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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.

For ABS on glass I recommend 110C heated bed temp, 245C print temp. I prefer hairspray for ABS but I have only printed 10 or so ABS prints so don't consider myself an expert. I use unscented hairspray. Spray on tissue then wipe on (so you don't get hairspray all over the inside of your printer).

When I first got my UM2 a year ago I did a lot of experiments printing on glass. I have the HBK for my UMO and everything still applies: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/3404-printing-on-glass/ PLA on glass If you don't want to read it all... For maximum sticking you need the PLA to be hot enough on the bottom layer to flow onto the glass. This means heat. For 20C air, 220C nozzle, this means about 45C minimum. Colder than 45C means it won't stick well at all. From 45C to 70C it's all the same stickiness (no difference). But if you have colder air or colder nozzle you need warmer glass. So I recommend 50C or 60C to be safe. In fact I recommend you do a bunch of experiments and print something that takes under 3 minutes to print and find a way to measure the force of removing that object. That was too much info. Anyway here is the trick for printing on glass (which is superior in every way to blue tape): 1) Get Elmer's wood glue (it's a pva glue like the glue stick- what country are you in?). Mix it 10 parts water to 1 part glue (this is not exact). Keep it in a glass jar with lid and shake well before each use. Use a cheap paint brush to spread onto the glass. Heat up the glass and don't print until the PVA is dry and so thin it is invisible. 2) Heated bed at 50C 3) Use brim option - extremely important 4) Bottom layer should be squished a bit. Consider moving the glass closer to the nozzle. If you have very large prints that are still warping you *might* have to print at 75C to keep the part above glass temp on the lower layers. I have never had to do this. Make sure you let it cool to 50C before removing or you will destroy the part as it is still soft like clay at 75C. Please update what country you are in on your settings.

Oh and also sometimes the filament gets stuck in the bowden. Please measure the filament and also maybe check if it flows smoothly through the bowden (difficult to do unless you detach from the feeder).

"printing in air" clogs can be caused by many things. Some people have feeder steppers that are too hot and the filament gets very soft at the feeder wheel especially if there are lots of retractions. I don't have this problem. But you can recognize it because you get a long section of flattened filament. There could be house dust. Or tangles in the filament. I recommend putting the filament on the floor so that it goes straight up into the feeder and not at an angle. It's possible to continue a "failed" print. I posted about this many times so you can google that on the forums. The key thing is to not let the glass bed cool down while you learn what to do. Otherwise the part "pops" off the glass. You may be printing too hot nozzle and the PLA gets gummed up after a long time (I kind of doubt this). Or maybe you are printing too fast. What is your layer height, print speed, nozzle temp?

I just remembered something - someone was able to get rid of those by lowering extrusion a bit - maybe you should try setting flow to 75% to see if that makes any difference. I will be curious to know if that makes any difference.

Often a different filament will give better results. But I'm not sure what is causing those lines. It's possible they are speed change points and ringing but I don't think so. Maybe some kind of oscillation pressure wave in bowden?

There are many possibilities. What you describe sounds like it might be underextrusion although the picture doesn't help very much. You may be right about the temperature. You can test the temperature with this method: You can test for other causes of underextrusion with this test print which must be done at 230C: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4586-can-your-um2-printer-achieve-10mm3s-test-it-here/

You really need a fan. There is another part that can also easily get damaged - the 19V to 12V converter. It's the 3 pin part that sticks up into the airflow. So you should order a fan from ebay or something. Also did you try printing on it's side with a desk fan? Again - the printer prints just fine sideways.

Look at the second photo in this post. It discusses your issue. The quick answer is lower the temperature but not so much that you get underextrusion. Or lower the temp *and* lower the print speed.

It's called "stringing". Make sure retraction is happening. I think it's turned off in the quick print profiles so don't use quick print mode. If you still get stringing you could try a lower print temperature - maybe 200C and printing at 35mm/sec for a low temperature, high quality print. Look at the information in this first picture in this topic: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

If you want a lithopane, then choose "load model file..." and then choose a photo. If you want to photograph, say your dog and then print out a 3d version of your dog you need dozens of pictures (where the dog doesn't move) and you can use 123dcatch. It's free. Google it.

Either that or you aren't cooling enough. For me 95C to 100C is cool enough to get it out in one piece without this much stretching in your photo. But maybe you need to cool slightly more or let it sit at 95C for a full minute.