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x,y,z has been 1300 and 1250 for e right from the start. However this year (2015) the Z current was lowered to I believe 1100 and some people recommend going even down to 1000. For some reason the newer PCBs sometimes have the Z driver overheat. Especially in hot climates. i think i said all this in a post above somewhere. For many people having the Z current limited to 1100 or 1000 makes a huge difference. I still have mine at the default. I tried increasing E current (extruder) years ago and at 1300 it was stronger and I could print faster with less underextrusion. I went up to 1350 and it got worse again. I decided not to mess with E current and it's still at 1250. I'd rather have the stepper skip back than grind the filament.

Please read through my standard list below. Especially #1. I recommend the IRobertI feeder because it can help you narrow down the causes because you can feel the pressure by hand by simply opening the feeder and pushing on the filament and seeing how much is coming out. I also recomend the Olsson block from 3dsolex because you can test #2 and #6 more easily by removing the nozzle and feeling the friction through everything but the nozzle with the heat off. A valuable diagnostic. Also you can have one nozzle for ABS and one for PLA as it's just problematic switching back and forth. Also you can swap nozzles to see if that makes a difference (and you can burn one nozzle out with flame or soak in acetone while printing with the other). CAUSES FOR UNDEREXTRUSION AND HOW TO TEST FOR THEM AND REMEDY THEM As far as underextrusion causes - there's just so damn many. none of the issues seem to cause more than 20% of problems so you need to know the top 5 issues to cover 75% of the possibilities and 1/4 people still won't have the right issue. Some of the top issues: 1) Print slower and hotter! Here are top recommended speeds for .2mm layers (twice as fast for .1mm layers): 20mm/sec at 200C 30mm/sec at 210C 40mm/sec at 225C 50mm/sec at 240C The printer can do double these speeds but with huge difficulty and usually with a loss in part quality due to underextrusion. Different colors print best at quite different temperatures and due to imperfect temp sensors, some printers print 10C cool so use these values as an initial starting guideline and if you are still underextruding try raising the temp. But don't go over 240C with PLA. 2) Isolator - this is most common if you've printed extra hot (>240C) for a few hours or regular temps (220C) for 500 hours. It warps. It's the white part touching the heater block. Test it by removing it and passing filament though it by hand. 3) Curved filament at end of spool - if you are past half way on spool, try a fresh spool as a test. 4) curved angle feeding into feeder - put the filament on the floor -makes a MASSIVE difference. 5) Head too tight? Bizarrely MANY people loosen the 4 screws on the head by just a bit maybe 1/2 mm and suddenly they can print just fine! Has to do with pressure on the white teflon isolator. 5b) Bowden pushing too hard - for the same reason you don't want the bowden pushing too hard on the isolator. 5c) Spring pushing too hard. Although you want a gap you want as small as possible a gap between teflon isolator and steel isolator nut such that the spring is compressed as little as possible. 6) clogged nozzle - the number one problem of course - even if it seems clear. There can be build up on the inside of the nozzle that only burning with a flame can turn to ash and remove. Sometimes a grain of sand gets in there but that's more obvious (it just won't print). Atomic method (cold pull) helps but occasionally you need to remove the entire heater block/nozzle assembly and use flame. 7) Temp Sensor bad - even the good ones vary by +/- 5C and bad ones can be any amount off - they usually read high and a working sensor can fail high slowly over time. Meaning the sensor thinks you are at 220C but actually you are at 170C. At 170C the plastic is so viscous it can barely get out of the nozzle. You can verify your temp sensor using this simple video at youtube - on you tube search for this: mrZbX-SfftU 8) feeder spring issues - too tight, too loose 9) Other feeder issues, one of the nuts holding machine together often interferes with the feeder motor tilting it enough so that it still works but not very well. Other things that tilt the feeder motor, sleeve misaligned so it doesn't get a good grip. Gunk clogging the mechanism in there. 10) Filament diameter too big - 3mm is too much. 3mm filament is usually 2.85mm nominal or sometimes 2.9mm +/- .05. But some manufacturers (especially in china) make true 3.0mm filament with a tolerance of .1mm which is useless in an Ultimaker. It will print for a few meters and then clog so tight in the bowden you will have to remove the bowden from both ends to get the filament out. Throw that filament in the trash! It will save you weeks of pain 10b) Something wedged in with the filament. I was setting up 5 printers at once and ran filament change on all of them. One was slowly moving the filament through the tube and was almost to the head when I pushed the button and it sped up and ground the filament badly. I didn't think it was a problem and went ahead and printed something but there was a ground up spot followed by a flap of filament that got jammed in the bowden tube. 11) Hot weather. If air is above 30C or even possibly 25C, the air temperature combined with the extruder temperature can soften the filament inside the feeder such that it is getting squeezed flat as it passes through the feeder - this is obvious as you can see the problem in the bowden. The fix is to add a desk fan blowing on the back of the printer. 12) Crimped bowden. At least one person had an issue where the bowden was crimped a bit too much at the feeder and although the printer worked fine when new it eventually got worse and had underextrusion on random layers. it's easy to pull the bowden out of the feeder end and examine it.

