gr5

Nice! Okay I guess sometimes it works - it seems to work for you. But for me it works only maybe half the time. And I was told that was the entire purpose for adding the "horizontal expansion for support" feature. So I'm not sure how you got this to work, kman. I know tinkergnome (or maybe foehnsturm?) did some tests and found that if you squish the PVA extra hard into the layer below it will work. He had to hand edit the gcodes to over extrude 2x on a layer that was just above a PLA layer. That definitely worked well for him and I hope they add that as a cura feature some day.

Wow! Good details there!

You have to be more specific. I see above there is discussion of a connector that is always on but do you want one that is pwm controllable? the always on one can handle whatever is left over after the heater and head are not used so if you aren't using the heater you have a lot of power. But if you are using one controlled by the pwm controller it will be less I think. First figure out the connector name/number. Then look on the schematic to see what transistor/chip/mosfet is turning that on and off, then find out the part number on the schematic, then post the piece of the schematic with that part and I'll look it's specs up for you. Schematic is here: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Ultimaker2/blob/master/1091_Main_board_v2.1.1_%28x1%29/Main%20Board%20V2.1.1.pdf Click "raw" to download it as a pdf. Some pages I think are board layout maybe and some are schematic maybe.

@neotko might now how to fix this although he usually uses s3d and not cura. The basic issue is that infill is trying to fill in those holes but basically failing. There are some new settings in cura and I think one of them tries to fix this exact issue but I don't know much about it and don't understand it.

In settings try disabling the checkbox that makes the part always sit on the bed (cura settings - not slicer settings). Then use the move tool and move your part downwards by .5mm and see if that makes a difference. I'm wondering if most of your part is kind of up off the build plate.

I'm pretty skeptical of @Indy31's theory. I don't know what the issue is though. Again - seeing a video might explain everything. No the 16 point limit is due to the arduino being a very wimpy computer. You could probably emulate 1000 arduinos in an old iphone (don't know for sure). I can see it now - one iphone wired up to 1000 ultimaker printers and controlling them all. But you only have 15 points in a 5.7mm curve - that means it should always be well ahead and the path planner should always be well ahead of the currently printing line segment. I think your issue is something I haven't considered yet. I think a video would be helpful.

He says almost a year later...

That's a tough one. I'd use a UM3 which can print PVA on the lower portion of the sphere. Without PVA, it will print as is but the area that is less than 10 degrees from horizontal won't look so good. Also you will have severe raised edges and when the nozzle hits those it could knock the part off - all this is only a problem in the first 1/10 of printing the sphere - once you get past that you are good. You could add a cylindrical stand built into the model. Solid. That would help all these isues. If the moon is 200mm in diameter the stand should probably be about 75mm in diameter. I'd put that on the south pole. You might as well also sink the moon into the glass a few mm as you can't see the south pole anyway if you go this route. Some people might print it in two halves and glue it together but this is more difficult to do than you might think as the X/Y axes aren't perfectly perpendicular so the circle cross section on the glass will be slightly eliptical towards upper right/lower left or the other diagonal. You could heat one of the halves to 60C and push it to the right shape I suppose. Or just suffer with a line around the equator. Rotating the second hemisphere by 90 degrees should help. Making sure the rods through the print head are as close to 90 degrees as possible before printing will help also.

Okay, thanks for the correction @neotko I guess the 40C is software controlled. But on my older UM2 circuit board there is no software control (the newer UM2 circuit boards have a new connector for the fan near the center of the board - the older boards the fan connects on the edge).

Keep in mind that although pla sticks on top of pva, pva will not stick on top of pla. I know - it's strange. but true. So the whole point of horizontal expansion is that for typical prints that need pva, this allows the pva on upper levels of your part to connect all the way down to the glass. If they only rest on pla then they tend to fail (come loose as strings all over your print bed). So keep that in mind before reducing horizontal expansion for support material. Basically make sure that if you removed the pla the pva would all be connected still.

The famous Anders Olson of Sweden has the same issue. I have an even larger screen and I don't have this problem in windows 7 nor in Linux but I think Anders has windows 10 maybe and he also has a high resolution. Do you have windows 10?

Oh and the "fan turns on at 40C thing" is hardware - not software. You and I both have the older UM2 with the older circuit board that has the fan always on.

I have also had my 3rd fan fail due to badly crimped connectors. The connectors are in the plastic sheath just above the hot end.

Ooze shield doesn't connect well with the bottom because it's so thin so that's not surprising. The prime tower falling over issue is very common and easily fixed. The main problem as far as I can tell is a bit complicated - basically because of how tempered glass is made the center is thicker and the 4 corners are thinner but we level near the 3 screws so you end up with it mostly flat except the rear 2 corners are low. Having the glass farther from the nozzle makes it so parts don't stick well there - bascially THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to getting plastic to stick to glass is that you squish it a bit. The more you squish it, the better it sticks. So one solution is to test your glass and confirm that it is not as flat as desired (just drop a ruler across it in different angles) and ask for a new one from your reseller. Another solution is to move the prime tower to the rear center. In addition to both of these I recommend you do not use auto level and that you do not use paper when leveling (level such that the nozzle touches the glass).

