gr5

Wow! Um. Wow! I have UM2 upgraded to plus and my firmware doesn't move Y when moving Z. The UM2 firmware has several "locations" in X,Y,Z. For example there is one location when priming. Another location when homing, another when aborting, another when feeding filament and so on. Those locations are different for each printer (go, extended, normal, ext-plus, normal-plus, original, etc). Your "prime the nozzle" location seems not to be exactly above the "lower bed" location. 2 different locations. On my printer they are at the same spot in XY but different in A - again on your printer the prime spot Y value is right to the very edge of your printing area (or maybe beyond). ANYWAY One solution would be to get older firmware. another is to just ignore this as it's not that serious unless you print something that goes to the other end (Y=0?). But I think the problem is in your homing - If you can get it to home just 2mm further back this problem will go away. Is the head homing properly in Y? maybe move the limit switch 2mm further back? Every printer is a little different - the actual print area varies a few mm from printer to printer but the firmware only lets you go so far. Usually the firmware restricts before the hardware hits something. In your case your print area is smaller for some reason. Again you can ignore this problem and you should be fine.

After seeing the photo I'm assuming you only have "level 1" curling which is kind of normal. It looks like you are doing "production". You might want to add custom gcodes between each print. There's no need for the skirt also - maybe getting rid of skirt will help? Set skirt lines to zero. For "production" printing I've had to mess with gcodes betwen prints. I experimented with different things until I got it to work consistently. You certainly don't want the nozzle priming between prints! You don't want any pauses - you might want to get that nozzle back onto the glass quickly and away from the print.

The UM2 bowdin ID is about 3.175mm (1/8 inch) but when filament goes through the feeder it gets squished a bit so it may start off as a 3mm circle but end up as an oval when it comes out of the feeder. So it's really hard to say for sure. The bowden's I sell in my store are I think 4mm ID but it can *still* get stuck in the teflon part (or at least have excessive friction). Typically the problem is not the teflon part but the bowden. Being a bit tight in the teflon is not as serious since it isn't so long like the bowden. So I really don't know if this ORB stuff will be okay. Probably it will be fine. Their *actual* tolerance is probably tighter than their published tolerance but who knows.

This sounds bizarre. Can you post a video? Please keep it under 10 seconds.

LePaul make sure you tighten all 6 (SIX!) of the Y axis pulleys. Tighten the hell out of them. Usually it's the one hardest to get to - the one on the motor. You should be tightening so hard you are a little nervous about breaking the hex tool.

I would try this version -- I don't know if it goes to 110C but it might: https://github.com/TinkerGnome/Ultimaker2Marlin/releases

If you find out which version supports 110C, let us know please. You can see the version number on the printer's display - it's in the advanced menu somewhere.

It's usually not serious. You have lots of options: 1) Print a skirt far from the part so the blob doesn't get near the part. 2) Be ready and grab the filament after it is done priming. I just use my fingers and pull it away as the nozzle moves towards the start of the print. 3) Fix it. If you do "move material" and grab the tip and pull it down a little and after 2 inches of "weight" of filament you let go and then move some more through the nozzle and it *still* does this curling then you have "curling level 2". If it isn't as bad as level 2 but will curl and hit the nozzle only when there is no filament pulling down then I call it "curling level 1". Usually I don't fix "level 1" as it's pretty minor. I always fix "level 2". it's caused by dirt or gunk at the very last mm in the .4mm wide pasageway near the tip of the nozzle. Think of this is a short tunnel going into the nozzle that quickly widens into a larger cave. The tunnel is the problem area. Usually I can fix it by taking one of my nozzle cleaners (free with everyone's first order at my store) and rub it around in a circle a few times in the nozzle tip and then making sure it is fixed by doing move material. All this is done at temperature (e.g. 210C) and takes all of 30 seconds at the most. If that doesn't do it you can either throw the nozzle away or try some more "cold pulls" (a proper cold pull includes pulling out a perfect inverted "tunnel" at the very tip and is hard to get without playing with the "cold" temperature). Or you can burn the nozzle gunk to a char followed by one more cold pull to get out the ash.

