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Some people have found that if they remove the arduino from their PCB it can upgrade whereas when mounted on the PCB it won't upgrade. This makes no sense to me but whatever. I recommend you buy a new arduino. They are cheap. What country are you in? Here in the USA you can get one for $20 on ebay which includes shipping costs. I believe you want the mega 2560.

1) Nice picture! 2) What country do you live in? Please say so in your profile. 3) What is your layer height? This looks like over extrusion do to the Z axis not moving the full distance. The extruder is expecting the Z surface to move a certain amount and extrudes the proper amount of plastic for that distance. If instead the Z surface moves half the desired distance then there is a lot of extra plastic trying to squeeze out. How to fix? You could print a little cooler so that the plastic has trouble squeezing out. The better fix of course is to fix your Z axis so that it is better. This is difficult as there are many moving parts in the Z axis. Is this a UM1 or UM2? Did you grease the Z axis? Your UM should have come with a small green plastic thing with green grease. Put a small drop of grease (about 5mm in diameter) on the Z screw and slide the bed up and down past that 3 or 4 times. Also put some light petroleum oil on the 2 vertical rods. Just a small amount. Don't use WD40 as that has strong additives. Use sewing machine oil, baby oil, or other light (non viscous) petroleum oil. There could be many other possible issues with your Z axis such as something with the Z nut, obstacles, vertical bearings, and more.

I suspect you have to remove the cover of the extruder because you need to push that knurled part further in before tightening the set screw that holds it. Make sure that set screw is very tight. There are 4 screws holding the cover on - take all 4 out but beware the motor will fall so hold the stepper as you do this. This is a pretty easy fix so don't be scared.

A couple of things to check (grasping here on 1-3): 1) Maybe your temp is lower than you think - do the calibration where you set the temp to 105C and touch a drop of water to it and make sure it boils. 2) Could the fan be blowing onto the tip of your nozzle? That can cause problems. If it might be close try turning off the fan just for a test (although parts come out much better with fan - especailly small parts like this) 3) Does the delrin (delrin is that black plastic) wheel pushing against the filament turn okay? Could it be stuck? 4) Consider spending (really very little) money to buy a new nozzle. It may just be full of some kind of gunk stuck to the sides (think paint on the inner walls). I suspect Illuminarti will sell you one (or maybe two different sizes to boot!?) if you click on his name and send him a personal message. The nozzle is pretty easy to change - just unscrew it when temp is 180C. Although it sounds like you took it off already.

In theory it could damage the arduino I think (I didn't look at the schematic just yet though). So I would recommend removing the transistor. You can usually print without fan, especially large parts but no fan can make some things worse: overhangs top surfaces might bulbble bridging Or if you are printing something small, less than 10 seconds per layer, then the fan is a huge help.

Easily. I've seen 8 inch bridges. They will droop if the PLA is too hot though: See post #17: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/?p=25304

Try lowering "max z jerk" also. The initial (and end) speed of movement starts with this value/2. So if this is 20mm/sec than the Z speed will start out at 10mm/sec.

Did you put the plugin here?: ~/.cura/plugins/ More here: https://github.com/daid/Cura/issues/602

I looked at the spec sheet and the BD683 looks fine.

That looks exactly like normal underextrusion. Try printing slower. Here are photos of underextrusion: (post #1 gray picture, post #2 also): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

ca marchera: 220/65. Pour trouver plus d'information: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/3404-printing-on-glass/ On peut utiliser un bâton de colle aussi.

I played with the support tool for an hour in meshmixer a while back and I wasn't convinced it was useful for 3d printing. For example the dragon wings you show - yes definitely it will keep them from moving around while printing, but the underside of the wing is going to have lots of strands of pla that loop/fall down way below the wing. I don't see how those occasional supports are going to help. It seems like you need continuous support lines along the edges so that cura can bridge from one support to the other creating the flat(ish) wing. The support feature seems meant to support flimsy structures, but not designed to support overhangs. But on the other hand it's hard to argue with the result you got so far. Perhaps the part you printed so far mostly only has bridging issues? And not overhangs?

1) Solidworks is to meshmixer as a smart phone is to a pencil. There are a lot more features and solidworks is used by professionals. Meshmixer is for fun. My opinion only. 2) Keep in mind that the nozzle diameter of the UM and UM2 is .4mm. Or a radius of .2mm. So your x/y resolution is basically limited to 200 microns. Going below 50 microns in the z direction gets a little silly at some point. If there are any errors in Z accuracy parts may look *worse* at higher resolutions and layers might get more noticeable instead of less.

