gr5

By the way - are you using fan? Consider using 40% fan by the time you pause. This will cool the ABS to a temperature a bit lower than 90C and may be enough for the PLA parts to not sag. Glass temp for PLA is around 55C. ABS around 100C.

Yes. Or at least very very likely. How big is the ABS part? You can certainly try 70C which is cool enough that the PLA shouldn't sag (barely cool enough). Or maybe 60C. But I usually print ABS at 110C. But if your part is more than 100mm side to side it will almost certainly lift off the bed as you print higher layers. Maybe you should include photos? And why can't the insert parts be ABS? Or Nylon or some other material? Pictures please.

Please update your settings to indicate you have an Ulitmaker 2 and also your country (you can get different support depending on the country as you might need a new heater). First of all, go to Advanced Maintenance and "nozzle temp" menus. Does it report current temp as 20C? It should initially say something like 20C/0C where the first temp is current temp and 0C is the goal. You can spin the dial and the 0C should climb. If your answer is that "yes, 20C" then you are correct in that it is the heater. If it reports perhaps "300C" or almost anything not near 20C then it's the temp sensor. You probably broke the wire at the nozzle but you can remove the larger cover under the UM2. Everything is labelled under there. There are only 2 screws holding the cover on. The entire printer is designed to be taken apart by customers.

The article speaks for itself: https://www.3dhubs.com/talk/thread/most-wanted-3d-printers

Your underextrusion appears to be almost exactly 50%. This is very suspicious. I'm thinking either the E axis (extruder) is moving exactly half as much as it is supposed to or the Z axis is moving 2X. You should test both axes. Also you replaced the Z axis recently. Maybe Ultimaker shipped the wrong Z stepper to you. The steps/mm in your posting are correct (836 and 200 for E and Z). Are parts twice as high as in CAD? Measure them accurately. Or alternatively control your printer directly through USB and command the Z axis to move 10mm and see if it really does. Then command the extruder to extrude 10mm (it won't move unless the nozzle is >170C). Mark the filament and see if it really moves the commanded distance. Also maybe you bumped the E axis jumper and it is moving at 1/2X normal. Check all the jumpers in this photo - only the circled jumper should be missing or out - especially check E axis:

So it must be hardware. It can be: 1) nozzle is not the temperature you think it is 2) head has partial clog somewhere 3) filament is too big for bowden and gets stuck 4) feeder not working as well as it used to Did you say you replaced the actual nozzle and you had the same problem before *and* after changing nozzle? That might eliminate #2. To test #4 - what happens if you push the filament by hand (open the feeder). Set nozzle temp to about 220C and push hard on the filament - does it come out okay? You need about 3KG force. Look at the teeth marks on the filament. Are they sharp like the photo here or different than this?

To post a picture click "gallery" in the top left of this page, then big "upload" button. Then edit or post and click "my media" next to smile icon.

@axsdenied - 3 things: 1) Cura won't do that but the "new" upcoming version code named "pink unicorn" will. But that might be many months from now. 2) simplify 3d can do this. It's not free but not expensive either. And it works well for ultimaker printers: http://www.simplify3d.com/software/ 3) You can get Cura to do what you want if you have access to the cad model. You can add very very thin air tubes (say .001mm) and Cura will print shell around them effectively creating a solid area of your part. Emmet on thingiverse (a damn genius by the way) does this and it works well.

Do you have Ultimaker original? original+? Or UM2? Does the display actually change to 190C? If so there is nothing wrong with the hardware and you probably have a plugin lowering the temperature - check for plugins in Cura. Or maybe you are having problems printing over USB cable? USB printing doesn't work great and may require you to try other cables, computers, USB buffers. Or do you mean you tested the nozzle and it is at 190C even though the Ultimaker thinks it is at 220C?

There are plenty of "reprap" nozzles on ebay that fit UMO just fine also.

Always assume people are smiling when they post. Always assume people are nice. I'm pretty sure Eldrick is a nice person and when I read this I laughed. I'm pretty sure Eldrick is just teasing us. And trying to be helpful. By the way, this theory that isolator works fine for lower temps and PLA and works fine for higher temps and ABS but if you switch to PLA after 100 hours of higher temp printing the PLA gets stuck - that's devious! That's a devious theory. That might explain a lot!