Short answer, "No. Sorry." Hopefully soon.

I don't know lulzbot very well but I know they are open source. They probably also have an active community just like this Ultimaker community. On a UM2 if turning off retraction reduces clogging then the problem is usually the "third fan" on the back of the printer that keeps the upper parts of the hot end cool.

You have a few choices. One is I believe if you set the temperature to zero for bed and/or nozzle it will just leave out any temperature commands. At least I think this was true in Cura 15.X so it's probably also true in cura 3.X Also I believe you could edit the start/end gcode and remove any temp related commands or move them to after the fan is turned on.

It's normal for it to be silent when you turn it on. Try heating up the nozzle and see if the rear fan (third fan on the back of the print head) comes on when the temp gets above 50C.

I agree - it's only 15 points so the planner should be fine. I guess I need to see a video to know what you are talking about but I don't think I will have any more ideas. The feedrate multiplier in the TUNE menu simply multiplies all the F values just before they reach the planner. It should make no difference if you increase it with TUNE menu or in the slicer. Well except the slicer is smarter and only increases the X/Y movements and the TUNE menu will also affect non-printing moves and it will affect retraction speeds.

It's most likely the white teflon part then. Ultimaker used to actually include a spare with every printer. If drilling it fixes it for a while then expect the problem to come back in a week or so. CAUSES FOR UNDEREXTRUSION 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. 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) 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) Bowden pushing too hard - for the same reason you don't want the bowden pushing too hard on the isolator. 6c) 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. Or soak it in acetone overnight (after removing 90% of the material with cold pull). 8) 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 10) Other feeder issues, one of the nuts holding machine 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 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 and 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.

I'm not sure what you mean by temperature settings but I have a guess. If you use the default cura settings for a UM2 it produces "ultigcode" which allow you to specify certain things on the printer instead of the slicer including: filament diameter, print temp, bed temp, retraction distance, fan speed multiplier. If you want to specify temp in the slicer you can choose "reprap mode" gcode instead of "ultigcode". This is in the machine settings in cura. If you do this then any of these settings on the printer are ignored.

You really want to fix the steps/mm or it won't do "insert filament" properly either. So I recommend just using cura to install the UM2 "plus" firmware. You might have to do a "reset to factory defaults" after that as I think the firmware tries to honor your older steps/mm settings. Alternatively you can install tinker Marlin which lets you adjust these values right from the menu. I recommend version 16.01. Or you can also adjust steps/mm with a gcode and then do a M500 gcode to save the new steps/mm.

Yes. You need a microsd card. But yes. https://ultimaker.com/en/community/51752-recovering-a-bricked-um3

Cura tells the printer the "feedrate" which is the desired speed or goal speed. Search for "F" in your gcode and every number after an F is the feedrate (but in mm/minute not mm/second). Adjusting feedrate % ONLY affects this goal speed. This is from older technology of milling machines and lathes where the cutting tool worked best at a particular feed rate but we still use gcodes. UM2 has Marlin which has a path planner and does "trapezoidal velocity movements". Marlin gets these gcodes which for the most part are a list of x,y,e coordinates. The E axis isn't a problem as it's slow but the X and Y are near their limits of what they can do typically. It looks at the junction angle of every intersection and decides what the max junction speed can be. Then it tries to accelerate out of each junction up to the goal speed (the feed rate). It accelerates at the default acceleration (typically 5M/s/s on UM2 printers). It maintains the goal speed as long as possible until it has to start decelerating down to the next point. It's good you showed me a photo because you are talking about curves. Marlin doesn't think of it as curves - it thinks of it as lines (that's what are in the gcodes). Another thing about the Marlin planner which is more important to your issue (probably) is that it only looks 16 points ahead and always has to be ready to stop so it can't go so fast that if the 17th point away said to stop it would be able to stop if it is using full deceleration. 16 points is usually plenty far ahead unless in CAD you have too many triangles on your curves. I'm guessing you do. You don't want more than about 10 or 20 faces on these curves. I suspect you have more like 50. I suggest you go back into cad and export to STL and pay attention to how many faces/triangles it's going to create. Usually you specify some kind of resolution or angle or something so that the CAD program knows how much resolution to go down to. Export it such that it creates half as many points (the stl file should probably also be about half as big when you are done since it appears to be 100% curves). Usually higher resolution is good but for curves and for 16 point look ahead, you dont' want those 16 points to be much less than a cm or two. If you have 16 points in 1mm it will DEFINITELY jerk like crazy. Especially if you crank up the speed because the faster you are going, the less distance you have to decelerate in if you have to be stopped 17 points from now.

@mastory please update your profile to indicate what country you live in. Even if you tell me here I'll forget again later. Definitely get some cheap reading glasses. I got my first pair at CVS. Get the strongest they offer. Seriously. The strongest. You want around "10X" (meaningless number) which is about 5 diopters. This allows you to focus much closer so you can look at a part from just a few inches/cm away and see great detail. Also I'm not sure what you are printing but this is the best zebra-stripe-test https://www.youmagine.com/designs/curve-test-print