gr5

Lars86 I played some more. With the yoda on thingiverse this time - takes a minute or so to slice with .06mm layers (1000 layers). .001mm and it gets to about 2GB and then crashes. And I can not duplicate your problem on my old windows machine. I can change settings to my heart's content. Do you have a Mac by any chance? If Daid did what you ask for then you wouldn't complain and he wouldn't know about bugs that don't affect his machine (or my machine in this case). And you say you have "plenty of memory" but exactly how much? steam engine can be quite a memory hog - potentially using up to 3GB it sounds like all by itself. That's on top of the memory needed for the operating system and other programs. If you have windows please check memory usage on "task manager" performance tab. CuraEngine used about 1GB but only at the very begining before the progress bar started moving.

Some people have had a problem with a new UM where they couldn't connect to the arduino unless they removed it from the UM board. The USB cable is all you need to power it up so you can remove it from the board (very carefully!!! easy to break or bend a pin!) power it up, replace the firmware, and then put it back onto the UM. At least 2 people had to do this recently.

Lars86 - I'm not sure what you are talking about. It doesn't matter if the model takes 10 minutes to slice, I have no problem rotating the model while it's slicing. I have no trouble changing other parameters - it just stops slicing a few seconds in and starts over. Everything is always responsive. I think you need to describe the problem better. For example are you in normal view or layers view when this happens? I think you will find if you are in layers view it's even snappier/faster as graphics are disabled while slicing in layers view. But I had no trouble in either view. Ovehang view was fine also. I'm really not sure what it is you are talking about. I have 13.06.

It's unlikely you need to tighten them any more then. The latest UMs come with the proper length belt. If you tighten them up too much you will increase the forces/friction needed to move the head. Did you watch/listen to the video that shows exactly how tight the belts should be? It uses pitch/frequency which is sensitive (accurate) to tension. The video is somewhere in the build instructions. If after watching the video you are absolutely convinced the belts are too loose then there are a number of solutions. Search for tensioner or "loose belt" on thingiverse. But you are probably better off not going for any of those solutions - at least for a year (total guess) or so.

I've never printed that thick. Have you? I have printed .2mm at 100mm/sec just fine but it's getting to a point of mild underextrusion. I only print that kind of volume at 240C. But if I need to print at cooler temps I don't go that fast.

It's hard to tell but it appears that if your filament wasn't transparent you might not even notice this. Because it happens at different places on the same printed part I think it is most likely filament related. Alternatively it could be temp related - some people have a loose wire to their thermocouple and it reads the wrong value sometimes and the temp can drift up or down by 20 degrees even though the display is showing a consistent temp. If it's the later problem it will get worse and eventually you will get a temperature failure reported from Marlin. I'm going to sick with: filament quality. Regarding duplicate outlines (aka skin) - that feature isn't very useful. It does both passes identically (but moving up a half step). Because if it didn't it might collide with the infill which is twice as thick in the z direction. So you don't really get a better surface yet it takes longer.

What? Picture please. This doesn't sound good. Also try turning off the fan completely. Why did you stop at 240C?

Hmm. Maybe there needs to be a 3 second transition whenever speeds change. In other words if infill is speed A and perimeter speed B, the speed should change gradually on each successive segment (in the infill portion of course) so that stabilization at the new extruder nozzle pressure and speed is gradual. When changing back to perimeter speed B it would change gradually when finishing up the infill so that it is back to speed B before starting the perimeter.

Unrelated. Did you grease the z screw with a drop of the green grease?

It's a z seam. It's either where the head turns around to do the inner wall (if you have one) or more likely it's where the head pauses while the z axis moves up to the next layer. What's probably happening is there's still some pressure in the head and a little plastic oozes while the print head isn't moving. Maybe you can reduce pressure by printing more slowly or at higher temperature. Or alternatively maybe lower temperature will reduce leakage? I would try it on a small cylinder. Experiment with speed and temperature. Take notes. And pictures. Let us know what happens. The nice thing about a tall cylinder is you can change settings while you print. Both cura and the UC let you change print speed and temperature while printing so you can print a few mm, mark the cylinder with a sharpie and then try a new settings. Keeping notes as you go.

I want to print two models in one run but I don't want cura to start the second model until the first model is done. The old cura could do this in project planner. Can the new cura do this? I notice that there is only a start and end gcode setting whereas older Cura had two for project planner so I'm thinking "no".

Is the fan running and blowing air across the electronics? Can you post a video please?

Someone should write a plugin for it if it doesn't already exist. It would be a good example of a relatively simple plugin. Probably only about 20 lines of code.

