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LePaul... FOR EVERY PRODUCT that gets upgraded. Whether it be a car, an iphone, operating system, whatever, there is a date. There is a date that before that date no one knows what or when the next version will be and after that date people at the company have decided to build something. Or the date is when they have named the next product and decided it's features. Or the date is that they have a working prototype. Or they are confident when they can start recieving production copies. Or when they can start shipping. But there is always a date when they make the announcement. Whether a company artificially moves that date when the public knows about it or not, there is a cutoff date. No matter when that date occurs, people are going to be annoyed. I know you are asking to see it from your perspective, but see it from UM perspective. It makes sense to delay that date a little bit but they still probably announced it early. When they did the release they didn't exactly have UM2's ready to ship (there was still one part they were waiting for - I think the motor cover in the back corners of the machine). Some people may be annoyed that they announced the UM2 too early! There is always going to be a date and some people will always be buying the day before the date and will be annoyed but what can one do? Anyway you can sell your UM for about $1500 on ebay and effectively get most of your money back and apply that to the UM2. But you will have to wait a while because you will probably find that you can't get one in less than about 30 days. Then when you *do* get one you will be annoyed to find out that the rumored "usa distributor" is now shipping them for half the shipping cost. No matter what happens there will be cutoff dates and there will be annoyed people but there isn't much UM can do about it. I guess when you asked they might have hinted. "There might be something coming out soon but we can't promise and we can't say when and we can't say what".

The templates only change settings that you can see below. That particular one turns on "increase PWM frequency" checkbox. You can read more about it if you hover over the question mark in the right hand column. I recommend "basic" and not "experimental".

Can you post a photo of the part? This tends to happen when you have overhang slopes. The shrinkage of higher layers pulls inward and that hinges these outward facing slopes more up than in (with vertical walls it ends up more lifting the corners of the part instead). There's lots of tricks to reducing this. For example you could include support (exterior only). In this case the support helps pull down. You can reduce the pulling forces by adding more vertical and/or horizontal holes in the walls between the lifting areas, less fan, less infill, making the part more squarish (less long and skinny), using a heated chamber, use PLA45 (less shrinkage), add support in the cad, press down on lifting parts after every 5th layer with a putty knife, and more techniques. I'd like to see what the part looks like first.

Whatever is typed into the settings here ends up in the gcode at the start (or end). Instead of deleting the fan off line you could also optionally turn it on: M106 S128 ;turn fan on half speed M106 S255 ;turn fan on full speed More gcodes explained here: http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code#M106:_Fan_On Yes. You can do this from Cura print menu, or UC, or gcodes or by pushing with fingers. I prefer to use fingers. I push the head out of the way and rotate the Z screw at the bottom. You need to disable steppers sometimes which I can also do in UC. In UC go to "prepare" "move axis". But never use this for moving extruder as it can cause problems! Instead move by hand. To disable steppers it is also under "prepare" menu.

Maybe the walls moving around less with windows is due to less pulling which is due to less shrinkage? For a model that can be kept at room temperature, I would think PLA45 would be a better material due to it's reduced shrinking versus normal PLA. Also the manufacturer is in Germany which is good for you, right Ian?

Love the video! I would use an electronic tuner. Then mathematically figure out in % how much to change the frequency then move the hole that much closer or further from the other end of the flute. In other words if the pitch for a note is 450Hz but you want 440Hz you need to lower the pitch by 450/440 or lengthen the distance to the hole by 450/440 or 2.3%. Or you can do it by ear but that is harder. Each half tone is 5.95% (each step on the piano). - George

Well again, most of your stringing is between model and support. I suspect there might be a bug in Cura on that issue. But I don't know. I rarely use support. You can tell by looking at the layer view - if there is retraction it shows a short vertical blue line at the start of the horizontal blue line (blue lines are non-extruding moves). Here are some tips on stringing: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

I have seen the UM2 and the original UM. I was at Maker Faire in NYC. The bed leveling is better. It's quieter. It's much prettier (although a carpenter was declaring the wood one to be much more beautiful and he wasn't joking). But I doubt it will print much better or different quality of prints. I looked at the prints it made and they looked good. Didn't go below 100 microns though at the show. It *might* be more dependable. It may take a year to find out. You might have to wait quite a while to get one. I know a lot of people ordered them last Friday. It might be a few months before all the bugs are worked out. The UM original is available now. It has dual extrusion available (UM2 does not). Also note that the entire support team for UM was in NYC Friday through Monday and the head (sander) is now in England. It's hard to answer emails when the only time you have is after 11pm after a long hard day and you are in a hotel room with no comfortable table/chair system and that puts the keyboard too high. So you have to work from a bed which you suddenly realize it is now the next day.

