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Even higher up the quality is bad. That higher up section is caused by printing with not enough fan. Is this ABS or PLA? If ABS and you want good quality you really need to enclose the printer like the Zortrax. If PLA then you just need more fan and probably lower the printing temperature also. What temp are you printing at? The bottom area that you spoke of is usually called by the build plate being too hot. I will get something similar at 70C but it's usually perfect at 60C for me but if you enclose the machine you might want to go a little cooler or maybe better - make sure the fans are at full power by the 2nd or third layer. In cura look at your fan settings and make it go to 100% by 0.5mm to .7mm (this is for PLA, not ABS). Also double check this by going into the TUNE menu while it is printing and make sure the fans get to 100% by layer 3 as your material settings on the printer can override the cura settings. For example by default I believe ABS keeps the fan no higher than around 50% and I would probably even go to 30% even if the printer is enclosed. Oh - and white is more difficult to print with for some reason - it tends to melt at a lower temperature and so you probably want to print it 10 or 20C cooler than typical. Again, assuming this is PLA and not ABS. So either try a different color or try printing at say 200C. In fact I'd try an experiment where you print just the bottom bit of those pins (and then cancel the print) with 100% fan and 0% fan at 210C, 200C, 190C, 180C. And print slow - like 35mm/sec just like the zortrax does (I think it's like 20mm/sec!).

Yeah that's from me which means it came from 3dsolex. It's an optical illusion. I recently sliced something in Cura which had a threaded rod through it - large threads. The amazing thing I noticed is as you go through the layers EVERY layer is a perfect circle but the circle spirals around with the threading. So any cross section looks like a circle that is offset (not aligned). If the threading stopped lower down you would see that it is indeed perfectly centered. I just now took out a handful of blocks and found the worst 2 looking ones (and the "thin" looking side was in 2 different directions. Then I screwed on the steel coupler. Still looked bad because only the flat part of the olsson block is clearly visible. Then I inserted the teflon isolator. PERFECT. Within half the thickness of paper easily. I could see no error even with reading glasses and looking from both ends. So it's an illusion created by the fact that any cross section of a thread looks like a circle "off-center". So please explain about your printing problems - maybe post a photo?

Thanks for the photos. I pulled as much of the HB wiring into the area below the printer and as little as possible in the main printing area. It make things much neater.

There's "level" and then there's "level". The latest leveling procedure with the card makes it so that when the z=0.3mm the nozzle is 0.3mm off the glass and that is where it prints the bottom level (by default in Cura anyway) and that is how much filament is extruded (enough to make a bottom layer .3mm thick). This works great when you need dimensionally PERFECT parts - where the absolute bottom layer can't have a skirt - not even .1mm of skirt (not visible without a microscope or micrometer). However this results in parts that don't stick well. So instead I level things a little lower (a lot lower). This way the bottom layer is extruding pancake-like brim or skirt. To achieve this - anytime after doing the leveling procedure (I rarely run it anymore) just adjust the 3 screws counter clockwise about a half turn. The next time you print something make sure the brim or skirt is squished flatter than nominal. It will stick much better.

Yes. Make sure brim and skirt lines are set to zero. Even then it might fail. I think cura creates 2 rectangles - one longer in X that goes between the clips. And one longer Y that goes between the clips the other way. Your part is outside both of those rectangles yet still does not touch the clips. So this is kind of a bug or limitation of Cura. You can lie to cura and tell it the bed is 250mm by 250mm and then place the part as close to 0,0 as possible (front left corner). I haven't tried this but I suspect it will work.

The two rods that pass through the print head are not perpendicular. That is why the print isn't perfectly square. It's easy to adjust them - loosen the setscrew on one of the 4 pulleys and make the crooked axis straight again. Push the head around to the 4 sides to see where things aren't quite square. But I don't think you can ever get it perfectly square. So you need to print these 4 parts in the exact same orientation such that if one is a paralellogram where one corner is 89 degrees instead of 90 then the same corner will be 89 on all 4 parts and they will meet up nicely with no gaps. Or maybe the error is only .5 degree. Or 0.1 degree. But whatever the error is you want it consistent to get rid of these gaps.

Cura used to always be inaccurate in predictions but then they included most of the marlin planner mechanism into the planning and now it's spot on - around 1% error. But they used the acceleration and jerk settings for a typical Ultimaker and even Ultimaker people mess with that. Ultimaker is 25% faster at the speeds you print (because of the higher acceleration). So one solution is to buy an ultimaker.

Yes. What @Torgeir said. You can adjust steps/mm from the control panel. Make sure you do a save or you will lose that value the next time you power up the printer. And if needed, to reverse an axis swap just two wires in the extruder connector (the two wires of either twisted pair). Source: http://reprap.org/wiki/Stepper_wiring#Motor_moving_the_wrong_direction

I agree - it's most likely a firmware issue. Maybe you said this already - but where did you get your firmware? Ideally you want to get the latest Cura and tell it that you have a UMO (not UMO+) with the heated bed (maybe you chose umo+ by accident?). Then update the firmware. Or you can choose custom update and look through the choices.

If it's the wrong voltage, check tp10 next to make sure that is 1.2V. If tp10 is correct and tp1 is wrong voltage then the problem is probably with the larger pcb. If both voltages are 1.4V then the problem is probably with the smaller pcb.

good work. So did you measure the voltage at J1 to see if it is indeed 1.2V and not 1.4V?