I haven't had a need to go below .1mm but here's my guess: 1) bed levelling is super critical if the first layer is less than .1mm. I mean 1/8 of a turn of the screw is about .1mm so you have to have those 4 screws accurate to 1/16 of a turn now? Plus if you still have the acrylic bed - it tends to bow by .1mm easily. So you might need a more level surface and you might not want to use blue painter's tape either. All of this only affects the first layer. You might want to check "add raft" for this reason. 2) clogs/plugs. Cura has a "minimum" feed rate. I assume this is because of plugs but not sure. People have complained with the older hot end that heat slowly travels "up the solid filament" into the peek where if the PLA gets soft it can clog in the peek. I think this is only a problem with retractions maybe? Obviously with retraction you are transferring some heat upwards briefly, and then if you soon retract again, the heat can go up further as the previous retraction heated slightly higher parts of the filament and assembly. I don't know as I've never had this problem. However I know you can go much thinner than .1mm. Anyway you might want to print faster (over 100mm/sec) with thinner layers to avoid this problem? I don't know. I guess I would only print fast if I had ever gotten a clog in the first place. Check out these tiny frogs - made at .1mm layer and with a .2mm nozzle which use only 1/3 of an inch of PLA! and most of that for the bed: http://www.printrbottalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2755here

No. Not normal. I just wiggled my bed, the z screw, everything I could. I pushed the bed up and down at the front and back and side to side and twisted and spun the z screw and tried to move the z screw up and down. Everything is impressively tight. More than I would have thought possible looking at the design. I remember assembling my bed and nothing fit. I had to file down almost every opening - the openings for the bearings, for the Z nut, the openings to let the plywood into slots. Everything was too tight. It took several hours just to assemble the bed because of all the filing (like sanding but faster) I had to do. I also had to add shims to space out the bearings far enough apart so it could fit onto the vertical rods the correct distance apart. Shims are just little pieces of wood to fill the gap so I could tighten the side arms to the bed piece nice and tight.

These jumps are in Z only? Not in X or Y?

yes, if you don't use the ulticontroller, the cura print menu has a tab where you can adjust the speed of each thing separately. I like to set the speed in cura to 100mm/sec so that then the percentage equals the speed. So 100% is 100mm, 150% is 150mm 20% is 20mm. It's just easier math.

That part won't keep your tube in. It just keeps the tube from moving up and down on every retraction.

I don't mind ringing so I haven't tried to fix it but I've seen many other posts about it. Here are some thoughts: 1) someone claims it's mostly from the print bed and not the print head. He fixed it by adding an iron bar as a weight to the front end of the bed. This doesn't dampen the ringing but it changes the frequency to such a low amount that you no longer see it. 2) Jerk is the only setting that counts but the "jerk" setting that is in the marlin firmware isn't really jerk. So the only thing you can do is lower the acceleration. Try lowering it by at least a factor of 10. There's no reason not to keep the speed high although for short runs it will never be able to accelerate up to full speed. 3) It might not be just ringing - there are temperature affects that causes something that looks similar to ringing. Ringing fades as you move farther, ripple effect doesn't and is a periodic frequency caused inside the nozzle. Try lowing the temperature - look at this picture for more details (second picture in this post): http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

Tiny pieces of dust or wood that are difficult to see can cause partial blockages. That's the most likely problem. Best fixed by unscrewing the nozzle (gently! and while at 200C! Consider using oven mitts as you are less likely to damage it) then heating the nozzle with flame to burn anything in there out. Not so hot that you melt the brass. Alternatively is it possibly you have been increasing layer thickness or speed recently as the volume of filament that can pass through the nozzle is limited so if you switch from layer height .2 to .3 you will hit this limit likely or if you speed up from 100mm/sec to 150mm/sec with .2mm layers you can also hit htis limit.

You should start new topics for new questions. People who are experts in soft pla will read this thread title and skip over it. Regarding bowden tube, yes! I have tried many solutions on ultimaker. This one looks better than what I ended up doing and is on my list of things to print: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:46157 Printing this will let you reduce your retraction amount. I retract 4.5mm. I haven't tried less than that yet. The less the retraction amount, the faster you can print.

Nice model. I like it.

I have not needed them myself but I'm saving them just in case. Instead I tightened the hell out of my existing screws to the point where I thought I would break the screwdriver shaft.

lol. Yes I wanted to see the teeth marks in the filament but I don't see any which tells me your spring probably isn't tight enough. I was suspecting that when you were done printing, the filament (at the feeder part) was chewed up so badly that it had a big bite chunk taken out of it (ground out of it). But I could be totally wrong especially since you managed to finish the pyramid this time. Your cooling is fine. I can see that it takes much much longer than 7 seconds to print a layer. If it was me, after watching the video, I'd tweak 5 things: 1) Increase layer height to .2. .1mm in my experience is *worse* quality than .2. Unless you spend 40 hours calibrating and experimenting. 2) Temp is at 205 - lower it to 190C. This can help quite a bit for a tricky print like this. 3) What's your retraction amount? I use 4.5mm as that's enough for me but I have a tight bowden that works very well. You should experiment with larger values maybe as much as 7mm just for a test. The only downside of using larger values is that it takes a little longer to print. That's why i lowered to 4.5mm. 4) Extra length on start should be ZERO! This could easily be the entire problem for you. If this is non-zero it would explain everything - it would give you over extrusion. I don't understand the purpose of this parameter. It only helps if you are leaking filament somewhere. 5) If there are no teeth marks or are barely seen in the filament then tighten that spring. Mine is at 11.5mm. Try just a 1/8th turn if you think something is close to breaking/striping. I can see the teeth marks through the bowden tube as it comes out of the feeder. Easily. Nice and regular.

A while back I posted how in windows to figure out which com port is the one with the arduino. I'm too lazy to search for it but you could. I bet it's not com3.