gr5

What are you printing on?

Are you printing over USB?

These are the best photos yet of the inside of the extruder. Your ideas are great. One of those red guide lines however will get hit by the idler. But the other 3 look good to me.

The plugins do all their editing after the gcode is created. So if you think about what a jitter plugin would have to do - I think it's easier to write an entire slicer. In other words it's too hard. I think. What you ask for would be very appropriate for a plugin (change E to A, remove M codes and comments). The E to A is the easiest part - you can also do this in most editors. Most editors such as notepad (better to use a really good one like notepad++) can do "replace all" with a search string and replacement string. The tricky part would be getting rid of all the comments and m codes. Not sure how to do that.

I found this works fine for me. I can leave it for hours. I've watched it and occasionally the lazy suzan rotates. The lazy suzan goes on the floor.

You could build something like this. A smoothly sanded and then painted dowel. But build one much higher off the floor for large loops of PLA.

I would love to see a photo.

Yes, correct. Read all the explanation in youmagine of how I printed the first layer using a special utility to generate the STL. You don't need to restrict yourself to letters. You can do an icon, image, or symbol also. Anything you can create in a 2 color image can be printed. Make sure the send object to be printed has a much thicker first layer so the plastic flows between, over and around the first color. Printing on glass or kapton tape will look much better than printing on blue tape.

Take a piece of sheet metal and drill a 3mm hole in it. Then run your entire roll of filament through the hole to test it. Then throw it all away and get some filament from printbl.com

This is an improvement I think. This is just a very difficult print. I think it will come out better (not so much sticking out) if you use .1mm layers and keep the speed at 50mm/sec. Slower is almost always better. It's also important to have 100% fan. Do you? That last finger could use more support and it would help if the supports were a little thicker - those thin supports might get knocked over. You should get a small improvement but this is a very difficult print.

Not everything Daid does is paid for by Ultimaker. On his off times he does his own pet 3d projects. Daid wrote cura and Erik van der Zalm is the main author of Marlin. Both were written when neither worked for Ultimaker. Since then Daid was hired by Ultimaker. Erik van der Zalm doesn't work for UM as far as I know. So this project with the ARM is a hobbyist community thing. But they are very smart, very serious hobbyists and if this arm thing starts working well, it may (may!) some day get integrated into a new UM. The biggest advantage to having an arm is probably that now you can have a "network printer" instead of using the SD card. But having a nicer display (think iphone) with better sound isn't so bad either.

The collision detection between the part and clips is not very sophisticated. the algorithm creates 2 rectangles and your part must fit in either one or the other. One rectangle reaches the left and right edges but doesn't overlap the clips. The other rectangle reaches the front and rear edges but again doesnt overlap the clips. Someday, hopefully, Daid will come up with a more sophisticated colllision algorithm. Also be aware that you might need to turn off brim and disable skirt by setting it to 0 loops and 0 skirt min distance. Not doing these things may extend the part on the bottom layer and give you less room for your part.

In Advanced/Cool you must have minimum layer time set to 5 seconds. This explains why it goes at 20mm/sec - so it takes 5 seconds to get around one layer. This is a good feature because you want the PLA on the layer below to cool before the next layer reaches it. With fans on full power, this can probably be lowered to 3 or even 2 seconds. But at 1 second per layer - you will definitely have problems - the part will look crappy. It will be deformed.

Measure the height of between lines. Then measure the threads on your Z screw. Note that if this is a UM2 the threads are a triple helix so multiply that measurement (on a UM2) by 3. Are these 2 measurements the same? If so then something is happening exactly once per rotation. Did you grease the Z screw? There is a small packet of green grease. Put one drop of grease (sphere of diameter 5mm) onto the Z screw and then run the bed up and down past this spot 4 times. Is the Z coupler tight? Is the Z screw straight? Does it wobble? Is your Z motor axially aligned with the screw? Is the Z screw all the way into the coupler or is it maybe sticking out a little?

