gr5

Almost guaranteed you will have problems but we will be able to easily help you I'm sure! Welcome.

PLA and ABS are of very similar strength. Many people claim ABS is stronger but in my experience it is very difficult to print ABS as strong as PLA. ABS and XT (PET) have layer adhesion issues because if you print them just slightly too cold the layers don't bond well and parts split along layer lines. This isn't a problem because PLA melts at a much lower temperature. The main difference between ABS and PLA is the melting temperature and that explains everything - because PLA doesn't get solid until around 55C there is much less shrinking/warping even though both plastics have almost identical density/temp graphs. It's because you don't have to worry about shrinking until it is a solid. Many people claim PLA is more brittle than ABS - for example Taulman is a manufacture that claims it has a PLA as flexible as ABS. But I tried their PLA and I have found that all good quality PLA brands are just as flexible or almost as flexible and that all brands seem to add some thing to make PLA slightly more flexible than pure PLA. As a result, PLA is the easiest and most popular printing material. The only drawback to PLA is it's low melting temperature which makes it useless for anything going inside an automobile because of the potential extreme temperatures. also PLA can't be used for cups that hold coffee or tea yet ABS can.

I've seen that before - I think it's just an extra cable that isn't used. Are all 3 of your fans working on your print head - did you ever check the 3rd one on the back of the head? It should come on when the nozzle is > 40C. Or when you power on depending when you got the printer.

Detailed correct answer to this question was just posted here. Suggest you read "best answer" and also the final post by the original author made on Aug 27 (today) https://ultimaker.com/en/community/view/17099-unresponsive-after-firmware-update?page=1&sort=#reply-116566

Before you start your business look at 3dhubs.com and see how many people are already offering the same service within 100 miles of where you live and see what price they are charging. 3dhubs lets you do that kind of thing (choose area).

That sounds normal. The Z axis is about 100 times louder than the other 3 servos.

You need to practice removing the bowden at both ends so please do that. On the head end it's easier - you loosen the 4 screws 1 or 2 full turns, then remove the clip, push down on the bowden-clip-holder and then only while pushing down on that ring pull up on the bowden. Note that there are 4 tiny metal blades that can damage the tube if you don't push down on the clip. Once you have experience doing the head, the feeder is simpler because you can't loosen the 4 screws. But easier to damage. But I've taken mine off many times, no damage yet.

It's the filament. I think it's too dry. Or too old. I have some older filament that does this. I had to throw it away. Take a small piece of filament - say 10cm. Take another piece of brand new filament. Break them both in your hands - the new filament should be much more able to bend without breaking.

Not sure what you mean but you might need a new teflon coupler. Is this the UM2?

The newer printers come with a tiny white ring to block the path of PLA from your part up into the head. I guess you didn't get one of those :(

This is common if your part doesn't stick to the glass and starts getting dragged around wtih the head part way through the print and then you walk away for 3 hours. You need to learn how to keep your parts sticking to the glass better but first - to fix this issue - realize that even hot tea is plenty hot enough to loosen the PLA. So get a hair dryer or a heat gun and start heating all that plastic up and then remove the fan shroud and then start removing it carefully. It's very easy to damage the 2 cables going into the back of the heater block so be careful and gentle back there!

My UMO does the exact same thing when I create the gcode with cura and accidentally choose um2 as the machine instead of umo. Could that be it?

This is a good thing because.... There are 2 ways to control the temperature of the bed: "bang bang" mode or PID mode. The latest um2 firmware uses bang bang mode for certification to reduce the EM radiation (which is small) from PID mode. In "bang bang" mode the controller acts like the simplest possible thermostat - if temp is low turn heat on. If temp is high turn heat off. PID mode runs the bed in pulses - about 10 per second - you can see this in the LEDs when the bed is within 10C of the goal temp (when bed is 10C above or below goal temp the bed is always on or always off). The flicker is sublte so some people don't notice it. It used to bug me but I'm used to it. So why not just go with bang bang mode? Because the quality of the prints is reduced greatly for some people. You can see horizontal lines in the print. For some reason bang bang mode causes the nozzle to vary in temperature by larger amounts - over 5C - very slowly from layer to layer such that you get layers that overextrude slightly and then underextrude a layer or two layer and you see these annoying lines. This doesn't happen for all printers but I recommend PID mode. The EM interference has never messed up my wifi or cell phone or home wireless phone or any other wireless device so I suspect it is negligible.

Oh - another thing - your part is very large and it will likely shrink and warp up off the bed. You need to the brim feature as a minimum to keep that from happening. If it still warps up with brim let us know or google this issue as it is easy to fix once you know the tricks.

Here are my recommended top 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.

If you want to print 16 cubic mm/sec you will need a larger nozzle. google "olsson block" for more details. There is another issue with .5mm shell/wall - it will do that on one pass I believe which means it is basically making one pass with a .4mm nozzle but over extruding by 25%. This is difficult to do (requires extra pressure) and so you will be have to print slower than normal volume if you do this. Because of all the extra friction of stuffing all that PLA in that tight space between the nozzle shoulder and the print. So any shell not a multiple of 0.4mm is for experts only - when you've done 100s of prints and really understand what's going on. For example if you need to make a water tight cup, or print very small letters in a different color these are cases where you might mess with shell width. Or thin walls in an architectural print.

Creo doesn't do inches. Internally it only stores things in mm so it properly always outputs STL files in mm just like Cura likes it. I think you didn't tell Creo you are doing inches. it sounds like a system setting in Creo to set it in inches mode. If you don't do that what you think is 1 inch is actually 1mm. More explanation here: https://www.ptcusercommunity.com/thread/33296

On the other hand - maybe you have the correct firmware and the message is simply a print message right out of the gcodes - there is a gcode that displays messages -- check the gcode file that you are printing - it might say something about a "bed" even if you don't have one. Also in cura there should be no option for bed temperature. If there is then you need to go to machine settings and fix that.

The only way to disable the heated bed is with firmware change. The ulticontroller shouldn't even know it exists when you have the correct firmware installed.

On the left - not enough tension - on the right - perfect.

There are a few things you can do. One simple solution is to reduce the amount of retractions. I was printing "big ben" and it kept doing what you describe on a particular section. I found that slice and there were 40 retractions. It was one retraction every .159mm or 24 retractions for every spot of filament on that layer. So I set the minimal extrusion parameter to 0.32mm. I had 19995 retractions in the resulting gcode instead of 34300 retractions. That was enough that I was able to print big ben and the stringing appeared to be no worse visually. A second solution is to adjust the tension. Looking at the "clean" part of your filament (bottom part of picture) I would guess your tension is too light. Try tightening it a bit - try to get the diamond pattern in the filament a little more severe. I have a different UM2 that is older and has a different spring. That one seems to have less tension on the spring yet it has deeper cuts into the filament. I'm not sure what the tension is. That older UM2 once did the eiffel tower which had 42000 retractions on just the bottom section which is 231 meters of retraction (I had retraction distance on 5.5mm at the time - have since gone back to 4.5mm) or each piece of filament going through the feeder 9 times. Less than that difficult layer on big ben but still that's just the average. Some layers probably had much more.

PLA is much easier but with practice you can get perfect ABS prints every time.

Oh - and who is/are the authors of the cura gui?

Good to know!

I don't know anything about the 70% but UMO and UM2 use microstepping - 16 micro steps for all servos except the Z axis. On the UMO Z axis is 8 micro steps (you can set this with jumpers under each stepper - 16 steps should be quieter but I never messed with that). So since we are using microsteps does that mean you don't need to do the 70% part?