gr5

Not double checking but from memory I'm pretty sure it's 235X225X205mm. I would go ABS. PLA even just in hot water out of the sink faucet will soften much too much. ABS is much more frustrating but I would recommend you just start right out with ABS and not even bother learning about PLA. The heated chamber is only if the shrinking is a problem. For example hollow fuselage parts printed edge up and down will probably print fine without heat. But some parts will be a problem. Or consider buying PLA90 (google it).

Voltmeters in DC mode (or even AC mode) do not measure pulsed signals very well. PWM in this case means the fan is turned on and off many times per second. The voltmeter is probably designed to measure DC voltage so it gets a bit confused. Tries to average but probably fails.

Just edit Configuration_adv.h here: //These defines help to calibrate the AD595 sensor in case you get wrong temperature measurements. //The measured temperature is defined as "actualTemp = (measuredTemp * TEMP_SENSOR_AD595_GAIN) + TEMP_SENSOR_AD595_OFFSET" #define TEMP_SENSOR_AD595_OFFSET 0.0 #define TEMP_SENSOR_AD595_GAIN 1.0 And rebuild Marlin. It's not that hard to build Marlin. I recommend the latest Erik Zalm version. Actually I recommend you go here first: http://marlinbuilder.robotfuzz.com/ And use that to get your configuration.h file. *then* get latest source code of Marlin (which is updated almost every week but which has always worked for me): https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin Do a diff (winmerge is free and works great) on the Configuration.h file from there and the one from marlinbuilder and pay attention to the changes. They should all make sense. You don't have to know anything about programming to understand these files. Just know that anything after the "//" is a comment. Don't forget to edit the Configuration_adv.h (I've never had to touch that but that is the change you want for your temperature fix). Then you can build it through the arduino gui (there's instructions inside the source files somewhere) or you can build it according to this detailed instructions: http://www.extrudable.me/2013/05/03/building-marlin-from-scratch/

Certainly print a test one at half size first. Do you plan to paint it? If so you could consider just printing it as shown with "support" enabled. then sand and file it and then use bondo to fill in any cracks/tiny holes, then prime it with automotive primer then paint with any kind of paint you want (maybe acrylic). Also if you are painting it then it isn't so bad to print it in two halves. It's a lot of work getting those 2 halves to fit together nicely (both halves will warp) but lots of people have had success.

With the UM you have the feeder mechanism pushing on the filament from the back of the machine and then through the bowden tube. Most machines have the feeder mechanism on the print head. This is the biggest difference between UM and other printers. It means the print head weighs much less and can move much faster. The downside is that when the feeder stops turning, the filament still has pressure from the pressure/flexing of the bowden. Like a spring. But you can undo that pressure very fast with retraction. Non UMs benefit from retraction also but don't need the feature nearly as much.

Hi Sander. Marlin disables the extruder from working unless you heat the hot end up to 170C or higher. This is to avoid damaging things - usually you simply get a grinding of the filament but sometimes the bowden pops off. So either heat up the print head to 180C or you can build a version of Marlin that has this safety feature disabled.

@anthonyT - I'm not sure I followed you there but did you know you can right click on the icon (whether it is a print icon, a SD card or whatever) and you have more choices?

Ja! .3mm nozzle: http://www.tridimake.com/2013/05/3d-printing-with-smaller-nozzle-diameter.html

Perfect skirts! I'm going to save a link to this picture for when people want an example of a perfect skirt!

saulbass - did you try the extra cable? There's a spare cable and connectors (meant for a second nozzle). You can just switch over to that second cable and on the bottom of the machine, take off the cover and switch to the second cable there also.

Well I recommend replacing the wires and the connector to the temp sensor. Just run a whole new cable from board to print head and leave the existing cable as is. Make sure you do really good strain relief. Either that or accept that you have to replace the cable every 300 hours of printing or something like that. I used the backup cable in my cable assembly and that gets the error occasionally also but it's much rarer now. I also did better strain relief. But I still get the error. Never in a print so far, it only happens when I'm leveling the print bed and pushing the head to the 4 corners. Anyone know the part number (or even better the digikey part numbers) for the connector and crimp fit pieces for this connector?

