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Here is my collection of cylinders. My wife thinks I am nuts for keeping them. I couldn't prove my point if I didn't. Here is the breakdown: 2 X 10 - perfection 2 X 9.5 - had a small error in the 10 ring 2 X 9 2 X 8 1 X 7 2 X 6 2 X 5.5 - a small error in the 6 ring 5 X 5 2 X 4.5 4 X 4 4 X 3.5 10 X 3 6 X 2.5 - errors started in the 3 ring There are some silver cylinders in the picture. That filament came from Makershed. The best silver cylinder scored 3.5. I'm tired of printing cylinders. So I tested a C-130 part. I printed a part at 4mm3/sec at 240C with the blue Ulitmaker filament used in the above picture. Over a 40 minute print there are 2 major underextrusions and several minor ones. I printed the same part again at 1.6mm3/sec and 240C with the same filament. That part came out perfect. Right now the same part is printing at 1.6mm3/sec at 230C. The first 25% looks good.

Aaron, you liked my previous post? Really? Was it A - The fact that my printer is "bad" B - My reference to "comfort beer" C - The clever beer quote - already used by me once before. or is it D - The awesome detail of my reporting Given your obvious scientific nature, I'm guessing "D." If "D" is the correct answer just wait, I'll have a picture soon that will blow your socks off. "B" and "C" are also obvious choices. If it was "A" then may the fleas from 1000 camels infest you and your cat. :cool:

We've all been thinking about this topic a lot. I came to a disappointing conclusion today. I have one of the "bad" printers. I have been printing cylinders for a week or so and have 2 or maybe 3 that are 100% correct. The rest of my pile of cylinders are much shorter. I'll have to count tonight when I get home. (I will count/monitor my "comfort beer" consumption as well.) I've tried many different configurations for my machine with seemingly random results, always at 230C, 65C bed temp and 100% flow. Almost all prints used the Ultimaker PLA that came with my UM2. When I did get a perfect cylinder it was always the first print of the session when the printer had just been turned on. On subsequent prints I would get maybe an 8 then a 6 then a 4. I never got 2 perfects in a row. I realized that although I have 200+ hours of print time I think all of that time was spent at 3mm3/sec or lower. I reviewed my posts on my C-130 project and discovered that the first print I talked about was at 75mm/sec and a .1 layer height which is 3mm3/sec. I don't remember the temp but I'm sure it was above 240, most likely 250. It was underextruded. Maybe from burned PLA, maybe not. People advised me that was too fast so I slowed down. Thinking more about it, I think most of my prints were at 2mm3/sec or less. Other than the test cylinder, I have never made a print that had a layer height other than .1. I simply have never tried to get my machine to print very fast. It was only when I started printing cylinders that I discovered I had a significant problem. I bet if I had tried to print the cylinder when my UM2 was new I would have the same poor results. I now have a 3mm drill bit and will inspect the teflon piece tonight. It doesn't feel bad when I am cleaning the nozzle with the heat up, cool down, stuff in, pull out technique. I will also try a squirt of WD-40 in the tube. Thinking about the idea of loosening the 4 head screws, I have some O rings that fit nicely onto the screws. I will try putting the O rings on the screws then assembling the head. It might be that the O rings flex just enough to absorb extra pressure on the filament - doubt it. My final idea is to check the feeder motor. I think all of the motors are the same. If so I should be able to swap the feeder motor with another. Beer. It helps things not suck.

I keep thinking about why people report such random variations and why my machine seems to get worse the longer it is on. No ideas just lots of cylinders. Different color cylinders, tall ones, short ones, perfect ones, etc. Not very many perfect ones. Illuminarti, you mention your experience with several machines and only 10% are less than ideal. Were these machines new or almost new? I don't know for sure, but I'd guess my machine has over 200 hours logged, maybe even 300. It started out awesome but keeps getting worse. Several people seem to have the same report. Idea for a feature: Add total print hours in the maintenance section. If it is there, I couldn't find it.