I'm guessing you want to get EVEN CLOSER between the nozzle in the bed. Anyway here is my standard explanation of how to get prints to stick: 1) Make sure the glass is clean if you haven't cleaned it for a few weeks. You want a very thin coat of PVA glue which is found in hairspray, glue stick, wood glue. If you use glue stick or wood glue you need to dilute it with water - about 5 to 10 parts water to 1 part glue. So for example if you use glue stick, apply only to the outer edge of your model outline then add a tablespoon of water and spread with a tissue such that you thin it so much you can't see it anymore. wood glue is better. hairspray doesn't need to be diluted. When it dries it should be invisible. This glue works well for most plastics. 2) Heat the bed. This helps the plastic fill in completely (no air pockets) so you have better contact with the glass. For PLA any temp above 40C is safe. I often print at 60C bed. 3) heat the bed (didn't I already say that?). Keeping the bottom layers above the glass temp of the material makes it so the bottom layers can flex a bit (very very tiny amount) and relieve the tension/stress. For PLA 60C is better than 50C. 70C is even better but then you get other "warping" like issues at the corners where they move inward but if you are desperate it's worth it. For ABS you want 110C (100C is good enough). 4) rounded corners - having square corners puts all the lifting force on a tiny spot. Rounding the corner spreads the force out more. This is optional if you use brim. 5) Brim - this is the most important of all. Turn on the brim feature in cura and do 10 passes of brim. This is awesome. 6) Squish - make sure the bottom layer is squishing onto the glass with no gaps in the brim. The first trace going down should be flat like a pancake, not rounded like string. don't run the leveling procedure if it is off, just turn the 3 screws the same amount while it is printing the skirt or brim. Counter clockwise from below gets the bed closer to the nozzle. Don't panic, take a breath, think about which way to move the glass, think about how the screw works, then twist. This may take 30 seconds but it's worth it to not rush it. You can always restart the print. If you do all this you will then ask me "how the hell do I get my part off the glass?". Well first let it cool completely. Or even put it in the freezer. Then use a sharp putty knife under a corner and it should pop off.

Colorfabs PLA/PHA is slightly more flexible then "regular" pla which makes it much less brittle. But of course what is "regular" pla? UM also has additives to make it more flexible. Almost everyone does now. I plan to characterize the "young's modulus" of a few different brands of PLA in the near future. I just finished building my stress/strain tester.

Clean what? The filament? Just wipe the oil off. Or leave it on the filament. The print will not get significant amounts of oil on it - it's very subtle.

I'm not sure - I pretty much never get those Z scars. I know different temperature and different PLAs make a huge difference. I use expensive filament - mostly UM filament and Colorfab. Why not mess with temperature and/or speed while it's printing? It does not take long to change those 2 things in the TUNE menu. I pretty much always slice with 2 shells. So if .4mm nozzle then .8mm shell width. Shell width must be an integral of nozzle size or you can get horrible results. With .8mm nozzle and larger I usually do 1 shell pass. Also my infill speed is always identical - all my printing speeds (except for the main printing speed) are set to blank or zero such that they are all the same (e.g. inner sheel speed). Having different speeds will cause over or under extrusion on the outer layer right at the Z scar. Are you using Cura 2.X? I haven't tried that lately and not sure if it has any z-scar bugs. Probably not.

Oh and probably you want to ignore that 16X multiplier and stick with the table values that go roughly from 0 to 1023.

For the arduino in the UMO it's almost definitely 5V=1023 on ADC and 0V=0 on ADC. But then you have to remember that 108 ohms on the adapter board gives you 1.2 volts, right? I'm not sure what you calculated 0 ohms to result in. Maybe 1.11 volts? Sorry - too lazy to read above. But this should ALL JUST WORK. You should be able to use the special firmware - something like "UMO w/hb" (not to be confused with UMO+ which uses very different hardware).

In your profile settings you can make it so you get emails.

Well there are only 3 possibilities that I can think of: 1) When you levelled somehow it didn't save the new z home position. 2) Something is wrong with your gcode (this happens to me all the time - more later) 3) z endstop problems or other hardware issues #3 - do a quick check to make sure the Z switch is clear and nothing hits it. Look under the bed and you see a long screw sticking down. When the bed goes all the way down it goes into a square hole - see it? Make sure everything is solid and no junk in the hole. #1 - did you try this a second time to be sure? #2 - this seems most likely. Look at your part in cura layer view (always do this before printing something new). Move the slider up and down. I'm guessing nothing is printing on the bottom layer and it skips right to 1mm off the bed for the first layer. If none of these helps I would get pronterface and command the bed to move to position z=0 to see what's going on.

That's the "z scar". It is where the outer most path starts and ends. You can see it in Cura in layer view also. Anyway one fix is to print slower. Try 35mm/sec. Or if you are already at 35mm/sec try 25mm/sec. This assures less pressure in the head so less leakage while moving inward and outward from/to the outer edge.

Did you run the leveling procedure again? The height of the UM2+ head is a little shorter so you have to re-level.