Oh - and parts just pop off once the bed cools.

The one for children and the one for wood both have PVA as the primary ingredient. This is also the key ingredient in hair spray and glue stick. Any of these work but my favorite is "wood glue". For wood glue mixed with 10 parts water I use a paint brush and paint it right on the glass inside the printer. Heat the bed and it dries quickly:

Welcome! I suggest you follow this topic for inspiration: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/1467-post-your-latest-print?page=156

Doesn't sound serious to me. It seems like it happens on travel moves only and only during layer change. As though it's doing the Z and X move at the same time which is not how it normally works. Anyway I've heard much worse sounds. I don't think anything is getting damaged.

The problem is with Cura. Not the printer. NEVER PRINT anything without looking at it in slice view first. You would have seen these holes in slice view. There are several possibilities. It could be that the walls that aren't printing are too think. In general if nozzle is .4mm then wall must be at least .8mm (1mm to be safe). Or you may have extra hidden walls inside your walls. You can test this easily by going into xray mode in cura (that's one of the 5 or so view modes for your model in cura). If you see *any* red then that's a problem with your cad model. Typically sketchup creates lots of errors (lots of red).

How are you inserting the new filament? Either push it manually until filament starts coming out or maybe you can use the "move material" command? Basically you don't want to resume the print until you have the new color showing. I haven't done this (change colors part way through a print) in a long time and I forget what features are available. I think if you have tinkermarlin you have a lot more options. Usually I just pull the old filament out by hand and push the new one in by hand but that can be trickier on some of my UM2 printers than on others (due to higher spring tension in the feeder).

Are those rough surfaces showing up in the cookies? it seems hard to believe. I'm wondering if you really need to make the top look perfect visually in the stamp as long as the cookies look perfect. Getting the top surface perfect is quite hard. The advice about leveling was to avoid the part lifting off the bed. I'll give you simpler advice. The problem is your are printing too high off the glass on the bottom layer so it's not sticking well. So rotate all 3 leveling knobs about 1/2 turn counter clockwise as seen from below. This will raise the bed closer to the nozzle so that the next print you make WILL STICK BETTER. Also keep your glass clean if you aren't using glue on the glass. Oils from your fingers (or cookies?) on the glass makes it not stick so well. Again the other advice about flipping your part over 180 degrees sounds smart also - if you really need the letters to look better you can try printing them upside down on the glass. It should work out nicely. Please don't use raft. That's very old technology and not needed since 2014. Finally consider lying to Cura and telling it that your nozzle is 0.35mm (and similarly make shell a multiple of .35 such as .7 or 1.05). The letters will probably come out a little nicer.

If you are printing over usb don't slice to a machine in "ultigcode" mode but instead you want normal reprap (not volumetric) gcodes. Basically "ultigcode" is another way of saying it leaves out the temperature commands from the gcodes.

I like glue. I dilute elmers wood glue with 10 parts water and spread it with a paint brush. This dries to an invisible layer and lasts for 20 to 50 prints. When I'm printing a large print that makes me nervous about curling corners I will wet the paint brush in the sink and then spread the water around on the glue spreading the glue around again (it becomes visible again when you get it wet). There's nothing messy when the layer of glue is about 1/10 the thickness of a sheet of paper. Maybe around .01mm thick.

Well something is wrong somewhere. At room temp the bed resistor should be about 108 ohms and the little board (not shown in picture) converts that to some voltage between 0V and 5V and sends that to this bigger board (shown). Something somewhere in that long path is broken. I don't know what parts to probe other than the 108 ohms.

heated bed upgrade kit should have included a little board that converts the temperature. Also you need to remove the 4.7k resistor on the bed sensor circuit if you had inserted one long ago. Actually the 4.7k resistor issue is common for many people who built their own heated beds. Make sure no one installed one on your 1.5.6 board.

You only need to heat it up a bit and then you can pick it all off. 100C or even only 80C is plenty. boiling water or just a hair dryer. Not too hot to touch or maybe just a little too hot to touch.

The driver is getting too hot after a while. Is it getting good airflow? If so then you want to adjust the current a little (probably reduce it). Be aware that moving those potentiometers as described above just the tiniest bit can blow them up. But I'm not sure what else you can do. Basically turn it about a half millimeter to a lower current value as described in the photo that shows which way to turn all the different pololu's to get lower current.

I call that "stringing". You can get rid of all stringing without too much trouble although as I think vince is implying some filaments string almost no matter what you do. You want to make sure your bowden is tight on each end (doesn't move up and down) and make sure your retraction is about 4.5mm (more retraction if the bowden tube moves). This is the default but still worth checking - it's in the material settings somewhere. Or the TUNE menu when printing but it's on the printer, not cura. Also make sure you have retractions enabled. You might want to go into the advanced retractions menus and make sure retractions ALWAYS occur for this particular part. By default there are a few cases (see the minimum settings) where it might not retract before doing a blue move. And finally - (possibly the only thing you have to do) - slow it down and cool it down. Hotter filament is more liquidy (like syrup) and cooler is better behaved (like toothpaste). And printing fast leads to high pressures in the nozzle which also drives leaking. So try 200C and 25mm/sec but keep your travel moves fast - 200mm/sec is good. Your part is tiny so it should only take a few minutes at 25mm/sec.