gr5

@andrew - tilting indicates friction in general - usually near the motor or the short belt from the motor to the first pulley or near the pulley. Push the head around with power off and see if friction is worse on the X axis. You might not be able to see it. Look to see if black belt (short one) is rubbing while pushing head back and forth.

Or you can heat to 180c, then unscrew the nozzle (careful - many people break it - it's soft - brass maybe). Put it in a flame and burn everything out. Don't leave in flame too long or it will melt.

Clean the nozzle with the Atomic method which is much easier on the UM Original. Heat head to 180C (or higher) then cool to 90C. The moment it hits 90C pull the filament out hard from the feeder. You should get a nozzle tip shaped end of filament. Inspect for dirt. cut it off and throw away, repeat several times. Poke that needle in the hole a few times also when still around 180C.

Oops. :oops: I need to stop doing it in my head maybe.

If it hits 3.01mm it's probably getting stuck in the bowden. :( Throw it away. Sorry to say this but that's by far the best solution. Alternatively, take some sheet metal and drill a 3mm hole in it, then pass filament through it and chop up the filament and discard bits that are over 3.00mm. Then give up and throw the whole thing away anyway. :(

Was it X or Y axis that missed steps? There are two main causes of missed steps. Loose pulley causes sudden shifts. Rubbing/friction causes gradual shifts like this. If it's a UM1 it's almost certainly the rubber belt rubbing against the wood frame - you can tell because it twists back and forth each time it changes direction. Fix by adding washers under the 4 black plastic spacers and possibly also taking the motor off and moving the pulley even closer to the motor (should be very close - about 1/2mm). If UM2 it's also usually rubbing pulley or belt but usually right at the motor pulley. In that case the only solution I'm told is to move the pulley along the shaft closer to the motor.

Interesting! I didn't know this but it makes sense. I think you meant 72% (72*.6 = 43)

Plywood works very well but you could use a laser cutter to make it in acrylic: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/275-acrylic-ultimaker/ I recommend you do the UM1 plans because that way you can make the head, ulticontroller, blocks, feeder all out of the same plywood (or acrylic or whatever). The print bed too. The UM1 is basically just as good as the UM2 except the electronics are probably more reliable on UM2 but you can't get that. Also the UM2 is quieter due to dibond. Also UM2 has LED lights (you can add those) and the UM2 has a heated bed (also easy upgrade to UM1).

You're all wrong! Just kidding. I like IRobertI's explanation the best. You are just a little too close - level farther away. Pressure is building up and when the head passes over a gap in the tape sometimes that releases a blob. I recommend first layer to be .3mm (default in Cura) that way you only have to level to within about .1mm or maybe .05mm. If your first layer is thinner (say .1mm) then you have to level all that much better (3X in this case or around .015 to .03mm accuracy). A sheet of paper is about .1mm so you have to do a really good job.

yes. You can increase the 4.5 to 6.5 or you can lock in the bowden. You don't need any clips. First a definition: "bowden holder" - That thing on the print head that you push down in order to pull up and remove the bowden. It has 4 metal blades inside that dig into the bowden. The little colored clip goes under it. It's off-white colored. Simply loosen the 4 long thumb screws such that the print head relaxes about 1mm. Then push down hard on the bowden (the bowden holder allows one way movement). I guess I would remove the clip first but it shouldn't matter. Then screw the 4 long thumb screws tight again - make sure no wires get stuck in the gaps when you are done (inspect all 4 sides of the black print head - black seams). Now the clip should be useless and the bowden should be tight. If not repeat but go 2mm relaxed instead of 1mm. I did this and was able to lower my retraction distance back to 4.5mm.

Fortunately Daid is really good about fixing stuff like this. Unfortunately he is very busy working on the GUI part right now. Fortunately this is open source so it might get fixed by someone else within a few months but I doubt that. More likely Daid will come up with something. Workarounds: print slower 20mm/sec should be plenty as that is the "jerk" speed which means I think it is willing to instantaneously change speed by 20mm/sec from line segment to the next so no deceleration on corners necessary. 30mm/sec might also be slow enough. Use 14.01 for now Decimate You can reduce polygons (I've done it for artistic things that have millions of polygons but never for basic shapes like this) here: http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/226-polygon-count-reduction-with-meshlab.html Other free CAD I only use free CAD. Daid, and Illuminarti, and myself like: DesignSparkMechanical. Very nice. My recommendation for most CAD needs (not for people making sculpture though). I also use google sketchup. Neither of these create excess polygons. openSCAD lets you set the resolution on arcs. Isn't tinkercad based on openscad? I don't know tinkercad - never tried it. Learning a new CAD sucks. It really sucks. I'm so damn fast at google sketchup and it's frustrating to use designSparkMechanical even though it is clearly superior. I have about 20 hours experience with DSM but 200 hours with sketchup. Also DSM always gives you manifold STL files (it isn't capable of not doing that - it's like solidWorks that way) whereas sketchup is always leaving my CAD with interior walls and such when I put two parts together. And holes. So I have to go back and clean up the model all the time if I want to print it.