I suppose a 3rd type of "elephant foot" would be caused by having the bottom layer be .3mm but subsequent layers .1mm if the part is supposed to tilt. Cura slices slopes into a staircase pattern and if the bottom layer is .3mm and remaining layers are .1mm and the wall is sloped then you can visually see the thicker layer. This is as expected. As designed. It's damn hard to get leveling better than 50 microns so having the bottom layer be 300 microns makes it easier to get good prints. But I have my bed leveled closer to 30 microns now so 100 micron bottom layer works for the most part. It's hard to get better than 30 microns because the glass can be bent by screws and clips and such and the overhead gantry isn't perfect (the 4 rods that move the gantry aren't all parallel within 30 microns! Errors are a little higher than that I think). So I can get better than 30 microns for a small area of the print bed but across the entire print bed would be harder.

"elephant foot" is a term that means different things to different people. 2 different phenomena that I know of. One is the bottom most layer sticking out - this is caused by imperfect leveling. It can happen with .3mm layer, it can happen with .1 bottom layer. The other issue is a inward curving of the layers *just above* the bottom few layers. Especially on corners. This *also* looks like elephant foot and is a problem with layers *just above* the bottom layer being too small (versus bottom layer being too thick). This second issue is usually caused by heated beds above 60C or 70C. I now usually print PLA on 50C heated bed. Photo of these second type of "elephant foot" is here (5th photo down on left column): http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/23-a-visual-ultimaker-troubleshooting-guide

I almost always print .3mm bottom layer but on occasion I have printed .1mm bottom layer. Levelling must be done by trial and error by printing "brim" or "skirt" and adjusting the 3 screws on the fly, halting print, starting over. Repeat a few times until perfect. Here is an example print with red pla at .1mm:

It's not a problem. First of all you shouldn't need oil with "flex pla" but you *do* need it with rubbery materials like ninjaflex. The oil doesn't make the print look any different. Any light mineral oil will work. You can not tell the difference in the print. The oil doesn't make the print different - it just makes it easier for the filament to slip through the bowden.

I have. If for example when the bed is too close I get an elephant foot on the bottom layer. By the 3rd layer there is no difference with the 4th layer. The bottom of the nozzle has a flat "shoulder" area around the hole. It spreads out the currently printing layer like a knife spreading butter on toast. Or frosting on cake.

How will you attache the 3 sides? Glue? Melt? Try sticking some 3mm filament into some hot water (boil water in microwave first - then insert filament for 10 seconds) and then bend the filament as it cools. Now consider printing the entire phone case flat and then heating it in hot water and bending it around your phone. This is how Aaron made his glass frames - he printed them flat, then heated them and curved them to fit his face. I've seen this done with 3d printed clothing also. A jig might help also with the glueing/melting/bending phase. Perhaps made out of ABS, UPET, XT, or Nylon so it can withstand higher temps.

By the way it's very common for heavy underextrusion to suddenly stop printing. I don't know why exactly. One theory is that the feeder is grinding/slipping the filament but this isn't always true. Another is some kind of temporary clog but when I start printing again it's always fine. So I'm trying to say all 3 of your symptoms (printing too fast/cold, underextruded infill in the photo - yes that's exactly what it looks like, and suddenly it stops printing) point to the same thing. I don't truly understand it. Here's a nice photo that shows print speed and underextrusion (severe) and you can see where it also stopped printing near the top of the part (post #2 - purple cube): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

212C, .2mm layer, .4mm nozzle, 80mm/sec is beyond what a UMO can do for most PLA. You need more like 230C. I know you say the walls are perfect but 10% underextruded walls will typically still look great. The filament is almost surely slipping quite a bit. Your problem *might* not be undrextrusion but this is the easiest thing to check. Keep your print speeds well below the dark blue line in the graph I linked to above. So for example either reprint but at 240C or slow it down to 40mm/sec. I believe top infill prints at the same speed as infill. I'm not sure what 130% means as in the recent versions of Cura (last few years) it only allows you to set the speed in mm/sec (advanced tab, speed). There used to be an old print window in Cura where you could set the infill speed % higher. Are you using that? At any rate, keep the infill speed also below the values I mentioned (80mm/sec at 240C or 40mm/sec at 212C).

