gr5

The .4mm is the standard distance between diagonal lines if you told cura your head was .4mm. Looking at your pictures of cubes I would say your play aka backlash was around .3 to .4mm in one of the axes. I don't have illustrator or anything really good but I'll give it a shot on this beautiful saturday...

Why not do a quick test and rename the stl file and slice again?

That's it! That's exactly what happened. I had to draw it out with pencil and paper. It has to do with the fact that infill is diagonal. If infill was aligned with the axis what you would see is good solid infill that would not touch 3 of the sides. Instead you have every other line almost on top of each other. Because the plastic has had less than a second to cool the head easily pushes the plastic down to the layer below. If you don't believe me I can post a diagram. Here's my word explanation (but a picture is better): To explain you only need backlash on one axis - say the Y axis. I'm going to imagine a vertical square where the infill starts at the top left corner (y=10mm x=0) and diagonally fills until it finishes at the bottom right corner. As each diagonal line hits the left edge, because the Y axis was moving downwards, when it rounds the corner and moves down another line width, it is still moving downwards so the backlash doesn't affect the print and there is a nice .4mm movement to start the next line. But then after moving diagonally up and right and it hits the right edge and the Y axis is commanded to move down .4mm before starting the next run back, it doesn't move at all because it just changed direction and so the next line is on top of the previous (this assumes exactly .4mm backlash - if it's more or less you get slightly different results). So what you get is a gap every other diagonal infill line. This is great - I learned something new.

illuminarti - please look at his 5 cubes photo and read the text associated with it. It doesn't make sense to me.

For me the limiting speed is the amount of plastic flowing through the nozzle which means I can print .1 layer parts just as fast (2x mm/sec) as .2 layer parts. In theory. In practice the acceleration and jerk parameters make it so that twice the speed isn't quite twice as fast. But still - I'm not sure the double outlines feature is worthwhile.

I've got the same head that you need to assemble and I've never had the bowden pop off and I've never had a clog (but ground the filament once during an experiment).

>Extra length on start (mm): 0.2 Definitely set this to 0. This will fix most of it. However I think you may have to lower temperature to get it perfect. Every color/brand of PLA is different but here's some hints - refer to the first photo here: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/

Ah - so it was the short belts keeping it from touching. I'm glad that makes your tops have fewer gaps but I don't understand how that works - why does less backlash make a solid top? I really love your pic of the 5 cubes. The one with underextrusion you can see on the side of the cube as well. On the test photo where you printed up to 600% the corners look worse - that's typical when you don't let a layer cool enough. There is a default setting in cura that slows down the printer if a layer is printed less than 5 seconds to allow the layer to cool. But you defeated this cura feature with your 600% printing. That's why I prefer to always set the mm/sec closer to 100mm/sec so that I can speed it up with UC like you did but max out around 200% (not 600%). Could you repost that picture of the 5 cubes in this thread here please?: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/ I'm hoping to create a thread of useful calibration photos and that one is useful. If you want I can do it (if I do it I will move the text to on top of the picture) but you copyrighted it so I am hesitant to steal it. You are gaining credability with every post and I have to now agree that your plexiglass isn't flat (or your rods aren't straight - less likely). You might want to purchase a piece of glass (maybe 4mm thick?) and clip it to your plexiglass bed using those black paperclips that can clip a 1/2 inch stack of paper (the glass needs to be able to expand if it warms up). That should be a flatter surface. Be aware that there is a setting in cura in 'expert config' in 'infill' section called 'infill overlap %'. This is designed to fill in that gap between infill and walls. Daid hates it when people increase this to 50% because that is masking the backlash issue (loose belts) but now that you have tightened them nicely I don't mind telling you about it. I increased mine to 20% and am pretty happy with it there. So if you still have a slight gap between walls and infill this is the final tweak to fix it.

Aha! I thought there was a possibilty of miscommunication. "I swapped it and the same thing happened" isn't specific enough, lol. It wasn't clear if the problem stuck to the same motor or the same driver. Anyway, now it is clear. Okay! That's great news. It's almost 99% in the wiring to the stepper motor. I would disconnect the motor and ohm out the connectors and jiggle the wiring while measuring the resistance. Or you could command the motor to move 100 meters very slowly and jiggle the wires. Then try the other direction. It's common to have an electrical open in the middle of a perfectly good looking wire. Or it could be at either end. If you can't get this working you can get a new motor from UM tech support. But I bet it's just a bad wire or connection.

Oh - and it looks like the test point is for *bottom* side access. For top side access you can just measure the voltage at one of the trimpot pins or according to the above website, the metalic part of the potentiometer that rotates can be used to measure vref.

