gr5

It would help a ton if you could round the corners of the base - reduce curling/lifting. Also if you use blue painter tape on your bed, put down fresh tape and wipe with isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol) before you print as this will help the print stick to the bed immensely. In fact if you don't do both (isopropyl wipe and rounded corners) I doubt you can print this. Alternatively you can add a single layer flat circular thing at the bottom of each corner. One layer thick - shaped like a quarter or bigger. Having a sharp corner puts all the force at a single point and makes it more likely to lift. Having a curved corner makes it strong. Then cut off that thin piece after printing and sand it down. The support needed for the roofs is ridiculous. That will take a very long time and waste a lot of plastic. I like the idea of printing this as at least 3 seperate parts with the roofs upsidedown to reduce the time and waste. Or even better, print the roofs seperate - call it a feature. "I made the roofs removable at no extra cost!". That way they can be printed rightside up and the yuky support will be hidden under the roofs instead of visible on top.

I have a set of very small files. They are useful for many purposes including cleaning up some parts after printing. I used one of these to file flats on the 3 motor shafts and I think the Z screw maybe but nothing else. The 8 gears with the long belts - you can't file flats on these because you will have to adjust them *after* assembly. Or maybe someone knows how to do it but I certainly don't. Just tighten these extra tight once you have things square (perpendicular). As far as other cusomizations or modifications - well there are several. I had to adjust the positions of washers for the extruder (and manufacture my own extra washer). I had to cut some bolts for the fan cover. I can't remember what else. This is a kit. UM tries to do a good job on the kit but there are mistakes, issues, things that don't quite fit - oh yes, I had to do tons of filing of the plywood to get everything to fit. The bed was probably the worst. Anyway, since you can't file the 8 pulleys flat then there is no definite need to file flat the rest either. I just removed about a half a millimeter of material. It's easier than you may think but optional.

>Like if I have the initial layer thickness set to .15mm, does that mean >the machine is expecting the Z-home to be .15mm off the bed, or does >it move the nozzle .15mm above Z-home? If your initial height is .15, Cura will home your machine - call that zero and then move z up by .15 when printing the first layer. Whatever the initial layer height is set to (.3 default?) it sets the z to that height when it starts printing.

Keep in mind that the above picture applies to a given flow rate of plastic through the head. If you print faster or slower than jake did (he made the picture, not me) or if your layers are thicker or thinner, this will change the amount of plastic flowing through the print head and will affect the temperature. You need higher nozzle temps at higher flow rates for the plastic to come out at the same temp. Also different dye colors and different manufacturers of PLA have different viscosities at a given temperature.

Other ideas: Turn off fan for layer 1 print layer 1 extra thick (.3 mm) print layer 1 extra slow 20mm/sec heat the blue tape with a hair dryer just before printing so it is closer to 37C (body temperature) - of course 70C would be ideal. set nozzle temp higher by 20C for first layer then lower using ulticontroller or Cura gui All of these help.

This is an extremely common problem. If you are using PLA you shouldn't need a heated bed to keep it sticking but a heated bed is one (expensive compared to others) solution. My favorite solution is to use blue painters tape on the bed and to wipe the tape with isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol - found at any drug store). In fact you may have a new problem - removing parts from the bed Also you could round the corners of your box. Or add a single layer of material beyond the edge of your box with a large round radius on each corner. Or you can use the Cura option to print a "raft". If you have pointy cornered box, all the lifting force is strongest at one tiny point at the corner of the box - once that lifts, it keeps going. However if you have rounded corners the force is distributed across the curve of the corner. But again, you shouldn't have to do any of this if you use blue painters tape (came with ultimaker - available wherever you buy house paint) and clean it with isopropyl alcohol. I think the alcohol removes the glue residue from the layer above when the tape was still in the role.

I'm more worried about your heated block. I think you might want to rotate it 90 degrees before you power it up. If it is touching the fan shroud, it will melt the plastic of the fan shroud and allow cold air to touch the tip of the extruder which will cool the tip too much and mess up your prints.

Yes, I get ringing causing vertical lines. I also get vertical lines because I like to print at high temps. Not sure which is your issue as they look very similar. The ringing caused vertical lines appear typically on the left side of a flat face and fade out towards the right edge. The temperature caused vertical lines are more consistent and look very similar to lines that might be in the STL file. Here's a great picture of the lines caused by temperature and ringing (PLA): (source is here:) https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ultimaker/_1cPRgxGmOk/hDACjl0vO5QJ

195C seems very cold to me. Try 220C just for a test. Yes the nozzle oozes (but shoudn't drip) below 180C, but it looks to me that when it is printing the part, sometimes the loops in the outer wall are pulled too tight makeing it look ugly. At higher temps each layer will stick better to the previous and the plastic won't solidify before it's placed. Look at your gcode. There may be a line near the top: M92 EXXX.XXXXXX If you have Marlin, this value will override your extruder steps/mm setting in your firmwayre.

