gr5

Clicking is easy to fix. It's usually that you are printing too cold or too fast or with too thick layers or the teflon part. Anyway it's a sign of underextrusion and here is the list of possible causes: 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. 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) 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. 15) 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.

Well it's probably safer than leaving a clothes driver running unattended but most schools don't have those either. Ultimaker tests every printer for fire. Their basic test is to override the software and put full power on the heater for many hours to see what happens. You do get a lot of smoke and metled plastic but no flames. But there are also several safety systems to keep even that from happening. I don't work for Ultimaker and I've never seen these tests first hand but I've heard them described by UM employees. They might set off smoke detectors if the circuit board fails and shorts out the heater but they won't start any fires.

The UM3 has 2 side fans but they aren't fans. They are blowers. Centrifugal blowers. They are pretty commonly used in electronics - especially laptops. Someone in this forum posted a head design with 2 blowers remarkably almost identical to the UM3 design but I don't know where the post is, sorry. Blowers can take back pressure which means you can restrict the output, or aim the output, or channel the output through a passage. Fans can't take hardly any backpressure and pretty much do nothing when you restrict the air flow unless you are very very careful. Blowers are more appropriate for 3d printing.

Yes - this is much clearer - this is underextrusion. It can have many causes most of which I listed above. 220C .2 layer height 60mm/sec as you mentioned above is really right at the limit of what an UM2 can do. The pressures in the nozzle are at an extreme - about 100psi. The pressure on the filament is about 10 pounds or 5kg. Trying to push that hard by hand would lift the printer off the table. I recommend never going over 30mm/sec at that layer height and temperature. At that extreme you really need to increase the flow a bit because the filament is slipping a consistent amount in the feeder. I know you said you saw the same problem but not as bad at 0.1mm layer height which makes sense as you are at half the printing speed, half the nozzle pressure. Increasing the flow is a reasonable solution although I have found that when you get to where you need 140% to get no gaps in walls you are at the point where going any faster will just grind up the filament to dust. If 120% is enough then I would just keep using this flow rate for this color and brand of filament. This is not a hack solution but an excellent solution. Another solution would be to get a bondtech feeder. It pushes from both sides of the filament instead of just one side and can go to probably about 100mm/sec before needing 120% flow. If you really want perfect looking parts you are going to have to slow it down anyway for other reasons. A better way to speed things up would be to go with a larger nozzle. A 0.6mm nozzle can print double the volume of filament in the same amount of time. The loss in XY resolution by gonig from 0.4 to 0.6 is pretty small. The outside radius of a corner on a cube will be 0.3mm instead of 0.2mm. Circular parts will be just as good/perfect as with 0.4mm nozzles. Benchy will look just as good because all his corners are rounded already.

meshlab. That's pretty much all it does. It's free and has hundreds of great features. Google how to use it to fix models. It depends on what type of problem you want to fix but it doesn them all.

There can be many causes. Usually the problem is *not* at the feeder but some heavy friction somewhere else. Or it could be you have too many retractions. So first - check if it's happening on a layer with hundreds of retractions - if so then that's most likely. Also have you ever printed CF (carbon fill)? That can wear down the points on your knurled sleeve and cause grinding. Other than those 2 things it's much more likely the same kind of thing that can cause underextrusion. Here is a list: 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. 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) 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. 15) 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.

root / ultimaker

flow! photos please!

There should be 4 wires going to each stepper, right? I think there are 24 ways those 4 wires can be wired. About 8 of the way the stepper go one way, 8 go the other way, and the remaining wirings won't let the stepper move at all or it will barely kind of vibrate. I would check that the wiring is the same for all steppers as DaHai8 said.

No - you need 19V for steppers, heater and probably more (fans?). It will work with any 19V supply that can deliver at least 6 amps. More discussion here: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/3245-power-adapter-died

Ultimaker absolutely needs all resellers to have a few micro SD cards to unbrick machines that get corrupted such that the reseller can mail the SD card to the customer who can insert it into the A20 board and reload the operating system (and then of course update it to latest the normal way through Internet). and arduino github link would be nice.

You don't really belong here as this is not a UM and not Cura but whatever. Did you try swapping cables between X axis and Z just to see if you can move the Z axis with the X driver and vice-versa? This will reduce the possible causes.

