gr5

If you google "3dhubs cad services" there are lots of people who will design models for you. I recommend you print the plug with a flexible filament like ninjaflex.

You are on the right track. These kinds of lines can be caused by many things (filament tangles, z stepper drive too hotO) but with this kind of consistency and on models of very different amounts of plastic per layer - the only explanation left is Z stage issues. Fortunately you know how take everything apart. Start by sliding the bed up and down many times with power off and trying to feel these 2 spots. Your hands are amazingly sensitive and hopefully you can feel this. If you can feel it then you have a check that takes a few seconds to verify if it is fixed or not versus printing for an hour. It could be bad screw, bad nut, bad z rods, bad bearings, or other interference (does spool holder or anything else touch the bed? Often the spool holder sticks through enough to hit the bed as it passes by). Usually these things can be fixed without getting new parts but new parts can be amazingly cheap. If your printer is less than a year old you should be able to get the faulty part replaced through warranty but none of these parts costs very much. Also try loosening the screws that hold the bearings a bit and see if it's now smoother and possibly you need to somehow make the 2 rods more parallel or maybe just loosen and retighten the bearings. There should be no oil or grease on the vertical rods as that can get into the bearings (along with dirt/dust). The screw of course needs a little grease. Is this a new printer? Or is this a recent problem on an older printer?

The model needs to be 2x as thick as the nozzle width. So a typical printer has a .4mm nozzle so you need the walls of the mask to be at least .8mm but because of tilting and floating point errors in CAD and in Cura you need a small margin for error so I recommend 1mm minimum thickness on the mask. Or you can lie to Cura and tell it that your nozzle is a bit smaller than it is. For example saying the nozzle is .35mm and the shell width is a multiple of that (like .35mm or .7mm) then it will print down to .7mm. Or you can put in a .25mm nozzle or .15 or even .1mm nozzle (from my store gr5.org/store/) and print thinner but with a .1mm nozzle that mask will probably take a few weeks to print so I don't recommend that.

Or just take a tiny piece of wood and glue it on the top of the existing wood post. Use wood glue.

3dsolex has 1.75mm of TFT coupler and also 1.75mm version of Olsson block. The TFT material from dupont is crazy expensive and can handle 255C for a year no problem. The only wear and tear will be mechanical abrasion from rough filaments.

Always look at your part in slice view before printing. I think these issues are all visible in slice view. Even if the part is 100% symmetrical I think that floating point errors make things come out slightly different. Changing the shell width to a multiple of .35 instead of .4 may help things here. Such as shell width=.7mm.

I think it's bad layer adhesion which is best fixed by lowering the fan speed to the lowest possible setting but still spinning. Or even turn the fans off. That will help the most. You can also improve layer adhesion by covering the printer to get the air warmer. But fan speed is more important than air temperature.

Try freeze spray on the metal only for a long 20 seconds and then grip with rubber sheet or rubber gloves. The cold will make the metal shrink faster than the PEEK part.

Definitely try a different brick. I have 2 (two!) power bricks that sometimes refuse to turn on (blue light looks fine) unless I leave them off for several days. It's very strange. If that doesn't work I hope your printer is under warranty.

@printedman - I confirmed that the tinker marlin lets you go up well above 100C. 115C at least. It's much better than regular Marlin. It has all the same look and feel and features but shows you more of what is happening during a print and has lots of great new features like continuing a failed print. Hundreds of people use it. So no reason to wait: https://github.com/TinkerGnome/Ultimaker2Marlin/releases

Try to make all the speeds identical. This can reduce stringing quite a bit. I don't know S3D but I assume 3600 means 60mm/sec and .6 means 36mm/sec for outer shell and .8 means 48mm/sec for infill and support. Make them all 35mm/sec (slower and equal). At 35mm/sec you get much less pressure in the head so less leaking. Just experiment. If that works try increasing the speed in the TUNE menu and take notes. Then set it to the fastest speed with no stringing but trying increasing infill speed. Take notes.

Is it hot where you are? sometimes the heat from the extruder motor combined with unusually warm weather will heat PLA enough that it softens at the knurled sleeve and grinds to dust at the feeder. So if room with printer is unusually warm try a desk fan blowing on the feeder. Also I don't know if your part has tons of retractions - it doesn't look like it - but who knows - if it has say 10 retractions for every spot of filament (same filament goes back and forth 10x thorugh feeder) then that can also grind up the filament at the feeder. As the feeder driver chip on the PCB under your printer heats up it gets weaker. That might also be getting too hot. Consider removing the cover and printing on a tilt with a fan blowing air under there. If for nothing else then as a test. The UM2 can print just fine upside-down or sideways. Still, don't rule out "bad ptfe". You have minor underextrusion on some of the lower levels of the part so I would also change the ptfe to the new kind of teflon. Try shop3d.ca.

