gr5

So Avi ... it sounds like you already built your printer and have already made some prints. Do you still want a complete set of panels and will you take your printer apart and move it to the new panels or is that too much work and you will just live with what you have?

Are you saying you don't get the "elephants foot" on your prints anymore?

It's on my list for this weekend. I don't promise anything.

aviphysics - I think you are going to be a good addition to this community. You express your thoughts well and think of things that not everyone thinks of.

The elephant foot is difficult and I'm not sure what causes it - possibly temperature issues, possibly other factors. As Robert suggests, the most common solution is to compensate in the CAD part. Also different people get different sized "feet" depending on many factors (layer height, temp, speed, fan) so it's hard to fix in Cura. Easier to fix in CAD. The pillowing as Robert suggests is almost always caused by inadequate fan. Are both of your side fans working? Many Ultimakers came with disconnected side fans. Click "PRINT", choose and model, then quickly go into the TUNE menu and set the fan speed to 100%. As long as you stay in the tune menu the printer will not start printing. If the fans aren't working, try sliding up the black plastic mesh at the top of the head and checking the 3 fan connectors. The wires leading to the 3 fans are red and black. As robert already said, pillowing can be reduced by thicker layers and also mitigated by having more top layers. But you already have 10 layers! I usually only do 4 and rarely see pillowing. I often don't even do infill (which helps support) and still don't usually see pillowing. So - maybe the fans are off? Also check that they are blowing and not sucking (that was a problem on a UM1 once but I don't think the UM2 fans are capable of spinning backwards).

You should be able to disable the heat bed. There are 2 ways. I'm not sure if either will work: 1) The simple way (less likely to work). Click "PRINT" and choose your model, then quickly go to the TUNE menu and set the heated bed temp to 0. This will probably fail before you can set the temp to 0. 2) The harder way. Create a custom filament that uses heated bed temp of 0. I forget where the menu is - I think the MATERIAL menu. Go in there and create a custom material and set the temp to 220 and set the bed temp to 0. Save the material and you should have a CUSTOM1 material. Try this a few times until you are able to create a material with bed temp 0C. Then select this as the current material and go to the PRINT menu. 3) Even harder. Use cura to create a job but uncheck the "ulticode" box in machine settings. This will create a UM1 like gcode. Make sure to set the heated bed temp to 0 in Cura (when you uncheck ulticode you get more settings in cura). Then copy the gcode onto SD card and print on UM2. 4) You could just fix your printer. The problem is almost always one of the 4 solder joints. At least 2 other people have fixed their heated bed on this forum. I can point you to the postings if you are interested in more details.

This was all explained in Illuminarti's original blog post. If you read the whole thing (it's not very long) you would have known. I had to keep his post up in one window, and follow the transform directions in another window to get it right.

Sorry. Don't mean to be rude. I'm trying to explain it clearly. It seemed like you misunderstood the concept of simulate when you started talking about chaning bios settings for COM ports when there is no physical COM port needed for the ultimaker (it uses USB). When my first explanation didn't get through to you I tried something simpler. I thought all the arduinos had the same USB driver. But if you really need to know, as Robert says, it's the 2560. I believe that is the most capable of all the Arduinos (most memory, most IO, fastest cpu).

Wow. You *are* confused. Let me try again. 1) You don't need any com ports on your computer to connect to an arduino. The BIOS stuff is just history. Forget about BIOS. 2) You need USB port. Do you know what simulate means? Maybe you should look it up. When you plug in the USB to the arduino it is supposed to simlulate (simulate - look it up). Not "Be". "Simulate". Let me start over - when you plug in the USB it SIMULATES a COM port. It is not actually a COM port but windows thinks it is. Get it? Windows thinks it's a COM port but actually it is not. Actually it is a USB. So in device manager (did you get device manager working yet?) when you plug in the USB, it should show up as a COM port. When you disconnect the USB, it should dissapear from device manager. If this all happens then that is very good - it means the Arduino driver is perfect and you can move on to the next thing. If this does not happen then something is wrong with the Arduino driver. We are taking this very sloow. It may take a few days but it seems we need to take very small steps.