It must be at 1%. Look at the gcode. Look at the "E" or extruder values. The first exmple below is set to flow of 1%. The second 100%. See how the E values are much too small for the 1% example? Distances are in mm so .003mm of filament movement - well is too small for the stepper to even move I think. It would take 1000 of these moves to move 1 mm of filament through the extruder. Is filament diameter set to around 2.85 (good) or 285 (bad)? Try changing flow to 110, let it slice, then back to 100. ;total_layers=100 ;LAYER:0 M107 G0 F5400 X77.61 Y88.48 Z0.20 ;TYPE:SKIRT G1 F1800 X97.77 Y73.83 E0.00313 G1 X102.50 Y78.19 E0.00393 G1 X107.23 Y73.83 E0.00474 G1 X127.39 Y88.48 E0.00786 ;total_layers=100 ;LAYER:0 M107 G0 F5400 X77.61 Y88.48 Z0.20 ;TYPE:SKIRT G1 F1800 X97.77 Y73.83 E0.31254 G1 X102.50 Y78.19 E0.39320 G1 X107.23 Y73.83 E0.47385 G1 X127.39 Y88.48 E0.78639

Daid wrote cura - he will probably reply to you but... You have to slice somewhere. If you always raise the slices by .000001 then this problem will just happen somewhere else. The root problem is that blender doesn't have a flat bottom. The way Cura works is it performs a step where it slices the model and ends up with many random line segments in no particular order. This is because the stl format doesn't have the polygons in any particular order. Then Cura has to take these line segments and figure out which ones are connected into loops. Anyway it's that first step where it does the slice -- are you saying when cura goes to slice at 3mm it should slice at 2.99mm, 2.98mm and 3.01mm and pick whichever is most similar? So if it looks almost the same at 2.98,2.99,3.0 but completely different at 3.01 and different again at 3.02 it should pick the 2.99 slice because it is more consistent? Really blender should make flat bottoms flat and not with bumps in them. Also notice that this layer would have printed fine anyway as Cura is adding some solid support for what is about to happen in layers above.

Just slow it down the print by 50% and I bet that will fix much of the issues. Once underextrusion starts happening it can kind of get in a new mode for a while.

>my nozzle size is 0.3 Oh. Wow. Did you set that in Cura? The default is .4 so make sure you set that!

So many problems... 1) Fan. Do you even have a fan? Some of the problems I see imply that your fan is off or is blowing the wrong direction (sucking). Does it work when you are printing? Do you have a fan? You can get by without a fan if you print slower - especially minimum layer time needs to be something like 7 seconds or higher. But fan can fix 3 of the problems you are having possibly. 2) backlash aka play. The castle looks pretty good but in the top layer I can see that you have two paths/strings close together and then a gap. This pattern repeats. This is classic issue of play. It is caused by loose belts - typically the short belts (those to the motor). Sometimes it is in the head itself - possibly bad bearings or loose parts. Try pushing the head back and forth with power off - before it starts moving there should be very little movement. Looking at your castle top I would say you have .4-.6mm of play in one or both axes. These aren't your biggest problems. LOOPS ON WALLS! What the hell? I have never seen loops on near vertical walls like this - even at 45 degrees there should be zero loops. I have seen many people's "bad" prints and never seen this. Is the head moving out of the part and then suddenly coming back in? I'd have to see it happening in a video. STRINGING This can be reduced by using better quality filament e.g. printbl.com and/or lowering your temperature. I'm wondering if your temperature is way off. Try calibrating at 100C. Set head to 100C. Use q tip with water and touch to aluminum block. Then increase or decrease the temp to find what temp your thermostat thinks water boils at. If this is off by 10C then no big deal. If it is off by more then you can fix it in Marlin. We go over that if necessary.

