gr5

By the way Steve has many more PDFs like this one testing other properties but some of those mention the suppliers by name so he has to "scrub" them before they can be published here.

I learned this past week that Ultimaker uses multiple suppliers for their existing filament. I assume the three different suppliers consist of existing and potential suppliers. Steve wants to get the best material for each color that UM sells. "best" is complicated when you include things like strength, flexibility, print flow, glass temp, layer adhesion, shininess, color consistency, etc.

If the entire light box is sided with mirrors or white paper then you get lots of extra light as the light that misses your object bounces off the walls and you get a second chance to light your part. So if you want a black background make it as small as possible. Or add more lights.

Don't know. But I do know that Steve now has 4 UM2 printers in his office (he got 2 more). All covered with yellow tape. I didn't notice the feeders but the hot ends look normal/standard. I suspect there are no changes other than maybe newer isolator.

ultiArjan has good advice. There are several fixes but I like ultiArjans. Did you design this part? Consider: 1) Flip part over. 2) Instead use bridging. Bridging is easier to print see photo here: http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/23-a-visual-ultimaker-troubleshooting-guide#overhangs

This is the simplest test for underextrusion. Give it a shot. Make sure to do the test at 230C so that it is valid: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4586-can-your-um2-printer-achieve-10mm3s-test-it-here/ Put your spool of filament on the floor so it doesn't enter the feeder at an angle. I'm not 100% sure that is underextrusion but it looks like it. It wasn't *any* worse at colder temps?

There's nothing wrong with direct flash - except if it is near the camera (and it's usually *on* the camera). Having the flash right where the camera is makes for the worst possible location. Move that flash 3 feet to the right and woah - suddenly it looks good. But diffusion is good too - let everyone share the light. The cheapest cameras take awesome photos outdoors during the day when there are some clouds blocking the sun. Whatever amount of light you think you have/need, try 100X and your pictures will look so much better. Instead of 1 60 W light, how about 10 500W lights? lol. one 500W light might be enough but 10 are even better.

Dans le post ci-dessus les 2 dernières photos ont été imprimées sur Ultimaker origine. La première image sur Ultimaker 2. L'image de robot blanc était une tentative de meilleure qualité possible. Il a fallu quelques jours pour obtenir les bons réglages pour ce niveau de perfection. Le robot de plus bleue à gauche est un exemple d'impression trop froid (pas une bonne impression). La qualité de l'Ultimaker origine et Ultimaker 2 sont identiques pour autant que je peux dire.

Steve from Ultimaker does material tests. He tests many properties of PLA. It turns out that Ultimaker gets it's PLA from multiple vendors and they are trying to get only the best it seems. This is only one test (he does lots of strength tests also for example). Steve asked me to publish his findings on the forum for him. It's interesting to see the variability he found between printers, manufacturers and colors. Anyway this is extrusion rates for various manufacturers and colors: http://gr5.org/PLA_u...usion_tests.pdf The data closely agrees with my tests (blue line on first graph): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4127-um2-extrusion-rates-revisited/

Steve from Ultimaker does material tests and did a more thorough test that concentrated more on different manufacturers but on average got almost identical data - this is very thorough and informative!: http://gr5.org/PLA_u...usion_tests.pdf

Wow. Sounds like it comes out in 2016. From the above link:

The thermal conductive properties of copper grease aren't important on the UM2. It's just you need grease that can withstand temperatures of 300C. Or at least 280C.

To load a picture click "gallery" in the top left corner of this page. Then click big blue "upload" button. Then create a new post and click "my media" next to smile icon. Is the filament squished flat? If so the feeder stepper is too hot. How hot is the air in your room? 20C? 30C? 35C? Consider removing the left rear servo cover - only 2 screws - very simple. Then put a fan in front of your printer blowing towards the feeder stepper and try printing something with lots of retractions to test. PLA gets soft around 50 or 60C and the stepper can easily get up to 80C.

There is a rather sudden change in stickiness at a given temperature so I like to make sure I'm at least 10C above that point. The key thing is to get the PLA to flow into the cracks of the blue tape. Heating the blue tape with a hair dryer for 1 or 2 minutes means you can print the bottom layer cooler but I prefer just printing the bottom layer at say 230C and then lower to 190C for the second (carefully - don't want it to overshoot to 180C).

Not sure. I don't even know what flex cable or toner transfer is. But my clothes iron gets impressively hot. Probably 200C. Ninjaflex may be deposited at 240C but is around 100C within 3 seconds. So perhaps it doesn't heat the "flex cable" as much as an iron?

