Jump to content

origamimavin

Dormant
  • Posts

    32
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by origamimavin

  1. After building a RepRap from scratch over 4 years ago with very little calibration and troubleshooting documentation available online, and the machine taking over a year and a half to get a decent print, being able to take an UM2 out of a box and have it print a very nice octopus after 45 minutes of setup is pretty plug and play in my book. True they still need a lot of tweaking, but having a machine that works out of the box and needs some maintenance from time to time is better than starting with a box of parts. We have a couple Stratasys printers here, so some of the engineers should be able to deal with it when little problems arise, I just needed it working by the time I left. But yes, when it comes to the everyday, non technical user, these are still far from plug and play without hassle.
  2. I've got the teflon back in place and it seems to be working. I did another cube yesterday that came out great and then another mostly flat piece that was so-so. I let it sit overnight and today printed a non-test part that came out great. Hopefully all is well now (knock on wood)! Cloakfiend, I'm glad that technique works for you, but that worn't work in our case. This is a company owned printer, and even though I'm the only one using it now, I'm about to leave the company and hand it over to others who don't know how to use it as much. It needs to be as plug and play as it can be, which is why I chose the UM2 over so many other printers. Needing to baby it before and after every print would render the machine useless in this environment.
  3. Well, thought about the shape of the clog and thought that maybe there was a gap in there where it was getting stuck. I just took apart the head again and pushed the teflon piece as close to the nozzle as I could. I just got it back together and have it printing another test cube now, hopefully it'll continue to work this time. After I assembled everything and was waiting for it to heat up, I found this image online: Which I think is exactly what was happening this time. The teflon was too thick to be easily pushed into place, so it ended up sitting higher and was leaving a gap for material to jam. I think this is a pretty poor design for the UM2, since it looks like at least one other person had a problem with this and that they don't mention anything about this in the users guide. Hopefully it'll continue to work this time..
  4. I'm having some more issues with the printer, and I know something is wrong inside the head. I wanted to do the atomic pull to clean the head, even though I've done it before, but wanted to take care in going through all the steps properly. I turned it on and went to move material to reverse it, and it wasn't moving. I bumped the temperature up to 260 and tried again, and it wasn't moving. I ended up pulling HARD on the back end of the filament while turning the dial, and it finally started to come out and go into the tube. I saw there was a fat blob at the end, and then saw it was stuck in the bowden. I ended up disconnecting the tube from both sides and yanking it out. The blob at the end was quite fat, as you can see below. The section of filament by the motor was all torn up, much more than usual. I thought screw it and changed back over to the black PLA material. I connected the tubes at both ends, loaded it as usual, and immediately tried printing another .5" test cube. It printed just fine! I thought maybe the red material was just bad. I let the printer nozzle cool down to about 90C and hit print again. It printed a 2nd cube just fine. This time I let it cool off a bit more, close to standing temperature and tried printing something else. It put down all of the 1st layer and barely any of the 2nd when it clogged and stopped again. Nothing had been changed since the cubes, so I know nothing should be clogging it. Based on the shape of the red clog, I'm thinking there may be a cavity of some sort inside the head, and when the printer cools off, it solidifies and clogs itself. Does this make any sense? Is there something I could do to fix this here, or do I need to replace some parts in the tip?
  5. Well, it was working. I printed a .5" cube just fine, but my next print stopped after the 2nd layer or so again. I just did a material change, removed the red, cut off the end section the length of the bowden tube to get rid of the grind, and put it back in. Just started another test cube, and again it stopped printing pretty quickly. Any other thoughts?
  6. Didier, I followed your instructions and fixed the coupler to sit flush, and now it seems to be working just fine again, now with the red. I'm guessing that when I took the grey out, it lifted that up and just stopped working since. Thanks for the help! I wonder why this makes so much of a difference, does it have to do with heat distribution? While I said it was 3mm filament, it's actually the standard 2.85mm. That was one of the first things I checked, I only wrote 3mm to differentiate it from 1.75mm which UM's don't use.