So it's a different issue then. The previous poster had it set to 1 (1%) but thought it was 100%. So are you seeing it retract and extrude perfectly (gear moves) but when it prints the gear doesn't move at all? Or are you seeing something different?

Also did you watch the video? LePaul has experience that might be valuable to you. Watch it carefully like he says. Maybe you should send a photo of your extruder and post here. Both with extruder closed and ready and open also.

Don't touch the nozzle, touch the aluminum block. Well first calibrate. Figure out at what temperature it starts boiling. If it boils at 130C then it is about 30C off and you can just raise all temps by 30C. If it boils at 200C then you really need to fix the temp sensor. Your temp sensor may be fine - you might just have a clog. When you heat PLA too hot for too long (e.g. 240C for 10 minutes) all the "good" stuff boils away and you are left with brown or black gunk that clogs up the nozzle. You can burn it out by heating it over a gas flame and preferably cleaning with thin wire such as the strands in an electric wire. But first step is to figure out if temp sensor is working or is off and how much is it off by.

You need to act fast if it was less than a month ago. I think there is some deal - certainly if you haven't received your UM1 you should be able to upgrade to a UM2. I know UM stopped shipping all UM1's for a week or so before the UM2 announcement to give people time to upgrade their order. Contact them - they have some deals for people who "just" bought a UM1 but I forget the details.

The picture came out but your link doesn't work.

Yes exactly. Use wider tape. I use about 2 inches. Illuminarti uses I think 8 inches.

Also to get it to stick better: 1) Enable the brim feature. This will add more surface for your part to stick to. Do around 5 to 10 passes. 2) clean the blue tape with isopropyl alcohol. The blue tape as it comes off the roll has some wax to allow the tape to unroll at all (did you ever wonder how the sticky side doesn't stick to the other side of the tape when it is rolled up?). So you the alcohol removes that waxy stuff. And then the part sticks much better. You might need a larger piece (wider) of blue tape if the entire tape lifts off. 3) The first layer should be pressing the filament into the tape a little bit - the top of the first layer of filament should be squished like a pancake. There are other tricks but those 3 should be enough. I've printed very skinny, very tall things with just these 3 tricks.

You are printing at a speed that is possible for the UM but you are on the edge. 100mm/sec is pretty fast for the volume of plastic going through the nozzle - you have quite high pressures going on in the nozzle and your feeder is probably slipping a bit causing some underextrusion. I agree with nick that you should slow down a bit and see if that helps. Try 50mm/sec and be patient. Also if your part pops off the blue tape let us know as there are some reliable techniques to keep that from happening (isopropyl alcohol, brim). Other things to mess with: 1) You can set the "shell thickness" to 10mm if you want and it will fill with lots and lots of passes. 2) Or you can set the bottom/top thickness to 200mm. That creates a different kind of infill than if you do 100% infill and many people prefer that type of infill.

In Cura I always set the temperature to 0 and set it manually before I print (using either cura or ulticontroller). Then when the temp is "close enough" I start the print.

I'm confused. Are you saying it's fixed now? I thought you said the machine isn't working well now. It's underextruding with 2 types of filament, right? When you heat PLA too long it turns into a brownish black gunk that boils and gets thicker and thicker until it turns into something very hard. This hard thing can stick to the side of the inside of the nozzle and *partially* block extrusion. I have some of the same stuff on the outside of my extruder - a thin layer of brown or black gunk.

Which version if ie?

I think your nozzle is just partially plugged. Do this: 1) heat up nozzle to 200C. *carefully* unscrew it because brass is easy to break. Be gentle. 2) Bring it over to a gas flame like on a stove. Heat it up pretty good but not too much (lol). burn everything out of there. Tap it on something to wack some plastic out. Try running a 2 inch piece of filament through it maybe. Make sure it looks empty on the inside. 3) While the nozzle is off, push down on the bowden ring clip thing and pull out the bowden tube from the head. Remove filament also. Make sure that path is clean of plugs. 4) Put it all back together and test out the old PLA you *know* works fine. I print at 240C all the time but at that temp, if the PLA is moving too slow apparently you can burn it which turns it into a sticky plug. Never leave your nozzle over 180C for more than a minute without plastic flowing through it. Especially dangerous at 230C and 240C. But as long as filament is moving slowly I've not had a problem. Or as long as I turn the gear a bit every 30 seconds.