Apparently there are several manufacturers of the A4988 stepper driver. Only one of them is pololu. There's some more details here on locations to measure vref (scroll down to pololu section): http://apatureresearch.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/3d-printer-part-2-the-brains-and-the-brawn/ You can see the vref test point just above the trim pot and almost under the heat sink on 3 of these 4 pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultimaker/8210300863/sizes/k/in/photostream/

What are you using to move the steppers? (cura? ulticontroller? pronterface?) I hope you put the pot exactly where it was as you can damage things (the driver) if you aren't careful. I haven't tried it but I assume you can disconnect the cables to the Y endstops. If I understand you correctly you swapped motors and you swapped drivers and the problem stays on the "y" commands when you command the Y axis. This strongly implies that there is nothing wrong with the drivers or the motors or the wiring to the motors. You also reburned the firmware so the only thing left is the board itself. It's time to contact UM customer support. They are very helpful but only work certain hours so email is probably fastest. They can probably ship out a new board as soon as you convince them that is what it is.

I think those things that hold the bowden tube to the ultimaker might be available very cheaply at plumbing stores. Someone mentioned this once. So you might be able to get one today and be back up and running sooner.

Something is seriously wrong. I've pushed filament through manually (not using the gearing) with my full strength and the bowden tube didn't come off. I'd say maybe 80 pounds force. I had to hold the feeder down with one hand and push on the filament with the other. So I assume you can pull on the bowden (either end) with 80 pounds force and it will stay on although I'm afraid to try.

I don't know mac but I'm sure it has the same capabilities... On windows you can hit printscreen button (next to scroll lock - above insert key) and that does a screenshot of your entire screen. Or you can do ALT-PrintScreen to get a screenshot of just the active application. Once you do either of those you can open up mspaint (start button, run, mspaint (skip 'run' in vista/win7). In mspaint do "paste" and then save as png. Don't save as jpg as jpg isn't good for screenshots - it's only good for photos. If you have win7 you can use the snipping tool. Click start button and type "sni" and it will come up. Snipping tool is nice because it has built in highlighting functions (like makeing red circles and yellow highlighter).

Sorry - I mean 1 cm cube test print. Solid infill. (set to 100%).

There's a lot here... >at about my belts tension, do they make the right sound in the video ? It did sound fine. But looking at the print - you are right about the walls not touching the infill. Plus your infill is overly sparse (not enough). There are hints of underextrusion everywhere. The "solid" layers have holes, and the walls don't touch the infill. This could caused by many things but usually it's that the feeder can't keep up with the nozzle pressure. So, I will repeat what I said earlier: Please tighten the feeder screw that tightens the feeder. Maybe it's fine but give it a full twist and see if that helps anything. Now upping the temp to 240C will reduce head pressure. Alternatively slowing down will help. You can reduce the flow through the head by a factor of 2 by either going with half layer height (.2mm to .1mm) or printing at half speed. Since you are doing experiments, how about printing a 10cm cube solid. Set speed to 100mm/sec. Use ulticontroller to set the speed so that 50% will be 50mm/sec and so on. Start off slow - maybe 20%. After 2 layers double to 40%, 80% 160% and try to see if this makes a difference. You can change it every 2 layers and make notes as you go. Typically, the printer does fine at 150mm/sec .2mm layers but is actually extruding about 10% less than it is supposed to. But 10% less is not too bad. You can also play with "flow rate" from the ulticontroller once it starts printing (not before). It's under the calibration menu but doesn't exist until you start printing (from SD card only maybe). Please post a link to this make magazine torture test. I still dont' understand. I"m guessing the box has 4 points (a,b,c,d) and it always starts at point A and point A is where the z stepper goes up a layer? Is this what you mean? If so that is referred to as the Z seam. Kisslicer has an option to locate the Z seam at random locations each layer. Cura puts it I believe on the near left corner so you can rotate some parts so that the seam is "at the back". >I printed a full size calibration model Referred to with underextrusion but there is A SECOND COMMON THING that creates this not-touching-walls issue and that is called "backlash" and just means loose belts. Or worn belts (the teeth). Backlash is where you tell the head to move to the right to position 10, then left back to zero but it only makes it to position 9. A true,pure backlash will not be improved by slower speeds but in reality it might. I had a car where the steering wheel had backlash. I could turn to the right and then when I turned to the left it would move an inch before it started moving the wheels. But because you seem to have non-solid layers it's probably underextrusion. But you'll have to figure that out. Finally about levelling. I stared at your leveling photo and it's just too low resolution to tell if the center of your platform is higher so I'll have to trust you. You could try flipping it over maybe. Anyway... "leveling the bed" has different meanings for different people but usually we mean both levelling *and* setting the home height so that the nozzle is touching the bed. Your leveling print looked level but it looked to low - too much space between nozzle and bed. When you print the very first skirt on a print it should be squished into the blue tape a bit. So I would raise your bed a bit. If you don't get a good first layer it's hard to get everything else right as well. The first layer being bad will create non round circles on *every* layer above. It's hard to believe but very true. Also the bed will bend over the course of a day and you have to re-level often. With a new printer at least once every 10 hours or maybe more. With that large test print did you wipe with isopropyl first? Did you get lifting at the corners?