I would concentrate on the Z issue as if Z is not moving far enough, then you get overextrusion and it messes up X and Y axis dimensions. With the platform half way down, try lifting it with your hands. Does the z screw come up out of the coupler? It should stay in. I'm thinking maybe your Z axis is loose or slipping. Look at the photo in the assembly instructions - is your Z screw inserted all the way? How much can you see of the Z screw above the coupler? Compare that to the photo in assembly instructions. It needs to be all the way in, or it won't rotate properly. Make sure the set screws in the Z coupler are tight. If everything seems fine then try calibrating the Z axis by moving it 10mm at a time with a ruler taped against the side of your ultimaker.

For anyone else who has this problem - the red circled area is how the z jumpers are supposed to be (right most one removed or postitioned as shown so that it does nothing). As usual, click image to see it larger.

The printer has trouble printing "in air". It needs to print each layer on top of something existing. Can you share where you got your orginal model? Or post your STL somewhere? One uption is to turn on "support" in cura. Another option is to use meshmixer to get supports: Another option is to maybe rotate your print to a different angle, or print 2 halves and glue together later. I don't know what the best option is because I don't know what your STL file looks like.

The 49 is completely normal and expected. PLA shrinks as it cools. The 73 and 47 seem impossible. Maybe these axes are slipping? I'd like to see a picture of your finished part. Consider looking at the Z coupler under your bed and make sure the Z screw is all the way in. Compare to assembly pictures - you should see threads almost to the coupler like in assembly pictures. If Y axis slips you will see a slanted part and will be very obvious. Maybe the Y dimensions included a nose or chin or something that didn't print properly.

I'm not sure if you can post pictures before 5 posts but the way you do it is go to upper left corner of this page, click "Gallery" then "upload". After you finish uploading make a new post, click "my media", then "gallery images". If you do not see the "upload" button in the gallery than you will have to post the images somewhere else such as flicker, imgur, facebook, google plus. Then link to the image from your post here.

Sorry to hear this. I swap out a .4mm nozzle and a .65mm nozzle all the time. I only finger tighten it when I put it back together. I always do this at 180C. Never hotter as PLA can kind of boil or something and get extra gunky/sticky. When I say finger tighten - I mean I wear thin cotton gloves and don't tighten it very hard at all. I've only ever used PLA filament (and PLA with stone powder) but I can imagine that if you have used ABS even only once it might make it impossible to ever get that nozzle off again. You can clean the nozzle without taking it off. Get some hypodermic or accupuncture needles that are less than .4mm in diameter but as large as possible. Then follow these directions but modify for UM1 as needed: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4118-blocked-nozzle/?p=33691

A .6mm drill bit is MUCH smaller than a .8mm drill bit and easy to snap off inside the nozzle. Be verycareful and steady. Use a jig if you can instead of your hands so that a little vibration in your hands won't snap the drill bit.

There's no exact cutoff of what an overhang can get to. It just gets worse and worse as you get closer to horizontal. I guess horizontal is the cutoff. Even 10 degrees from horizontal is printable and I've printed round arches without any support - it's not pretty but it works. In general - for nice looking surfaces, a 45 degree angle is a good limiting goal. Make sure the fan is at 100% before it gets to these overhangs - but don't switch the fan from 0% to 100% on a single layer or you will cool the nozzle too fast and get underextrusion for a minute until the controller compensates for cooler breeze. When the head is within 10mm of the buildplate, the fan air bounces off and cools the nozzle quite a bit. When you are printing "up high" it's not so much. But when printing overhangs and bridges (think the top of an open doorway) you want max possible fan.

Twice now people have reported that the little white teflon piece just above the nozzle was restricting the filament and drilling this out to 3mm drastically helped their underextrusion. Here is the latest from user mnis: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4145-small-question-about-material-feeder/?p=34106 I am still very suspicious about nicolinux's extruder however. Also nicolunix, I know you consider your UM2 to be broken but it *does* print - just at half the speed of mine. So you can use it to print parts - it's just going to take twice (3 times?) as long until this problem is figured out.

By the way I put my ear on my power supply the other day and it makes the same sounds.

It's okay to print at 195C if you have lots of stringing - it's just that you should probably cut the speed in half at those temps.