For a fully custom Marlin... BUILDING MARLIN thermistor tables: https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin/blob/Marlin_v1/Marlin/thermistortables.h Ultimaker2 marlin source: https://github.com/Ultimaker/SecretMarlin First get the source code files here: https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin Then edit Configuration.h – this is by far the hardest step and it's not bad. I recommend you go here: http://marlinbuilder.robotfuzz.com/ and use that website only to get the Configuration.h file. Then run winmerge or some other diff program to compare the latest ErikZalm version of Configuration.h to the one from robotfuzz which is usually a few months behind. Edit the ErikZalm version to match the robotfuzz generated version. Make any other edits as necessary. It sound complicated but it is extremely clear and well commented. Sometimes with paragraphs of explanation. configuration.h file detailed explanation: http://airtripper.com/1145/marlin-firmware-v1-basic-configuration-set-up-guide/ Then you need to build Marlin. There are instructions that come with the erik zalm download 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. 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. 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/

You are asking about marlin *and* cura. That's a lot to cover. If you build a custom printer you need to create your own Marlin. You can set Marlin to use software endstops or hardware endstops. If you are lucky you can build marlin using this convenient web page: http://marlinbuilder.robotfuzz.com/ If it doesn't have all the settings you need then at least use that page to build a starter configuraion.h. Either way I recommend you look at the configuration.h it generates and read all the comments to make sure it's "good enough" for your printer. Cura In Cura there are "machine settings". You can go in there and set the dimensions of your machine and cura will let you print bigger. Cura will by default place objects on the center - in other words if your build area is 300X300mm it will place it at 150mmX150mm but you can just drag the object around if you want. Or place multiple things. The settings about "minx", gantry height only affect if you want to print multiple objects "one at a time". You can skip those machine settings for your first print.

Sitting by the printer and watching it change is a lot of wasted time. Instead look at the gcode. Gcode is easy to read - it's meant to be read by computers *and* humans. It has lots of comments about layer number in there and so on. The fan command is M106. The "S" number after that is the speed where 0 is 0% and 255 is 100%. While in the TUNE menu and looking at the fan speed maybe it's possible it won't change? More likely I think you found some bug. I never set min fan speed to anything other than 100% because I don't print ABS much but maybe you found a bug. What it should have done instead is start off like you said but turn on GRADUALLY until by layer 2mm it is at 60%. 34% maybe around layer 1.2mm and it might have been stuck because that's when you entered fan menu settings within the tune menu? And that action may have locked the speed. Check the gcode - it's much easier. Search for M109 and you can see right there what layer it is modifying fan speeds on in the comments.

Yes - lower bed temp. This is a problem I've talked about quite a bit now. It's because for smaller parts they don't have enough time to cool and so the "base" layer that you are printing onto is still too soft and the upper layer pulls it and "warps" it. Printing slower might help for the bottom 5mm or so to give it more time to cool. Above 5 or 10mm it's not a problem as the air is cooler. Fan will help also. 60C is probably good enough for you. I found that for getting parts to stick to the bed 40C to 80C seems to be all about the same but somewhere around 30 to 35C there is a sudden transition where parts don't stick as well because the plastic doesn't flow as well to make good contact.

@abstract - the feeder motor is almost always off when not printing. Before i start a print I simply grab the filament 20mm below the feeder and slide it upwards. The retraction amount is normally 4.5mm but there is also an end-of-print retraction that is 20mm. But it's supposed to unretract that at the start of the print but for you I think it's getting caught on your teflon piece.

After thinking more about why Daid did this in the first place, I have a cura fix idea. The original problem was that combining these short segments (removing intermediate move points) into slightly longer moves on corners is that when you do the long edge move (the side of the square) sometimes it starts .05mm off from the layer above or below and you get a slight indent along that line - looks kind of like under extrusion. .05mm is more obvious when it affects 20mm of a print line. The fix is to go back to the old threshold but only combine line segments (only drop intermediate travel points) if all of the line segments are each shorter than say 3mm. That way you won't combine a short move with a long move thus causing the problem that was occurring in cura 14.01.

