gr5

With power off, raise the bed. Now take a toothpick or something small and push it through that hole under the bed and listen for the click when you push on the endstop. Note the screw sticking out under the bed that goes into that hole.

You may not be able to turn off the fan but you do have the ability to make it quieter. Mine is so quiet I can't hear it more than 10 inches away. The refrigerator 2 rooms away is noisier. Cars driving by 2 blocks away with windows in house closed are noisier. I have to touch it to be sure if it's on or off.

This is very common on the UM Original but rare on the UM2 which lowered the current so the extruder stepper skips (hopefully) before grinding filament. But if you have a UM2 you might need a spring adjustment (usually you want it looser). If UM Original you might want to tighten the spring on the feeder. For either machine you might want to raise the temperature, make layers thinner, or slow down the print speed (only one of these is necessary - not all 3). Which machine do you have?

Just to clarify - levelling the bed will *ONLY* reduce that skipping on the bottom layer. If you have that skipping on the second layer or higher, then you are printing too cold or too fast (or your printer is defective). 50mm/sec at .2mm layers (4mm^3 of PLA per sec) should be possible at 230C but probably not at 210 or 220C (PLA is approaching viscosity of toothpaste as you lower temperature). You can only shove so much PLA through that tiny hole per second. It's important to have an understanding of how fast you can print given the layer height and temperature. There are test prints to see exactly how fast your printer can go: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4586-can-your-um2-printer-achieve-10mm3s-test-it-here/

I'm worried that sometimes the build plate isn't triggering the Z limit switch, but sometimes it does. I'm worried that if the build plate moves .1mm farther it hits something. Ideally you want the bed to go down enough until you hear the "click" from the switch, and then can move another mm (minimum) before hitting something that stops the bed from going farther.

Sorry to hear that. I think they are interviewing and may be hiring two more support people soon. I think they are a bit busy right now. If something isn't working it is usually faster to ask on the forum but if you need a particular part replaced (especially the PCB) then there isn't much else you can do. But if for example you need a new piece of glass, or a screw or almost any part it might be faster to just buy one. Or if something isn't working (like a fan not turning on) we can probably help you fix it in minutes. Usually a photo or a video is needed.

That's my first advice. This is difficult to print with a .4mm diameter nozzle. So print vertical. Yes. That might help also. But definitely try vertical. Alternatively you can do multi color by changing the filament part way through a print: This is a crude example but you can get much finer detail and fonts when you use 2 colors. I really need to upload better examples some day.

1) I think you are seeing inner slicer issues showing through to the outside. It should help quite a bit to use a thicker shell. Try setting shell to .8 (two passes) or 1.2 (3 passes). Always use a multiple of your nozzle which is .4mm. Never use a shell of say .5mm. 2) Alternatively this could be overextrusion caused because the printer slowed down on the corners but pressure was still high in the nozzle. That would be fixed by slowing down the print speed. I consider 30mm/sec very slow and 100mm/sec to be fast. But sometimes I even go down to 20mm/sec.

usb debugging (post #7): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/5100-how-to-update-um2-firmware/?p=46156 Narrow down at which step you are having trouble by following the debugging advice in post #7 in the link above.

Homing isn't done very often. Typically it's the first thing done when starting a print. The first time you try it, do it with power off. Just push down firmly with your hands as close to the rear of the platform as possible. Same with lifting, lift near the rear. Just push and pull hard enough until it starts moving. Then later you can try it with power on. If the servo is powered (often it is not!) then the bed won't move.

Why an xbox one? Why not the original? They are down to about 30 euros.

No he shouldn't move them? No he shouldn't have them?

Now you tell us? That's definitely the problem. It needs to hit the limit switch. There is a long screw at the bottom of the bed that goes up and down when the bed goes up and down. That long screw needs to hit the Z limit switch when it does it's homing procedure. You can hear the switch click if it is working. The switch could be loose or might need slight adjustment.

Which I enjoy! If you have a picture of what you are talking about that would be interesting. Maybe a screenshot from Cura of raft versus support for the same part.

