gr5

I would loosen all the panel screws, place on the UM on a flat strong surface, then have 2 large (heavy) people push down on the four corners and while pressing down tighten all the screws you can get to. See if that helps. Shouldn't have to remove anything to do this so it should be quick and easy.

I'm not as smart about this kind of thing as most people on this list but, that's what I would do. Sorry you have to take the rods out. You'll have it done in less time than worrying about it. OR you might get by with having the left side of the bed be more loose. I think it's designed to change widths depending on the width of the rods and lead screw. It might be that just moving the left side of the bed farther out (left) will be all you need to do. I don't remember doing much about the main "nut". I remember putting in tons of shims on the left arm of the bed to get it to fit on the rods. Spent 2 hours building and inserting shims

Are you in the normal view mode? I can rotate in normal view mode INSTANTLY after changing a parameter even if it takes a full minute to slice. I can rotate before the progress bar comes up. I can rotate after the progress bar comes up. So something is wrong. Unless you are in slice view in which case I have the same issues. Several people reported these bugs somewhere but I forget where (probably above in this very thread) and there were either bug fixes or workarounds for all of them. I thought the latest Mac version (which is newer than the latest PC version I think) fixed one of the problems that was Mac only related. Also: do you have any of the 4 "fix horrible" boxes checked? These perform cpu intensive work before the slicing starts. Unfortunately, Daid is much slower at fixing "mac only" related issues as he probably doesn't have the issue you are having on the few Macs he *does* have access to. Daid's philosophy is not to add a workaround (turning off slicer) to fix a bug that needs fixing. The bug itself should be fixed, otherwise if he gives people the slicer-off feature people won't complain and the bug will never be fixed.

3.00mm filament can be a problem as if it is a tiny bit bigger (typically 3.1mm) it can get stuck in the bowden tube. I recommend you buy a 3mm drill and drill out a perfectly 3mm hole in a piece of sheet metal. Then test several meters of your filament. I suspect it goes up to 3.1mm diameter on occasion. Also maybe use pliers to squish your filament so that it is 3.1mm and see if it can fit through the bowden. This would explain the areas the underextrude as filament can vary a tiny bit. Some people pretest their filament with a sheet metal hole and you can possibly use this to correct the diameter of the filament.

If you do end up breaking off the brass part, you can remove the threaded piece using a special tool. I don't know what it's called but it is designed for removing things like this that broke. It looks like a reverse threaded, cone shaped, drill bit.

There were 3 problems I think they were all fixed and all also had workarounds: 1) In Files Preferences turn off the auto SD card detect - this was causing lots of slowdown issues. 2) Disable any virus scanners or even better, tell them not to worry about steamEngine.exe. 3) Was there a third problem? I forget now. I think there were some Mac only bugs so you should get the latest version.

The screws and rods are fine. It's the stage you need to work with. I think you are going to have to take it partly apart. I spent a long time on the Z stage. I remember after I was done thinking that if I were to have two people working on the UM build at the same time I would have one person start on the Z stage, while the other started at the begining.

It's for a second nozzle if you upgrade to dual print head. But you can use the second set of connectors in place of the first set to verify an intermittent wiring issue. The Marlin firmware has several tests built in to detect faulty wiring (and halt printing) but sometimes it still gets fooled. Ultimaker has done tests to verify that if this happens and the heater is stuck "on" then although you will damage the Ultimaker you won't start a fire. You *might* start a fire but it wasn't a problem for the people at Ultimaker.

Oh - and I wouldn't print a new fan duct as the one the comes with the UM is really ideal. They tend to constrict air flow too much for the design of the current fan.

By the way I often print at 240C (depending on the part) and you should be able to print at that temp just fine if you don't care about stringing.

The last photo with the 3 "cylinders" (are they all supposed to be cylindrical?)... I know it looks like a temperature issue but I'm pretty sure it is simple overextrusion (extruding too much). Most likely your z isn't moving as much as it should be - I think it is sticking or missing steps. You probably need to fix the z coupler. Look again at the photos of where the Z screw goes into the coupler and make sure you inserted it all the way. Also did you remember to put a drop of grease on the z screw? I would use cura or pronterface to move the Z axis 10mm at a time up and down and test it with a ruler taped to the ultimaker. You can place a pencil or something straight on the bed and make it touch the ruler so you can see pretty accurately. But with this much error we are talking at least 30% error (Z not moving far enough).

The vertical lines are clearly infill showing through. You can see this on the top view. There is a recent bug in cura (more here): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2501-is-this-slicing-settings-or-hardware-problem/?p=17683 This is easily fixed by doing 2 or 3 shell passes (set shell to .8 or 1.2) to keep the infill from coming outside the model. Alternatively you might have loose belts. Easier to tell if you provide an overhead view of the top layer of a cube printed. Also make sure "infill overlap" is at a reasonable value such as 15%.

