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If I set the nozzle temp to 220 it overshoots to maybe 230 but by the time I start printing it sits between 219 and 221 for the entire print. An exception might be when the fans come on but within 30 seconds or so it's back to 220.

I have tried hairspray on glass for ABS but have not tried it for Nylon. 95% of my prints this year have been PLA. This suggests PVA glue on glass. I used wood glue but this guy used glue stick. Also different types of nylons are easier/harder to get to stick to glass: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,233826 This guy likes glue which I strongly suspect is PVA also: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:114868

Between 24% and 25% Cura changes it's algorithm for infill. At 24% it prints basically the same pattern on every layer. At 25% it prints the same pattern but odd layers all the lines are parallel and on the next (even) layer all the lines run in the other direction perpendicular to the odd layer. This pattern looks much more dense looking down on the print but has more gaps (or at least isn't as strong bonding between layers) when looking horizontally. I have no idea if this truly helps pillowing or not. I would expect it would help as the final support is closer together.

Print slower and cooler. This is a difficult print. For maximum beauty I would print at 25mm/sec and 200C. Make sure travel speed is at least 200mm/sec to avoid plastic leaking out while spanning those gaps.

Move material upwards? There's a "move material" menu item. Have you not found it yet? Or you can just yank on the filament behind the machine. The extruder motor is off most of the time. It turns on when you start a print, home, load filament, move material. But after 60 seconds or so it turns off again and you can just push filament in and out by hand.

Australia has an excellent filament supplier called diamond age. They make fantastic filament. I recommend using them.

Ah! Then it's probably Z axis. Or belts too loose - make sure the belts are all tight. Especially the short belts. If the XY belts are loose then I would expect different layers to stick out different amounts depending on where the Z scar is and depending if the head is travelling clockwise or counter clockwise. Yes, more focused higher resolution - or just cropped closer to one of the problem areas. I can't tell in the photo if the plastic actually changes color, if there are tiny tiny holes (underextrusion) if layers stick out (now you say they do) or what it is that is different on different layers. But it sounds like you have layers that "squish" out because Z moves too far on some layers and not enough on others. This is more common on the UMO as the UM2 has a much better Z screw/nut combination.

I've had some trouble getting PA6 to stick with larger parts (> 100mm across) but I've gotten it good enough for what I needed so I haven't investigated further. Nozzle temp has to be very hot - I print at 260 nozzle. Always. Any cooler and you get bad layer adhesion. For the same reason I print with fan at 30 to 50% (both seem fine). Now the tricky part - getting it to stick. Of course you need brim. I've gotten it to work with PVA glue and bed temp of 80C. That was my best result so far. Next time I will almost certainly try 100C. Alternatively I've gotten it to work on blue tape at 50C. My notes say don't go hotter than 50C because then the blue tape doesn't stick very well. I recommend you try PVA on glass rather than blue painters tape. 80C on glass seemed much better than 50C but I'm not 100% certain. I haven't tried kapton tape. fbrc8 is Simon aka Illuminarti. Not me. He's also "Ultimaker USA" now.

WTF? Okay - well I assume you have a USB cable powering the Arduino when the UM is "off"? If so then that would imply that the 12V or 19V power is somehow getting into the sensor. I suspect you wired it wrong. Or maybe your heated bed is at 12V or 19V and it's shorted to the sensor. I would measure the voltage from ground to each side of the 100k resistor with power on and off. It should always be between 0V and 5V. But I suspect you will see something over 5V when you power on the UM.

@thirty6 SSR = solid state relay Did your heated bed *ever* work? Did you solder in the 4.7K resistor?

First of all gcode files open just fine in notepad. Just drag and drop onto a fresh notepad. Secondly - that stuff above isn't a .gcode file. It's a .ini file. Do "file" "save profile" and it will create an ini file which is *also* a text file that is human readable with notepad.

@stephanG that's called "pillowing". It's usually fixed by using: - thicker layers (layers < 0.1mm tend to be worse as the threads break) - more fan (most important of everything) - more top layers (as it eventually recovers). Usually 6 top layers are enough. Notice how the problem is more on the right side where the fan doesn't reach as well (because nozzle is closer to left fan)? (or did you turn the part around?) I think slowing down the top layers by 50% would help also giving the filament an extra few milliseconds to cool, shrink, thin as it's being laid down before it touches the layer below. Once it touches the layer below further shrinking can break the thread.

That sure as hell doesn't look like 8 layers thick top surface. It looks like 1 layer. Plus it's all curvy/swirly. This top surface does not appear to be flat but slopes up and down and such. Which should be fine. But maybe it's confusing Cura? What does it look like in slice view? There should be 6 to 8 layers of diagonal top layer. Not swirly like I see in the photo (which is fine for the top most layer but it should sit on top of 6 to 8 layers of diagonals below). I suspect there is some bug in Cura such that it's not printing the 6 to 8 layers of tightly packed diagonal solid layers. I suspect you can fix this in cad by making that layer more flat or maybe Daid can fix this if this is a Cura bug.

Nylon PA6 has worked fine for me in boiling water. I got it from here: http://fbrc8.com PA6 is easier to print than most of the Taulman nylons although Taulman Bridge is even easier but probably too flexible for your needs. PA6 is what I recommend. Or ABS. Don't put PLA in boiling water - do this instead - boil some water in microwave in a mug or glass. Then remove and place on counter. The water is now already down to 80C. Take some PLA (filament or a model) and insert into the water for 10 seconds. Remove from the water and push on it. It has zero strength - it's like clay. YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THIS EXPERIMENT. There is something about tactile learning that is better than learning by reading.

