gr5

I may have had this exact same problem - not sure. Is this a dual extruder print? I had it with the default profile for 0.8mm in cura. One of the problems is that the default profile does a retraction on layer change. wtf? I don't know why. None of the other profiles do that. It's a bug. I reported it but it apparently was ignored. So check that - something like "retract on layer change". Also there were speed changes and flow changes that were the major issue. I changed my settings so that line width was ALWAYS 0.8 (changing line width on infill can lower the pressure in the head and it takes time to recover - your 10mm issue). This was the larger issue. So set all lines widths to be the same (0.8mm) and set all SPEEDS to be the same (all printing speeds - travel speeds should be >=150mm/sec).

There are many things that go back to "default" when you do a factory reset including all the steps/mm settings. Particularly, like conny_g, I'm guessing you messed around with Z steps/mm long ago? Does that sound possible? Alternatively it could be the extruder steps/mm. I would calibrate both. Move the Z some distance such as 100mm and then check that it moved the correct amount. Repeat with the extruder.

If you are doing single extruder prints then then some of these are probably ignored. You could set them to 206,207,208,209 and then search through the gcode to verify that they aren't used and then you never have to worry about them again and can hide them. Of course for dual extruder prints these save a TON of time on the nozzle switching.

What printer is this? So in cura "machine settings" you can set the size of your printbed and also you can say that 0,0 is either in the corner of the print bed or the center. I'm guessing that for your printer (this is common on delta printers) 0,0 i in the center so try changing that checkbox. If it's not that then it's probably the size thing. If you say the printer is 200 by 200 then it will try to center the part at 100,100. But if your printer is smaller than that it will not center the part.

Copied from someone else - I didn't write 99% of what is below but I think it's very useful - especially if you are messing with json files on your UM3/S3/S5/UM2+C and it stops booting. If the below procedure doesn't work I have MUCH more detailed debugging information here: gr5.org/unbricking/ Ask your reseller for the latest recovery image for your particular printer version. here is a nice guide on putting a disk image on a sd card: https://www.hifiberry.com/build/documentation/create-sd-card-from-img-file/ If you are working with MacOS, you can better use ApplePie baker: https://www.tweaking4all.com/software/macosx-software/macosx-apple-pi-baker/ • Insert the Micro SD card in your computer. • Use the IMG recipe section and search for the file. • Click on the Restore Backup button. • Once that is done you can put the SD card back in the printer and check if it boots correctly. Then, removing the plastic cap in front of the olimex board (it is located on the bottom of your printer), find the SD card slot and insert the SD card: The SD card slot is located on the smaller board in the back. (Where the network cable connects into) In order to reach it you will need to remove the micro USB cable in front of it Now, booting up (only once) with the sd card inserted, wait until a green light goes on on the led ring around the control knob. The display will also tell you to remove the sd card and reboot. After all this you probably want to update to the latest firmware as I'm not sure that the link above will always be the latest but the printer will know if it is the latest or not. Please message me with more details that you learn as I have never tried this with an Olimex board (I've done the same basic procedure on a Beagle Bone Black).

tinker is correct but I'll say it another way. Cura has this concept of line width, layer height, move distance. It uses these three numbers to calculate the volume of a cuboid - very simple - just multiply line width by layer height by distance of XY travel and you get the volume. It then moves the extruder the right amount for that volume. If you mess with flow % in Cura then cura modifies this final volume one more time. So 200% flow will over extrude by 2X and 50% flow will underextrude by half. To make things more confusing there is also a flow control on the printer itself. This multiplies ALL extruder moves by this percent. It even affects things like retraction distance. So if you set flow to 120% it will try to overextrude by 20% and it will also retract (and unretract) 20% farther. Marlin (the firmware on the printer) just blindly multiplies all extruder movements by 20%.

On one hand it's important to have our parts stick to the print bed and the best way to do that is to overextrude the bottom layer so we really push the filament into the glass hard. On the other hand if you are overextruding you get these blobby areas. After a few layers it should all fix itself. I'm not sure how to fix this overextrusion yet still have parts stick consistently. Especially larger parts like this (more than 40mm across). But I suggest you try something in between. In other words try moving the glass a little farther from the nozzle. But if the parts come loose while printing you moved to far. Also if you have the patience to level perfectly then you could try a thinner bottom layer. 0.1mm bottom layer height can work quite well. That way when it over extrudes it tends to strip the filament a little bit instead of overextruding yet you still get the part to stick well on the bottom layer. By the third layer there should be no overextruding.

What slicer are you using? In Cura 2.* you can enable "combing on bottom layer only". This will take care of that single line through that circle on the right. It will also take a little longer to print as it will avoid going across open areas but when it does go across open areas it will retract the filament.

sounds great but aren't your parts a little bit too tall or short at the end? Anyway I'd have to see a print but lets assume you are either over or underextruding and giving the Z motor a click helps. Actually when you say "additional" I guess that means you are moving the bed further down so I'd say you are over extruding. So the Z axis on the UM2 (which printer is this anyway) is 200 microsteps/mm and I believe 8 microsteps per step. Each click is a step. so 200/8 is 25 clicks/mm or .04mm. If your layer height is say .1mm you are adding an extra .04mm (wow) so that is an extra 40%. You're parts are probably 40% too tall if you are doing .1mm layers or 20% too tall if you are doing for example .2mm layers. Anyway lets say it's .2mm layers then (40% is insane). So 1/1.2 is 83% - set your flow to 83%. If you were doing .2mm layers and if you were using a UMO, UM2 or UM3 which are all 25 clicks/mm. Or it might be that your Z movement is off by a lot. In that case you would want to calibrate the Z. What kind of printer is this anyway? Is it Marlin based? If so you want to hook up a USB cable and pronterface and move the Z by say 30mm and see if it actually moved 30mm. Probably not - probably only 15mm. Probably your steps/mm is way off. If that's the issue you can use the M92 gcode to fix this. Read up on gcodes and pronterface and M92 and how to use pronterface to read the current steps/mm. You will also have to do a M500 to save this so that you don't lose this one power cycle.

