gr5

Um - okay - I think you are going to be a good contribution to the forum. I like this kind of thinking.

That is important but the wooden part is not important. One corner is maybe 5mm lower than the other 3 on my machine.

Many bad prints in years past were because the fan blew on the nozzle tip instead of the part. The nozzle tip always gets some wind but if it gets too much you get underextrusion issues because it is colder than the heat chamber. This was particularly a problem when Ultimaker was testing their new UM2 design (before it came out) and Cura changed the way the fan is turned on quite a bit - it now comes on slowly so that the PID temperature controller doesn't allow the head to cool too much when they first come on. Also there was an issue related to air bouncing off the glass and hitting the nozzle. So the cooling of the white teflon part is instead cooled by the 3rd fan on the UM2.

DHL is very violent when shipping UM2s. You can probably ignore it - Other people have the same issue yet the printer prints beautifully. If you must fix it maybe you can loosen all the screws, then put something very heavy on the top for 24 hours and then retighten. Not sure if that will help.

UM1 or UM2? On UM2 you can set the temp by going to MATERIAL menu and changing the default temp for PLA and than saving that back to the PLA profile. Or every time you hit PRINT and choose something to print you can then go to the TUNE menu and change the temperature there. You can continue to change things in the TUNE menu while it is printing such as bed temp, nozzle temp, fan, print speed. Also it will not start printing while you are in the TUNE menu but once it starts you can go back to the TUNE menu and stay there for the whole print.

Just be aware that there is a small possibility that it is not the glass/bed but rather the gantry - those 2 thin rods for example or the 4 rods. Make sure those are very straight also. You might want to remove the 2 thin rods (4mm I think) and roll them on a flat surface. The shipping companies that ship these printers is very violent with the printers.

For better overhangs the most important thing is 100% fan. So if the overhang is below 5mm from the bed you need to adjust the cura settings. Not as critical - it can help quite a bit to print slow. 20-35mm/sec. Also having a 2-pass-shell helps (make shell thickness 0.8). Also if layer thickness is too thin or too thick this might affect things - not completely sure about this detail - but anyway .08 is a reasonable choice for layer height. So try .8mm shell and print at 20mm/sec just for an experiment to see if any better. Other hints about other printing issues (not overhang) are here: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

Thomas please update what country you live in by going to your profile settings.

Nothing needs to be level. You can hang the printer by a rope to one corner upside down and it will print fine. When we talk about "leveling" what we really mean is that as the nozzle is pushed around to the 4 corners it should be EXACTLY the same distance from the build plate - that acrylic flat piece. Well not "exactly" but .01mm would be nice which is 1/10 the width of a piece of paper. Unfortunately wood warps over time (plus humidity affects it) so you have to level the UM Original quite often - maybe every few hours the first few weeks. Fortunately the heated bed upgrade has no wood parts (still in alpha test - hopefully it will be available within a few months).

Also the power itself can be 120V or 240V 50 Hz or 60 Hz. So it's only the cable you need.

This is a difficult problem in slicing. Most slicers probably implement this by drawing the exact same outer perimeter twice. But it would be better if it followed the contour of the part you are slicing. But following the part shape means the two skin layers are quite different - or can be. So where to you put the infill? Where the upper layer is? Or the lower? Or half way between?

I couldn't open the pictures. Please post picture again: How to post pictures: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4525-how-to-upload-an-image-to-the-forum/

It should be a cura or marlin option but it isn't. I've done it many times. I usually use pronterface to control my Z axis and find the exact spot where the printing ended - I move the head around using pronterface so i have the Z coordinate of where it stopped. I don't do the solid layer thing that you do. Instead I just remove the portion of gcode that is done and use G92 to set the extruder properly.

There are 2 ways to set the temperature. One is to go into the MATERIAL menu and set the default temperature for PLA and save this back to PLA. Then all future prints will always be at that temperature. While you are in there change the bed temp to 60C for PLA as 75C is too hot unless you are printing something with severe warping forces and all other methods fail. The second way is once you say PRINT and select a file, you can go into the TUNE menu and change lots of things including temperature.