  7. The company I work for bought an Ultimaker 2 a little while ago, and everything has been going well. After some time, I changed over the material and started getting some problems. The 3 materials I've tried have been the stock silver PLA that it came with, some black PLA that I got from IC3D, and some red PLA from Gizmo Dorks. All are 3mm PLA, and from here on I'll be referring to them by color. I should also mention that I've been printing the silver at 50mm/s at around 230C. I found that if I printed it at 50mm/s at 220C, it had a tendency to under extrude and the extruder motor would grind. Sometimes I'd have to go as far as slow the print down to 90% to get it to print properly. The silver has been working well, though it has jammed once or twice. I followed the procedure of heating it up and pulling the filament out to pull the clog out of the head and got it going just fine. The silver is running low, so I switched it to black. It made it a couple layers and then stopped. I switched it back to silver and it seemed to work ok, then the black didn't work again. Thinking it might be the filament, I tried the red, which clogged too. I can see that the material is flowing ok when I heat up the head and push it through by hand, and I've tried the same unclogging method as before, but I'm not getting anywhere. I tried using the silver again and now that one's clogging too. Every time I start a print, it heats up and starts to print. I can see the extruder motor turning, and the filament is moving through. after about the 2nd or 3rd layer or so, even though the motor is still running, the filament isn't moving and nothing comes out. The extruder starts to grind a bit if I leave it for too long, as I've already adjusted the tension there, but if I remove the bowden tube from the nozzle, I can see the filament start to move again and come out. This tells me there's something wrong with the head. When I heat it up and pull the filament out of the head, rather than seeing it come to a point, it almost looks as if it's a bit of an hourglass shape. Is something wrong inside the head where it's clogging and not coming out? I would feel more than comfortable taking apart the head as I've built up a RepRap and have made lots of modifications to it, though the UM2 says not to take apart the head without contacting them. Since the printer was bought by the company I work for (after lots of convincing), I'd rather not mess it up and void anything. One thing I was wondering about was when I was swapping the material and cleaning a jam, I think the head may have been pulled up into the housing that holds it a bit, since I had to do some more bed leveling afterwards. Could this have pulled part of the head apart and created a larger gap in there that it's getting hung up on? Below are some images of everything, I'd be happy to take more pictures or video if it'd help.
  8. i tried printing off some old gcode, and while i didn't get any checksum errors, the material stopped feeding, and it was printing nothing into air about halfway in, messing up the print. could this be a checksum error as well without it alerting me about it? i soldered on the sd card, but couldn't find any info about setting it up with marlin. i tried uploading a print to it, but it didn't do anything. since i know this is an ultimaker forum, i'm guessing i'll have to post elsewhere about finding help for that, though i'd appreciate anything anyone has to offer here.
  9. i haven't printed anything with plugins yet. i started looking into it and reading up some more on the wiki about it this weekend, but haven't implemented it because of all the basic print errors. eventually i'd like to use it for color changes, but it needs to first be capable of printing.. didn't get a chance last night, i should be home earlier today after work to try some things out. thanks!
  10. thanks for the info! it's just so weird that this started happening all of a sudden.. i'll try out another cable and make sure it isn't up against something that could be interfering with it. hopefully i can sit down and add the sd card reader sometime this week.