Okay - so the problem was kind of obvious once I sliced this file using both Curas and then opened the gcode in repetier host. The STL file has about 60 edges along the curved corners. Some of these edges are about 1/10 as wide as others in a seemingly random pattern. The older Cura had a feature where it would just skip over line segments that were shorter than a particular length - probably around .1mm, but the new Cura lowered that threshold by quite a bit due to demand from users like us because of complicated results related to rounding errors. I think the original threshold was better. The reason 60 edges on a corner is a problem is that Marlin only has enough computing power to plan out about 10 edges in advance (or maybe it's 20?) and so it has to be ready to come to a complete stop after 10 edges because it doesn't know what's next so it starts decelerating maybe 10mm before then but with 60 edges taking up 3mm Marlin slows the hell down - probably to around 10mm/sec around those corners. Slowing down from a typical printing speed to 10 or 20mm/sec causes some overextrusion on those corners. In the photos below the yellow portion on the left is the same as the highlighted portion on the right - the 14.03 photo (lower photo) has 32 line segments in that yellow portion and some are as short as .05mm!! The 14.01 photo has many fewer line segments as cura tossed out the short ones: The obvious fix is to go to your CAD software and in the STL export settings there should be a way to specify the resolution on curves - something like that. Tell it not to output triangles smaller than say .2mm across (that's the radius of the nozzle and in one sense you can't really print finer than that anyway without getting a smaller nozzle). There's probably some "max resolution" or "min resolution" or something that affects this. Also maybe Daid should set the limit back to where it was. Also there will be future Marlins that run on faster processors - actually Eric Zalm is working on this now and so the UM3 will hopefully have an ARM processor which can look out 100 line segments instead of 10 and maybe there will be a UM2 and/or UM Original upgrade. But this is a ways off.

The blue tower is definitely underextruded. You could have saved time and filament by only printing for the first 10mm. What temp were you printing at? There is a relationship between speed and temperature. 80mm/sec .2mm layers is (I can do this in my head: 80X.2X.4) 16mm^3/sec which is - well - INCREDIBLY FAST. I think even at 240C you won't be able to do that - that's kind of beyond the printing ability of most Ultimaker2's. However if that is .1mm layers then you are at 8mm^3 per second which is kind of near the limit of what a UM2 can do. I can do that if the filament is at 240C. Barely. Better at least than your results. If you really need to print 80mm/sec and .1mm layers you need to crank up the temp - 250C might be best. Don't use 250C when printing slow though or you can "burn" the filament.

This test isn't about quality - it's about how much plastic can you force through the nozzle in a second before the extruder motor slips backwards. It's checking to see if you have something wrong with your extrusion path (feeder, bowden, head, nozzle) this is not achieving normal ability for a UM2. It looks like your printer is doing pretty well. I'm not sure what that means. I guess that must refer to the temperature as I don't think there are any other settings that affect this speed test.

Well this is heating up in the last few days - or maybe just yesterday. It appears Makerbot just filed a slew of patent applications including at least 2 different ones that take designs from the community. Including my favorite thingiverse inventor known as emmett. One design even talked about by makerbot thanking the designer of this wonderful improvement and then going on to patent it!: http://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/makerbot-blatently-steals-and-patents-a-community-design/ Even slashdot. Slashdot! Mentioned it. Wow: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/05/23/2133237/questionable-patents-from-makerbot Another patent is for automatic bed levelling using the head as the probe first posted by the community (not electronically probing - mechanically - it's an interesting design - but from the reprap community).

Wow. Must have taken you all day, lol.

There was a time when vista came out and it was much too slow on most computers out there and even brand new computers were shipping "vista ready" but where much much underpowered to run vista. However, the hardware has caught up and surpassed this issue years ago. Hardware gets about 2X faster every 1.5 years. Pretty much all computers sold today can handle windows 7 (or 8) and can handle cura and will be at least 5X than 90% of computers sold from the XP era. Worry more that it can read/write SD cards, does it have SVGA output or only DVI or HDMI output, stuff like that - obvious tangible things.

Please update your location as to your country in your profile settings. If you are in USA I can give you some links to some "bowden material".

Could you send me the STL of this "box with rounded corners" please? I want to do some tests. I want to use your exact box that has problems. You can email it to - lets see - here's a temporary email: gr-tempjan06 _at_ spamarrest.com Change the _at_ to the @ symbol. And remove spaces.