gr5

Do you guys have cell phones? I love meeting people there - you can text me when you find the Ultimaker booth and I'll run over to meet you. Don't try. Do it. It's amazing. They had about 70,000 people last year. 70,000. I don't know if you can imagine how many people that is. And it wasn't too crowded. This thing is quite large. 70000!

When initial layer height is changed to .3 it changes TWO THINGS. It starts off at Z=0.3 (instead of Z=0.1) and it also extrudes 3X as much to fill in 3X as much space. So you are asking the printer to print 3X as fast as you had been previously. Any time you speed up the volume of plastic by 3X you shouldn't be surprised if it underextrudes. So you could either: 1) slow down the first layer using the TUNE feature to 30% and put it back at 100% after the first layer 2) Raise the temperature significantly (again - maybe you should check your print speed against this graph - remember - .3mm is 1.5X thicker than .2mm and this graph was done for .2mm so go 3X slower than dark blue line (2X for safety 1.5X because thicker): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4127-um2-extrusion-rates-revisited/ If you can't print at the speeds on the graph it could still be your leveling is off - only the first layer is affected by leveling anyway. You could test your printer to see if it is extruding fine. I suspect it is but there is a test here: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4586-can-your-um2-printer-achieve-10mm3s-test-it-here/

Having the head go to 0,0 or -1,-1 on pause-at-Z should not be allowed. This should be tested for. The minimum position should be .5,.5 to avoid hitting the endstops and shifting the rest of the print.

I have repetier host but I only use it to look at gcode files visually - I haven't connected it to my printer yet so I am unfamiliar with the interface but I assume it lets you type gcodes in one at a time, right? If not then use the cura print window to do this (with pronterface-like-gui plug in) or get pronterface itself (let me know if you needa link). Anyway, once you do that, you should type in the "move" related commands to see what is going on exactly. Type them in one at a time and experiment. These two commands home the axis and I expect it is at the "0,0,0" position afterwards. You only need to do the Z axis homing as that is where your curent problem is. G28 X0 Y0 ;move X/Y to min endstops G28 Z0 ;move Z to min endstops This next command moves the Z axis by 15mm. Is this the problem command? Maybe F5400 is too fast for your printer? That's 5400 mm/ minute (which if you divide by 60 you can get it in mm/sec). G1 Z15.0 F5400 ;move the platform down 15mm This last command is where the had and the bed come back together. This is where your problem probably occurs: G0 F5400 X30.00 Y63.05 Z0.30

.25mm layers is fine but definitely slow it down if you want higher quality. Why? These artifacts are caused by the printer speeding up and slowing down the extruder. The extruder speeds up and slows down because X/Y speeds up and slows down. XY movement has to slow down on corners because it has a maximum jerk/acceleration setting. The "jerk" setting isn't "true jerk". Instead, in Marlin, jerk is defined as the magnitude of the instantaneous velocity change at a vertice. Max jerk on ultimakers is 20mm/sec. So for example if making a 90 degree corner the *change* in velocity can be as high as 20mm/sec so it comes into one corner at 14mm/sec and leaves going 14mm/sec the other direction (14^2 + 14^2 = 20^2). So if you keep the velocity closer to the jerk setting (20mm/sec) the extruder won't have to slow down and speed up and you get smooth perfect extrusions. Every time you slow down you get some over extrusion because the nozzle has too much pressure. Every time you speed up you get under extrusion because it takes time to build the pressure back up in the nozzle. That's the "artifacts" you see in your picture.

Who is going? I'll be there. @Ultimaker will be there. @Illuminarti will be there. Who else? I'm excited. Also UM is supposed to make some big announcement! PLEASE WATCH THIS 30 SECOND TEASER!

My printer may have the same issue. The symptom is that sometimes the heaters work and sometimes (after a power cycle) they stop working. Especially if the machine has been on for a long time (more than 20 minutes) and I power cycle it, the 19V won't come on so that means the heaters and steppers won't work. You can verify this by going to maintenance -> advanced and moving the bed up or down. If that is broken as well then we have the same fault. The problem for me was K1. K1 isn't needed and one of the designers of the board at UM actually told me I can bypass it so I did. But one fix was to turn off the machine for 30 minutes and then it worked. Another fix was to firmly tap the bottom cover under the board or remove the larger cover and tap the board direclty. When I do that I can hear K1 click on quietly. It got so that I could predict if 19V was going to come on by the sound the machine makes when you turn on power. There is a very rapid "click click" when you power on the machine. The first click is the actual power switch and the second click is K1. So I'm guessing you have the same issue. Let us know what you find. If you want to make it fail on purpose, simply turn on the printer, walk away for 30 minutes, then come back turn it off for just a few seconds and turn it back on. The heaters and servos should now be not working.

