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That benchy looks pretty good. Your most serious problem is underextrusion. I circled where your walls have gaps. If the gap is 1/5th as wide as the lines then that would be about 80% extrusion (versus the preferred 100%). That's pretty bad - I'd fix that first. Is this a new printer? I have a nice list of the 30 or so causes of underextrusion on the UM2 but I'd start with the first one: Are there more than 500 hours on this printer? (you can check on the menu). If so then replace the teflon part. Another common cause is printing too fast or too cold. But you didn't ask about underextrusion. Circular issues you show could be play - you said you checked belt tension (which usually isn't a problem on UM2 because there is a spring hidden in those sliding blocks that the belt passes through to maintain tension). Another thing to check is friction - if this printer is old it's time to add a drop of light oil to all 6 rods in the gantry. Push the head around first to feel the friction and then feel if there is a change when you oil 3 rods of just one axis. Push head diagonally to spread the oil better. What is your line width for this print? That looks like more than .4mm but I guess this is zoomed in more than I am usually used to maybe? Not the very topmost layer on benchy will have much worse issues than the rest of the print as the smokestack doesn't have time to cool down. You get overextrusion on the corner of the stack where it does layer change. This benchy isn't too bad but you can definitely fix those gaps and probably your "circle issue" whatever it may be.

Just to clarify - higher temperatures means the filament is less viscous and it flows more easily with less pressure from the feeder. When the nozzle is colder the nozzle pressure is much higher. The feeder doesn't skip but it has a knurled wheel that makes pyramid-shaped holes in the filament and when the pressure is higher, these holes elongate. In other words the filament is flowing at (for example) only 80% of requested amount when the pressure in the nozzle is much higher. Hence underextrusion when the nozzle is cooler.

It does indeed do walls at T6 T5 T4 T3 T2 then it moves the bed down a little and goes back to T6 T5 T4 T3 T2 then it does two layers on with the other core and finally the bed comes back up to repeat starting at T6 again. If it was a Z play issue I would expect them all to be the same or T6 to be the worst (not T2). Well T2 has the most assymetric cooling where every other layer it gets much more cooling (cooling while printing T1 which takes longer to print). The other towers have quite assymetric cooling but no actual fan blowing on them for such a long time as T1. But you did an experiment where the two towers were far apart. So I don't think it's the fan. Maybe it's nozzle temperature? Have you tried to go to the printer's web page and look at the temperature graph? Make sure your printer is in "developer" mode. It will then show it's IP address. Put that address into a browser and you should be able to see the printer's web page. There is a link there for temperature graph. Enable only nozzle temp for both nozzles to keep the graph clean. Show a few layers where it is doing the PVA. I think it would be MUCH more informative if you did this with the 6 tower print you did above.

If it's more on one side versus another then it's almost always fan related. After verifying that both side fans are working, in your mind position the nozzle over your print and look where the 2 fans are blowing. Is this on a UM3? Your profile says you have a UM3 but that doesn't mean this was printed on your UM3. Looking at the cura profile for UM3 and abs it has the fan at 5% which makes sense as at least for my UM3, 20% is the same as 100% and 5% is like half power which is typically good for ABS. But perhaps for your print 5% isn't enough fan. Usually ABS gets too much fan and you have layers not adhering very well but this looks kind of like the opposite problem where you aren't getting enough fan. When the printer is idle go into the menus and there is a way to turn the side fans on - set them to 100% and 5% and see if 5% seems like about half power based on the intensity of the noise (not based on the pitch). I would also consider printing slower. For really nice quality parts I like to set all the printing speeds to 35mm/sec. Or even 25mm/sec for extra high quality. Printing slower as it goes around the tips of those arms/teeth should help them not pull inwards so much. It could be your side fans are broken. If so that would explain everything.

@tato1989 - A print should never break on a layer so perfectly like that. When that happens it implies that this particular layer was much weaker than the layer above and below. Which should never happen. This happens more often with ABS if there is too much cooling but I'm guessing this is PLA (which can't have too much cooling)? My nozzle hits my prints hard all the time and we could go into that but it's not a problem for me as my parts hold together just fine. Instead I think you had an underextruded layer. Having just one underextruded layer can have many causes. One common cause is that the Z moved farther than usual for that layer so it is all underextruded. Another common cause is some kind of tangle or jam or grinding at the feeder that somehow recovered after another layer completed. Another possibility is that cura skipped that layer due to minor error (but fatal) in the model. If that is the case you would see this easily in cura in PREVIEW mode - it would just skip a layer or more than one layer.

