gr5

I never use "CHANGE FILAMENT" anymore. Just heat the nozzle to 90C and pull hard on the filament. If head is hotter than 90C wait until it reaches 90C before pulling. When the filament is half way up the tube, let it cool for 10 seconds, then pull it the rest of the way - pull as fast as possible when the tip goes through the feeder. About once every 30 times it breaks off inside the feeder :( To put the new filament in, just push it in through the feeder.

It's quite good as it is. I mainly use it to check that it will print where I expected and not print where I expected - for example to see if walls are too thin to print. I also use it to check if retraction is on for a particular move, and if it will be printing "in mid air". Changes: - I'd like it to be more obvious that the first layer is 3X thicker when I have .3mm first layer, .1mm remaining. - It might be nice to show "height" and rounded end points with radius matching nozzle size instead of squared off lines. Yes!!! That! I guess you show the height of the top of the trace which is also the nozzle height for that trace. - Instead of showing the vertical line on a retraction move, show a different color. - Sometime's there are so many lines so close together I can't tell which diagonal the infill is. Black lines to seperate would be nice. - I don't know how to do it visually but it would be nice to know the travel direction - maybe each line could fade from one color to the next. For example from a grayish yellow to a brighter yellow. Just a very slight fade - enough to tell travel direction. - Please use less saturated colors. For example for red, start with 255,0,0 as the color and go into HSB mode and lower the S (saturation) and maybe the brightness also. Intense colors should be reserved for small things like text and very thin lines. That would be great! DSM does this well. When you are in top-down mode and you pan around you stay always straight above the part at the center of the display. As soon as you orbit/rotate the view you lose top-down mode. In top-down view mode I should also be able to measure wall thicknesses and part dimensions such as hole diameters (even though I can already do this in cad) so that I can double check any scaling I might do. This is not a critical feature though.

You mean a cross bolt? Picture(s) please.

That would be good for nylon! Nylon seems to absorb water very quickly and it doesn't print quite as well when it does. I can hear the water sizzling as I print nylon.

Very strange. Usually Z is most accurate direction. And usually PLA and ABS shrink. They don't grow!

You have two completely different problems. The lower area has problems caused by overhangs I think. The upper area has basically slicing issues. What version of Cura are you using? There was a bug introduced recently and then fixed in the latest version that can cause the problems on the upper areas of the shade. You might be able to improve the upper area by having a shell of .8 (2 passes). The lower area will be improved if you slow it down quite a bit and it's critical that the fan is on 100% to get good quality surfaces. Try 20-35mm/sec just to see what happens. Let it print for 24 hours if that's what it needs. A third issue: there are some layers that look thicker - as though the Z didn't move enough. I would grease the Z screw and move the bed up and down to make sure it isn't getting stuck on some layer moves. Also consider .2mm layer height as the thinner you go the more likely you get these long horizontal bands.

The easiest way is to raise the bed a tiny amount. Right now your bed is probably too far from the nozzle and so the filament isn't getting squished enough. It also helps to have the filament extra hot for the first layer (240C) to allow it to flow well. It even helps to heat the bed with a blow drier even by only 20 degrees F. This allows the plastic to flow better. But at some point you can't do anything about it except for post processing. You can remelt the part a bit after you remove it, or you can sand-prime-paint it or you can use a vapor of THF or ethyl acetate (for PLA).

You are showing us a problem I'm not sure that anyone has seen before. 1) What country do you live in? (This is an important question - but I don't want to explain why - please update your profile location to indicate your country). 2) So can you explain the symptoms again? Does the head knock the part off the bed? You say it's grinding into the part. Do you abort the print at that point? Or does the head just keep moving and moving with Z never moving and no more filament coming out? Or is it printing in the air? With the head above the part by a little gap but the filament isn't coming out? 3) If you hold the z screw while it's printing the "failing" area you could feel if the shaft is spinning a small amount between layers. Depending what country you are in, you might want to return it but then you might just get another one that has worse problems. The shipping service is very violent to these printers. Usually you are better off fixing it yourself. You might want to lower infill to maybe 5% or 0% just to speed things up so you can get to the failure point sooner. 4) I see you are printing with brim. Is that working? Or is the part lifting off the bed on the corners? 5) What is your: print speed, layer height, nozzle temperature? (these 3 numbers combine to let me know if you are printing at reasonable flow rates - knowing only 2 of the 3 numbers doesn't help much).

