gr5

It's best to ask Cura what the terms mean as it will never give you a false answer. It will never lie to you. To do this put your object into cura and look at it with "slice view". Pick an inner layer with the slider on the bottom right. You can use shift+up arrow to move one layer at a time. The "shell" is the outer perimeters. So the red line is the outer most shell, the green lines are more shell (if you have more than 2 passes) and the yellow lines are "fill". Experiment with settings. ALWAYS make sure shell is a multiple of nozzle diameter. Changing density changes how much yellow infill there is on areas that are not "top/bottom". Top/bottom areas are yellow but they are always 100% fill. top/bottom might not be at the top of your print - it might be in the middle if you have for example a shelf. Don't mess with infill speed - I strongly recommend you set this to 0. I don't know what an "air gap" is. Maybe the space between the yellow fill grid? But change these cura settings and look what happens in slice view.

Is it ultimaker filament? There was a bad batch mostly last summer that gets brittle after a while (3 to 12 months - not sure). If you bend your filament 90 degrees with your fingers and it breaks then you should probably send it back. Or throw it out. Anyway - "binding" I assume is actually where you have one loop underneath another. This happens to everyone and is very annoying and is easily avoided. The best thing to do is to remove the filament from the printer, maybe have someone hold the end and keep it tight and start to unwind until you see where it goes under another loop. Give it slack and pull the filament out from under the one on top. then repeat the test and make sure there are at least 5 meters/yards of filament that aren't tangled. Once a spool is "certified" as not tangled try to never let it get tangled again. For a while I would never let go of the tip of the filament. when storing I would put the tip through a side hole or I would use rubber bands to keep the tip from getting under the rest or other techniques. But now I pretty much don't worry about it - if I have a large print I unspool at least 2 yards/meters first to make sure there are no tangles. When the filament comes from the factory there is never a tangle - it's just when we open it up in the first few seconds and any other time the filament is not inserted into the printer - that's when it's very easy to get it tangled.

The one thing that changed for sure is you ran the leveling procedure. That was probably a bad idea. Don't fix it if it isn't broken. I use the leveling procedure once to get it close but then level every time while printing the bottom layer - I suspect that's your issue is #6 below. But if you follow all the steps below you will be able to pick up the printer with your print before it cools down. Even if it is as small as a UM robot. ========================================== lifting corners, curling corners, part sticking to glass 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.

at 15mm/sec, 205C is plenty hot!

100% fill is not necessary and wastes lots of time and plastic. If you need something strong enough that a car can drive over it - try 3 shells (1.2mm) instead of 2 (.8mm). The issue is that because the nozzle is on the left side of the print head, you get more fan on the left side of the model. I'm not sure what the solution is - I guess print cooler. Try printing at 195C on the printer and slow it down to 30mm/sec. Of course getting the UM2+ upgrade *might* help as I think it gives you more fan power. Or just print something larger - or print 2 at once so one has more time to cool while printing the other.

Obviously the stepper is fine but be aware that what you describe is what happens if one of the 4 wires is cut to the stepper. It will go down but not up. And the noise it makes when it goes down is - well - wrong. And you can easily fight the stepper and keep the bed from moving but if you push it up when you tell it to go up (push hard) it will go up a the correct speed. But we know that none of the 4 wires are broken - alternatively one of the 4 connections on that connector could be bent/twisted/dirty or the solder on one of those pins could be bad - you could just reheat that solder spot. Or you can get yet another board. good luck.

They cost about $1 each in batches of 10 so go for it. fbrc8 might send you a free one - don't know. Doesn't hurt to ask.

@thinusp - I saw that pattern you show in the first picture today. It happened when I was printing too fast - was printing 200mm/sec (doing a test). The problem was that the nozzle slows down (decelerates) at each change of direction and because it was printing fast there was a lot of pressure in the nozzle and it overextruded on the edges of each trace but then it accelerated and underextruded in the middle. Lowering the speed significantly helped quite a bit. Even if you are only printing at 50mm/sec, try cutting the speed in half (in the tune menu) just to see what happens. I bet you see huge improvement. I think cura by default uses a higher speed for infill - and I don't do that because this is just what you expect - crappy infill.

If the printer had a camera you could automate this most easily on the bottom layer. Print some lines on the bottom layer at different speeds and see what speed/temp they start to become thinner than nominal. This camera would also be able to auto level of course just by looking at the thickness of the lines in different locations of the bed. Then the bottom layer could be .1mm instead of .3mm (I mean I can do .1mm now but some people can't because their glass is slightly warped).

Is there more information somewhere about where to get the same compiler version as UM? What build environment is preferred?

Oh! You mean this? $MAKE -j ${JOBS} HARDWARE_MOTHERBOARD=72 ARDUINO_INSTALL_DIR=${ARDUINO_PATH} ARDUINO_VERSION=${ARDUINO_VERSION} BUILD_DIR=_Ultimaker2extended DEFINES="'STRING_CONFIG_H_AUTHOR=\"Vers:_${BUILD_NAME}ex\"' TEMP_SENSOR_1=0 EXTRUDERS=1" I have always used the arduino IDE :( I didn't know it added junk libraries. But it still fits on my um2go so maybe it's not critical? What about for tinker Marlin? Do you also use make?