earaujo! You deleted your photos from drop box and so now they don't show up here! Next time please upload them to ultimaker so you can delete them off your drop box account without messing up your posts.

There are sooo many causes of underextrusion. Here are 2 of them - the white teflon part degrades pretty quickly at temps above 240C so it may be time to change out that part. People who switch from ABS to PLA in particular have this problem plus bits of ABS dust showing up in the nozzle. Another thing is that you replaced the temp sensor. If the sensor is loose it tends to read low and so the nozzle is hotter than normal (as much as 20C). If the sensor is tight the nozzle can be as much as 10C cooler than normal. While it's underextruding I would go into the tune menu and go as high as 240C (not just 220C) but don't go over 240C for PLA. Another thought is that if I print ABS at 260C I get clogs incredibly easy - especially if I print too slow or let it sit like that without printing for a minute. ABS just tends to bake into a gummy gunk very quickly and easily. I'd like to see some closeup photos of underextruded parts please.

Sometimes if you do a find/replace all it tells you how many it replaced so you can change G11 to X11 and then undo. or use "find" dos command or "grep" unix command. 10548 is fine as long as it is a big enough print. 10548 X 4.5mm retraction (the default I think) is only 47 meters of retractions. I've had a half kilometer of retractions. But if you are only printing 1 meter of filament that's 47 retractions for each spot - marginal but might work. If you are printing 4 meters of filament that should be fine. More importantly just check ONE LAYER. the layer with the rivets. Anyway you won't break anything - the worst thing that will happen is you will grind the filament at the feeder and have to remove the bowden at the feeder to get it out. Make sure you push down on the ring around the bowden while pulling up on the bowden. Perhaps use needle nose pliers for pushing down.

Lol - that's to a drive on your computer. I don't know how to access your personal computer. Start a new post. Click the right most icon that shows a mountain and a blue plus symbol. Click the "upload image" tab and then drag and drop your picture onto that, then choose full image (not thumbnail).

gcode files store all the settings used to create the gcode file - at the end in a binary format. In cura you can select "file" "open profile from gcode" and that will load all the settings from that gcode file into cura and then you can go through them all and look at them or save them out "save profile...".

Please move this discussion somewhere else and link to the other topic.

I can never remember the above formula but the general rule is, if the shell is very close (within 20%) of a multiple of the nozzle width, then it takes the shell width and divides by that multiple to get the line width. So for example if nozzle is .4mm and shell is .7mm then it will do two .35mm lines. If nozzle is .4 and shell is .8mm then of course, two .4mm lines. If nozzle is .4 and shell is .42mm then one .42mm line. If shell is thinner than nozzle it pretty much always uses shell - exceptions above for example if < .01mm. Best to go through above code for a specific example. It's pretty simple to run through the above code with a specific nozzle and shell size (shell is called wallThickness).