Um. So you are going to increase the printing volume from: .06 * 20 * .4 = .48 mm^3/sec to .3 * 50 * .4 = 6 mm^3/sec ??? That sounds like a good opportunity for underextrusion. Well if you are going to print that fast (6mm^3/sec) I recommend 240C. Or instead you could print .2mm layer height 35mm/sec and 230C and you should get beautiful results and not have to wait so long. Or you can use the "cut off object bottom" feature in cura and just print the walls of the knob to test for the pattern.

Can't you just look at it in Meshlab or some other cad program and see if it's going to have too many polygons. Certainly if it looks "low poly" to your eyes in cad it will print out low poly.

The meshlab article I sent you had suggestions for every setting in meshlab.

So alternatively set the current to 500ma, go to "move material" and move the filament a mm or so then try pulling it out. See if you are strong enough. If not try lowering to 100ma, turn stepper back on with "move material" and try again. If this isn't working then maybe your controller board is broken. If this *is* working (if you are able to control the current) then try doing a print at 1000ma instead of the default 1250ma. If you have temp probe it would be good to test the temp of the extruder motor or the extruder "gear" (hobbed sleeve) at the begining of your print and when it is failing.

I've never seen filament squeezed flat before. Never. I think I've read every post for about 2 years. I'm thinking your feeder stepper is getting very hot and that is warming up the PLA above 50C and that is causing it to turn into clay and getting squished. I wonder if something is defective on your board that causes the feeder current to be unlimited. I'm not sure how to test this theory. Spray the feeder with freezing spray every 60 seconds? I guess I would use the gcode command to reduce the current to the extruder lower and lower and make sure it is very weak at 0 amps. Then I would program it to be 20% lower current and see if you can print the same print much farther along before it fails. So to test my theory first install pronterface on a PC. It can be found here: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/ Then issue: G92 E0 (this tells Marlin that the current position of extruder is already homed) Then move the extruder a bit for fun G0 E-10 (move to position -10mm - possibly 10 cubic mm depending on the mode) G0 E0 Then lower the current M907 E500 (sets max current to 500ma, default is 1250ma) Then move it some more back and forth and try fighting the extruder - see how strong it is. Go lower and higher currents to see if it seems to be working. It might be that this part of the UM board is broken and it always goes full 2 Amps which makes it too hot. If the M907 command seems to be setting the current properly, try lowering the current to 1Amp: M907 E1000 Put that above command towards the top of your gcode file before putting it on the SD card and printing it. This should keep the extruder stepper much cooler. gcode listing/explanation can be found here: http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code Please report back what you find!!

Cura manual is here: https://www.ultimaker.com/spree/uploads/38/original/Cura_User-Manual_v1.0.pdf

There is something wrong - there's absolutely no reason to start a print if move filament isn't working. Try backing the filament up until you see it moving up in the bowden and going back down - sometimes it catches. Or you may have ground the filament down inside the feeder. You could try turning the knob (move filament) with one hand and pushing up on the filament in the back of the machine with the other to give the feeder help until it gets past a bad spot. I've only had this happen once or twice and indicates you are doing something else wrong (maybe spring is too weak or too strong in the feeder but don't worry about it until you can consistently get it to be a problem). Also going over 100% for line width or flow is counter intuitive. It is more likely to build up too much pressure in the nozzle and have the feeder skip backwards resulting in underextrusion. Best to keep those at 100%.

Yes! You got that right. That is why the default is .3mm for the bottom layer. This means you can be 3X as inaccurate. If you print a perfect cube, the walls of that cube are infinitely thin in CAD. Or another way to look at it, the cube is solid in cad. But that's a waste of PLA to print solid. So you choose the "shell" thickness and "top/bottom" thickness for your final cube. That's the thickness of the walls before you hit the "infill". The slicer slices the 3D object into 2D layers and many of the settings are with reference to 2D layers but some are reference to 3D model. The "shell" and "infill" settings are related to a given slice. If your shell is .8mm and nozzle diameter is .4mm you get 2 "shell" passes and the rest of the interior is filled with "infill". Layer height and "initial" layer height is how far to move the Z axis between layers. The first layer should be .3 for beginners. I rarely go thinner than .3 but for some special case parts I do. This are slice centric terms. Bottom/top layer thickness - go back to that perfect cube - this sets how thick the top and bottom of the cube is printed before you come to infill. It needs to be a multiple of the "layer height" parameter because the Z axis will only move in steps of layer height. If bottom/top layer thickness equals shell thickness then your cube will be symmetrically thick on all 6 sides. bottom/top layer thickness is more complicated for other shapes.

