gr5

>How do you gents calibrate your print head to the bed? See post #8 above.

1) If you really care about stringing so much, do a test print like I did here. It only takes a few minutes to run the test itself. Keep good notes as you change the temperature. I found that different color filaments have hugely different results: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/ 2) If you go lower temp you need to go lower speed (volume actually). So if your layer height is .2 and your temp drops to 210 or lower, now you really should slow down to at least 50mm or lower. 3) If you want the features of netfabb but don't want to have to learn it's quirks, learn how to use existing (and write new) cura plugins. These can very easily do things like change speed or temp at a particular layer. Adding fill you can't do but it's not too hard to remove all infill for a given layer. >I'll come back here and confirm whether or not the gcode was messing up and drawing lines where it shouldn't have been. I believe Illuminarti offered to check the gcode for you if you send it to him. I think he uses repetier host. Or you can check yourself in just a few seconds. Slice it again and view in cura in slice view. Pay attention to all blue lines. Wherever retraction occurs you can see the blue lines move vertically and not just horizontally - there is a little vertical line - maybe 2mm high? That is a visual representation of retraction.

"nothing" isn't enough of a description to understand what is going on. First of all, to test extruder, turn it by hand and you should see thin strings of pla coming out the nozzle. Of course do this while the bed is away from the nozzle. For the little you mentioned I suspect this part is fine. Now levelling is very very crucial. If you are too high off the bed, the pla string will come out but won't stick or will just barely stick to the blue tape. If you are perfect, the pla comes out squished flat like a pancake. It comes out a bit wider and very flat (not rounded like string). If you are too low it looks like something is wrong with extruder. The plastic dribbles out in bumpy drops and then occasionally suddenly oozes a big blob. But basically looks like you are getting 1/10 as much pla as needed. It's best to slice with the bottom layer being .3mm (nice and thick) so that you have more room for error. This I believe is default in Cura. If none of this helps, please send video of your first layer experience. Be warned that this is just the first roadblock of many to come that are fixable (e.g. warping, corners lifting, parts popping off blue tape, overhangs not working, stringing, melting look to part, horizontal and/or vertical patterns that shouldn't be there, and holes in walls, or tops of parts, clogging nozzles, ground up filament at extruder).

clean surface helps later when the part gets knocked off. Not critical for a single layer to work. Clean with isopropyl alcohol when you get a chance.

Or do what some people do and turn the Z coupler by hand (raising the bed) while it prints the skirt until it is smushing into the bed. YOu have to turn it damn hard to overpower the z stepper. YOu will get a click feel when it skips a step.

I really am going to bed this time. Good luck.

Yeah. Seen that a lot. You won't beleive me but it's a levelling issue. Levelling is amazingly important. Raise the bed a tiny bit. Turn all screws counter clockwise 1/4 turn and try again.

well? anything? Send a photo of your failure. For example if extruder not working send pics of extruder. Or video if it's a "first layer" issue. Anyway bedtime now.

So using the cura print window, set temp to 200C and when it is above 180C, turn extruder gear until plastic comes out. I'm going to walk dog. BAck in 5-10 minutes.

to prime the pump as it were.

Make sure you manually feed the extruder gear (turn by hand) once head gets around 180 or 190C.

If home works don't need finger on power. Yes, print away. But still did you test with piece of paper in 4 corners? Print that ultimaker robot! go for it!

Try to level very very accurately before doing a test print. Use piece of paper: How to level: leveling here is defined as setting the Z height and also leveling. It's one procedure that does both at once. Optionally heat up the nozzle to 180C because a cold nozzle shrinks and you will be setting the bed to the wrong height. Make sure tip of nozzle doesn't have any plastic on it or you may level to the wrong height. I usually prefer to level with a cold nozzle but if you want extra accuracy then use hot nozzle. If you have a heated bed that should also be warm for the same reason. Home the z axis only. If you must home all 3 then you need to disable the steppers once it's done so you can move the print head by hand. Move the head as close as possible to each of the 4 screws in turn. Once at a screw tighten the screw and then slip a piece of paper between the nozzle and the print bed. Make sure the paper slides very freeley. Then loosen the screw until the paper gets slightly stuck. You want the paper to easily be able to slide in and out under the nozzle with one hand pushing the paper. If the paper gets stuck it's probably too tight under there. Repeat this procedure for the other 3 screws. Then go back to the first screw and repeat on all 4 screws again. Then repeat on all 4 screws again. Then again. It may take you 20 minutes to do this the first time but the second time you do this it should take much less time because you are both better at it, faster at it, and because there isn't much to adjust the second time. If you leveled with a cold nozzle you are done. If you leveled with a hot nozzle you should then loosen the 4 screws 1/8 of a turn to compensate for the thickness of the paper. Once done leveling rotate the z screw by hand to keep the nozzle off your bed. This makes it less likely to damage your bed surface and gives the nozzle room to leak. On a new ultimaker repeat this procedure before every print (at least every hour) because the print bed can move/droop like a new guitar string. After many months the droop slows down.

but have your finger on power switch and turn it off if it makes horrible noise.

