows. For windows I recommend putty: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html In putty you don't type the "ssh" part but just put the ultimaker@111.222.333.444 part and click "open". ssh ultimaker@1.2.3.4 (don't enter 1.2.3.4 - enter the ip address listed on your UM3) username/password: ultimaker/ultimaker (much easier than root/ultimaker as it takes you straight into the utility to do sendgcode) Choose the type and size from the list below - T0 is left slot and T1 is right slot so before running any of these make sure the core you want to program is in the left slot if it will be AA and in the right slot if it will be BB After programming the core, slide it out and back into the slot at which point the UM3 will re-read the eeprom and realize it's new state. The software that does X,Y,Z offset calibrations for a core goes by serial number and that can't be changed so you won't lose any calibration data when you do the below changes. AA 0.4 sendgcode M151 T0 A8 D7800000000004141 sendgcode M151 T0 A16 D20302E3400000000 BB 0.4 sendgcode M151 T1 A8 D7800000000004242 sendgcode M151 T1 A16 D20302E3400000000 AA 0.8 sendgcode M151 T0 A8 D7800000000004141 sendgcode M151 T0 A16 D20302E3800000000 BB 0.8 sendgcode M151 T1 A8 D7800000000004242 sendgcode M151 T1 A16 D20302E3800000000 AA 0.25 sendgcode M151 T0 A8 D7800000000004141 sendgcode M151 T0 A16 D20302E3235000000 BB 0.25 sendgcode M151 T1 A8 D7800000000004242 sendgcode M151 T1 A16 D20302E3235000000

Well it's not #18 "too many retractions" as that causes complete and sudden failure where it stops extruding. You are still extruding but not enough. You are extruding maybe 1/3 normal. Look at the "cold pull" feature on the UM3 menu system.

good. Don't. Those will help with "ringing" but other than ringing it will make quality worse. Especially under and over extrusion issues will be worse.

If you print nice and slow you might be able to get it to work with below average quality. Say 0.1mm layers and 20mm/sec print speed. You can convert your printer. The absolute cheapest/simplest thing to do is to get a teflon part with a 2mm hole through it (instead of your current one with a 3mm hole through it). 3dsolex sells these and also sells a 1.75mm conversion for the UM2 series printers. In the USA I sell 1.75 conversion kits at thegr5store.com.

For many parts, Cura 15.X gives me a better looking result. Pay particular attention to wall thickness and line widths (there's at least 4 line widths in the latest Cura but only one in 15.X) and make sure the wall is an exact integral of the line width (e.g. 0.8 and 1.6 for line_width/wall). Anyway now that I understand better what you care about, there is discussion of your exact issue here and some settings to try: https://github.com/ultimaker/cura/issues/2665

I was going to say try 20mm/sec but you did. Wow - even at 20mm/sec you get that kind of underextrusion? What are the jerk settings, acceleration settings, and what is travel speed? On UM series printers typically jerk=20mm/sec, accel=5000mm/sec/sec and travel speed at least 150mm/sec. You want it to change layers as possible which means you want it do decelerate as fast as possible (basically stop instantly and change layers and start up again) with the fastest possible Z acceleration such that the Z axis just "clicks" and then starts right back up without losing a beat. Right now I think it's pausing at the layer change, over extruding, then underextruding as it speeds back up. Thinner layers should help (such that the nozzle pressure is lower). Also look at the "spiralize outer contour" feature which doesn't need to change layers. Could you show a picture of your model? Ideally you want to give cura a model of a solid cylinder and choose spiralize which will only print the walls like this.