Is your printer on a turntable!!?? If so that's very cool!

I've seen quite a few autoleveling features out there and I think this is the best and this is the one that makerbot applied for a patent on (I'm sure they won't get it). Skip to 44 seconds into the video! The first 44 seconds describe the old way.

In the expert menu you can do quite a bit of support configuration including having much less fill. Cura support keeps getting better but I still prefer meshmixer support (meshmixer is free): http://www.extrudable.me/2013/12/28/meshmixer-2-0-best-newcomer-in-a-supporting-role/

There's some discussion on taxes/duties somewhere in this forum. Buried in questions about lead time. Use google to search only this forum. Experiment with keywords "custom duties taxes import" and "ultimaker2". To have google only search the forum include this in your search term: site:umforum.ultimaker.com

How to post pictures: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4525-how-to-upload-an-image-to-the-forum/

1) Disconnect any wires currently connected to the green connector with screws labelled "heated bed" to eliminate that as the cause. 2) Measure the voltages at IC1 - that's the one that needs the most cooling. You should get 19V, 12V and 0V. The 19V comes from the black power supply that plugs into the printer. IC1 then regulates this down to 12V which the Arduino uses. If the 19V is fine but the 12V is bad then it's either IC1 or something is drawing a huge amount of current (and getting hot). If the 19V is low then it's either the black supply or something is drawing huge amounts of current there - I'd start by removing the pololus - the 19V only goes to a few places including servos, nozzle heater, maybe fans also.

Try a newer version of Cura - a bug that causes surface bumps was recently introduced that is fixed once again here: http://software.ultimaker.com/Cura_closed_beta/ Also 70mm/sec is fine for very large parts with long smooth moves, but with small tight curves like this you will improve quality quite a bit at 30mm/sec. Or even 20mm/sec. This is because the extruder isn't constantly speeding up and slowing down as it will never go below 10mm/sec (3 to 1 speed change ratio versus 7 to 1).

Also try slicing a small stl file just to see if it can slice *anything*. Try the smallest STL file you have. Preferably under 11k even though Cura can usually handle 1Mb STL files just fine. If it can't slice that then go to microsoft update and look for "optional" graphics driver updates. That solves *so many* problems.

win 7? Possibly graphics drivers. But then that would only crash in layer view I think? I don't know but there were some changes at 13.04 in the layer view display. Also there is a bug in 13.04 where it slices too many line segments even if they are only .00001mm long. So try reducing your polygons. How many millions of polygons do you have? Or try thicker layers - try 1mm layers just to see if it will slice. You can reduce polygon count with this technique (it worked well for me and meshlab is free): http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/226-polygon-count-reduction-with-meshlab.html

In general the screw should be mostly to spec but the nut hole will be a bit small. Probably around .5mm too small. Aside: .04mm might be too low -- I recommend .1mm layers as you will probably get better quality. There are 3 reasons why vertical holes are .5mm too small if you really want to know. And it varies by your own settings so it's best to just adjust the holes (or nuts in this case). So scale up that nut so that it is .5mm larger in the hole diameter. Even better get some calipers and measure the error exactly and scale up the nuts accordingly.

You can pay $100K for a printer and still won't necessarily work out of the box. No one makes a "3d printer" the way they make the "2d printers". The 2d printers are very complicated now. Even the ones they give away for free have all kinds of feedback sensors. They all have a camera to watch the paper loading and things like that. It should not be called "3d printing". It should be called "Additive Manufacturing". It's easier to use than a CNC milling lathe. But at least as hard as learning how to use a sewing machine. There's definitely a learning curve no matter who you buy from. For now. Wait until HP starts making millions of these every month. Then you will see some serious improvement. Having said all that the UM2 is a pretty awesome printer. I don't think you can get as good a printer for the money unless you get the UM1 kit and are willing to spend 20 hours assembling.