Just click "skip".

You might be missing a resistor on your circuit board I suppose - the one needed for front right. If so I would just not worry about it.

When it asks you to press front right - try pressing all 6 limit switches just for the hell of it. See if one of them is wired up wrong. FYI you really don't need the x axis right switch, the y axis back switch or the z axis bottom switch. You can use the UM just fine without these 3 switches working and with no bad effects. The UM has software limits for these switches anyway plus if you force the stepper to go beyond the end of travel nothing will break.

No. It should be even lower than that. Make sure the Z screw is seated well down into the coupler - make sure your set screws aren't blocking. The top hole is only so you can insert and remove the z screw. Once your z screw is installed I suppose you can seal up that top hole. As far as the left side of the bed - yes it's designed to kind of float in and out. But I didn't like that design (or I guess I didn't understand) so instead I put shims in there and tightened it up good at the correct spacing so it slides up and down smoothly. I have had very good z travel since but it's not the intended design.

Just to clarify. Your UM came with 4 long belts and 2 short belts. The 2 short belts connect to the stepper motors. These short belts have twice the torque on them and twice the possibility for errors and are twice as hard to get to and twice as hard to see (dark back there) and twice as easy to forget about. Get those short belts away from the plywood. Even .5mm is plenty but if they touch the plywood it's trouble. And make sure the belt is straight between the pulleys (pulleys are aligned so belt isn't crooked).

Okay so I've only used Cura so I'm not an expert but here's a little background: Cura was written by David Braam (Daid on this forum) and is the GUI portion that interacts with a slicer called steamEngine. Cura is written in the python language. steamEngine written in c. steamEngine was also written by Daid. When you go back a few months, Cura used a slicer called um. Damn I forget! Slic3r maybe? This slicer was not written by Daid. It is about 100X slower than steamEngine but is very useful. Usually takes less than a minute to slice a model. But sometimes it takes hours. You can try it out by downloading cura 13.04.x (or older but why would you?). Daid is doing a great job with steamEngine but it feels like he put all the dual extrusion issues at the top of his huge list of featuers/bugs for steamEngine. Right now he seems to be working on support (physical support). Another great slicer to try is kisslicer. It's free and has a great gui just like Cura. It's at kisslicer.com. Another popular slicer is netfabb. This is I beleive what professionals use (and pay for).

Sounds like a bug then. Daid might be interested. Was retraction enabled in Cura?

Strange! I would just do a hack - I would use the pause at height feature to pause 2 layers before the top layer. And then I would just cut the power to my UM when it got to the pause. I haven't tested pause-at-height with the latest cura - beware that many of these plugins expect G0 move codes but the new cura uses G1 move codes also and so many of these plugins need to be edited slightly but most of them haven't. Even safer would be to just edit your gcode and remove the last layer completely. gcode is easy to edit because each layer is labelled with a comment in the gcode.

That extra cable is for the extra extruder if you do dual. Or if you break the cable at some point you can use the second one as a spare. It *does* matter which is which when you plug into the circuit board. I mean extruder 1 goes to extruder 1 regardless of which cable/color you use.

The plastic is shrinking. I doubt the fan makes much difference X versus Y as it blows more on top of the print than a particular side. Plus the shrinking should be exactly equal in X and Y shouldn't it? Look at your 6 X pulleys. Move the head back and forth. Are the pulleys round? Or do they wobble? Some people have found pulleys with the hole not centered. Other's had the hole so large that when they tightened the set screw the pulley moved to the side. Maybe if you do something that is the same length as the circumference of a pulley (approx 60mm?) it will be more accurate? Just some thoughts. Usually people who really care about a dimension design something in CAD, print it, then adjust by the error and print again. It seems crazy but that's also how most people do it with word documents (print everything twice). And it works as the printer may be off a bit due to shrinkage but it's pretty consistent if you print with the same settings and with the same PLA and with the same air temp etc.

You are welcome to come visit! I'm going to Maker Faire in NYC on September 21,22. Interested? http://makerfaire.com/ Ultimaker will have a booth or something. If you break something maybe they'll give you a spare part, lol.