Oh - that's a cool knob. Yeah I agree - you should drill through the transparent housing but do it from below!

You should be able to get pronterface to work. It's a little tricky but not too bad. Basic overall steps for a PC - plug the cable in and listen for the "da dunk" sound indicating you plugged in a USB device. Then go to device manager and locate that device. If there is no device then install the arduino USB driver. It's part of the cura install and also you can get it from the arduino people. Once you see the device in device manager it should show up as a COM Port for example COM7 or maybe COM13 or whatever. Then go to pronterface and have it use that port. The baudrate I believe is around 115k. The baudrate is also specified in the configuration.h file.

Can't you just change it to 80,80,400,282? That should fix it. The Z axis has a jumper roughly in the center of the board that can switch the Z between 8 microsteps per step or 16 microsteps/step. By default the jumper is off and that makes for 200 steps/mm. But you are using the second extruder stepper which is always 16 microsteps / step. So you need to set the steps/mm to 400 instead of 200. Easy. You can do this with gcode commands if you don't want to rebuild marlin.

I've updated all those parts but not sure what you mean by "metal knob". A picture would help.

This is a common problem and the entire reason why the head has that white silicone damn. If you can't get the door open it's going to be tough. I'd start by heating the nozzles to 160C and then getting a hair dryer or heat gun and carefully heating up the bottom of the head until you can get it open. Then just be patient. It can take an hour. In the future learn more about how to not let this happen ever again:

So this is to glue two parts together? Why are you gluing parts together so much? I only glue together maybe one in a thousand parts. Are these PLA because the answer depends on which plastics you are using.

Interesting. So if the filament is squeezed will that mean it over extrudes? Or under extrudes or neither? These can be compensated by changing the flow but I want to know. And convince me please - why would it over or under extrude - I have a strong desire to understand. I'm thinking under extrude? you are passing the stretched out version at the correct speed but then it leaves the extruder and shrinks again. So it feeds too slow? Right? In my experience though I tend to get over extrusion. I think because of water content/boiling. Not because of the feeder.

@shurik - 30mm/sec is much too fast in my testing (I just did a ninjaflex print a few days ago). I recommend 10mm/sec and oil the filament.

All the circuit boards are public domain. You can look at the exact measurements of the pads. My first question is which ultiboard is this exactly? The one for Ultimaker original? UM2? UMO plus? The ulticontroller on the UMO? Not only are the schematics published, the exact circuit board layout is also which shows all conductors and all pads that these parts have to solder into. some of the schematics are on github but give us more info first.

Set 1st layer horizontal expansion to positive 2mm and look at bottom layer versus 2nd layer. Then cahnge it to -1mm and look again. It's hard to explain in words but obvious when you compare the bottom 2 layers.

@imbrechtsjurgen - if your wheels work out well maybe you can contact KrisT.

The final picture of the part itself is tough to see clearly. At first it looks like the roof on the left is done but I think it's not. I'm pretty sure there is nothing wrong with cura - I think it's giving you good gcode. So what's going wrong. There are a few possibilities. Did you see it still printing when it was making spaghetti? One possibility - the most likely in my opinion - is that the part came loose from the glass. The part was sliding around the bed and the head was printing in the wrong areas (over air sometimes) and made the spaghetti. I'm not confident this is the issue but you should know - was the part loose when you came back to the printer? Part of the problem is if you wait for the bed to cool completely the part is likely to come loose anyway once it cools. So you'd have to notice before the bed was completely cool or maybe you *did* notice and the part was still stuck nicely to the glass at this point. Another possibility is that it stopped printing for several layers and than miraculously started again. This is very unlikely because once it stops it is unliekly to start again. A third possiblity - maybe now I'm leaning to this one - is that your Z axis slipped down suddenly. It went down maybe 10mm in one second and so was printing over air. This was a common problem with UM2s a while back and was fixed by lowering the current to the Z axis because the Z stepper driver was getting too hot. When it gets too hot it shuts off but only for less than a second. During that time if your Z axis is nice and loose the bed can slide down quite a bit before the Z axis has power again and stops moving. I would assume issue #3 unless you know the part came loose. So I would uncover the PCB (remove the 2 screws holding the cover) and tilt the printer on a book or something and blow some air under there. Or you can lower the current. 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 Z1000 <-- sets current to 1000ma M500 <-- saves this so you don't lose this on power cycle consider not doing the M500 at first for a test. If you install pronterface and connect to the printer you can find out what the current limits are set to before chaning them. Someone can help you more on this if the fan method helps your prints.

Well the bottom layer is clearly not getting squished enough. The lines aren't even touching in the photo. That's usually the most important factor for how well the part sticks to the glass. So turn off auto leveling and simply rotate the 3 screws a little counter clockwise to move the bed up a bit. A half rotation should be enough. When the printer is starting the bottom layer - look at how thick the lines are going down. You want them squished flat like a pancake - not ropy.

You need a box that the filament spool fits into that has some desiccant and a very small hole in it to let the filament out. Cardboard will work.

The previous AMA was with a materials engineer. That would have been good questions about PVA and PVA formulations and other materials. But at these AMAs they usually can't talk about what's coming.

Get pronterface here. It's free: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/ Connect pronterface up to your printer through usb cable. You can now command the axes to do things - move the X axis 10mm, Y axis, Z axis, E axis. Make sure everything is moving correclty. Home the axes next.