I had a great idea!! Not a fancy solution, but a simple work around. Worked great at first then got progressively worse. Nevermind. It seems my machine gets worse the longer it stays on. Go Team!! Go!!

If English is not a familiar language for you, my post above is only a joke. There is no such thing as a Turbo Encabulator. According to Wikipedia, the Turbo Encabulator dates back to 1944. Who knew??

A buddy just had an awesome suggestion!! It is so obvious I'm shocked no one has considered this. I will get to work right away modifing my UM2 for the Turbo Encabulator upgrade. I think I have a source for the Spurving bearings which will need to be smaller than the original design. Given the overall "geeky" nature of the people participating in these topics I suspect most of you are familiar with the Turbo Encabulator. For those of you who have never heard of this amazing device here is a link:

I did the cylinder print and have happy/sad/mystery results. First I cleaned the nozzle by heating it up, stuffing in filament, cooling to 90 then pulling out filament. (This technique needs an official name. Maybe after the person who first posted about it, who ever that is.) I have mentioned previously that I am not very patient sometimes. The nozzle heats up nicely, but cools way too slowly. I have been dipping a paper towel in water and holding it against the nozzle to cool it off. Unless someone says this is a really bad idea, I will keep cooling it that way to speed up the process. Did that several times until the filament came out the same color as it went in. Next I inserted a steel wire that measures .37mm into the hole. That is as clean as I can get it without soaking in acetone or something else. I loaded the Ultimaker blue PLA that came with my UM2. The spool is below the printer hung on a piece of pipe. Set temp to 230 and waited. The extruded started skipping at 7mm3/sec. I then switched to some PLA I purchased from Makershed. It behaves differently. Did the same test. Skipping started at 4. I switched back to the blue and waited. My wife said something about me paying more attention to the printer than her. I'm not really sure what she said. I was listening for the extruder to skip. This time it finished the cylinder 100% correctly, all the way to the top!! When it was done she said maybe she should get some toys of her own so she could entertain herself. I'm not sure what that meant, but it didn't sound friendly so I quit for the night. This morning I tried again. Nothing had changed from last night, just the time of day. The blue was still in the machine. I started and waited. As I sat there I heard the spool quickly unwind. The sound it makes when the filament explodes off the spool if you don't hold it tightly in place. Right after that happened there was an extruder skip. It was at the top of the 7 ring. I aborted and started again with the blue as always at 230C. The extruder started to skip at the top of the 5 ring. My conclusion from this is that the position of the filament as it goes into the extruder is very important. Most of you likely have the same conclusion. I will try again with the spool on the stock spool holder to see what happens. My plan is to print a cylinder and abort when the extruder skips. Clear out the machine and print again several times in a row. Hopefully I can get 3 or 4 cylinders that fail at about the same place. The randomness of my cylinder tests so far is confusing. I have also concluded that my UM2 can be awesome. Hooray!! It is a little tricky to get to awesome however. The filament must be aligned properly with the extruder, Jupiter and Venus, and the lunar gravity must be at a right angle to the polar vortex above The Netherlands. As I said before, I cannot offer much other than confirming results on my machine. So I say "Go team! Go!"

Ha Ha!! Mr Waldorf said "comfort beer." One of my favorite quotes, "Beer. It helps things not suck." I sure do hope this gets solved soon. I'm trying to design a plane that will actually fly. I'm losing time reading all the theories people are looking into. I thought I was pretty good. Compared to you folks working on this I'm just so average. All I can offer is "Go team. Go." I'll have some comfort beer tonight and ponder my averageness.

As an RC modeler I also use cyanoacrylate (CA) glue. I use it for almost everything I need to glue. I really like the thin instant variety which every hobby store should have on the shelf. It is like water and penetrates well. If you have a joint that needs extra strength, pack ordinary baking soda around the joint then add a few drops of CA. You must use thin CA or it won't go into the baking soda. It sets up instantly, adheres to almost everything and is so hard it takes a power tool to sand it. Watch out for white vapors that exist from time to time. If you get that smoke in your eyes they will hate you for a few minutes.