Looking at the photo - I can get a print like this with a perfectly functioning printer. In other words this can be caused by either: 1) Something wrong with one or two X/Y axis. 2) Other things. I'm going to assume #2 for a minute. The first layer is critical - it's hard to get the bed the exact right height. Often when laying down a circle for the first layer the filament is place don the tape at the right spot and then 1/10 of a second later it gets pulled and slides across the tape towards the center and you can get a "flat spot" in the circle. This is fixed by printing the first layer very slow in Cura (20mm/sec) but more importantly getting the Z height perfect. If you are too high by even the width of a sheet of paper, then the filament doesn't get pressed down enough. On the first layer the filament needs to get pressed down more. Look at the first layer carefully as it is going down - if it isn't much wider than tall then grab the z screw coupler and twist it away from you 4 or so clicks. Do this while the skirt is being printed so it is perfect before the part is being printed. The second problem is cooling - on small parts like this you need at least 3 seconds - preferably 5 seconds between layers. This is small enough that the UM can do a layer in only 2 seconds. So make sure the fan is on high and use the "minimum layer time" feature and set it to 5 or 7 seconds and don't print faster than 100% when printing parts this small. I could be completely wrong - it might be something with your X or Y axis.

There are several things that can cause this: 1) This looks a lot like what you see when the filament on the spool gets tangled for maybe 20 seconds. The extruder has to pull harder and harder until suddenly the spool turns and the tangle comes free. Make sure the filament isn't stuck at the start and middle of your print. 2) Measure the length of your extruder spring when the extruder is closed and there is filament in it. How long is the compressed spring? It should be 11 to 11.5 mm. 3) Make sure there is no dust on your filament. This can cause partial clogs. Could you send a photo of your extruder? Also remove the filament and photograph the bolt. Check the bolt grooves to see if they are filled with filament. Make sure it looks like a good grip. Also examine the small black disk that squeezes the filament. Does it spin freely? With only a few inches of filament in the bowden tube, hold the filament back with one hand and turn the gear with the other. The feeder should be able to pull about 22 pounds.

That's a bit bizarre. Usually less fan is needed when you have shrinkage issues. Maybe you had some shrinkage/warping because the part cooled down to fast. I'd love to see a photo of your fan and fan shroud. Are they pointing at the part or the nozzle tip? (ideally you want not very much wind on the nozzle).

Or you can get "reading glasses" at any pharmacy (that sells bandages?). At least in the USA you can get reading glasses for less money than a bottle of wine.

Ja, aber kleineren Düsen häufiger verstopfen.

Das ist richtig. Die Düse ist diamter 0.4mm. Es kann also nicht zu drucken etwas kleiner als die Durchmesser. Dieser Ring optisch scheint es Kugeln in viel kleiner als 0,4 mm aufweisen. Also ich glaube nicht, dass es möglich ist, es sei denn, Sie eine kleinere Düse verwenden. Mit einer 0,25 mm Düse, vielleicht ist es möglich: http://www.tridimake.com/2013/05/3d-printing-with-smaller-nozzle-diameter.html

Hopefully daid will post again as I have never had any trouble in this area and don't understand it but I believe the default hex file is the one with the faster baud rate yet you installed the lower speed rate (although I thought it didn't matter). The log file looks EXACTLY like what I would expect with baud rate issues. Also with a broken USB, or arduino, lol. Anyway I would go to cura and go to "file" "preferences" and set the baud rate explicitly to whatever version of the firmware baud rate is.

I'm a software guy so I would offer a software solution. First I would make a table of programmed temp and actual temp in the region of where you print (for example 160C to 260C). Then I would update the table in the Marlin firmware. If the error is a simple offset (like add 30C) then I believe there is a single line in configuration.h to fix this but I don't think that will work for you because that would affect both nozzles. Instead I would... hmm... this is tricky as both use heater number "-1" which is a formula instead of a table (the bed uses a table and is easier to mess with). Okay so what I would do is hack the actual code that does the calculation. I simplify the errors to just a gain and offset (multiply by A and add B to get the correct temp) then I would do that multiply and add only if it was heater number 2 or whatever. It's pretty easy to build your own marlin. I prefer the gui but here's a well documented way: http://www.extrudable.me/2013/05/03/building-marlin-from-scratch/