The z movement is DEFINITELY the loudest thing by far on the UM2. People say it is whisper quiet but then a print finishes and the z axis goes all the way down it is pretty loud. I'm not sure why this is. The Z axis stepper is mounted I believe on the bottom panel and the bottom panel. seems to act like a sound board on a guitar or piano - amplifying the sound. I think the best solution would be to couple the Z stepper to the base with rubber washers maybe. Lowering the max Z acceleration and jerk might help. I would cut both by a factor of 3 to see if this helps. But I'm not sure that's enough. I think it's the mounting of the z stepper.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly but maybe I do. Many printers have X,Y (0,0) at the center of the printer but for the UMs, 0,0 is the corner and the center is whatever half the axis distance is. For example 100,100 will work for most parts but if the part is more than 200mm on a side you need to specify exactly half the axis limits which I forget. I think maybe 235 by 225 or 225 by 235?

Other people have insulated the heater block and/or tip and they all seemed happy with the result. I wouldn't do anything though that makes it more difficult to change the nozzle. Right now I can unscrew it (when hot of course) and clean it out easily

No. Don't touch speed. It never gets up to the requested speed. The move distance is only .1mm or .2mm. Instead increase the z ACCELERATION. Not the speed.

How much does this head weigh? Currently the acceleration for X/Y axis is 5000mm/sec (in comparison I think the makerbot is more like 200mm/sec but I could be wrong). The main advantage of the UM over other printers is the light weight head.

Sounds like your pulleys are slipping. I assume it is slipping only on the X or Y axis? Does that make sense? If not please post a picture because in that case I have no idea what you are talking about. So figure out which axis it is and then tighten all 6 pulleys for that axis. There are 6 (six!) pulleys. The two most likely to be slipping are the two that are hardest to get to: the short belts ones: the one on the motor and the one above. Tighten the heck out of those grub screws (aka set screws) and try again. Also consider maybe marking the pulley and shaft with a tiny dot to see which one is slipping.

You have a UM Original right? No heated bed?

ic's at 80C sounds fine. Even 100C. Head hitting side - sounds like you fixed it. Flickering lights is normal when bed is within about 10C of goal temp. It is PWM controlled meaning it turns on and off about 5 times per second which is visible and a little annoying (you can dim the LEDs if you want). I have never noticed any clicking sound from my PSU but I will check it next time. The head temp probe is definitely a problem. I recommend you contact support at support.ultimaker.com and get a new probe/cable assembly on Monday. You could get a whole new UM but it may have new issues. Better to fix the 1 thing that doesn't work.

Probably only 1 person in 30 who received a UM2 has an account on these forums so this is not a very accurate survey. I didn't know about these forums until after I had printed a few things with my UM Original. To answer your question: I already had 3d printing experience so it was pretty quick. I had two fans hooked up backwards (side fan always on instead of rear fan. rear fan comes on with side fan). I probably could have printed with it like that without any problems forever. But I expected this problem because I was reading the forums and I had it fixed in 1 minute - so simple - just unplug the fan and plug it into the other connector. That was it - other than that great prints starting with the first attempt.

More on bridging here - post #17 (currently last post): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/?p=25304

This is a nice design. It's not clear that you need any support. The UM can do what we call "bridging" as long as the lines are straight. The shorter the bridge, the easier but 4 inch long bridges are not a problem. I recommend trying this print with zero support.

Retraction may start where the shrinkage changes but several other things also start there. For example more "top" infill. And an air gap. Obviously shrinkage factors won't pull across an air gap. I'm pretty sure all FDM printers will do what you see. I'm pretty sure it is 100% caused by shrinkage and not over or under extrusion. But shrinkage is a bit complicated because it is shrinking while printing. I since learned that shrinking is very linear at all temps. In other words if you graph PLA density on Y axis versus temp on the X axis it is a relatively straight line. Also PLA in injection molding only shrinks .3% even though the shrinkage from 200C to 20C is over 1%. .3% agrees mostly with a change in temp from around 70C to 20C which means most of the shrinking issues start only when PLA gets to around 70C or colder. Above that temp it's close enough to a liquid to not be a issue. So a more interesting test for this piece would be to print it in either a heated chamber or at least on a heated bed at 70C. Also like Robert says, look to see if Cura is putting in some solid layers - solid layers are going to pull much harder than open infill at 20%. I would love to help print this part because this is an interesting topic for me but I am away from my printers until Monday night.