If it really is clogging at the nozzle, use the nozzle cleaner tool I sent you along with a cold pull. In other words heat to 200C, push firmly down on filament (can either remove bowden or do it through the motor) then insert the to to push any clogs up into the filament, then let it cool to around 95C and remove the cleaner tool while it's cooling. When it cools to about 95C and is at that temp for 10 seconds or longer, then pull out the filament to get any clogs out. But I still suspect you are printing too cold or too fast and the feeder is grinding up the filament.

I'm still guessing that the feeder is grinding first and *then* it stops feeding at the nozzle. What speed, temp, and layer height are you printing at? (I need to know speed and layer height to calculate volume per second). Also is your cura shell setting an integral multiple of your nozzle size? Such as .4mm or .8mm or 1.2mm?

Even just changing one byte in the code will make the whole file different because now addresses of every jump (in machine code) have all moved. Or if you move the data by one byte then those all change. So comparing binaries that only had one tiny change will usually look completely different. There might be a git tag somewhere - there should be - such that you can check out the exact version but really - the latest version is best anyway. What doesn't home? X? Y? or Z?

The 0,0 position for an ultimaker is in the front left corner and the bed is about 200mm wide (235?) so it prints roughly centered on X=100 Y=100. Where is this for your bed? Where is 0,0 on your machine? A corner or in the center? If the center then in cura, machine settings you need to tell it to *not* do ultigcode and also tell it that 0,0 is in the center. Before printing anything you might want to install pronterface and play around with a few things like figure out where x,y,z=0 are if you haven't already. Also ask around in the prusa community about what are good settings in Cura for a prusa printer.

I strongly suspect the _XXX parameters is a bug. I think you can just delete those. There was talk about some new bug with the materials settings in Marlin. Not sure if the bug was fixed but this could be related to that bug.

71-73cm. You can buy them from 3dsolex - it's hard to find a better price and they are precut to the correct length. And the inside is bevel cut so the filament is less likely to get stuck at the feeder (just as Ultimaker does to their bowdens).

Because your PID values were too high. Just reduce the PID values (each of the 3 values) by the increase in heater power. Older PID values were for a 25W heater, UM2+ has 35W so multiply by 25/35 and save those lower values. Or get the latest firmware. Herman's problem is completely different I think. I just ran my new sensor on the outside of the black cable bundle - ugly but it works.

It takes practice. Eventually you do it without thinking.

That would be my store fyi. How do you know it's the nozzle? I mean if you have lots of dust or other materials (like if your nylon feeder is grinding to dust and getting stuck in the nozzle) it's possible but kind of unlikely. Is your printer in a very dusty environment? Are you sure it's getting clogged and instead maybe the feeder is stripping the filament?

.6mm is twice as fast and .8mm is 4x as fast. I did most of my quadcopter parts with .8mm. If you want functional things the .8mm is great. If you want something that is a masterpiece then go with .4mm. With the .8mm I usually do 0.8mm shell - that's just one pass! And creates very strong parts. It's also useful for making a vase or a cup or something out of transparent PLA. Transparent PLA looks best with very thick layers and just one pass. 0.8mm or 1.0mm nozzles are great for that and do thick layers like .6mm thick.

If you have "combing" turned on it should try to stay within the walls of the cylinder but if you have combing turned off then it will go right across the cylinder like that. Setting infill to 0% might help. A lot. Very thin walls like this are tricky for Cura.

Shell thickness of 1.0mm is bad - this can result in horrible prints because it is trying to squirt out 1mm of filament with a .4mm nozzle in 2 passes (.5mm each pass) which can give you bad underextrusion. That's probably not the problem I see in your print but still - FIX THAT RIGHT AWAY. You want shell thickness to ALWAYS be an integral multiple of nozzle size. I would go into the tune menu while it is printing and just slow it down and cool it down. Try printing at 50% feedrate and lower by 10C and see if that helps the quality. This stuff inside your cylinder however should remove very easily. I'm not certain what is causing that - probably bad retraction - but I can't imagine why it would happen on one print and not the other.

No. Autoleveling is overrated (it doesn't work well in other products). Once you level it will stay level for months. However I still tweak mine a bit - sometimes you want something to stick extra well and I adjust it (simply turn the 3 screws the same amount a 1/4 turn) such that the bottom layer is squished a little more - this way the part will stick very well. Other times I'm printing something small that doesn't need to stick well but where the bottom layer is critical dimensionally. And I don't want to have to file the tiny tiny bottom layer lip off the bottom edge. So I turn the screws the other way. Autoleveling takes this control away from you - moves you farther from controlling the printer and gives you fewer options.

Good question. I haven't tried the .25mm nozzle yet but I have one (I have a .15mm also). I'm just guessing. Either no one really proofread the specs carefully who had tried a .25mm nozzle. Or it might be that you really can't go lower than .06mm layer height for that nozzle. PLA is kind of gunky/sticky as you are printing and it sticks to itself like snot or like a liquid rubber band. When printing very thin layers it may be that it has trouble and these liquid strands break and don't print so well when it's so thin to start with (.25mm across). I really don't know. Hopefully someone else knows the answer.