From comments below the article:

No it's not. It's tempered glass. But I'm pretty sure you can use any glass. Boroscilicate glass (aka pyrex) has a very low temperature expansion coefficient so that would be better than regular glass. But more expensive. Because the heated bed heats up slowly and evenly and because the clips allow the glass to expand and contract, regular glass is fine. More important is the thickness of the glass (4mm?). Anyway go to your local glass store and have them cut you up a piece of the right dimensions. It's very inexpensive. Maybe $10 to have it cut to dimension and ground smooth? Maybe buy 2. More money if tempered glass. Let us know how much they charge you.

Wow. Wow. I had to adjust my wood bed every day. But I can go many months without adjusting metal bed. In fact all adjustments have just been refinements to the original leveling (it gets more and more accurate each time I turn a screw a little bit). Marko, please put "canada" in your location in your profile settings. Do you know Valcrow? He's in Toronto. I've met him in person. He's an amazing guy.

On the UM2 it's very easy - you do it in software. On the UMO you turn a tiny potentiometer. But I don't recommend it. Or if you do buy at least 2 spares as these are extremely easy to blow up and turning that potentiometer 1mm the wrong way might blow it up. I haven't touched my potentiometers but a few people on this list who tried it had to buy new ones. They aren't expensive (google pololu) but you will then have no printer for a few days. I like Daid's suggestion better - to change the steps/mm by 2X. Just make the Z jumpers the same as X,Y and E. Move the Z platform using pronterface or cura pronterface print window. Make a few manual movements, then put the jumper in (takes a few seconds and you don't have to remove power) and then make a few more manual movements and see if it's quieter. I'm curious if it works. Then if it's quieter you can change steps/mm in the ulticontroller. Make sure to save the settings or it will go back when you power cycle the UMO.

By the way you can make all the axes MUCH quieter by using 64 microstepping instead of the normal 16 (for UMO and I think UM2 also). It's incredible the difference but the pololu that comes with UMO won't do it. You can buy pololu "black" and fix the steps/mm and then you can do 32 or 64 microsteps. But you might have to lower your top speed. I think 500mm/sec is the fastest that Arduino can do so your new top speed might be 125mm/sec if you go to 64 microsteps. There are multiple ARM boards out there that can do 64 microsteps easily on UMO. Erik Zalm has one and TinyG sells one also (that works just fine on UMO - I tried it myself).

Z is noisy as hell. That's normal. Fortunately you don't notice it except when the print first starts or just when it ends.

This is a common problem - especially with older Ultimaker Originals (as the wiring works for a year or more and eventually breaks). It's usually at the head of the printer at the connector. Did your wiring go through the black F shaped wire strain relief? Quick fix is to just use the alternate wiring. If instead you want to debug the problem, try turning it on and checking that the nozzle temp is 20C. Then push the test head to the 4 corners. Often this is enough to trigger MAXTEMP. If this isn't enough start poking the wires at the top of the print head - it's usually the connector on the tiny circuit board. Alternatively the wire may have fallen off underneath the printer. The basic problem is the wiring from the tiny circuit board on top of the head to the circuit board underneath the printer.

@nicolinux regarding post #187 from 10 days ago... The orange top gets underextrusion on 0% infill because the top isn't perfectly level - it bows down a bit when doing the first top layer as it is printing over empty space. Each layer gets a bit better but it doesn't recover in time for the last layer. If you increase top/bottom layer thickness to add 1 or 2 more layers it should become "perfect" or as good as the other layers. Regarding that dark/light pattern it could either be not-round pulleys which cause the X/Y to move more in some areas and less in others creating a slightly more extruded areas and slightly less extruded areas. Or more likely (as you already confirmed) the X,Y rods are bent/bowed such that the head is moving up and down as it prints. This will cause high spots and low spots exactly as shown in the picture you posted. Ultimaker is working on newer/better shipping boxes. Personally I don't think it's enough but it will help some of the shipping issues. I'm not surprised at all that after shipping the X/Y rods all got bowed downwards in the middle. Something during shipping put massive forces on that printer.

The metal arm is longer. That's the only difference. So that it reaches the z-axis end-stop-bump thing. Yes. In fact the UM2 only has one end stop for each axis and uses soft limits also. If you don't get answers about the firmware stuff (pause print etc) within 2 days please repost as your post is too long for Daid (the firmware guy) to find your issue. In fact please post each bug in a separate thread (topic) if they might be separate bugs. If you *still* don't get answers within 2 days after that I will bug Daid myself. Or you can PM him. I think the firmware bugs you bring up have been addressed recently but I'm not sure. Perhaps not but hopefully they will be fixed in the next version or in a version that you haven't updated to yet.