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The UM1 came with a wonderful skinny screwdriver that can get to all the grub screws (aka set screws) on all the pulleys except the motors. With power off you can push the print head around until the pulley screw lines up in a favorable direction. Other than that I'm not sure what you should do. 90% of the time these layer shifts are caused by a slipping set screw. Usually the short belts as the long belts get half the force and if one pulley is loose the other one still sort-of works. About the green grease - that is for the Z screw only. Try to clean that mostly off the rods. Any light petroleum oil with minimum additives will work for the rods - baby oil is good. 3-in-1 is probably fine. WD-40 is bad as it has powerful cleaning agents which shouldn't be left on there for long. Try not to get any oil on the belts or under/inside the pulleys. Sewing machine oil is perfect. Car engine oil is probably fine but the lighter the better e.g. 5w30 is better than 10w40.

I built my own spool holder out of wood that rests on the table.It's very ugly because I used scrap wood that is different colors. And for filament that has no spool I just put it on the floor flat and make sure it isn't tangling. Illuminarti puts his on a turntable which I tried once for a long print and that works well also. But the turntable is usually used for other things:

Looks like underextrusion on that pumpkin. What temp were you printing? The dirty "secret" of the UM2 is that it appears it only has about half the extrusion power of my UM1. So speed/temp/layer combinations that work fine on the UM1 are a struggle on the UM2. For 50mm/sec and .2mm layers I think you need 230C (I always halve the speed shown in my table that I generated for the UM2 because this table/graph was calculated with the nozzle printing in the air and on a part it prints even slower): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/3418-um2-extrusion-rates/ Please try to over extrude on purpose - the easiest way is to warm up the nozzle to 180C or warmer and extrude manually in the air until you get the "click" sound from the extruder - if you watch it, you will see it jump backwards. Once you know what to listen for, if you are printing something and you hear a click, lower the feed rate to 95%. If you still here clicks, keep lowering until they go away. edit: oh - and if it clicks on the first layer this is usually fine. That is usually just because the bed is a tiny bit too close. It's the rest of the layers that clicking indicates underextrusion.

Do you have an Ulticontroller? If so look for "mintemp" or "maxtemp" error on the UC. If not, I'm not sure how this error is shown. It's okay to shove the head around when the servos have no power. Try moving the head more towards the middle. I'm guessing there is a loose wire somewhere connecting to the head. I know if you lose connection to the thermocouple you get one of the above errors and everything shuts down until you power cycle. So I am thinking it is that cable. Consider using the alternate cable (for if you have two extruders). It may be that your primary cable has a bad connection or that you didn't plug it all the way in.

Correct. Again - I have no idea why fan makes such a difference. There is more here (post #10): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/?p=17300

I haven't tried this technique yet but 180C should be plenty hot (220C not necessary).

Looks good now. You must have fixed it.

Much better! I see the bottom of your test print is lifting off the bed. Time to start using the glue stick again. Also I see lots of stringing between the two posts. You can reduce that to nothing if you want although it means slowing down printing: ultimaker2 retraction settings There are 6 retraction related settings: 1) Make sure retraction is checked on basic/quality 2) In expert settings set minimum travel to 0mm or at least something small like 1mm. 3) In expert settings set "minimal extrusion..." to 0mm. I hate this setting right now. 4) In expert settings you can set "combing" on or off - it shouldn't make a huge difference for this part. Lately turning this "off" seems better in the current version of Cura but in the next version it might be best to turn it back on. 5,6) On the printer, you can control retraction there also Leave the retraction speed alone but change the retraction amount from 4.5mm to 5.5mm.

The smell should be like any PLA printing machine. Almost no smell compared to ABS. And the smell should be pleasant - like popcorn but not as strong.

I've never printed with ABS but I've seen this exact pattern on PLA and the fix was more fan. One person had no fan. Another had a fan hooked up backwards so it was sucking instead of blowing. It doesn't sound plausible but I'm telling you I've seen this several times. But in case that doesn't work... Don't mess with infill speed - it should be the same as print speed - put 0 in there. Try printing very very slow - 20mm/sec for the top layers. So when it gets there you can just lower the "feedrate %" to the correct value to get 20mm/sec. Maybe even 10mm/sec. This will help get a consistent flow. .2mm seems like it might help also to get a thicker strand that won't break. Also consider looking at your nozzle with a magnifier glass to make sure it isn't damaged (no holes, nicks, grooves).