  11. thanks for the reply! 1) i looked at the layer views a bit and didn't see anything that stood out. i can look a bit closer at it, but i'm guessing i won't find much. 2) i can try repetier host, i haven't yet. i looked at the code in notepad and didn't see anything that stood out. i also tried printing it in pronterface and was having issues too. lots of checksum errors return. 3) i usually print at 180deg. right after some of the prints stop, i would immediately check the temp, and it was still in the 178-185 range. i've glanced over the machine, nothing is hitting any endstops, nothing is interfering with the circuit board, etc. everything looks as it should. 4) i have a microSD add-on board that i can try to solder on. i just haven't gotten around to it yet. from what i've read online, it sounds like that may fix the checksum errors, and it would be nice to be able to turn the computer off on long prints. only thing is, i'm about to run a bunch prints and change the color halfway through (logo keychains), and since i don't have any buttons or display on my printer, i don't think i can control that with a sd card (but i could be wrong?). in terms of the computer, nothing has changed. i brought the printer and computer to the midwest maker convention a couple weeks ago, but everything was fine there and fine when i got home, these issues seem to just have started to happen. i can try to change cables. i haven't added any appliences to the house, and the printer sits in the same place it always has. it's running off a usb 3.0 on a nice, modern workstation laptop, so i don't think that would be causing issues. i've never had these checksum errors before, and i've run some quite long prints in the past. could it be something with the new version of Cura, did something change? i haven't really used any other slicer, and really like Cura, but i can't print with problems like these.. i appreciate any help anyone can offer!
  12. I've been able to get some prints to work, but not others. I keep getting this error message in cura as it's printing, sometimes as it messes up, sometimes it keeps printing: < Serial Error: Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line:2 < Serial Error: Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line:2 < Serial Error: Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line:3 < Unknown command: < N4T0*30 < Serial Error: Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line:2 < Unknown command: < N4T0*30 < Serial Error: Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line:5 ^I'm getting these errors on just about all the prints. What could be causing this?
  13. A couple days ago I ran a couple prints (tree frogs) with some new material i just bought, and everything went as it normally does. I then ran a print over night using 14.02-RC3 (same as the frogs), and when I woke up I saw it only made it about halfway through, but it looked the the nozzle had been moving properly. I ran it again the next day while sitting next to it, and I noticed that when it got to exactly the same spot, the nozzle stopped outputting plastic. It looked like the extruder would be moving much much slower than it should have been (but still doing retraction on jumps), and the temperatures were fine, but it stopped spitting out plastic. I tried to print it again with the newest version, 14.03, and it still stopped extruding at exactly the same place, about 50-60% through. I tried to then print a standard octopus, and it would then stop right around the start of the eyes, but this time the printer head would just stop moving and leave a big melt spot where it stopped. I tried another octopus print today using Cura version 13.03, and that printed just fine, not a problem at all. Then I went back to print a small keychain with Cura 14.03, and again the nozzle halted at about halfway through, melting the spot it came to rest in. Anyone know why this is happening? I haven't had the issues before. The prints seem to come out so well, then just fail. I've restarted the computer and checked all my connections. I'm using a RepRap running Marlin, printing over USB.
  14. Perfect! Thanks Daid, I'll give it a test run tomorrow!
  15. I'm using a reprap. I'd have to install an SDcard reader and I think update my firmware to support it. Is there any way to do it within the software?
  16. I've noticed in multiple versions of Cura, whenever it's printing, my laptop webcam light comes on. Even if I have the timelapse turned off, it's occupying my webcam, which means I can't Skype while it's printing. Is there some way to turn off the webcam within Cura?
  17. I hhave a RepRap, but as it functions the same, I figure I could still chime in. Outside of allen wrenches for small adjustments, the only tools I ever use are a needle nose pliers to break off and collect and extra material dripping from the nozzle before a print, but almost more importantly, a paint chipper. Something like $5 at Home Depot for a 1.5" metal paint chipper and everything removes from the bed easily when I want it to (I print right on glass) and I never have to touch it with my fingers. If for some reason my 1st layer isn't sticking to the bed properly in a print, I can sometimes press it down with the scraper and it will bond enough to continue.
  18. There's a setting to make the outer layer print at half heights to simulate a smaller layer height. For example, the inner layers are all printed at .2mm, while the outer layer is printed at .1mm heights. I believe tthis is what he's talking about.
  19. Could this possiibly be due to diffeerent filament diameters? Try remeasuring and changing that setting within Cura. I had trouble in the past of having too small of a number set, and it was spitting out more plastic than I wanted and gave some issues. Once properly measured, it's able to spit out the proper amount and bunch up less. Depending on what I'm printing, I actually find that slightly underextruding has better results than overextruding.