If you have a .6mm nozzle then that would be better than the .8mm nozzle for this tool. Anyway it will probably come out okay - not sure. The tolerances are important to get the right torque - or reasonably close. In general there is a formula in Cura that determines "line width". The line width for an entire print is always the same which is weird because I would think the infill should match the nozzle width. But it doesn't. The line width is how thick the line is (the goal thickness) when it lays down a line. The line width determines 3 things: the spacing of lines, the amount to extrude, how far in from the edge to print (half line width) such that the part is dimensionally correct. def calculateEdgeWidth():wallThickness = getProfileSettingFloat('wall_thickness')nozzleSize = getProfileSettingFloat('nozzle_size')if getProfileSetting('spiralize') == 'True' or getProfileSetting('simple_mode') == 'True':return wallThicknessif wallThickness < 0.01:return nozzleSizeif wallThickness < nozzleSize:return wallThicknesslineCount = int(wallThickness / (nozzleSize - 0.0001))if lineCount == 0:return nozzleSizelineWidth = wallThickness / lineCountlineWidthAlt = wallThickness / (lineCount + 1)if lineWidth > nozzleSize * 1.5:return lineWidthAltreturn lineWidth

No - but you may grind the filament into dust. For example I printed the eiffel tower which has hundreds of girders per layer - each tiny girder is a separate "island" on a layer. I actually had a half kilometer of retractions! On average each piece of filament went through the feeder 20 times and it was no problem. Then on a different printer I was printing big ben and there was a few layers where there were 40 retractions per piece of filament and the filament ground down to half it's normal size and eventually failed. I had to reslice it with fewer retractions - it came out great. Some printers/filaments can do 40 retractions per spot of filament without grinding it down too much. Other filaments get ground down until it can't feed anymore and the feeder stops feeding and the print fails (nothing extrudes). There is absolutely no damage to the printer.

Can't see the photo - please try again. maybe you need to make it public or something? I cut and pasted just the part to the right of the //.

In the video they suggest you leave 3 of the screws in. At this point I recommend you take it all apart - remove the 4 screws, remove the 2 screws that hold the plate that the spring is pushing against, remove the white teflon piece, then try lifting the steel coupler up. Probably the thin screw that holes the heater and temp sensor in place is making it difficult to get the block out. Better at this point to do it the "hard way" and so that you are gentle with the temp sensor and heater which are so easy to break.

It's the loose belts thing. Also make sure the short belts are tight. The issue you have in the robot photo is called "backlash" and it is also called "play". I recommend you read about it in wikipedia. Also scroll down to the photo with the green lines that talk about backlash here: https://ultimaker.com/en/community/2872-some-calibration-photographs Now the other problem with the model with the hand - I think that's underextrusion - most likely due to the Z stage moving too far occasionally but it could be filament tangles, sudden nozzle temperature changes, who knows what else. I think that's going to be a more serious problem and harder to fix for you. First compare all models you have printed and see if the problems tend to occur at the exact same height (mechanical problem) or different heights (tangles in filament or Z stepper overheating issues (this is common)).

It's probably the relay known as K1. Watch this video: Once K1 closes it will stay closed until you cut power. If you let it cool a few hours and turn it on it will work fine. Watch the video! It's only 1 minute. I fixed this by shorting out the 24V that K1 controls. I spoke to Siert (one of the founders) and he said that's a good solution and that K1 isn't used for anything - it was intended to be used as a safety power cutoff to be connected to external power off switch or signal but it's never been implemented. If you aren't into hacking K1, first prove that you have the same problem by following the things in my video and checking the lights and tapping the relay. Then post back here and then ask for a new PCB from whomever sold you the printer and refer them to this thread. While waiting for you new PCB you can use the trick in my video for now.