Could you please provide the gcode for this 6 tower print so I can understand the order of things better? You are saying it prints the right most tower first? And the problem gets worse over time and then after printing the PVA it gets better again? Doesn't that imply something to do with the fan? I assume he fan is at 50% for the left most tower. For the pva. I'd like to see the gcode though. - George

grease The z screw is different in that it is supposed to have grease, not oil. Just a pea sized drop. Wheel bearing grease is great. z nut Yeah there can be a lot more play than that even. The printer partly relies on the weight of the bed to avoid backlash issues and partly it relies on only ever moving the bed down during a print (never upwards) (so try to avoid using the "hop" feature on an ultimaker - in fact it's pretty much only meant for delta printers - a completely different design). speed and line width I don't like those to vary. Ever. That's important. There is a big delay between changing speeds and when the pressure in the nozzle equalizes. The pressures are pretty high: 150 to 250 psi is common. Anyway whenever you slow down extrusion it overextrudes for a little bit and then when you speed up again it under extrudes for a second. Bridging may be an exception where you might want to change flow for that. Anyway, so keep all your speeds the same if reasonable (infill, inner shell, outer shell) and keep your travel speed high - like 250mm/sec on a UM2 should be fine (I think it defaults to 150mm). Same with line width - if you are doing one shell at 0.4mm line width and the next at 0.2mm line width you are going to get under/overextrusion at the flow changes. Try to make the wall width a multiple of the line width. For example 0.4mm line width and 1.2mm wall width. So the lines are the same thickness. Fans at 100% - good. That's what you want for PLA. The more fan the better. Some people add cross flow fans or even put a window fan blowing into the printer. The improvements in quality are typically pretty small as the side fans are usually enough. There are a ton of bridging features in cura. Type "bridge" in the settings search box and you will see them all. I have no recommendations but many other people do. Maybe search for posts by burtoogle as he has experimented a lot with bridge settings and he is the one who got many of those settings added to cura (he is not an Ultimaker employee and doesn't own an Ultimaker printer but he has been a significant contributor to Cura features and bug fixes).

Well in this last picture I'd be worried about the quality of those walls first. Bridging is indeed tough but... Okay my thoughts: 1) Bridging is tough but first you need to get the walls perfect - the walls should be much nicer. 2) The walls looked fine in the first pictures - maybe it's just printed too fast? Did you mess with the speed? 3) Are 2 the side fans turning on? 4) Okay that looks like Z issues maybe and it was stated that this is an old printer so... I think you might have Z issues. Maybe not - hard to tell from the photos but let's talk about that. The Z screw. In the back of the printer. By now I assume it's dirty? Dirt mixed in the grease causes the bed to move less consistently so each level has a bit of random error and you get horizontal banding, bumps, holes, and so on. Clean it with WD40. I recommend removing it - it is permanently attached to the stepper which has a cable under the panel so you have to remove 2 or so screws to get the bottom panel off then unplug the Z stepper, then undo the 4 screws that hold the Z stepper, then it just slides out. It's a little tricky as it has to spin to come out but you just pull pretty hard and the screw will spin and the whole assembly pops out. Then you can put it on newspapers and clean with WD40 and a tooth brush getting in all the cracks. Then add one drop of grease and reassemble. Or you can do it in situ. Protect the glass bed from any oils (best to remove it and also place newspaper or something on the bed). Clean with wd-40 and toothbrush. Wipe as dry as possible getting in the cracks of the triple helix thread (if you stick a paper towel and toothpick or something in one thread and spin you only get one of the 3 helixes). Add one drop of grease if you have it - any grease will do. You don't need high temp grease. You don't need silicone grease. Any grease. Just a tiny bit. See if this makes the walls of your parts much better. Try printing something you actually need or want. Maybe something around the house. Walk around your apartment or house or a friends place and look around until you see a need that can be solved by something plastic. Print that and if you don't like the quality *then* it's easier to talk about improving it. Printing test prints is trickier as they are designed to be nearly impossible.