I think UIT's problem is different. I think his two X rods (the one in the front and the back) are not parallel and in fact one is tilted versus the other. This means as the head approaches a corner the head is higher or lower than a flat plane. No amount of leveling can fix a saddle shaped surface. I think if I had UIT's machine and it was out of warranty I would put the whole box in a vice and twist it until the front and rear rods were parallel.

I think I was unclear: What I mean is if you print with the print bed temp at room temp the parts won't stick well at all. So if that is your goal (I think you are crazy) then that's one of the 2 easiest things to do. The other is to use no glue.

It works fine for me. I just tested it. Are you cancelling the print after it starts printing or before? If all you want to do is stop nozzle temp from increasing after cancelling a print you can turn off power or you can go here: maintenance->advanced->nozzle temp

I've never seen this particular issue. And you are all set, right? Illuminarti contacted you.

how about just put dime underneath the "low" corner(s)? Between the glass and the aluminum to bend it to match the tilt of the gantry overhead.

closedCircuit - you didn't mention about your 3rd fan. Please test that this is working as your symptoms match those of people with broken 3rd fan.

The atomic method requires a warm/extrusion temp and a cold, pull temp. 90C is about right for the cold temp for me. 180C is plenty hot for the hot temp. No need to go any hotter than 180C when doing atomic method. For PLA anyway - not so sure with ABS. Atomic method is good at getting dust and dirt out but not necessarily ABS. For ABS baked into gunk it might be tough to get it all out. You didn't say how old your printer is but a new teflon piece would be smart. I don't know how much glass is in the new teflon isolators.

I'm going to have to make some guesses because you are leaving a lot out of what you say. 1) The first picture looks great. I'm guessing the bottom side doesn't look so good, right? And I'm guessing that's going to be the "outside" of the final part and you want it to look better? Please verify this is your goal. 2) The second picture looks great - I don't see a problem. The underside of that long "flap" seems to stop early. Is that the part you want to glue on? The flap? You want to glue very thin edge to very thin edge? I don't think that will work well. I'm just confused here as I don't understand your goal and I don't understand what the problem is. It seems to me orientation #2 is a good solution but why not print the whole thing as one part? I know it wastes lots of support but so what? If it were me and I printed in that orientation I would turn off support and build my own support in cad as simply two walls that go all the way up with regularly spaced holes to allow me to cut it off later. It will need sanding and that edge will not be as pretty but close enough? But even easier, I would print the part like orientation #1 but lay the side with the small hole in it flat and down on the table and the other flap in the air. Then I would change the model so there is NO BEND between the flap and the main section. Then print it and after it's done printing I would heat it up with a blow dryer or some hot water and carefully bend it into the correct orientation. I would probably build a jig to bend it perfectly. This jig would probably be made out of two flat stiff things like a table and a book cover or a table and a thin piece of flat metal propped up.

1) When you switch from ABS to PLA you can do an Atomic pull (or "cold pull") also. More like 130C. This gets it all out. I do the pull method on my UM2 now on every filament change - through the feeder (I don't remove the bowden anymore). The feeder doesn't offer much resistance. I insert filament this way also (I don't use the menu - just shove it in). 2) 240C should be hot enough to get ABS out. Any hotter and it won't help - it will bake the ABS into some other chemical. 3) Everyone gets underextrusion at some speed and temp. But if you are getting it at 5 cubic mm at 230C then your machine is working reasonably well. It's like saying "I get short of breath when I run". That means nothing unless you qualify it. Can you do the 100 meter in 1 minute? 10 seconds? Maybe that's normal/expected. Maybe it isn't.

Hello fellow Bostoner. There are 4 ways to print: A:USB, B:SD card 1: Cura to Ultigcode mode (machine settings) 2: Cura set to reprap mode (machine settings) If you are printing mode 1B (ultigcode SD card) like you should - then after the temperature gets close (over 180C) go to TUNE menu and change the target temp by 1C then when you are happy with the temperature, exit TUNE menu and it should start printing even if not at the correct temp. If you are printing mode 2B you can set the temp in Cura to 0C and control the temp on the machine and it won't wait for exact equal temp.