Something to consider. I know people use various dust filters around the filament. I don't know if they help or not. Your current design does not seem to allow these filters to work as intended. I suppose something could be set up to hold the filter away from your bearings above the power cord.

2 more ideas. I would like to change the infill % at certain times during a print. For example, I recently printed a pirate ship. I selected 20% infill in Cura. That was fine for the hull. The masts needed 100% because I broke all 3 off when cleaning up the model. In the layer view of Cura I see that the deck ends at layer 164/1104. The default infill would be 20% for the hull. I want to tell Cura that begining at layer 150 I want the infill to be 70%. Then at layer 160 I want to switch to 100%. I have learned how the volume of filament/sec is a nice thing to know for print quality. (Layer height X nozzle dia X mm/sec) How about a field in Cura that does the math for you. The field could change from green to red to indicate the expected quality. The color would need to change at different rates based on which machine is selected and would only be a guideline. I also like the first of the 3 screens and agree it shouldn't be a priority.

Finished reading the topic suggested by Ian. I had no idea that was going on. Good stuff, talented people. I'll do my best to be quiet and wait patiently. BTW the print in the photo I included above turned out very nice. .5/10 Blarps.

I thought I was on to something. You can see several spots where the extruder skipped on the first layer. Note they are bigger and more frequent the further the print head got from the home position. I watched layers 2 and 3 print 100% without error. I have not been watching, but for the last hour I have not heard any skips and everything looks great when I stop by for a look. Just another confusing observation I guess. First layer printed at .8mm3/sec the rest at 2mm3/sec at 240C and 100% flow. I don't blame the folks at Ultimaker for being silent on this issue. Admiting there is a problem with their new baby would hurt sales and give competitors an advantage. Maybe they have and I just missed it. It would just be really reassuring to know there are people working on this issue whose paychecks and reputation depended on a solution.

I'll try lower temp next time.

My print above turned out pretty good. I used the Makershed filament. Stayed with the above settings except I lowered the extrusion to 95% because I heard the clicking. I give my recent print 2/10 Blarps. Just a few underextruded holes.

Yep, I did the heat up the nozzle, stuff in filament, cool to 90 then pull out gunk trick and got quite a bit of brown burned PLA from the print mentioned above. Did that trick 4 times. On the 4th time it still was pulling out some brown PLA. I guess 30+ hours at 250C was just too much. My son was excited to get one of his prints going so I started a new one a few hours ago and left for work. 245C, 60mm/sec, 100% extrusion and .1mm layer height. Thats 2.4 mm3/sec which I know is very slow. When I left everything looked fine. I should mention the PLA from the above print was purchased from Makershed. It definetely behaves differently than the PLA that came with my UM2. Sorry for so much belly aching. I just had no idea that nozzle cleaning and maintenance would be such a big issue. Those of you who have experience with the original Ultimaker, was the nozzle such a problem with that machine?