What is your retraction distance. As long as your bowden couplings are tight and don't move up and down (as they should) then 4.5mm should be plenty. Was this print doing lots of retractions? Or did you enclose the printer when this happened? I assume this happened on PLA because not much else will melt at such a low temperature and you don't need to enclose the printer for PLA. I never had this problem but other's have had this problem. Maybe @neotko has some ideas as he knows the UMO better than anyone I think.

Hopefully 3dsolex will come up with some lower temperature cores (pla only?) that have an olsson block and are very strong such that you can easily change nozzles. Hey @swordriff - are you listening?

I beta tested the um3 for the last 4 weeks and it works quite well. I took my core apart but it is INCREDIBLY easy to destroy. Even just loosening the very first screw to loosen the heater will very likely destroy it. The heat break is steel but only 250 microns thick (about 2 sheets of paper). Erin at fbrc8 already broke one when putting a core back together. Having said that - with proper training (e.g. youtube video) one can learn to take it apart safely like I did and change nozzles. But it's not simple - for me at least after doing it 3 times it takes about 10 minutes. You actually have to take it completely apart to safely get it back together unless you have very specialized jigs which I don't. I also agree that it's really not necessary to have different cores for pla, abs, nylon, cpe. But pva - that's a special material which needs it's own core. Also if you already have a um2 or um2+ and only need to print with one nozzle then stick with the um2. The printers come with 2 AA cores and 1 BB core (for PVA). Changing nozzles on um3 (without changing cores) kind of sucks because if you change the nozzle without changing the core you might have to recalibrate core 1 Z, core 2 Z, and X,Y separation between the 2 nozzles. But if you have lots of cores then you don't really have to recalibrate each time as the um3 keeps track of if you already calibrated a particular combination of cores.

I'll be at the new york city launch. Look for tweets with #ultimaker and #umlaunch October 18 (tomorrow) at 11am new york time or 17:00 Netherlands time. Of course before then I assume everyone will know "everything".

omg nancy - very creative! Thinking outside the bag? Are you going to be at the big UM announcement Tuesday? Did you get an invite? I'll see if I can send you one.

I think the quality is about the same. 3dsolex has the kit - get it from them, not me. I remember you - I met you next to a large egg. That was almost 2 years ago maybe. Anyway, I found the quality to be the same but I only printed one spool - maybe 50 prints. But I don't think it will work well with ninjaflex unless you also modify the bowden. The modification to 1.75mm is not a big deal - there are a few videos and some websites but if you will be printing a lot maybe it's best to just get 2.85mm filament.

Here's a link to some discussion which I think includes which laser he bought. Very very inexpensive: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/9028-hacking-um-to-cut-stuff?page=last

Murphy's law dictates that it will be off by 2mm in one critical dimension somewhere such that nothing fits and no amount of duct tape or chewing gum can get it to work such that it all has to be redesigned.

If all you care about is bed warm up time you can put a diaper/towel/hand cloth/rag on it while preheating and that saves you more time than an enclosure. I don't usually do that however as I like to get the entire enclosure up to 30-35C before starting the print.

Talk to @labern. He hooked up a laser to his UM2 and I think he used the fan PWM controller. Laser's don't mind being turned on and off 10X per second.

Tell Cura to make the bottom layer 0.2mm for the letters. Well if you make clips like I did you want the letters centered exactly in the part. Unfortunately this is probably rare. But cura places the parts exactly at the center of the bed so if both the letter(s) and the part should be centered then there is nothing special to do. If however you want the letters placed other than exact center you have a few options. One is to use the grid guide in cura. Each square is 1cm. However a more exacting solution would be to add a fiducial in both your prints. A plus shaped or L shaped thing to print on the bottom layer of both prints and in cura move your part until both L shaped fiducials are over the same spot (same 1cm checkered marking on the print bed). Remember to peel off the first fiducial before printing the second print.

Well installing the kit requires taking apart the head. If you have never done that why not look at a few guides first to see if you think it looks hard. Here is my page about it: http://gr5.org/olsson/ Which links to a great guide here: http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/62-installing-the-olsson-block-kit As well as my old instructions here: http://gr5.org/olsson/old_instructions.html The above link has links to two videos. I recommend you watch those if you are at all nervous about the procedure.

Oh. J20. No, sorry. It's always 24V. Can't change it. will that blogspot image be hosted for a few decades? Or is it likely to dissappear after a few months. In the future please use the "image gallery" icon above where you edit your post and that lets you upload an image to ultimaker so it's saved "forever".