So the description you posted sounds pretty convincing to me that the stepper driver for your Y stepper driver died. And it sounds like you are well past the warranty. If you are happy with your other printer you could just sell the S5 with the explanation that the Y axis stepper driver is dead. But this is a very nice printer (I have one) and can do things the Prusa won't do so easily such as print Nylon (one of my favorite materials). Servo drivers definitely fail - they get VERY hot and get a lot of abuse. However it's still pretty rare as the S5 was designed with all the proper temperature considerations for these chips. I have an S5 and I have about 10 friends with S5 printers and none of us have lost a servo driver. I'm pretty sure. If you are very good with SMD (surface mount devices) soldering and have the right soldering station equipment (hot air soldering station, solder paste and so on) then you can just change that chip. Unfortunately this skill set is rare. I am an expert solderer but will not touch SMD. But you might have a friend with the right setup. I mean what's the harm? It's useless as it is right now.

google "3d printer cold pull". The procedure is the same for all 3d printers.

It only moves a tiny bit so I can't really tell from the video. It's possible that both ends of threads are spinning. The top part isn't supposed to spin in place. Anyway - when you do the leveling - hit continue 3 or 4 times - the first part wants you to get it about 1mm above - just skip that part. Then you adjust the rear. Then when it comes to the front two screws (the second time) you shouldn't have far to move. If you are absolutely sure it doesn't move then just cut power and take the bed apart. Or at least do the fist step: remove the glass plate and then spin that knob and make sure the other end isn't spinning. If it is maybe try some glue or something to hold that end firmly in place. But I suspect it is working fine. So to explain again: When you turn that big nut in your video - the top of the screw (almost touching or actually touching the glass) should not spin. If it spins then that's the problem. Try a drop of glue up there just under the screw head - avoid glue on the threads though! So use very thick glue that won't slide down the screw onto the threads!

Cura 5 absolutely will not work with windows 7. Ever. You can use Cura 4.10. 4.10 is the last version that supports windows 7. Fortunately most older versions of Cura work very well and are loaded with hundreds of features.

Unfortunately that is the process. I don't know how much raspi costs but it used to be $25 from china. Holy crap I just checked and now $200 from china. Yikes! Okay. Well when they were $25 each it was a great solution - you put octoprint on each one and have one for each printer.

Most people use 0.4mm for 90% of prints. I sell things (about 1 per week) so I print lots of parts (over 13 different printed parts go into one sale), each of which I may print 50 per year. So it was worth my time to experiment with different nozzle sizes to get great accurate parts printed fast. I use 0.8 and 0.6mm nozzles for parts larger than a pack of cigarettes and 0.4mm nozzles for things smaller. For a while I used a 0.25mm nozzle for one of the smallest parts but I switched to 0.4mm as that is good enough. I can go a year without using the 0.25mm nozzle but everyone has different needs.

I noticed something new. But first... I ran it through 2 gcode analyzers and the amount of extrusions is perfect. Spot on. No issues. For example at this website gcode.ws I displayed the layers in 3 different "display type" modes: mm/sec (speed) mm extrusion per mm move mm^3/sec (aka flow) And both even and odd layers were the same. However... I also noticed that every other layer has more walls - thicker walls! One layer has 3 shells to the wall (3 passes) and the next will have 4 shells. They alternate. This could explain it! So I played with settings in cura. It's: alternate extra wall You have it checked. However the older 3mf file I got from you did not have that checked. So I don't think this will make any difference. 😞

So on your new print the lines seem more random. This is typical of a dirty Z screw. Since you are only using 2cm of the screw you could just clean the very top. For a quick test I use a tissue (toilet or nose). I stick it into the threads of the Z screw with my fingernail while someone else moves the Z up and down repeatedly. I repeat this at least 10 times because the Z screw is triple helix. 3 helixes. You have to get your fingernail (or a toothpick) into each of the 3 grooves. This takes all of 2 minutes. If it improves things even a little then it's probably worth it to remove the Z screw and clean it with WD40 over a newspaper. I have never done this for an S5 but have done this for a UM2. There are dangerous voltages inside the S5 so you have to power it off and remove the bottom cover and unplug the Z stepper motor. I believe there are 4 screws holding the Z stepper in place and I believe once you remove those 4 screws and unplug the cable you can pull out the stepper and the Z screw all together out through the bottom of the printer. It helps to have the bed in the up position before you start (put the printer on it's side and then on the printer raise the bed and then just cut power) (the printer works fine on it's side or upside-down). After a complete cleaning add only one drop of grease. If you only clean 5cm of the z screw you don't need to add any grease.

