Dim3nsioneer

I can only confirm the advantage of a PVA brim instead of the PLA brim. This should be a default in Cura. @Tomhe / @KristelB what do you think? I usually don't change the horizontal expansion on the support in order to make it sturdier but the support join distance. I also find the prime towers for two different materials still a bit thin. I increase the thickness to 3-4mm.

PC and ABS adhere pretty well to TPU, maybe too well...

Most plastic materials become more brittle with time due to UV radiation. A pretty easy trick is to apply a layer of UV protecting lack. You also might keep in mind that Tough PLA does not have an increased temperature resistance.

If you have a problem with the adhesion between the two materials you may want to increase the thickness of the tower. With 4mm you usually should not have any troubles for recommended combinations of Ultimaker materials.

Take a note of the stone table next to the guy on the right. There every frame is tested to stand without play on a flat surface.

and connecting to this: do you test boxes with e.g. dummy printers inside by shipping to a place where you know that the risk of damage is high?

...and one from the inside (production) please... 😉

OK, I have a first question for Steve: What special challenges in production come with the new Ultimaker S5? I guess the significantly increased weight might be one of them? Maybe there are others?

+1 for an LTS release cycle. Currently, we seem to have a bug in Cura 3.3.1 for combing which leads to extremely long travels. That significantly increases print time. I don't know if that bug was already in the beta. If it was, it was not detected. That could mean the beta test period was either too short or the wrong people were testing the beta. However, @smartavionics has already produced a bugfix which is great (thanks, although it is a bit exeptional that a community member fixes bugs implemented by employed devs 😉). I hope we will soon get a V3.3.2 including this fix. As I was informed the bug was introduced with many other changes and could maybe not be detected by the Cura devs themselves. The more important it seems to me to have major releases at a much lower pace and bugfixes in between. More thorough internal testing and re-introduction of closed betas could also improve things. I'm convinced that changes have to be made. The current roll-out system with the extreme pace doesn't work very well. It was ok at the time when Cura needed to catch up to other slicer software but in the meantime it has improved a lot and the strategy should adapt.

Unfortunately, Ultimaker could not provide specific information about chemical resistance (something like a list of acids etc.) until about two months ago. Maybe this has changed in the meantime. For the PP it's pretty easy to find information just by Google. With Ultimaker Nylon and CPE/CPE+ it's more tricky as those materials are blends. So it would require information from the production partner. I would recommend to get in touch with your Ultimaker reseller and ask for a few pieces of those materials so you can test it in your lab for your specific application. This is probably the safest way to find out if they are suitable for you or not.

The random seam setting might be responsible for the blobs. Try to set it back to default, switch off z hop and make sure combing is enabled. Then check the layer view for unnecessary travels.

Btw. AA is not nonsensical in German: You can take it as "Alles Andere" (engl. everything else) so people just have to keep in mind that the BB core is for PVA only.

@Daid Can you comment on the reasons the aluminium build plate is not available before fall? I assume the reason lies somewhere with the material profiles?

https://ultimaker.com/en/careers/all-jobs

If I'm not wrong I take from this discussion it might be a good idea if Cura would define per layer a spot where would be a good point for a pause. This could be realised by adding some kind of special comment at this spot. If the machine has the need to make a stop, it stops at the next of those spots. A good idea imho; something which might become useful in future. If such a spot is e.g. on the infill one could even think about making some kind of prime purge where the filament is e.g. put into the opening of the sparse infill. As for a planned stop due to the remaining length on an UM filament spool: Well that number might be not that accurate, depending on how much you cut off, purged at loading or even used it on a non-NFC equiped machine.