Could you photograph the part or what the model looks like in Cura? I'm thinking the Z screw is fine but there are other reasons to have the print head grind against the part.

I recommend you get rid of the delrin part: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1676-modification-of-upgraded-extruder-drive/?hl=%2Breplace+%2Bdelrin http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/5462-extruder-drive-upgrade-bearing/&do=findComment&comment=48496

Please photograph the problem with the filament being too large if it's not too late. Also I agree that this sounds like your 3rd fan (the rear fan) is not working. Or maybe the bowden is slipping too much or maybe both. The 3rd fan should come on when you turn on the printer - even before the lights come on. Make sure it is turning the correct direction - blowing air towards the front of the machine.

So what's the problem? Maybe post a picture of what you are having trouble with.

To dial this in, consider printing *only* the top of the rook. On advanced tab under "quality" you can sink the rook down into the build plate until only the top few mm will print.

1) You really need the area around the hole perfectly flat or you will get very ugly prints. 2) The stringing near the crenelations of the rook is caused by not enough retraction (not too much). When it is printing that tops of the rooks look at the filament in the tube. It needs to be at the top of the tube (at the top of the arc of the bowden) when printing and at the bottom when "retracted". You can change the retraction distance on the fly. Pull up and down on the bowden tube at the print head when not printing. If it doesn't move at all then 4.5mm should be perfect retraction distance. For every mm it moves up and down add 1mm to the retraction distance. So for example when my printer was new I had retraction at 5.5mm and that was about right but now the tube is tight and doesn't move and I have retraction at 4.5mm which works perfectly now.

0,02 est très mince. Essayez 0,06 ou 0,10. La résolution est d'environ 0,2 XY mm car le diamètre de la buse est 0,4 mm de sorte que le rayon de courbure est 0,2 mm et vous ne pouvez pas faire des choses pointues plus forte que 0,2 mm rayon de courbure. Il semble donc ridicule pour moi d'aller résolution plus fine 10X sur l'axe Z que sur l'axe XY. Je sais que certaines personnes veulent faire les lignes disparaissent. Cela peut se faire en utilisant d'autres techniques. La vapeur d'acétone pour ABS et autres produits chimiques pour le PLA (THF ou l'acétate d'éthyle).

10 million polys on a print the size of a human (6 feet tall) is probably detail finer than .1mm (smaller than the XY resolution of the nozzle). I have found that zbrush models reduced to a mere 100k polys still looks very good. I'm not sure how smart zbrush is about reducing polygons. I recommend this method which is very sophisticated in which polygons it removes, and which it keeps (meshlab is free): http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/226-polygon-count-reduction-with-meshlab.html I don't know if even meshlab can open a 1G stl but it probably will. It might take 20 minutes though so watch some youtube or something while waiting. Be patient. Once it's loaded don't try to rotate it, just go straight to the poly reduction step.

To test fans without printing anything, go to the PRINT menu, select that and select any print. Then quickly select TUNE menu and it will not print until you exit print menu (you can hit power switch when done). Then go to the fan control in TUNE menu and set to 100%. They should come on full speed. When done you can either exit PRINT menu and quickly abort print (but it will probably print a little) or you can just kill the power.

See post #1415 here: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/467-post-your-latest-print/?p=41757

:-P Sounds delicious. All prints have layers if you zoom in enough. It's hard for me to imagine scale even though I assume these are glasses. Also the pictures are a bit blurry. Maybe you should use a cell phone to take pictures? They tend to do macro photography very well. I'm still not quite sure what is going on. If the top left picture is the same area as bottom right, and if top left is .06mm layers and bottom left is .1mm layers then there should be at least 1 or 2 "cake" layers on the bottom left picture. So it's confusing. Maybe the bottom left picture is of the bottom of the print? I'm not sure. Is the bottom of your print designed to print flat on glass? I recommend experimenting with levelling. If the bottom left picture is the bottom of the print you should be able to improve that side and get it more smooth by printing with the nozzle slightly higher from the glass (maybe .02mm if bottom layer is .1, maybe .1mm if bottom layer is .3mm?). What is the thickness of your bottom layer? Cura defaults to .3mm. Also you can get a smooth bottom layer by cleaning the glass well, and putting on a very small amount of glue stick and spreading the glue carefully with a wet finger or wet tissue. The Brim feature in Cura will also help hold this print down. Again, the bump in the top left picture is a bit of a mess - I assume that was the highest thing printed. I recommend adding two small towers that are a few mm taller than the glasses. Place one tower left of the glasses, one to the right so that the bump has time to cool. Or you can try "cool head lift" which isn't as good a solution. The towers should be about 1cm wide and can be square or round. Please try again and answer some of my questions and try to take more pictures. Also read about how you can smooth your finished prints. If you print with ABS you can use acetone vapor smoothing. PLA requires a different chemical.