Someone else had this same problem: moves on second layer. They fixed it by reburning the firmware. This is bizarre. I guess some interaction with one of the Marlins with some gcode?

Someone else had a very similar problem this week and claims they fixed it by re-installing the firmware (using cura of course). This seems bizarre but their experiment was repeatable.

It's rare to shift in X *and* Y at the same time but possible. I would first tighten the tiny set screws on all the pulleys. I believe there are 6 for each axis. The most likely are the 2 pulleys for each axis on the short belts (motors). However is it possible that your part came loose during printing? Was it still stuck to the bed when the print was finished? If not then you can improve the stickiness of the blue painters tape by rubbing it with isopropyl alcohol. This will increase adhesion by about 100X.

That's not good. One side should be about 4.7/104.7 or about 5% away. In other words one side should be around 4.75 or the other side should be .25v. I would have expected the high side to be at 4.75. If it is indeed 5V then the 4.7K resistor seems to be a short circuit. Or at least much less than 4.7K ohms. Maybe you should measure that resistor (with the thermister disconnected).

I agree mostly with illuminatri as usual. The most important thing he mentioned is to tighten that feeder. Also don't use the canned settings. Look at advanced and expert settings. Know what they all do eventually. I disagree about the higher temp. For something like the busts, yes go with higher temp. For something like that test piece with all the things sticking up you might want to go lower temp - see this: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/ If you plan to always print small things because you like small things better then you should also consider going thinner layer height (.1mm instead of .2mm). The bottom layer is hard to get really good because leveling is so critical. The top layer if flat can be improved by making it thicker (2X or 3X layer height). Always make walls an integer multiple of the nozzle (so .4 or .8) and always make floor/ceiling integral multiple of layer height. Not sure what you mean about pathway not optimized but I suspect you might want to try kisslicer or the new cura which is coming out soon (in beta now). You might be talking about what we call the "z seam". "slicer seems to ignore small featuers even if they are big enough for a .4 nozzle" I assume you are talking about what we call "thin walls". If you have a 1mm thick wall in the stl and cura walls are set to .4 then it will leave a .2mm gap. This is a problem fixed in both kisslicer and the "new" cura (in beta). There are current hack methods to fix this - you could lie and say your nozzle is .3mm. But better to wait for the new cura.

3.5 meters doesn't seem like all that much but you can reduce that 5 hours. A lot of the PLA was the support material. Almost half of that was having double wall thickness. Myself I would change the wall width from .8 to .4. That will almost cut your print time in half *and* it will use less PLA. You printed at .1mm height which gives you twice the resolution on the horizontal layers (twice as many layers) so tends to look better but takes longer. But the nice thing about the UM is it can print 200mm/sec no problem so I would raise your print speed to maybe 150mm/sec (although if you want to speed things up more and decide to make layer height .2mm then I wouldn't go over 100mm/sec as the nozzle can only supply so much PLA per second. Those two changes shouldn't affect print quality and speed up the print to maybe just 1.5 to 2 hours. You retraction minimum travel is 5mm which I would lower to 1mm as the legs of that pony appear to be less than 5mm apart. If you got lots of stringing at 220C, you could also lower that to 190C and that would reduce stringing to nothing but may cause some underextrusion (probably not). This will slow down your print (a lot) while working on the legs but it's worth it as retraction and at 190C you should get absolutely zero stringing. Your minimal layer time is 5 seconds which is a decent value. I would up it to 7 seconds just to be safe. This may slow down some of the layers of your print but it's pretty critical to do so. If a layer doesn't cool enough when the next layer comes down the print looks like crap. You could reduce the support material by printing the pony on it's side maybe. But then that whole side will look not-so-good. So I would keep it as is. I recommend you get a nicer color PLA for such a cute animal.

There's probably nothing wrong electrically with that stepper driver other than that the potentiometer got turned slightly. You might want to just bend it back with pliers and try to adjust it (there's instructions at ultimaker wiki). I don't think I've ever heard a clicking anything like that before.

Perhaps you have a loose wire on one of the z endstops and a certain movement shakes the ultimaker enough to trigger the problem? What would be nice is a utility that shows the state of all 6 endstops so you can shake the ultimaker and jiggle all the wires and move the head around and see if something will trip one of the endstops. I would consider disconnecting the *bottom* z endstop - you probably don't need it anyway - just to see if that helps. Could it be though that it's the Y endstop that is triggered and it's just the message that is wrong?