So I just looked at the picture. This is normal/classical/typical underextrusion. Here is a list of the most common causes below. Because your issue starts part way through the printI would check #16 first as it's easiest and filament tangle (look at the back of the machine). Also try a cold pull as maybe your nozzle got clogged somehow. CAUSES FOR UNDEREXTRUSION ON UM3 AND HOW TO TEST FOR THEM AND REMEDY THEM 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. Note that your "print speed" may be 40mm/sec but it may be printing infill at 80mm/sec so CHECK ALL SPEEDS. 2) Line Width larger than nozzle. In cura 3.X search in settings for all line widths. If any of them are larger than the nozzle diameter this can cause underextrusion. There are 8 of these in cura 3.2.1. 3) Curved filament at end of spool - if you are past half way on spool, try a fresh spool as a test. 4) curved angle feeding into feeder - put the filament on the floor -makes a MASSIVE difference. 5) Bad core. Try a different core. It could be clogged, or something more complex like the temp sensor in the core. 5a) clogged nozzle - the number one most suspected problem of course. Sometimes a grain of sand gets in there but that's more obvious (it just won't print). Atomic method (cold pull) is the cure - from the menu do a few cold pulls. The result should be filament that is the exact shape of the interior of the nozzle including the tiny passage to the tip of the nozzle. If it doesn't look like that you need to pull at a colder temperature. You can do it manually instead of through the menu if it's not working right but learn through the menu initially. 95C is roughly the correct "cold" temperature for PLA. Higher temps for other filaments. 5b) 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 6) feeder spring issues - too tight, too loose. 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. You usually want the tension in the center. 7) 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. ? 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 8b) 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 wedgebot (link below) helps you feel this with your hand by sliding the filament through the bowden a bit to see if it is stuck. https://www.youmagine.com/designs/wedgebot-for-ultimaker2 9) Extruder mis calibrated. Maybe you changed equipment or a wire fell off. Try commanding the filament to move exactly 100mm and then measureing with a ruler that it moved 100mm within 10% accuracy. If not adjust the steps/mm (this is done by editing a json file on the UM3). 10) Z axis steps/mm. it's easier than you might think to double or half the Z axis movement as there is a jumper on the circuit board that can be added or removed. If the Z axis is moving 2X you will get 50% underextrusion. Your parts will also be 2X as tall. 11) 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. Similar to 8b above - use the wedgebot to feel how much friction there is in the bowden. 12) 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 insert filament that has the pattern from the feeder and fight the movement by applying 2kg force on both ends at the same time and then seeing how much harder you have to push it on top of 1kg force. UM2 feeders can push with 5kg force. UM3 can push quite a bit more. 5kg is plenty. 13) 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. This shouldn't be a problem on the UM3 which has very good quality control but try a different core. 14) 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. 15) 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 - there is a temp sensor built into the driver chip. The solution from Ultimaker for the um2 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. This doesn't seem to be a problem on UM3 even though it's the exact same circuitry but they lowered the current in the firmware. But it's worth considering if air temp is 30C or hotter. It would probably happen only after printing for a while (air heats up slowly under the printer). 16) third fan broken. This tends to cause complete non-extrusion part way through a print. In the door of the head. You can hear it come on when cores get above 40C. 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. 17) 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 core 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. 18) 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). 19) 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. 20) 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

@Bruce845 PC or Polycarbonate can be printed on the Ultimaker but is not intended as a dissolvable support material. It is meant to be used to create parts. PVA is a dissolvable support material. HIPS is a dissolvable support material break away" is meant as a non-dissolvable support material.

If you want a nice looking print you have to be patient. Overhangs are always difficult - the old rule of thumb is anything more level than 45 degrees is difficult (vertical walls are easy) although I've seen overhangs of about 80 degrees from vertical (10 degrees from horizontal) that look suprisingly... fair. One way to improve the print is to go down to 0.3 or 0.2 layer height. Right now with 0.4mm layer height and somewhat extreme slopes (overhangs and slopes) you have huge shifts from one layer to the next giving your part that iso-line look. Another way to improve the print is with infill. Or did you model the part hollow? Another way to improve the overhangs is to use PVA support on a second extruder. These last 2 issues depend on something: Did you model the part hollow in cad? Or did you just turn off infill and top/bottom surfaces? Does it absolutely have to be hollow or are you just trying to save time? If you are only trying to save time you should try "gradual infill steps" feature instead. This will help support the structure so the overhangs are better.

Well the fact that it is not symmetrical means that part of the problem is backlash/play. Most likely only in one axis (X or Y but probably not both). With power off try pushing the nozzle around and see if it moves before the stepper moves. Usually play is caused because the belts are loose or the friction is very high. On an Ultimaker style gantry, put the print head in a corner and pluck the belts and they should be around 100Hz. But that is not the primary problem. The primary problem is probably underextrusion although it doesn't look that bad. Are you using Cura? Make sure you explicitly set all the line widths the same and to a value equal or only a little smaller than the nozzle width and make sure the wall width is an integer of the line widths. For example if the shell width is 0.35mm the wall width could be 0.7mm but not 0.8 or 0.6mm (which could cause this issue seen here). As a quick fix also try increasing the skin overlap. But if the inner most shell is messed up (say it's set to 0.1mm) then you reall need to fix that instead. Another quick fix is to drop the speed by 25% and increase the flow by 25%. But this is not a great idea.

getting max volume out of cura set "travel avoid distance" to zero. disable brim and skirt both! details here: https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/44677-maximum-build-volume-ultimaker-2-plus-ultimaker-3

I just realized this is an AA 0.8. Some of the profile settings are pretty bad in that profile. You might want to start with the AA 0.4 profile and change the line width to 0.8mm and layer height to 0.3mm. One in particular is the "retract at layer change". Make sure that is off - that alone could explain most of what you see here. I like to do 0.3mm layers and 35 mm/sec with my AA 0.8. The parts look quite good - the layer lines are not so bad and it prints 4X faster than my 0.4 nozzle prints.