Yes, you can only change the overall feedrate once it starts printing. In cura you can now set infill a different speed while slicing, but once you start printing from SD card you can change all kinds of things but speed is only overall %. If you want a nice print but are frustrated - just set it slow for the whole print and it comes out nice (say 30mm/sec) and go away. Far away. Where you can relax. I recommend you get the ulticontroller instead of the UM2. If the UM Original drives you crazy I don't think the UM2 will be any less stressful. And officially the UM2 does not support USB at all. In practice it works a little worse than the UM Original but not too bad.

age of empires, robert? I still play it. About to launch a game with 8 people on the internet right now...

That's what I was going to say. Raft is a great way of dealing with warping. Except the bottom surface ends up rough. But if you don't mind that then it's great. And much easier than trying all those silly techniques to get it to stick better. Another way to deal with it is to have the temp well above the glass temp (try 75C). That way the bottom 5mm or so is so soft, any pulling forces won't make it down to the bottom layer.

So if I ignore the pictures of sets of 3... There is an earlier image of the part you are printing - it looks kind of like shelves. Each shelf I assume is unsupported except on the edges. What happens is when you start printing the bottom of the shelf the filament droops a little so that the next layer up is higher above the previous layer. I've had this happen before. It typically takes maybe 10 layers to finally catch up except your shelf ends before it has a chance. If you print this so that the shelves point vertically I think it will come out much clearer. That way you don't have any unsupported printing. Now to the pictures of sets of 3 - I'm not sure what's going on here - this is totally different - but I tend to agree a little bit with Robert that it's just the pattern and not underextrusion but... then it should look quite a bit different from your shelves. Does it look not as bad as the shelves? Anyway try printing your shelves with the open end down (or up) so that the shelves are vertical.

I had the same problem with thingiverse - uploaded the same picture 3 times before I realized there was a 5 minute delay. Then had to go back and delete 2 duplicates. But overall I agree, youmagine could use some improvements. But at least it *does* work. And there is a zillion (technical term) designs on there that aren't on thingiverse.

Oh - and competition is good so please support youmagine by posting all your stuff there. We don't want makerbot to have a monopoly on places to find cool things to print.

My understanding is that Thingiverse makes you accept a license that says everything you post there belongs to makerbot and they can do anything they want with your design. I think this was an unintended mistake but it pissed off a lot of people. I suspect the lawyers claimed they needed this right so that they could host all the designs and display them in multiple formats (such as the 3d viewer which might be construed as *copying* which might violate copyright). Or maybe they needed this right to allow people to download the designs. But still it kind of overrides all those creative commons licenses.

The most useful and easy things I've designed and printed are knobs for various things. For a fan that broke, for a voltage source with a broken knob, for a plexiglass door. Designing something and then printing is much more fun and satisfying than printing someone else's design. Each knob had a very specific and exact hole with a flat side to accept the post or screw that goes into the bottom of the knob and then the rest of the knob needs to allow a firm grip with fingers so should be "bumpy" and it needs to look nice. So not just a simple cylinder but something more organic and visually pleasing and possibly an indicator of some sort (an arrow or a line or a triangle or a circle to indicate position).

jenschr you post quite the puzzle! So the sides look good if you look carefully but in your picture they look bad because we are seeing the infill *through* the sides? Before I read that I thought maybe something was wrong with your Z axis and your Z axis was moving more than you thought and that was causing underextrusion but it sounds like the sides/top/bottom are fine but the middle isn't. I guess you need to post a few things for us. Please "save profile" and then post that entire text file here. Also please put your gcode file somewhere on the internet so we can download it and look at it with tools that measure the amount of extrusion on the inner layers and line seperation.

I don't think anything is wrong with Cura - I think you are just underextruding because you are printing too fast or cold. Try slowing down the print speed by 50%. I don't know what kind of printer you have but I think it can't handle the speed you chose. Also try increasing the temperature a bit (warmer PLA flows more like honey. Cold PLA flows like toothpaste). Or possibly there is an error with your steps/mm for your E axis or you have the filament diameter set wrong in Cura (defaults I think to 2.85mm).

The above post was also basically made here so please answer in the following thread: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/5494-thinking-of-getting-ultimaker-2-question/