I think it's the z-seam which is when the z axis moves. x,y axes stop moving and then z moves by itself. Because the printer pauses at this spot the seam is noticable. You can't make it go away 100% but you can make it harder to see with several methods. You can increase your z speed (well you have to increase the z acceleration to make any difference when moving only .1mm or .2mm). I recommend doubling the accelleration. You might want to experiment with pronterface first. Make sure you save the z accelleration to eeprom when done. You can slow down X and Y speed. (set mm/sec to lower value - of course print will take longer). This makes the difference between moving and not moving less severe so the seam is less noticable. You can change the temp. Increasing the temp will keep the pressure from building up in the nozzle but it might also increase extrusion when the print head is stopped. You can decrease the temp which will reduce how much filament leaks when the print head moves. Obviously I'm not sure which temperature direction will help! If I cared about the z seam I would print a test cylinder and experiment with different temperatures and keep records.

I haven't had to replace anything yet in 9 months. Although I did have to repair the fan shroud a few times but this can be done with kapton tape or printing one.

Can you send a photo? This area of the UM changed in the last 6 months. But are you sure you are measuring the spring length and not some other distance? Also 11mm is the length with filament in the feeder *and* the feeder closed onto the filament.

I don't remember it's been so long but once you loosen both screws you should be able to lift the Z stage and the screw should go up with it. If that is accomplished then rotate the z screw until the bed goes all the way down and keep spinning and the screw should slide up through the bed, right?

The grinding sound is the stepper motor missing steps. It's not serious. The two vertical rods probably have a different spacing at the bottom of the UM than the spacing for your bed. I fixed this by putting shims on the "left" arm of my bed. I made sure it fit before I finished assembling and did this with the z screw removed. The design of the bed I believe is supposed to allow this spacing to change as the bed goes up and down but I didn't like that idea and tightened it up good and tight but with shims spacing the arms farther apart. If you don't need the last 12mm then I wouldn't worry about it. I have not yet needed to use the full 200mm in Z.

Do you have a photo? The default UM extruder nozzle size is .4mm diameter so I would expect corners to have a radius of at least .2mm. Are you seeing more than that? If so try more cooling maybe? Or printing slower and fan on 100%. Perhaps 20mm/sec.

As I said before you want them as tight as they can go. If this means the belt is getting too tight then you can probably remove the little scew and nut that increases belt tension when these blocks are tight.

try opening it with meshlab (which is free) and then saving it. Just doing that will repair some errors.

By the way, you can also improve #2 by adding brim in cura in the "support" options.

This came out pretty good. I see 3 problems: 1) Stringing - I think you have a little bit of stringing but really not much. I don't know if you can eliminate it with this filament (ultimaker gray) as I haven't tried but you might be able to. You would need to experiment with temperature and print out something simpler like two towers. 2) Piece moved. The Curved arc piece looks like it moved during printing. Probably it wasn't sticking well enough. Did you use blue tape? It's important to wipe the blue tape with isopropyl alcohol to remove the (nonsticky) waxes from the tape before using it. Also it's important to make sure the first layer is being squished into the tape. I'd like to see a photo of your first layer only. 3) holes in the inifill. The top of the flat areas have a pattern of small holes. This may be caused by slight underextrusion which can have many causes. A simple fix might be to increase the flow by 10%. But also if you look carefully every other trace is touching followed by a gap (touching - gap - touching - gap - touching - gap) this is in both diagonal directions which leaves you with holes. This is fixed by tightening the belts. Did you watch the video about tightening belts in the assembly instructions? Did you tighten the short belts (the ones to the stepper mototrs) also? It's actually caused by "play" which is rarely in the print head instead. You can feel play in the print head by pushing it around with your fingers and it may slip around by 1mm or so. Your play might only be in one axes (x or y) but I can't tell which axis from just this image.

How accurate do you need? You should be able to get errors under (1% +.5mm) for X and Y directions and much more accurate in Z direction. Also the errors are consistent so you can simply print a part, then adjust all the errors into the CAD and then print much more accurately the second time within about .1mm. I don't think you can get better than about .1mm accuracy.

the "usually this one" is wrong I think. You want the "epcos" one. I still don't quite get it. Unfortunately I am away from home for a few more days so I can't help. Once you click the big button on that page you get to the other page with all the links. You should right click on the configuration.h file and choose save link as or something similar. If you have a stupid one button mac mouse you can hold down ctrl key and click on a link to simulate right mouse clicks. Then get the hex file. Once you have the hex file you can use cura to upload it to your arduino. Or pronterface.

What do you mean - you couldn't download the hex file? Please provide more details. Did you select the "EPCOS" bed choice.