gr5

LOL! Most of my knowledge comes not from direct experience but from other posts!

Usually the problem is in the wiring at the test head but I'm glad you got it working. FYI - if the temp is anything other than 0, printing doesn't start until the temperature is "stable". In your case it never got stable.

1) UM1 or UM2 2) What happens if you don't cut the end off and put it back in?

I love printbl.com in the USA. They make very good filament. 2.85mm (even though it is called 3mm).

Very few people do. I made some modifications - just create an account and then the "edit" button should appear on all pages. They may lock it down at some point as someone was vandalizing the main page. Hopefully they will only lock down the home page.

This is 95% chance the problem. I'm certain this was it. I would clean out the specs and if they are still there later then something is still rubbing.

I have 2 daughters so it's great to see 3 gifts for daughters in the last 6 postings of "latest print".

Well mine have never slipped. But I've also never taken out the bowden on either machine because I'm afraid of damaging it.

Oh, right! Forgot. Well with non Ultimakers, retraction is probably less critical and can probably be reduced to maybe only 1mm or 2mm of total retraction distance.

It has never happened to me fortunately. I have not yet disassembled the UM2 feeder. Most of my wisdom regarding UM1 and UM2 comes from reading and remembering every problem other people have had and posted in this Forum. I merely restate what others have said.

Something is wrong with your feeder then. I've done incredible amounts of retraction on both UM original and UM2 and never had a problem with grinding due to retraction. In fact I did an 8 hour print last night with 42079 5.5mm retractions and no problems. That's 231 meters of retraction on a print that used 26.6 meters of filament. So every part of the filament was inserted and retracted an average of 9 times. Of course that's just the average - there were sections with no retraction so some parts of the filament probably retracted 20 times. Your feeder is probably a bit too tight. Do you have UM1 or UM2? If UM2, where is the white square? When the square is at the bottom it is tightest. At the top is loosest. Mine is at the top. Or maybe nothing is wrong and you simply have a softer filament than I do. Are you using PLA or something else?

Something is very wrong. You appear to have play caused by something too loose or too tight. The problem seems worse in Y axis as Illuminarti says. Too loose: Hold the Y motor from moving with thumb of left hand and push the head and see if it moves a little. Does it move as much as the error in your circles? Maybe the nozzle is loose? Maybe the bearings in the head are loose? Too much friction: Push the head in X and Y with power off. Does friction feel the same? Check endcaps. Check belt tension too tight? Needs oil? You should be able to push the head around without the UM sliding around on the table (just barely though). You should be able to push the head with your smallest finger (but not easily).

If you aren't afraid to use the Arduino IDE I would be tempted to get the absolute latest from ErikZalm as he has some nice new features added/bugs fixed pretty much every week. But first I would use ginge to create the configuration.h file and do a diff (winmerge) between the ginge one and the one that comes with ErikZalm and use winmerge's nice features to grab what I want from each file. And also a diff between yours and either of those configuration.h files.

By the way, there's a README file with the sorce files at erikZalm which tells you how to build it yourself so that you don't need the ginge builder version but the ginge builder is SO MUCH easier.

There's an ino file. You have to open that file with the arduino ide. Not sure what you are trying to do exactly as ginge's builder makes the hex file for you which you can then send to your board with Cura. Be aware this is UM1 only (not UM2).

It has been too long - I don't remember this stuff. But I was able to mount it on the front for a while and recently moved it to the right side. I like having my UM1 sideways so I can touch the extruder gear with my right hand without moving. Also I can see what's going on with filament.

Yeah - I think I found those. But those aren't the same as on the extruder or head, right?

1) I think the original is 32X32 pixels. 2) So you are saying the existing pattern is 10mm on a side and you changed it to 5mm on a side? 3) You all know that you can click on your part, click scale and it tells you the max dimensions in x,y,z, right?

@porter - very nice print. I'd be tempted to dip those into paint which would paint just the characters and script text.

Some parts will get hot and can get damaged - mostly just the part that sticks up into the air flow and the stepper drivers. Just touch the parts occasionally to check temperature or only keep them powered up for say 30 seconds at a time. They can get hot enough to burn your fingers before you need to shut them down - certainly if they are hot enough to boil water you waited a little too long to turn off power. It depends what you find. If you find the voltage is good at the arduino but bad at the stepper driver than somewhere in between there is a problem - likely there are only 2 candid solder joints in between so I would just warm up each of them with a soldering iron (with power off). If you find the signal is bad at the arduino then I would remove the stepper driver to rule that out and then try again to see if the DIR signal is still stuck and if so then you need a new arduino. That covers 2 possibilities. A third possibility is that the voltage will be fine all the way to the stepper driver but the stepper still always moves the same direction in which case the stepper driver is bad and you should swap it with another and the problem should move. There's probably a 4th possibility because it seems like every time I think I've thought of all the possibilities there is another. But these 3 are the most likely. In fact a bad solder joint is the most likely because people have already seen this issue on many boards.

I believe they are specialty. Used in air conditioner low pressure water lines only. Very very specific application and although the tube is common the different types of "fittings" are varied and only one, rare one, is the correct one. I looked on mcmaster carr and couldn't find it. If it's not on mcmaster carr then it's damn hard to get. Although it may have been there but just difficult to find. You can probably get them at a plumbing supply place that deals with plumbers that deal with commercial air conditioning. But not at a typical hardware store.

Just cut 5mm off the end of the tube so that the blades cut in to fresh virgin bowden tube.

pronterface can be downloaded here. It's a very easy to use gui and will print gcode files through USB for you and much more: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/

Sander's correction was that it had to be more than 1mm (not less). And 2mm is probably better. This is a common problem. There are 2 very common causes. Either the tube is defective or the "fitting". Take the tube out and look inside the fitting. There should be metal blades inside. They can get bent backwards so that they no longer work or can fall out or break. If the blades all look fine and are symmetrical then the problem is with the tube. If the"fitting" is defective you need a new one. I have no idea where to get new ones other than through UM: support.ultimaker.com bad tube: One of the times the tube was removed (either by you or by pressure) the tube got a thin layer scraped off. If you look at the tube very carefully you might see that it is thinner or different where the blades "bite" into it. Anyway if the tube is "bad" it's very easy to fix. Just cut off 5 to 10mm from the end and now the blades will bite into the bowden tube higher up where it isn't damaged yet. Of course you can only do this a few times before you will need a new bowden. Or maybe I misunderstand. Maybe nothing is wrong with the bowden nor the fitting. Maybe you just didn't assemble it "tight" enough per Robert's directions (earlier in this thread post #43). I'm not sure 3 or 4 turns is tight enough though - maybe more like 6 but I don't know as I haven't taken this apart myself.

Of course but right now this is still experimental. Someone needs to prove it really works and do lots of tests and then if it really works, someone should next write a plugin that maybe locates these bridges (might be hard if there isn't a comment in the gcode although cura puts lots of helpful comments in there for plugins to use). Then when it has been tested thoroughly by at least 3 people, and Daid has tried it and is convinced it works, only then does it make sense to add to Cura. First we need to see if it helps at all. I am kind of doubtful. Actually I think what would make more sense is to extrude a little bit extra just before the start to make it a tiny bit thicker - maybe pause for 1/10 second before starting the bridge - I'm not sure. You could split the single bridge move into two moves - the first move would be over extruded and only move 1mm or so and slow - maybe 5mm/sec, then do the remaining move with normal extrusion.