I mean the radius of the filament as it got closer to the inside of the spool. It is wound tighter. I have never measured the diameter of the filament. I was using filament from Makershed. Printed Solid and printbl did not have any colors I wanted. I agree with your statement about filament variations. I have not had nearly as much trouble with the filament that came with my UM2. I just hate the color - blue. Since I have moved to plan B the color of the material won't matter since I'll be painting the plane when it is done. I'll use up the stuff from Makershed on experimental prints and get something else for the keepers. I will also say that I have had excellent results with the filament from Makershed. Those results were just very random. I will attempt to get the Makershed filament printing more reliably. My next plan is to put it on the floor as suggested by gr5. Hopefully in the near future Ultimaker will have a solution for the underextruding. I'm convinced this is a wide spread issue and not limited to a few machines. After my trials and errors on this project I do not think a plastic extruder type printer, FDM, can create a successful RC plane. At least not the way I was doing it trying to create a 100% scale plane 100% from printed parts. The skin and other sections need to be so thin that the individual layers cannot adhere well. The minium thickness I was working with was .8mm or 2 passes of the nozzle. The math indicates it would be way too heavy as I designed it. The very thin skin just wasn't strong enough over the surface areas I needed. It may be that one of the professional grade printers can make this work. This is just a hobby for me and I'm not willing to pay to have the parts printed on one of those machines. I bet that if I try this again in the near future a desktop machine will be able to do what I want. I guess I had better keep the files from plan A for the future. Lost sleep last night trying to figure out how to design the ribs so I can easily make them line up with the skin of the original plane. I think I have it figured out. It will take me a few months to redesign the thing but the parts will be able to be printed in MUCH less time. I think I have it figured out how to skin it with balsa and have the balsa line up perfectly with the printed sections I will keep for their detail. Sorry Europe but I'll have to use 1/16 inch balsa. They don't sell metric balsa in the US at least not at my hobby store.

After a booth review, my print above gets a perfect score of 10/10 Blarps. When I removed it from the build plate the layers had terrible adhesion and the whole thing was flimsy. The "fuzzy" final layers came completely apart.

I give up on plan A. I pulled the most recent print off of the base and discovered it is totally flimsy with really poor adhesion between layers. I think I will go with the plan of skinning it with balsa. Stay tuned for the next few months as I redesign. So much for getting this done for this summer.

Just had another thought. Has anyone looked into mounting the extruder directly on top of the X/Y axis thing, whatever it is called? It seems possible to get it there without much effort. That way you would just shove the filament straight into the heater. The axles seem strong enough for the weight of the stepper motor.

For those of you who have not been following my C-130 topic I offer the following gem: Cura said the print would take 28 hours. I started in Cura with a print speed of 60mm/sec and .1mm height. The flow rate was 100% and temp was 250C. 60 times .1 times .4 equals 2.4 mm3/sec as programmed in Cura. The night before I had a print come out perfect with those exact settings. The only thing that changed was the filament radius on the spool. Early on in the print I heard the extruder skipping so I lowered the print speed to 80% or 1.92mm3/sec. Still heard the skipping so I went to 70% or 1.68mm3/sec and went to bed. Woke up to this. My filament was on the stock spool holder. I'm changing that tonight. I've been watching the olympics almost every night - except for figure skating. I'm inspired by the scoring that goes on. I propose a failed print scoring system based on the blarp. Things like print time, print speed, and if the print is a total failure will be considered. I give this print 9/10 blarps. Took over 30 hours and had a really low total extrusion speed. I'll still use it and will fill in the gaps with balsa filler.

There should be no problem strength wise. It is a little hard to tell in the photo, but you can see one of the tubes that will house a carbon fiber arrow. I previously questioned how you can get great results one day and then use the same settings the next and get crappy results. I thought nothing changed. I may be a little slow on this but I realized the spool is changing. More importantly, maybe, the radius of the filament is getting smaller. I don't think the smaller radius would cause the blobs though. My retraction settings have never changed from the factory settings. This was my first experience with the blobs. Why does everything have to be so hard?

Well blarpidy blarp!!! Of all the blarping blarp blarpishness! Went to bed with about 8 hours left to print. Got up and found this. BLARP!! My printer must have a huge gremlin. I won't reprint it. Not wasting the time. I'll use it and fill in with balsa filler. I'm sure it was skipping. It makes a totally different sound. 60mm/sec was my programmed speed in Cura. I had slowed it to 70% with the UM2's controller. Now that my math has been corrected I was printing at 1.68mm3/sec when this happend. Blarp. I'll try something different with the spool.

Nope, lowering the temp resulted in more extruder skipping and no change in the blobs. The "standard" olympics are almost over. I really hope I can get coverage of the para-olympics for the next week or so. Those people are awesome!! Stupid gravity. Long live beer. I just heard another extruder skip.