@carl: um1 or um2? The um2 has issues with some of the ribbon cables that connect the 2 "box covers" under your machine. One fix is to remove both covers, remove the black netting - that's usually enough. You can also request a replacement cable from support.ultimaker.com

je ne sais pas.

Never heard of it before. I had to look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke

Doesn't this already exist in the advanced menu? I will go check later.

https://github.com/Dim3nsioneer/Cura-Plugins/raw/master/TweakAtZ.3.0.1.py

Yikes. Your UM2 is in bad shape. First of all in the first video you posted I could clearly see that the X axis was moving - I think you were probably pushing it - but the stepper motor wasn't turning. One of the set screws needs tightening - fix that first! It's very easy - there are very small screws to tighten the pulleys to the shaft. Tighten those a lot - very very tight. Then when you push the head back and forth the stepper motor should move also. This may help solve your limit switch issue. The second problem is your print head isn't assembled properly. In this picture here you can see that the right side of the head - near the bottom has a huge gap making the bottom plate, the fans and the fan shrouds all crooked. This is a problem which will make the right fan shroud touch your clips that hold the glass on. Also it might hit your parts as you are printing. To fix this I think you need to loosen the 4 very long screws, reposition the bottom plate and tighten again. Possibly/likely you only need to loosen the two screws on the right.

Why you get a clog already? Were you using ABS? Are you printing in a dusty room? Dust can clog the nozzle. I have only gotten 1 clog and only on my UM1 and only once in a year. You might want to order syringes (<.4mm). Or you can maybe cut a wire from a wire brush. Or from an electronics wire. Then heat the nozzle to 180C and stick the wire inside. This doesn't usually work as the clog just comes back in again. Another technique: 1) Heat head to 180C. 2) Extract the filament completely. 3) Loosen the 4 finger screws holding the head together 3 or 4 turns. 4) remove the clip that holds the bowden. (blue clip? or red?) 5) Push down on the ring that the clip held up and while pushing down, pull up on the bowden tube. method A: a1) Insert a 200mm length of PLA. a2) set tem to 90C. Wait 5 minutes for it to cool. a3) When temp has been 90C for a whole minute, pull hard on the PLA. HOpefully the clog will come out. a4) heat back to 180C. Put fresh piece of PLA in and see if it comes out the nozzle. a5) If still clogged go to step a1 method B: Take the head completely apart, stick a paper clip into the *top* of the print head while at 180C. scrape around and dig out all PLA and other gunk.

That would be .4mm. Not 3mm.

The plugin is a ".py" or python file. The changes above refer to the python code. I don't know why someone doesn't just change the code and check in the latest version. History: With older versions of Cura (13.04 and older) all moves were G1 commands. Now some moves are G1 and some are G0. For example G0 Z23.4 says to move the z axis only to 23.4mm off the bed. So the change to the python code now recognizes the new G0 commands. Consider also trying tweakAtZ which can do much more: https://github.com/Dim3nsioneer/Cura-Plugins/raw/master/TweakAtZ.3.0.1.py

Or maybe there is still glue on there? Clean it all off with glass cleaner or water and cloth.

Do you have a putty knife? Like this:

What Illuminarti said. Removes that non-sticky wax from the backside of tapes. Found in anywhere bandages are sold:

I am thiking more now that this is a Z screw issue. Did you put the green grease on the screw? Every UM1 and UM2 comes with a small plastic tube of green grease. Put one drop on there and move the Z platform up and down 4 times to spread the grease. The problem isn't how *thick* the layers are - the problem is overextrusion versus underextrusion. You can simulate this by increasing flow to 150% for a few layers and then changing flow to 75% for a few layers and see if you get the same color changes. If the Z stage is TOLD to move .2mm but it actually moves .15mm then you will get overextrusion. If later you tell it to move .2mm but it actually moves .25mm then you get underextrusion (not enough plastic to fill the space).

If you think gluestick + 70C is too much, simply print without gluestick. 40C is plenty hot enough for reasonable stick. Gluestick is needed for very strong stick. On machine itself, after clicking "print" then quickly go to "tune" menu and change the temp to whatever you want and then exit the tune menu.

Imprimer souple PLA très lent. Peut-être 10mm/sec! Aussi, vous pouvez avoir à ajouter une goutte d'huile minérale à filament pour l'aider à glisser dans le tube. Regardez cette vidéo à 0:50.