Yes. Filament change is best done at 180C for PLA.

I don't care if 3mm filament is free - it's not worth it. Buy some 2.85mm filament.

Modern power supplies are amazingly efficient and use "switching" techniques meaning there is an oscillator. Often the oscillator is at an audible frequency (a hissing sound). The energy can be very high in a very small area and there can be strong electric or magnetic fields. The magnetic fields can cause certain materials to move (vibrate) at the same frequencies. So it's common for power supplies (especially the bigger ones) to make a faint sound. The power usage for your Ultimaker is mostly in the heated bed. So I would expect a different sound when the heated bed is on or off. When the HB gets with 15C of final temp the bed is turned on and off severa (5?) times per second. If you look at the lights in the UM they flicker a little. The power supply may increase and decrease it's hiss sound at the same frequency.

Yeah - your experience is probably does apply. It should be squishing it a bit - not dropping. I know exactly what you mean. What is your first layer height? Default in Cura is .3mm but once you get leveling dialed in you should be able to do .2mm or .1mm even. I recommend you ignore the leveling procedure and just give your 3 screws a 1/4 turn and try reprinting a 1st layer. Again, once you get levelling down you probably won't mess with it for weeks. But turn very carefully - sometimes both ends turn at the same time so watch the screw on top. Do you want to be more specific? Did something fall over? To get parts to stick well you do need that first layer squished a bit. Also glue stick helps. Also warm bed helps. Or for ABS, abs glue is good or hairspray. You probably already know ALL of this if you have printed with other printers. Don't mean to talk down to you or anything.

I think you need a little history. A long time ago (1970s) computers used "COM" ports which used a technology called RS232. This technology has persisted to today where it was used for keyboards and mouses but not much else when USB took over. Now finding a RS232 mouse or keyboard is difficult. Modern day Mouse and Keyboard use USB instead. Most modern computers don't even have a connector for Comm port. Nor a connector for old style mouse or keyboard. Instead they all use USB. So now along comes Arduino. The programmers don't want to write a full USB driver for the arduino because it is very complicated and takes up lots of memory on the Arduino (there are many models of the Arduino - the original one had very little memory - the "Arduino Uno". The one with Ultimaker is much more powerful). So someone wrote a USB driver that sort-of simulates a comm port. When you install the arduino and when the arduino driver sees the USB Arduino, the Arduino driver makes the USB port look like a COM port. edit: Actually I think possibly this is done on a chip on the arduino board with built in firmware to become a usb device. So you don't in fact actually have any COM ports. It's just that the Arduino driver *simulates* a COM port. I don't think you can "enable" or "disable" COM ports. Either the Arduino driver successfully connects to the Arduino... or it doesn't. The COM port will magically appear when you plug in the USB and disappear when you disconnect. With a real COM port (not simulated) it doesn't appear and disappear - it is always there.

If I were you I would contact Ultimaker and ask them if they would be willing to sell you the UM2 with a spare nozzle included and how much extra that would cost and then I would learn how to "drill your own". I seriously doubt anyone out there with a UM2 has done this yet. I have a .4mm nozzle and also a .65mm nozzle for my UM1 and I love the .65mm nozzle (for some things). I have changed back and forth twice now and it just takes a minute. Changing this on the UM2 will take more effort as the nozzle and heated chamber is a single piece. You should beware that the UM2 has a very very small melt chamber and might not be able to print as fast as the UM1. So maybe we need someone to test this first. In fact the UM2 is already probably half as fast as the UM1 as far as melting PLA - in other words you have to print much hotter to get the same speeds. But for a .8mm nozzle you might be printing 4X to 8X slower than on the UM1 which kind of defeats the whole purpose. But this is just a guess! The slower extrusion on the UM2 is just as likely related to the extruder strength and so the UM2 might print very very fast with a .8mm nozzle. I don't think anyone really knows.

There are probably a million arduino users out there and thousands who speak every language. The arduino is very very popular compared to the ultimaker. So you are lucky that so far your problem is arduino related and there are many people who know how to fix this on google.

