gr5

@killjoy have you tried this on PLA? Or something else?

good catch!

And whomever you contact - give them a link to this topic. IRobertI works for one of those resellers and has fixed many of these machines.

Wait - maybe I misunderstood. Cura is the slicer. But maybe you are talking about the firmware? I just read your original post before I posted above but I don't know if you said anything about firmware. The firmware is called "marlin". Are you printing the same gcode file on different versions of Marlin and getting different times? This seems extremely unlikely. More likely the slicer is different.

Oh! But what about cura 2.X? Development on Cura 15.X is dead. No one at UM is going to look into this unless there is a problem with 2.X. Sorry!

Oh! Also the gears can strip or get misaligned or what have you.

Most likely the motor is turning but the gnurled sleeve is not. I have a plus but haven't taken the gnurled sleeve off and I'm not sure how that works but for the non-plus machines that is most likely. Possibly mark the sleeve and shaft with a sharpie and then try turning just the sleeve without the stepper moving. If you power up the stepper (have it move 1mm) it will stay "locked" for a minute so you can put more force on the sleeve. Alternatively the extruder driver is weak. It's common - especially if the electronics get warm and especially with the newer circuit board for um2 printers that the stepper drivers overheat and then they get very wimpy. Removing the cover over the pcb and then blowing a fan on the circuit board helps (you can tilt the printer to get airflow under there while printing - it doesn't matter - it will even print upsidedown). Warm weather hurts (if you don't have air conditioning).

If you never print PLA then an all metal hot end is great. If you do try to print PLA though it you will find the PLA often gets stuck against the metal and hardens and creates clogs high up inside the cooler portion of the hot end.

>I would really try to make them with new cura rooftops support. Ah! Yes! That's a good idea. I'd try that. I don't agree with the "use bluetape" though. Bluetape is great but it takes a while to learn the tricks (you have to clean with isopropyl alcohol first to get the wax off and relevel of course). Glass is better than blue tape as far as I'm concerned.

He used a sketchup plugin I think. Called "solid checker". Maybe the MakePrintable one is better. Note that very thin walls (less than 2X the nozzle width) can also be ignored when slicing.

Sometimes they do. If you opened it a year ago probably not. If you opened it a few weeks ago and keep it in a box with desiccant and you still have more than 3/4 of a spool then most likely yes.

neotko - if you look at the very short video the problem isn't where it touches the bed but where the support touches the 4 "feet".

brittle filament - testing for it, learning to live with it: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/17102-why-did-the-filament-break#reply-120629

An older version of cura used to let you choose the order (outer shell, infill, inner shell). All 6 possible orders I think. It doesn't seem to be in cura 15. I'd go back to cura 13. Anyway this is no longer selectable as it is the order for the best quality look. You basically want to do the outer shell after the inner 2 shells for it to look the best. Also you want to change Z height somewhere during infill or inner shell (not on outer shell). I think if you change your order your parts will look worse - for some other reason - there's always tradeoffs.

At least in the video the support is very flimsy. I don't use support options very often (usually design my own) so I don't know how to fix this but definitely you need more support of those 4 legs. Try grid support maybe or just design your own like I do.

The model is probably not manifold despite the "shiny" claim. First try looking at the model in xray view. If you see any red then that's the problem spot - it means either a missing wall (a hole in the print) or an extra wall inside a solid. STL files model triangles - not solids so if you have a triangle on one side but no corresponding triangle on the other side - well - it's not a solid - so how do you 3d print something that isn't solid... You can also play with the settings that try to auto fix this kind of thing. There are 4 settings you should try in cura 2.X "mesh fixes" group - try all of them - one at a time. You have to click one of the gears to enable these settings to be visible.

Fans are your friend!

I don't know for sure but after reading everything I think the "retractions" is the problem. I would change this setting in Cura: set the minimal extrusion parameter to 0.32mm or even 0.45mm. What this does: it's the minimum distance the extruder pushes filament through between any 2 retractions - if Cura wants to do one sooner it just doesn't. Because the retraction distance is 4.5mm if you set this to 0.45mm then it will do a maximum of 10 retractions on any given piece of filament (4.5/.45). If you set to 0.32 it will be a maximum of 4.5/.32 or 14. But that's the max - it's unlikely to go over 10. In other words this will keep the same spot of filament from going back and forth through the feeder more than 14 times. I found that increasing this to 0.32 was enough for a print where I had the same problem long ago. I picked this vale because I was looking at a layer that was fine and a layer that was failing and reduced the number of retractions (by changing this value a few times) until the gcode file had half as many retractions on the failing layer as before. That gave me a good margin of failure because it was only just barely failing - it was working on similar layers below.

If the printer is in a very dusty environment it's best to make a filter to clean the filament as it enters the printer. There are quite a few out there - search for them on youmagine or thingiverse.

Tinkergnome version will likely pull over the same bug as he merges the official version with his on every(?) release. This is likely a new bug but I don't know for sure so you could try an older version. The code has not significantly changed in 2 years such that even 2 year old versions of the firmware work great. So going back one or two versions should be safe until this is fixed. @tinkergnome - are you aware of this bug? @nallath?

What Sander said. You may be skeptical but that's probably it. More info here - this post and the next: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/2872-some-calibration-photographs#reply-15396

I think your issue is that infill is set higher than 24%. Try setting it 24% and it should be fine. When you switch to 26% it uses a different method where it only prints one angle on one layer and the other angle on the next and they only support each other on those posts just like in your photo. Because of this I try to stick to 0% to 24% or 100%. I don't like 26% through 80%. To be avoided unless all you care about is weight.

>ok thanks, the filament i was looking at is 2.95 mm. And how do you like your UM2+? Well what printer do you have - you shouldn't hijack someone else's thread - I was assuming you were the original poster who has a UM but if you have some other brand printer maybe 2.95 is fine. It's fine to post on forums without owning an ultimaker but put that in your description and start a new post to avoid confusion. Anyway in any UM printer 2.95 is very very very close to causing massive clogs in the bowden/fails but might be okay. Measure that in 5 or 6 places a meter apart to see if it varies a lot. 3.001mm and it will get stuck in the bowden after being compressed in the feeder. Non ultimaker printers are fine. I sell a larger diameter bowden if you are interested. Actually the best test - next time it fails - remove the bowden at both ends and cut the filament at both ends (3cm from outside the bowden) and slide the filament through the bowden while U shaped and see how much friction it is. The feeder can push about 5kg of force but you want all that force going to the head and not wasted in the bowden.

These high glass-temp filaments are similar in that too much fan destroys layer adhesion but no fan makes it look like the photo above. The best solution I found (with ABS anyway) is to enclose the printer, bed at glass temp (100C for ABS) and use more fan than if it's not enclosed. At least 30% for ABS. The warmer the air inside, the higher the fan speed can be, the higher the "look quality" yet still maintaining good layer adhesion (strength). PLA is so much easier!!!!! With PLA just crank dat fan!

Find someone with a working UMO - maybe go to the fablab in utrecht? Joris there can help you. That way you can isolate the problem to either the printer PCB, the cables, the Ulticontroller or the SD card. Once you know which of those 4 things that are broken you can replace just the broken one.