  20. another option, which i've done before, is to first remove the partial print from the bed.. sounds counter intuitive, i know. then measure the thickness of it with some calipers and figure out the height, and use the 'sink into bed' feature in Cura and drip it down that far. slice the model and give the print a go. the print should start off at about where you left off and finish cleanly. once it finishes, use some gorilla glue or something similar to glue the two parts together and clamp it down if you can. one thing you can do here, if you'd like to make sure it's as close of a match as possible, is after it's printed about 5 layers or so, stop the print and remove it from the bed (be sure to let it cool as to not warp it). line it up and see if you've chosen the right height to start the print at, it should line up closely with your earlier print. if it's too small, decrease the stat layer height, if it's too big, increase it. by stopping it early, you won't waste much extra material by printing it all if you don't match it up just right. by doing it this way (by not printing directly on the previous print), you can have more control over what comes out and have less of a chance at messing up your previous print, with the compromise of using glue. also, if the previous print stopped in a weird spot on the last layer, it would give you a chance to sand it all down smooth to make clean contact. i guess another method could be to figure out the height that it printed so far, divide it out by the thickness of the layers, and go into the gcode and remove the entire first section (after the start code) up to that layer. you might need to add some code yourself to be sure you don't run the head into your model, but it should be able to continue roughly where it left off, assuming your measurements are correct. with this method, you'd be dealing with the same kind of mess up chances as gr5's method. since in that print, you have those two circles in the middle of it, you might be able to locate where they are, model up or import something small and try to line it up there, and start printing there. it might help you to line up the print head to the right height without immediately starting on the edge, where it would be visible. you'd know after a layer or two if you guessed the height correctly, and then either peel off or sand off that one or two layers before actually continuing the print. oh, and remember that if it's still on the bed, you can use the +Z/-Z movements to move the head close to or touching the most recent layer to try to guess the height without calipers. good luck, be sure to post back as to what worked and how well it turned out!
  21. I've had a lot on my plate recently, and only now am getting a chance to try and test the new software. While I use a workstation laptop to do all my 3D modeling, I pretty much exclusively use my Asus eeePC 901 netbook for my printing, so I can leave it running while using my laptop elsewhere. I just installed 13.05 to the netbook, and I'm getting a display issue (screenshot posted). I suspect 13.05 will work on my laptop since 13.04 beta installed just fine on it. Version 13.03 works fine on the netbook. This issue seems to only affect the part placement window. Is this a problem with the software or my computer?
  22. i'd like to test it out! but fyi, i'm using a reprap, not ultimaker.
  23. sounds great, can't wait for the release to try it out!
  24. i've been using Cura since just before 13-03 came out, and love it. best prints i've gotten form my machine have come from your software, so great job. i've got a couple improvement suggestions as well. as stated above, it would be nice is the project planner was worked into the main screen. maybe nect to the load part button it could be something like 'add part.' i've noticed in other software (i think Slic3r? i havent spent much time with other software) that there's an option to randomize the start location of each layer. i'm noticing great looking parts, but some degredation near the start part of each layer, even with retraction on. it would be nice if it would change this up a bit so any errors from the start point would be spread out more and fixed by the time the next layer was built. guess that's it for now. amazing software, though, really great job, Daid.
  25. Thanks everyone, especially rbc1225 for the direct contact assistance! I seem to be getting much better prints now, but I'm noticing the first couple layers seem to be too wide. The first later seems to be laying down more material than needed and it's sticking out and up, so the next couple layers are a little messy, but it seems to correct itself once it starts outputting the sparse inner material. I tried manually changing the M92 command in the beginning to something less than my standard extrusion rate, then bumping it back up right before the start of later 3, and it seems to be working better, but still could use more work. Is there something else that might help this problem? Also, is there some plugin I could run where maybe it asks the starting steps per E as well as an adjusted steps per E and the layer number in which it is changed?
×
×
  • Create New...