In the lower photo - those randomish layer lines are most likely caused by a dirty Z screw. Get a box of qtips and some wd-40 or oil and clean out the threads - it's a triple helix so make sure you get all 3 threads (or is it quad?). The upper photo - that's strange looking. It could be partially caused by loose belts but loose belts are incredibly rare on UM2 and UM3 and S5. Pluck all 4 belts - both sides - while the print head is in a corner and make sure they are all roughly similar (roughly 60 to 200 Hz on a guitar tuner). No need to use the guitar tuner app - they should just be all similar - possibly one twice as loose. When belts are loose (or friction is very high - also put one drop of oil on each of the 6 rods in the gantry) you get walls sticking out a different distance depending if the head is traveling around the outside clockwise versus counter clockwise and so you get regions where the outer wall moves in or out. More likely it's something in the model or cura. I'd look at that region carefully in Cura. There are lots of settings that might create this (and of course the model itself!): optimize wall printing order outer before inner (turning this on hides infill from showing through but makes overhangs worse) infill overlap combing z seam outer wall wipe distance retract at layer change (turn that crap off) Also you might want to slow all the printing speeds down to 30mm/sec and lower the nozzle temp by 10C just to see what happens. In general slower and cooler results in better quality. I would concentrate on looking at the part in layer view first and if I couldn't figure it out I would toggle all the above settings and slow it down and change the temp to see if it got better and if so then reverse half the options at a time (binary search).

I'm thinking it's intermittent. When you heated the bed manually you were lucky and power was working. But when you went to print it was a different time and there was no power to the bed (K1 can get sticky -sometimes I give it a wack and it would start working or bad heater cables). Anyway this is my first guess. When it's just sitting there at the begining - go into the TUNE menu and see what temperature it is setting the bed to. If the bed warms completely up only then should it start heating the nozzle. If that heats up try exiting the TUNE menu and it should start printing. Pay attention to the temperatures and report back. It could be an intermittent cabling issue to the bed. Usually the problem is where the wires meet the bed - either the cable needs to be screwed back down again or the terminal block on the bed needs its solder reflowed or the terminal block at the other end on the PCB needs to have the cables screwed down again.

This is definitely underextrusion. What printer is this? If this is a UM2 series then immediately buy a TFN/TFT and replace it (that white teflon part). There are about 20 causes for underextrusion but I'm not going to list them without knowing the printer model. Also do some cold pulls (right in the menu for the UM3).

try changing combing mode to "not in skin" and see if you like the results better. By default it doesn't retract on internal top layer moves and so you get these melted lines.

By default combing is turned on for the bottom layer which means it doesn't retract on bottom layer moves which means you get these lines. Simply do this: combing mode: not in skin This is probably a better default. Combing mode improves your print quality in most cases and also speeds up your print in most cases but it makes top/bottom layers look worse (skin layers).

I would smooth out some of those sharp corners personally but this particular shape should print very well (just as well) with 0.4mm than 0.25mm. The inner corners should be just as good with either nozzle. Outer corners (you have none in the mold - your only outer corners are not related to the mold) will look better with 0.25mm. More important - if you want this to come out high quality - is to print it slow. I'd print this with 0.4mm nozzle, 0.1mm layers and 25mm/sec (all printing speeds - not just outer shell - because at every speed change you get a blob). Also I recommend rounding all corners if possible especially deep down in the mold where walls meet floors.

I think when you say "even" you actually mean "integral" and when you say "odd" you mean "fractional". Right? So if you have a nozzle of 0.4 and a line width of 0.4mm then it's true that in cura you want to have a wall width of 0.4, 0.8, 1.2, 1.6 and so on. Is that what you are talking about when you say even or odd? If instead you have line width of 0.4 and wall width is 1.0mm cura does bad things. It might do a 0.4 shell pass followed by a 0.6mm shell pass (which might underextrude as it's harder to get a 0.6mm line through a 0.4mm nozzle) or it might do two 0.4mm walls followed by a 0.2mm wall (which I also don't think is a good idea).

I strongly recommend you get tinkerMarlin here: https://github.com/TinkerGnome/Ultimaker2Marlin/releases Once installed you can change the steps/mm (and even direction) in among the menus - I think under motion settings. Alternatively you could read this long post - building Marlin has a lot of steps that con sometimes be confusing:

They wanted max torque I guess. Anyway it's less accurate but the gears bring the accuracy close to what it was.