Having a steps/mm value that is off by a bit is unlikely to be the problem. More likely reassembling the hot end will fix some of this, or checking your extruder. But since you are going on and on about the steps/mm, look at your gcode. If I understand correctly, he very first line overwrites the steps/mm regardless of what is in your firmware e.g.: M92 E865.888000 - George

Just set "minimal layer time" to 0 seconds and the bug won't affect you. Try printing only the very top of your part if you want to test that the fix works.

The layers just above your lowest set of holes look like typical under extrusion. This can be caused by a feed mechanism that needs upgrading or tightening. It can be caused by too cool extrusion temperature. It can be caused by printing too fast (50mm/sec is definitely not too fast!). Temporary under extrusion can be caused by poor gcode where it is printing slowly and suddenly speeds up. I love Daid's suggestion that maybe too much air on the extruder tip. You could test this by turning off the fan. You seem to have stringing which might be fixed by lower temp but everything else looks like you would be better off with higher temp. You never published your travel speed. Is it the default? I think it's 250mm by default? It's good to have a travel speed much higher than your print speed. Your issues could also be caused by retraction issues. You need to experiment more.

SOLVED! I had this problem. Printed almost perfectly but tilted. Took me hours of staring at the ultimaker as it printed to figure it out. It was the new motor mounts for x drive. They are black plastic tubes and are a recent upgrade to the ultimaker to keep it more quiet. The problem is the x drive belt is rubbing against the wooden back of the ultimaker making the belts twist slightly and the x motor lose a step occasionally. Fix was to add one washer under each of the 4 plastic stand offs on the x motor mount. Took less than 5 minutes to fix. I could not beleive that was the problem but it was.

@kirsten - Nope. No reason not to solder it now.

Measure the thermister when it is not connected to the utlimaker board and make sure it measures around it's nominal value (very very roughly around 100K if it's a 100k thermistor - 50K might be normal also). Try to include all the wiring in your measurement - there may be an open (or possibly a short) in your wiring. Heat up the thermister by touching it with your fingers or other heat/cool methods. You should see the resistance change immediately. Once that is working, connect up the thermister to the ultimaker, turn on the power to the ultimaker. Now you have a resister divider so that the voltage at SIG should agree with this formula: Vsig = 5V X Rthermistor / (Rthermistor + 4700)

The problem is that when you tell the extruder to stop extruding plastic, a little bit oozes out. You will get the greatest improvement by increasing the difference in speed for movements versus printing. So the suggestion of 40mm/sec is great because the default movement speed is 150mm/sec. Another fix is to use retraction (which will drastically slow down your print. The settings in Cura set the distance travelled before retraction (retraction of extruder) is used and how much to retract the filament. You could reduce the distance setting to be smaller than your hole sizes. The final fix is to lower your nozzle temperature a little so there is less oozing. Every color of PLA prints best at different temperatures so it's hard to recommend a temperature. If you lower the temperature too much and print too fast, you can damage your ultimaker with too much pressure in the print head. Ideally you should print a series of 10X10X10mm hollow cubes at different temperatures with same layer thickness as you plan to print most often, lowering the temperature by 5C at a time until you get an ugly look (tiny holes) due to underextrusion and then pick the lowest temperature where the cubes look perfect.

I'm not sure if you are talking about before printing or during printing. If before printing: You can adjust the home height by sliding the homing switch up and down. On the back of the UM there is a "Z limit switch". It can slide up and down. With power off, Loosen the screws so the switch slides up and down in the slot. Rotate the z platform until it touches the nozzle. Slide the switch down until it clicks (or a little more down). Tighten the screws. If you can't get the limit switch to click then you built something wrong. Did you include the plastic printing bed? Please send a picture of your bed and another picture of the print head. If during printing: When you tell Cura the first layer is .3mm, it sets the z axis to .3mm to allow room for the PLA to come out. This is normal. If you tell cura the first layer is .1mm, then the z axis is set to .1mm. If you have an ulticontroller you can see this on the ulticontroller screen during printing.

I can't see your picture. If they are tilted in the x-axis only, it is almost surely the black plastic x-motor mounts are too short and the x-motor belt is rubbing slightly against the wood back board. I had a tilting problem and it was fixed when I added 4 washers under the 4 mounts. Took 8 hours of head scratching to figure out the problem and only 3 minutes to fix the problem.