I just use the leveling procedure to get close. Once per year or so. Or when I rebuild the head. Then on the very next print, when it first starts up I watch it print the skirt or brim. That's the very first thing printed. I push up and down on the bed a bit to see how it would look if bed is higher or lower and then I turn the 3 screws equal amounts to try to get it to that amount. I used to have photos of "perfect brim" and "bad brim". I'll try to create a new set now. Okay: In the above photo I assumed the bottom layer is .3mm thick (cura default) and labelled how high I assume the head was *actually* off the glass. .3mm would be normal/nominal and what UM's leveling technique is shooting for. But I recommend closer to the bed. The yellow cell phone case is too close. In some places you can barely see the skirt. The blue marvin is about perfect - that is close enough that Marvin won't fall off during printing. the red is okay but getting a bit far such that your part might not stick as well. The black filament is MUCH too high off the bed such that it's not sticking at all or barely causing a print failure on the bottom layer let alone higher up. Note that these numbers are all guesses but the point is you want a skirt that looks about like the blue one if you want it to stick but more like the red one if you want the bottom most layer not to squish out a bit. It's very rare that I print a part where the bottom layer can't squish out by .1mm more than my model. Very rare. Therefore I aim for the blue marvin photo amount.

Well obviously you need better supports. You can do supports using Cura but they will make the print much slower (check the print time with and wihtout support!). You can tell Cura to only support surfaces within 10 degrees of horizontal and that shoudl speed it up a bit. You can use meshmixer to create supports: http://www.extrudable.me/2013/12/28/meshmixer-2-0-best-newcomer-in-a-supporting-role/ pay particular attention to how to rotate your part in the "annoyances & limitations" section and also note that there is a small error where he set layer height to "0.5" mm and it should be the layer height you print at e.g. .2 or .1mm.

I think the arduino has a AREF (analog reference) pin that is normally at 5V (3.3V for other types of arduinoes like the Due but that's not the case here). Maybe that pin is floating or at the wrong voltage? Or maybe the entire power supply for the arduino is at the wrong voltage.

Didn't you say earlier that you measured the voltage with a voltmeter and it was fine? Could it be that the 5V on the arduino board is actually maybe 4.5V such that the ADC is off by 10%?

I think there is a bug in one-at-a-time mode where it retracts then resets everything and forgets that it retracts and then retracts again and then unretracts. Maybe see if the bug is in cura 2.1.2? The simplest solution is probably to use skirt. If you don't use brim then it will instead use skirt be default. Make sure the skirt is a minimum length (maybe 200mm?) to get the extruder flowing again.

Most likely your stepper driver is too hot. Check the fan underneath and make sure it's spinning properly. Consider using air conditioning to cool the whole room maybe? Or just put a desk fan such that it blows under the printer (maybe tilt the printer 20 degrees - it prints fine in any orientation including upside down). That sound can be caused by too little current (even though it sounds like too much to your ears maybe) and also by too much current. Most likely too little. Most likely a temperature issue like I said. You can test by swapping the driver chip among 2 axes - oh wait - this is umo+? There is no fan. On the UMO+ and UM2 this is a very common problem - especially with the z driver. It gets too hot. So remove the bottom cover - that might be enough airflow but try blowing some air under there. Also it's recommended to lower the Z driver current to 1000ma. I think they lowered it in the UM2 firmware but probably forgot in UMO+. I think you can control the current manually from the front panel - I forget - too many versions out there! Some versions you can, some you can't. If you do adjust the current you have to do a SAVE or else the value resets on power cycle.

Is this your model? If so add support in cad and make the support wider at the base. Try to stay at a 1:5 ratio where the base is a minimum of 1/5 as wide as the height. If you don't know how to use CAD then maybe show a photo of where it goes wrong? Maybe someone will have suggestions.

The bottom layer is thicker than other layers so it takes more pressure to get the filament out so you are more likely to get underextrusion. Also the software assumes the head is exactly .3mm off the bed when it is printing the .3mm layer but if your leveling is off by just .1mm then it might be only .2mm of space so again, that can cause a lot of pressure in the head trying to squish .3mm of filament into .2mm of space - the pressure builds up and up and eventually something has to give. The solution is usually to print hotter and/or slower on the bottom layer. Try cutting speed in half again (you can experiment in the TUNE menu while it's printing) and try raising temp to 240C just for the bottom layer. Also consider moving the glass *away* from the nozzle by 1/3 turn on all 3 leveling screws by equal amounts.

Meanwhile spend the $10 for another arduino.

Well they kind of promised it as opposed to "we are experimenting with maybe the next printer having dual nozzles". I'm hoping for a wider printer (not taller).

Oh! I see it now. Does that mean the UM3 won't replace the UM2+ext? Rats. I thought maybe... Oh well. This is what happens when companies keep secrets about future products. People just make wild guesss. :(

@Nicolinux - please start a new topic - I think you are on the wrong track but don't want to detract from this topic. @tinkergnome - already 2 people have complained about the latest UM2 firmware which limits bed temp to 100C (I and other's prefer 110C for ABS which is achievable if you enclose the machine). This is in the latest cura I believe - 15.04.6 (I don't think it's in 2.1.2 yet - not sure though). I'm hoping you don't merge in that "bad" code that limits bed to 100C. Do you know if your latest Marlin has this 100C limit? Will you keep that "bug" out of your future versions please?

Really? I couldn't find it. For example if I hover over "products" above this page I don't see it. If I click on products I still don't see it. If I go to "store" then I can find it in some of the resellers. Strange that they no longer mention it on the main web page though? Maybe Ultimaker is dropping the extended when the um3 comes out? Or maybe they just want to keep the message simple (only mention 3 printers instead of 4).