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Hi Andwew, that is some extreme wear on the hot-end tip! We haven't seen extreme wear like this on our 3D printers when testing glowFill. We've been printing a few 10-16 hour prints on the Ultimaker Original and Makerbot without obvious signs of wear. The Ultimaker 2 nozzle should be much more pointy, so this one most likely needs replacing. Was the nozzle still pointy before printing glowFill? Do you have any specific methods of cleaning your nozzle? Perhaps with a iron wire brush? Have you been printing other exotic materials?

Hi izo2, we actually already made matte black XT and matte transparent XT. The result wasn't great, difference in gloss was hardly noticeable. Our PLA/PHA prints very matte on the Makerbot Replicator 2 and also on 1.75mm E3D hot-ends. Printing with a matte surface finish is all about your printing speed, temperature and layer height. 195C, 70-80 mm/s at 0.2mm layer height and 100% cooling fan works great for 1.75mm filament. I have not been able to do this trick on the Ultimaker hot-ends.

Hi Dave, I think the problem might be your model is really tiny. This probably means the minimal layer time will determine the max print speed and not the set 50mm/s. Now when the print speeds slows down the filament will move even slower through the hot-zone, allowing heat to migrate through the filament. This can cause some issue with the teflon coupler, especially if it's already worn down. Have you every replaced the white Teflon coupler? My tip for printing this specific model would be to print maybe 2 at a time, or increase the scale. Both options should result in faster printing. Another way could be to adjust the minimal layer time down, so it'll allow for the 50mm/s. But if your model is too small it can't cool down.

Hi Harold, Good suggestions about the temperatures. In addition to lowering the temperatures you can also lower the speed slightly, usually 40mm/s for best quality prints and increase the retraction speed, this is standard at 25mm/s but can be increased to 45 mm/s. When lowering the temperature, don't be afraid to go lower then 240C. We have one UM which is able to print at 225C, 0.2mm layer height at 40 mm/s, although this is probably a temperature error. cheers, Gijs

Both the Ultimaker 2 and Ultimaker Original have been able to successfully print with copperFill, but with less reliable results then other hot-ends. Novice Ultimaker users are not recommended to start playing with these experimental type filaments. You need to be willing to spend some time and effort if you want to print with copperFill on the UM Original en UM2. BronzeFill prints beautifully on both UM's so if you're not willing to risk copperFill stick to the bronzeFill Gijs

Hi Daniel, At what speeds are you trying to print? I did some XT printing with the UM Original yesterday and was able to print solid parts already at 235C, 0.2mm layer height and at about 35mm/s print speed. Also when you insert the material into the bowden tube, a fresh piece of filament that has not been flattened by the knurled bolt, do you feel unusual amounts of resistance? cheers, Gijs

So I was hoping to replace the hot end on our first Ultimaker 2 during the weekend however, I stumbled upon a problem. The temperature sensor is stuck in the UM2 heaterblock. I've tried heating it to 260C, but the sensor won't even wiggle a little, it's really really stuck in there. @Ultimaker I really liked that the UM Original heater block had holes that poked through the entire heater block. This made it easy to remove since you could push the heater cartridge and sensor out using a screwdriver. Now the only method is to pull on the fragile wires which will break when the sensor is stuck. Any tips on replacing a UM2 nozzle/heaterblock without replacing the temperature sensor? Cheers, Gijs

Hi Arjan, In the picture I can see that the nozzle isn't clean, there's a noticeable build up of PLA on the outside of the nozzle. This shouldn't be there and might cause the very fine hairs you're seeing. Might be the heater block is leaking, can you see molten PLA on top of the heater block? What happens if you decrease flow rate to about 95%? And are you seeing the same effect on 0.2mm layer height? cheers, Gijs

Hi Peggy, about the bubbles in XT filament. These are actually not 'air bubbles' but vacuum holes, they can occur when filament cools down and starts to set during the production. Since there isn't trapped air inside, but nothing at all it shouldn't effect the print quality. We have tested this on several printers and couldn't see a noticeable effect.

Hmm.. I think you're on to something Robert. Tomorrow an official statement will be made regarding our XT line of filaments and the future plans, exciting!

We've been testing bronzeFill for three weeks now on a UM original and haven't seen wear related issues. Every now and then I switch back to PLA/PHA and check if the print quality still looks the same. Then again it's a very difficult thing to actually measure, if the filament would cause the nozzle to wear out quickly we would have noticed by now The UM original must have printed about 1,5 kg of the stuff. @jeremie nice looking ring! Regular copper polish worked well for me. @foehnsturm the load dice is a cool example! Inspired us to print a few dices at the Haxpo this week. Also the Inception top is good idea, think I might make a few of those myself too Thanks for all the testing, great work!

wooohoa!! That looks really great Markus, nice polishing already. Especially the first ring looks fantastic! Let us know what polishing tools your going to get. Think I'll try some of that glass sanding paper. cheers, Gijs

We've been working on an exciting development, a bronze filled PLA filament. First test prints went really really well, printing with the ease of normal PLA/PHA compoun. Since there is actual bronze in the filament it's 4 times heavier then PLA which is awesome for jewelry items. Straight from the 3d printer the parts have a matte finish, reminds a bit of laser sintered parts. It's very easy to sand down, much easier then PLA and you can polish it to a sick shine!

Hi Leo, This topic is growing so fast I can't keep up I saw from the pictures you posted a few pages back you had some issues with overhangs. My best guess would be your printing the overhangs to fast so they don't have enough time to cool, you should be able to see this during print, the layer will curl upwards towards the nozzle. Instead of slowing down the entire print, which is an option, you could also increase the minimal layer time. The default setting is 5s, you could increase this to about 8s. Especially on small prints with overhangs this will make a difference in quality. Like your work, looks very cool and bit creapy cheers, Gijs

You could also try increasing the flow slightly and / or disable your cooling fan.