For hairspray it's best to remove the glass anyway to keep the rest of the printer clean. Therefore, why not remove the glass from the UM2, take it into another room somewhere and apply the acetone/abs slurry and wait for it to dry, then bring the glass back to the printer. Always remove clips using a tool such as a screwdriver as they are very sharp and will cut you if you aren't careful.

You are creating images so you should be looking not at CAD software but maybe microsoft Word (if you have it) which has a "word art" feature which can bend text into an arc like this with any font. Or photoshop which can easily blend the edges of the text into gray regions. I'm not sure how to bend text into a circle pattern like this easily in photoshop.

Ugg. It's all very simple math. Lets say you use 50% gray for the color around the text. Lets say you want a base of B (in mm) and a total height from top of letters to bottom of A (in mm). Here's how you do it: when importing the image set base, height, and cutoff values depending on formula below... A = cura_base+cura_height - cutoff B = cura_base+cura_height*0.5 - cutoff (0.5 comes from 50% gray color - change to 0.1 for 90% white color etc.) cutoff must be > cura_base Solving backwards... A-B = cura_height*0.5 cura_height = ( A - B )*2 <-- this is mandatory - the only absolute set cura_height to ( A - B )*2 calculate base_minimum = B - cura_height/2 if base_minimum<0 then use cura_base=0 and cutoff= -base_mininum if base_minimum>0 then use cura_base=base_minimum and cutoff = B - cura_base+cura_height/2 Example: I want B=2 (baseplate thickness) and A=5mm (total thickness) set Cura height to ( A - B )*2 or 6mm (set when importing image) cura_base to 0mm (set when importing image) cutoff = cura_height/2 - B = 6/2-2 = 1mm (set in advanced quality settings) It's easier to do specific examples than to do the formulas. Just remember your cura_height should be set first based on grayscale level and difference in desired base height versus text height. Once that unknown is solved the last two are simple.

ABS glass temp is 100C. room temp is 20C. It's those delta 80C that cause problems (not the 245 to 100C). PLA glass temp is about 60C for a delta of 40C or half that of ABS. Both have almost identical density versus temperature graphs which are both very linear even through melting points etc. This means PLA has about half the shrinkage issues of ABS. Getting your ambient temp to 60C will cut your shrinkage in half (100-60 is delta of 40C) and make it as easy to print as PLA. The problem is the stepper motors - they are quite tough and can definitely handle 40C and possibly handle 60C. I believe they are spec'ed to get up to a case temperature of 80C so at 60C they probably need fans. Personally I would aim for 40C which is a huge improvement. Although I have never needed a heated enclosure for ABS - instead I just go for the "make it stick like hell" method which works great for ABS (hairspray, glass at 110C, brim).

Here are my instructions for building Marlin - I've only tried them with the UMO firmware. There are tons of options you can mess with in Configuration.h and this file is very well documented and very easy to edit. GUI METHOD There are instructions that come with the erik zalm download (and probably all firmware versions) in the "README.md" text file. Basically you download and install arduino ide: http://arduino.cc/en/main/software Then copy the sanguino software as explained in README file. Open Marlin.ino file in Arduino IDE by double clicking it (not pde file as stated in README - I think that's old). Select board as "Mega 2560" as explained in README file (white UM2 likely uses a different computer chip). Go to "file" "preferences" and select "verbose output" so you can find your hex file. Then build it by clicking the check box in the upper left corner. At the bottom you will see it compiling Marlin. At the end of this it says where the hex file is. If you are currently connected to your UM through USB you can just click "file" "upload" and you are done! But you should locate that hex file and save it somewhere along with the Configuration.h file used to create it so you can recreate the same version with maybe one change. Also you can upload the hex file using Cura in expert menu. COMMAND LINE METHOD Alternatively you can build Marlin with somewhat more detailed step by step instructions the command line way (which I don't prefer): http://www.extrudable.me/2013/05/03/building-marlin-from-scratch/

No. You don't get it. The reason you print *gray* around the letters is so that the curved part is HIGHER than the rectangular base. Then you use that "cut off object bottom" to cut off the rectangular part but *not* the curved base. Just try it - put a 50% gray around the letters - in the curved section. You can also create a slope to the letters by blurring the edges of the text slightly and having that be a dark gray. Although you say Cura already takes care of this.

1) Can you get a better picture of that last print? 2) Could it be that the PLA changes color depending on temperature and your nozzle PID controller is having trouble keeping the temperature consistent?

Well that's easy! First make it so that in the image, the space around the letters is not the same color as outside the curved area. For example the letters and border could be black, the background white and the spac around the letters could be gray. Or a very light gray. Then pull it into cura like you already did and under "advanced" "quality" "cut off object bottom" set this to maybe .1mm or 1mm or whatever it takes to get rid of that outer area.

Please get a better photo of the problem. In this blurry photo it looks like underextrusion but I'm not certain. In general this is caused by either a faulty printer or printing too fast or too cold. You need to get off that "high quality" stuff as most of us who can help you don't know what those settings do and it changes from version to version of Cura. The most important thing is to know what speed and layer height you were getting with "high quality". Assuming .2mm layer height use this chart to pick your max speed versus temp (so either raise the temp or lower the speed). Use the dark blue line and cut the speed in half of the max where the line is: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4127-um2-extrusion-rates-revisited/ For example at 210C you should not be printing faster than 30mm/sec.

That's usually a leveling issue. 1) Do you really mean .6mm? Or .06mm? Check again! 2) Is your first layer height set to .3mm (that's default)? If first layer height is .06mm then this is very very difficult and will need to level very carefully using only the screws (not the normal levelling procedure which is too crude and will mess it up). 3) Usually globbed up around the head is levelling too high off the bed. Try moving the bed closer to the head by 1/4 turn on each screw and restart.

Not sure but maybe "filament change" wouldn't work if you didn't retract? I wish it would wait until temp is 100C and then do a "cold pull".