I found these images by googling images for "device manager arduino"

Good image - arduino recognized and on "com3": Example of problem - arduino not recognized:

Don't be afraid. Just try stuff. Cura and the Arduino both come with the Arduino "driver". When you installed Cura there should at one point have been a SEPERATE installer that launched and installed the "arduino driver". You may not have noticed it. Did you check "device manager" to see if the arduino shows up as a "com" port versus a "USB unknwon device"? If my instructions on launching device manager are no help, try googling "how do I launch device manager in windows 8.1".

1) Can you double check your firmware version Leon? You can read it back from the control panel on the UM2. 2) FYI Daid who posted above is the author of Cura and has customized Marlin for the UM2. So you are lucky that he read your post and complaints. Hopefully he will address some of them over the next months. 3) The piece of paper thing - I'm a bit surprised - but the good news is once you get leveling right it tends to last for months. 4) You *can* change the existing filament defaults. For example you can change the nozzle temp for PLA permanently. How the hell I did it I'm not sure as it was confusing and took about 10 tries. Instead I gave up on this and everytime I start a print I go straight to tune menu where it will not start printing until you leave the tune menu. In there I change everything - bed temp, nozzle temp, etc and only exit when the bed is close to desired temp. Video please? That sounds strange. If it clicks and slips backwards that is "missed steps" and is by design but means you are printing either too fast or too cold. You may have a partial clog - when switching from ABS to PLA people get lots of problems - the head doesn't seem to clean out all the ABS with normal printing - you might have to take it apart :( - sorry. If it is under extruding you could just drop the feedrate to 50% (while printing I forget if you just spin the control or if you go to tune and lower it there as I haven't needed to do this much). Crackling and buzzing sounds - well - broken. Not sure what you mean exactly but it could be bad.

I'm partly joking here. The most common way to lower demand is to raise price. But having a 8 week lead time helps also. Right now Ultimaker is driving away customers due to the long lead time. When the lead time gets down to 2 weeks, the demand will probably increase. Meanwhile it makes sense to raise the price a bit. But this is a complicated marketing decision and most companies keep the price low even when demand is very high. I think it's silly to keep the price low but obviously raising the price will annoy a lot of people. I think that it's better to annoy your non-customers than annoy your customers. So I vote for raising the price until you can ramp up your shipping some more. But I don't work for Ultimaker and also I'm not a marketing expert.

I agree! Obviously the price for the um2 is MUCH TOO LOW. Demand is much too high. Please help everyone by raising the price until the delivery time is down to 2 weeks. I recommend starting at 4000 euros and see what happens. Otherwise you will get "scalpers". People who buy the UM2, then resell it for twice the amount. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_resale

YES! It's much worse with the UM1. If you have a clog or if you print too fast or too cold you get grinding ALL THE TIME. It's a very serious problem on the UM1 and you learn not to print too fast or too cold. The reason it's not much of a problem on the UM2 is because the current that goes to the stepper motor is much lower on the UM2. The motor has much less power and doesn't have a huge mechanical advantage like it does on the UM1. This is done on purpose - the idea is that as the force gets very strong pushing on the filament, the stepper slips before the filament slips. That's the goal. So the UM2 is a huge improvement in grinding and I was surprised that anyone at all had the problem. This is a problem on other printers also. This is one of those really nice things about the UM2 over most competitors.

So this is like a newborn? You have to wake up every 2 hours to check on your print?

Maybe it wants to make a financial investment? That is probably the extruder motor slipping backwards (losing steps). Fix this by printing a little bit slower or hotter. Try half the speed you were printing at before (turn feed rate to 50% if you want) and/or raise the temp to 240C. The printer prints fine at 240C but you may get much more stringing - tiny strings across gaps. So slowing down the print might be the better solution for bracelets. Also the bottom layer is the hardest because if you are printing it .1mm thick (thickness of paper - very thin) and you are off by just .03mm (1/3 thickness of paper) then the printer is putting out too much or too little plastic by 30%. So if possible try to print the first layer .3mm thick (I think this is default in Cura).