1) Did you look at the part in Cura layer view first? Make sure cura thinks it is *supposed* to fill in the tops. There are lots of reasons why it might not fill in the top. But here's my second most likely reason: 2) The photo sure looks like underextruded infill although the walls look okay. Do you: 2a) ...have a different infill speed than shell speed? 2b) What is your print speed, nozzle temperature and layer thickness? These 3 values combine in a curve such that if you are above the curve it will underextrude badly: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4127-um2-extrusion-rates-revisited/

I recommend you don't use the normal "change material" and instead do a cold pull on every material change. That's what I do: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4118-blocked-nozzle/?p=33691

You have an incredibly steep overhang there on the edges. The UM2 can handle it fine but it's "ugly". Typically perfect (visually) overhangs can only be up to about 45 degrees. Is this your design? Can you change the angle overhang on the sides? Certainly more fan helps - make sure the fan is at 100% before it gets to the overhang. But I think you may already have that.

Typically the bottom layer is .3mm and the remaining layers are .1 or .2mm thick. The Z axis moves to the EXACT locations (or it tries). So for the bottom layer it would move to Z location .3mm (.3mm above the bed). (calibration is done about .1mm above bed -- in other words it is assuming the paper is about .1mm thick - maybe it's .08mm I forget). Anyway if the bed is too high then the bottom layer is underextruded a bit and there are gaps between the traces but typically they are small gaps. If the bed is too low then the traces are too fat and you have overextrusion and very commonly you get lots of grinding or skipping on the bottom layer especially during diagonal infill where there is no place for the excess plastic to go. Once the bottom layer is done, the top layer should be perfectly flat for Z=.3mm. It may be thicker and thinner in spots due to tape or bad levelling etc but unless you are off by more than .3mm it should be very very flat. Even if there are slight errors they get smaller and smaller each layer. The exception of course is for overhangs but that hs nothing to do with leveling. Overhangs typically get *worse* each layer. The corners are created like a liquid rubber band that shrinks VERY fast. In a few milliseconds. Already the plastic is about .2% shrunk as it hits the layer below and that causes extra tension (like a rubber band). Most PLA sticks to itself even as a liquid (very different from water!) and so it acts like a liquid rubber band as it goes around the corner and pulls hard enough to lift the outermost corner a bit which results in it being *higher* than the bottom of the nozzle. This effect builds and builds and gets worse each layer. Typically. If you print super slow (5mm/sec) the nozzle will remelt the layer below and fix it. I think it would be a cool feature to slow down to 5mm/sec on overhang corners (say within 5mm) on every 3rd layer. I haven't tested it but I would expect this affect to be not-as-bad with ABS because ABS has a higher glass temp and so it becomes solid MUCH faster (fewer milliseconds) and has less time to pull. Even so ABS definitely needs fan on overhangs and bridges. I could be wrong about ABS. I've printed with it but haven't tested overhang issues carefully like I have with PLA. Another fix is to alternate clockwise versus clockwise on alternate layers. This won't work in Cura without doing really bizarre shapes. Another fix is to add support walls under the corners. This results in ugly corners. ANOTHER thing causing the problem *may* be printing too fast. When you slow down for a corner, the pressure is still high in the nozzle and so it overextrudes slowing down into the corner and underextrudes accalerating out of the corner. This is definitely the biggest quality issue with UM printers and is fixed by printing at the "jerk" speed which is 20mm/sec (or close to the jerk speed). This might not affect overhangs though - not sure. If your corner is 90 degrees then it won't decelerate if the corner is 20*1.414 or 28mm/sec. So typically I tell people 25mm/sec is the slowest necessary to get amazing quality. 35mm/sec is "close enough" for me and is my typical "excellent but not perfect" print speed.

Yes. This is a common problem for corners of overhangs and it slowly migrates across the entire overhang but starts in the corners and is worse in the corners. There's a huge discussion plus slow motion videos here: Skip right to "page 2" and look at foehnstrum's video and read all the posts after that possibly. It's not until around post #39 and later that we really begin to understand what causes the issue. http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4094-raised-edges/

@anon - I've got a fever... for more FAN!