@DrR1pper Well you are showing some bad layer issues all right! Most likely caused by bad Z movment (or possibly fluctuating temperature which is trivial to check for - just watch the temp and see if it oscillates the entire print). What happens is the Z axis gets stuck and only moves half a layer and then later it moves a layer and a half. Or other amounts but the result is that some layers stick out a bit and some stick into the part. You get stripes. Irregular. The fix is to take apart and clean the 6 key Z parts: z screw z nut the 2 rods the 2 bearings My z nut has no play but on some printers it has quite a bit of play. The quality on these varies from printer to printer. But you might just have a bit of friction or dirt. You want zero oil on the 2 rods - you want them clean. Also the bearings can get dust in them especially if you oiled the vertical rods. If so take them off the rods and clean them out with WD40. People have been able to make the Z stage move perfectly with a little bit of messing with it.

Any mineral oil will work. Use a light oil. So for example: baby oil, 3-in-1 oil, sewing machine oil, penetrating oil. Food oils are not recommended but should work fine (they can go rancid). Oils with additives like detergents (WD40) not recommended either. Drip the oil on the filament before it goes into the bowden. One drop is enough to coat the whole bowden. Maybe slide it in and out 3 times if you have the latest "plus" feeder or if you have iRoberti feeder. Then add two drops of oil for every meter so that it is continuously coated. I uncoil the filament and it hangs down like a long string about a meter down and make sure it's coated every 20 minutes of printing. I just used ninjaflex with UM2+ last week and it worked great.

Are you saying the zebra stripes are located in a different part of benchy each time with the same gcode file? If so that is probably because it homes before the start of each print and the home location can move the tiniest of amounts so bench is printed the tiniest bit in a different spot. But the "missing" steps occur in the same spot it's just that benchy moved. I dont' think of the step as missing by the way - they just are smaller then the next step which is twice as big. Note also - I mentioned this many pages ago - that you only get these step related issues on benchy because it has a plane (wall) that is tilted *both* slightly off vertical *and* slightly off the X or Y axis. If it was tilted much more the zebra stripes wouldn't be such an obvious pattern. If only one axis was tilted it would be horizontal or vertical stripes which are easily confused with other issues (z banding, ringing, cad model lines, z scar, etc). If it was flat in XZ or YZ plane you get no stripes at all. Most models line up with X and Y and Z axes. So I'm not really surprised that this is rare and only obvious on a few unusual models like benchy.

Looks like it's in one of the appdata folders which is where programs are supposed to store data. program files folder is for executable code, not configuration code. You need admin right to modify files there. So most programs use the registry or appdata folders. Mine is here - your appdata folder will be different depending on your username: C:\Users\gr5\AppData\Local\cura

You still aren't very clear. But I'm thinking you are talking about the horizontal bands. What is happening is some layers are getting too much plastic and some not enough. That can either be caused by Z error (Z axis doesn't move consistent amounts so you end up with too much or too little plastic on a layer) or inconsistent extrusion (e.g. temperature is fluctuating, or repeated tangles of filament or inconsistent filament hardness (slips sometimes, grips sometimes, etc). Usually it's the Z. This would have been visible in old prints however before you modified the olsson block. So first check temperature - while printing go into tune menu and see if the temperature is oscillating. If for example you usually print at 220C and it overshoots to 240C the first time - no big deal but if then it undershoots to 210C and oscillates (forever!) between 210C and 230C then you can get this banding. So watch the temp. Normally it shouldn't move by more than 2C. I mean if the fan goes from 0% to 100% the temp may dip down by 3C but it should recover within a minute and then stop oscillating. If it's oscillating then you probably installed a higher value heater. You can reduce the 3 PID values by the increase in wattage so 25W to 35W reduce the P and I and D values by the ratio of 25/35 or 30% less. Or you can run PID autotune but just reducing them all by 30% may give you even better results than the autotune which is tricky. But really your problem looks more like a Z issue. Maybe clean the Z rods. Maybe remove the plastic cover and get at the bearings and loosen them and move the bed up and down and then retighten. Push the bed up and down a few times with power off checking for resistance. Many people have taken their beds apart and cleaned out the bearings with WD40. You want the rods and bearings dry and clean. No oils. No dust. No water. Many people have spent the $5 or so for a replacement Z nut. Hmm. I should stock those. There's quite a bit of play in the Z axis for some Z nuts, and then for other's there is zero play. I don't know why. You can feel the play when you lift the bed up and down slightly. There are other topics on this forum where people had great success by simply taking apart the Z bearings/mounts and puttnig it back together. I know it sucks having to debug issues on a print when you have other things to do but the sooner you fix this the sooner your printer will be printing perfect again. Hey what state do you live in? If Massachusetts you should come by my house and I'll help you for free.

The big one looks pretty good. What issue do you care about? the underside of the ears? Or the hand supports? The obvious layer lines? Or something else?

Yes the firmware is easy to mess with and build. In a nutshell there are instructions (broad but useful) in README file amont the firmware files. You get the firmware from github. Use ginge's website to get a Configuration.h file that is close to your final file (minimal editing).