I'm pretty sure that's underextrusion. I can see it in what little you have of walls also. There are many causes. You could have a bad feeder, a partial plug, filament diameter too large, printing too cold, or printing too fast. 1) A well tuned UM should be able to print about 10 cubic mm per second. The math is very simple on this - for example if you are printing 100mm/sec at .2mm layers (.4 width nozzle) then you multiply these 3 together (I can do it in my head it's so easy) and you get 8 mm^3/sec. This is close to the limit of what you can do if the filament is around 210-220C but relatively easy at 240C. So I guess the first question is what volume and temp were you printing at? Or if you can't multiple 2 and 4 you could just list the layer height and print speed. 2) If you are printing less than 4 mm^3/sec and temp is over 190C then there is some other problem. 3) Maybe your 3mm filament is getting stuck in the bowden tube - this is common for "bad" brands of filament. Especially since after coming out of the feeder, the filament has been squished a bit. 4) Maybe your feeder spring isn't tight enough - mine is at about 11.5mm when the feeder is closed. 5) Maybe the black wheel in your feeder isn't spinning freely or has a flat spot. Maybe you didn't close it tightly properly as shown in the famous(?) video that shows how your feeder should be used. 6) Maybe you thought you were printing at 240C but it was actually 160C because something is wrong with your thermocouple (this is actually very common).

>why there is a parameter for it if one would always have it turned on. Well it's slower. The printer stops, retracts, moves, then stops and unretracts (primes?). It can add about 1 second to every move across open space. For a two column object that's no big deal. Printing a hair brush with 300 bristles would add significant time. Some people don't care about the strings so much. If you are printing a part that is hidden within some mechanism maybe you don't care. And printers without the bowden tube (basically I think all printers other than the Ultimaker) don't need retraction as much. Personally, I always keep retraction on.

Retraction: You just enable it in Cura (the slicer) and you don't have to worry about it. Depending on your part shape a layer may have islands - for example if you print a chair, while it is printing the legs, there are 4 distinct areas of printing with nothing between each leg (until you get to the seat part). If you don't have proper retraction, some filament leaks out while the print head is travelling to the next lag and you get a thin "string". The strings are usually easy to remove but quality is much better if you get no stringing in the first place which is quite possible with retraction. connection: The um2 has a usb port on the back which you really don't need to use except to upgrade the firmware. But there are 2 ways to print: through usb or though SD card. The sd card method is strongly recommended. So you put many parts on the SD card (thousands?) as needed and you can have folders on the sd card to organize it. Then you select the item to print from the front of the UM. If you need a new design then when the UM isn't printing, you remove the SD card and put it into a "real" computer and copy the design onto the UM card. The "real" computer can be running linux, windows, or mac operating systems. Alternatively you can never use the SD card and always print through the usb port. This isn't recommended as you need to keep your PC running all the time and if you crash the PC, the printer will stop printing also and it's tricky to continue (but possible). The USB port can be useful for debugging things (I rarely do this). Like if you want to move your z drive up and down by 10mm over and over for some kind of test or calibration, it would be much easier to do this from a computer keyboard than from the knob on the front of the UM. But it really isn't all that bad to do from the UM knob.

Wow! I have never seen that before. And I've seen a lot. I think your Z stepper is slipping somehow. Is the z screw firmly seated into the Z coupler at the bottom of the z screw? Look at the first 2 pictures in this post: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2216-strange-print-artifacts-horizontal-bands-rippling/?p=15659 The first picture shows *good* z screw insertion. The second picture shows *bad* z screw insertion (sticking out). More likely you are slipping on the motor shaft. Try tightening that bottom screw quite a bit. The set screw that connects the coupler to the stepper motor. Tighten it much more than you think it needs to be. You can test things by homing, and then moving Z up and down by 10mm. You can do this with the ulticontroller or with the Cura print window. See if the screw is truly moving up and down by 10mm. If you install pronterface (it is free) you can adjust acceleration settings for the Z axis. Maybe you have too much friction in the z screw for the default acceleration. Although if it were me I would fix the friction and leave the z-acceleration alone. If you *do* change the z acceleration remember you have to save it to eeprom or you will lose that value the next time you power off the Ultimaker.

Can you show a very short video of the problem? Low resolution, 20 second video should be enough.

This is the first time I've tried to print a robot of higher or equal quality that Weiin posted. Here is my effort. I had to do a few "tricks" to get the antennas this good. It was more work though to get the damn pictures to be clear. White is definitely the hardest color to photograph when it comes to PLA. Click on the image for higher resolution, then right click and select "view image" to see it larger, then click it again to finally see it full size.