When you set a new goal temperature for the nozzle it often overshoots that goal so it's hard to say if the nozzle would be a bit warmer or cooler. The change is too dramatic I think to be temperature. Changing things like the distance between parts or the size of the part would make a big difference. With the z "hop" of going over to change cores, the bed moves down for that and when it returns to start printing the first PLA layer the bed is moving back up and usually you would expect it to not move far enough so you would get a bigger gap and an underextruded layer. Then the second layer the bed moves down and if it again doesn't move far enough you would get an overextruded layer. All types of Z issues has the bed not moving far enough when changing directions. Did you save any of the ufp files (or gcode files) where you have photos of the problem? I'd like to double check filament flow using a 3rd party method like gcode.ws or gcodeanalyser.com.

So it's common for the print head to knock a part off the bed in the middle of a print - it's a bit complicated but you can have the part higher than the currently printed layer on certain kinds of overhangs - the plastic sticks up. So this is a boring, old problem fixed with better adhesion techniques. But much more interesting is if the part comes off the bed at the END of the print - particularly hard enough that the glass slides out of the clips. This sounds like a firmware bug (possibly a cura bug but I doubt it). Regarding going to the lift switch maneuver. There are gcodes to change a core temperature without doing the lift switch (you add T0 or T1 in the middle of the gcode). But the only way I know to move the feeder is to do a gcode T0 or T1 by itself which does the lift switch maneuver. Some printers let you control each feeder independently and simultaneously with gcodes but the firmware on the S5 I believe doesn't let you so I think you have to go over to the lift switch to do a cold pull for both cores. For me I'm pretty sure it always moves the bed down to the very bottom at the end of a print. Before it messes with the retraction on each print head. But I don't have the material station so the procedure is a little different.

Regarding lifetime - these printers seem to last "forever". The parts that need replacing are almost always very inexpensive. The teflon part needs to be replace every 500 or so hours of printing but is only about 20 euros. The belts need to be changed after many years of printing. Around 2000 to 5000 hours of printing (25 to 50 spools of filament). Also not expensive.

There is a german section of the forum and it's pretty active but the english section has more people. UM2+ fixes issues of the UM2 feeder. It's a fantastic printer and will tend to give you better quality than the S5 if you stick with PLA. It can print PETG or nGen or CPE quite well but I'd avoid anything that needs higher temperatures than that like Nylon. It can print Nylon but you will go through the teflon part a lot faster. S5 also prints dissolvable support material, and abrasive materials. I have 3 active UM2 printers and they are used more than my UM3 or my S5.

It's a replacement for Cura's "print through USB" feature. It is not a slicer. It has many more features and is easier to use than Cura's "print through USB" feature. It runs on windows or mac. Don't think it runs on raspberry pi. It's older software and what a lot of other interfaces have copied. So you may have heard the term "prontrface mode" or "prontrface like".

I believe you can do it. I recommend using prontrface (aka printrun). It lets you choose which COMM port and you run it twice (two instances - two windows of prontrface). Each one uses a different comm port. http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/

Since you appear to be in USA, contact fbrc8.com. Is that who you are dealing with? Or are you dealing with your reseller? If you are working with your reseller then try emailing support@fbrc8.com. Include the above story and also your serial number. I'm not certain but likely they will give you a free replacement since your printer should still be under warranty on it I think? I'm a little confused. Maybe you printed only 53 days but you have had it for over a year? Keep in mind that there's no way to show hours and meters on the machine - just each core. So you have to slide in each core and add them all up. Of course if you truly only used the same core in every job then that's not necessary.

Yeah I'm stumped. I don't know what is causing the issue. I guess fan is the last thing to try. It's interesting that I saw something similar but each side shows a different amount (4 different amounts).

Okay I understand better now. With the material station (which I don't have - I just have a plain S5) it does a cold pull for each core and it lowers the right core before doing the right core (which should be unnecessary). The bug is that the bed is all the way up when it does this final procedure and when it goes to swap to the other core it hits the part. People who don't have a MS don't have this problem because it doesn't do the cold pull (it does a kind of warm pull). @CarloK @robinmdh - I know where to submit Cura bugs but where do these 3 people submit a firmware bug so that the firmware team looks into it? Should they do: support.ultimaker.com and click "submit a request" in the top right corner? Or is there a more direct/better way?