The lead time for UM2's was about 10 weeks last winter. That meant you could order it before Christmas and not get it until the spring rains come. The lead time has improved quite a bit!

Where do you see the break? Inside the bowden? Some people rewound their filament onto a tighter reel, or simply dried the filament too much by putting it in a box with desiccant for a week. And then later the filament shattered into hundreds of short pieces. Could it be your filament was too dry? Or too old? I'm guessing you have "bad" filament and should order some more.

I've never had this problem but I would remove the bowden from the test head and push it out through the feeder. Be careful. On the print head there is a little clip - remove that clip. That clip holds up the "bowden holder". The bowden holder has 4 metal blades that dig into the bowden. Loosen the 4 thumb screws on the head so that the head is loose - maybe 2mm or enough so that the bowden is loose. Then push down on the bowden holder and pull up on the bowden. Be careful as the metal blades can scrape the bowden and it might not hold well next time. If you do damage the tube just cut off the bottom 1mm of the bowden and put it back in. Tighten the 4 screws last so the bowden is good and tight.

Also if you still are experiencing problems with the rook piece after the above test, please remember to post layer height, print speed and printing temperature.

Londinium you appear to have possibly two issues. Your nozzle tip appears to have a crater in it. It should be more flat. You might want to try grinding it down a little. This crater may harm the quality of your prints. Or it might not. I don't see any evidence that it is causing problems with that blue rook piece. The badness in the blue rook piece is underextrusion which can have many causes. I would agree with the others and try the atomic bob cleaning method but then I would print this test piece at 230C to quantify any issues. Also put the filament on the floor instead of the back of the machine - that may seem silly but the angle it enters the feeder (around 45 degrees) is a problem - putting it on the floor makes the filament enter more vertically. Anyway try this test: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4586-can-your-um2-printer-achieve-10mm3s-test-it-here/

Je m'excuse de Google Translate. Je serai très prudent avec mon orthographe anglais et gramar si la traduction est aussi parfait que possible. J'ai remarqué que la distance indiquée en rouge, c'est trop. Ce devrait être d'environ 1 mm. Jamais plus de 2 mm. Ce n'est pas clair pour moi si vous avez imprimé à filament blanc ou si la substance blanche fondu est l'isolateur en téflon (flèche bleue). Si l'isolateur fondu, vous pouvez en obtenir un nouveau de Ultimaker: support.ultimaker.com Le sectionneur ne va pas fondre jusqu'à environ 300C si l'isolateur fondu puis quelque chose est aussi mal avec le capteur de température et vous devriez obtenir une nouvelle l'un de ceux aussi. Mais je vais maintenant suppose que l'isolateur est très bien. Vous devez continuer à prendre part. Première tout la chaleur jusqu'à 180 ° C. Ensuite, insérez un petit outil à travers le trou (flèche verte). C'est l'écrou de l'isolateur (flèche verte). Tourner ce pour obtenir la buse hors tension. Ensuite, utilisez une clé hexagonale de 1,5 mm pour retirer la vis mince. La vis mince maintient la sonde de température et le dispositif de chauffage. Une fois la vis enlevée, coupez l'alimentation et retirer la sonde de température et de chauffage. Retirez tous les PLA ou ABS filament de l'appareil de chauffage. ABS peut être trempé dans de l'acétone pendant quelques heures. Soit peut être brûlé dans une flamme de gaz. Chauffer suffisamment pour tourner le filament en cendres. Mais pas si chaud pour faire fondre le laiton.