I think you got it in one. The "shell width" is more important than nozzle width so leave nozzle width at .8 and try shell width at .7, .6, .5, .4 and look at layer view and see where the vanes come back in. You can print with a .4mm nozzle down to about .3mm shell and you can print a .8mm nozzle down to about .6mm shell. But of course the quality will be reduced a little. It may appear to be a bit underextruded. Of course you can then bump up the flow but now you may have bad tolerances when you try to put the torque wrench tool together.

I would also grab the last layer printed from the gcode file and run it through something to count the G11 (retract) commands and also look at the extruder position (which is in cubic mm which is confusing) and try to figure out how many retractions there are per mm. Then knowing it retracts about 4mm or 4.5mm figure out how many times each spot of filament goes back and forth through the feeder. If it's more than 100 you will probably get grinding. But maybe not. I've done > 100 and been fine on some printers/filaments and on others it fails around 30 to 40 times having the same spot go through the feeder.

I advise against Z hop. It can greatly reduce the quality. It's most useful for delta printers, not X/Y printers. I would print it as shown but I would also try printing the part up on the long edge (try both!). That way the rivets are a simple bump out and no retraction needed. I would also enable the brim feature if you print it on it's side to keep it from falling over during the print and possibly even add a few 45 degree supports to be removed later using cad software that meet the part half way up. But it should be fine without any supports.

Depends. If it stops extruding but keeps moving then it's not the USB issue. If it stops moving all axes for no good reason then suspect the USB.

260? For abs or pla? I recommend never going over 240C for PLA. You may have a coating of carbon now inside your nozzle if you did PLA at 260C. How fast are you printing and how thick are the layers?

"easy" is a relative term. You have to edit one line in Configuation.h and rebuild. Or you can get an old version of the firmware - for UM2 the newest version of marlin without the heater error is: 14.09. There are no official versions for um2go or um2ext but they are easy enough to compile.

You need quite a bit of force to raise the bed - about the same amount of force required to lift the printer off the table. Grip the bed using BOTH hands with your fingers under the bed near the very back where it attaches. Once it starts moving it doesn't take much friction to keep ti going. WD40 has powerful cleaners in it that are very bad to leave in/on the bearings/rods. WD40 should only be used to clean - not lubricate. You need to wipe most of it off after you are done. So only use WD40 if you take the two linear bearings completely off the rods out and you can get it pretty dry before putting it back together.

You might want to either disable the "heater error" check or alternatively get a 35W heater. The 25W heater that comes with the UM has quite a bit of variation from printer to printer and may actually be as low as 20W.

Sorry I don't know if my video player is terrible or if it's just hard to see. I can't tell if the Z axis speeds up or if it underextrudes. If the Z axis drops suddenly it might have nothing to do with the bearings - it could be the Z stepper controller - that is a similar problem but different. In that problem it doesn't always occur at the exact same height although typically with printing the same part it does happen close to the same spot. But different parts will happen at different heights (small 1cm by 1cm tower will happen higher as you can print much faster and so the problem occurs higher up).

This could be underextrusion, or it could be sudden Z movement. Does it usually happen at the same spot? Anyway there are 2 common causes of sudden Z movement. One is having too high of a current on the Z motor - some recent PCBs have the z stepper driver overheat and it shuts off for just a second which is long enough for the table to slip under it's own weight. Also if you use S3D the typical profile sets the Z current much too high. Cura doesn't modify Z current. You can lower the current on the front panel of the latest versions of marlin including tinker marlin. Default I believe is 1300ma, S3D likes 1400ma, UM recommends 1200ma, some people out in the wild use 1000ma. Hot air temperatures under the printer also can make this problem worse. Also sometimes the bearings stick and then slip suddenly. You can test this by moving the bed up and down with your fingers with the power off. Lift from the back. Go past the bad spot many times - if you feel anything then your bearings should be removed form the bed and experimented with and possibly cleaned.