shurik

"nothing on the print head is touching the metal clips" - verified. We are good here. Hmm, reversed the glass plate so the sticker "hot" faces down now. After yet another re-leveling the patchy patterns did change but they are uneven yet. It makes me more and more suspicious as to the quality of the glass plate itself. Maybe, I will open a ticket to replace it. "This got me wondering if you are getting a constant feed through the extruder(?)." Well, we can't be 100% sure but the printer can definitely produce beautiful prints, especially if the bottom area is not too wide and is located near the center. Let's give me the weekend to play a bit more. Your ideas are all welcome, of course.

Thanks guys. Yes, I have to do re-leveling after every print, unfortunately, with the same results each time. It always comes out that the right side is too far away and if you look at the pictures, it seems like the surface is uneven - there are some "bubbles" closer and farther from the printhead. Not quite sure what else can be done. :-(

OK, I give up - can't level my UM2 properly. No matter what and how I try, it always comes out to this (two different prints, few days and few re-levelings apart): No exceptions. To make the things worse, I have to re-level after every print, even if I do not take the glass off. As you can see, there's a bigger gap on the right - well, it is always this way, regardless of my leveling efforts. There is always a bigger gap on the right. Another thing is, during the leveling, the front of the printing plate can go up and down a tiny bit, since it sits freely in the air. This causes the paper always slip with little effort under the print head. When paper is removed, however, the glass can actually touch the head, leaving zero gap. This can be easily avoided by keeping an eye on the gap. I'm starting to get desperate and suspicious - would anyone suggest how this can be fixed?

Nope. Not in my case, at least. Speaking of which - what type of the tape should I look for in the nearest Home Center?

DonMilne - one pic worth 10 posts. :wink: More seriously, you just wait till the glass is cold - then the print simply snaps out with no effort. The only trick is to have the patience to wait. Other than that - my first prints were a total mess. Then, slowly playing with the parameters and using this forum as a guide, the quality improved. Hope, you will get better results in a couple of the days.

Ohh, silly me - of course!

Hi David, This is exactly what I'm doing these days, too. Maybe, the thread here might help: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4319-prints-quality-improvements/ To make the long story short: Speed: 50mm/s Brim: Yes Head: 240C Layer: 0.1mm Outer walls: 0.8mm Flow: 80% - very important! Put it more, and you get underextrusion, dunno why. Bed: 60C - do not get over this. Filament: UM Blue. The result: perfect, I'm happy! Another precaution: you must carefully slice the model in Cura using Layers view and play with the advanced settings of "Fix horrible" in order to get the desired result. Good luck!

Mr. Waldorf, yellowshark - thanks so much for your help! Mr. Waldorf - Yes, I was referring to these links by Gr5. He did a very impressive job. However, the results are confusing for such a newbee like me. It seems like we can print 0.1mm layers at 120mm/s on 210C, which is unfortunately, not very realistic. I probably miss the point there, such a noob of me... yellowshark - it wasn't any particular scale, just a very first test on the brand new machine, to see how it works out. It seems that my prints will be probably the maximum size of the buildplate, bringing the total print time to 14-16 hours. :wacko: At the moment, I use the only available UM Blue, but ordered Colorfabb White which already passed the customs and should be here by tomorrow. What you say about the printing speeds echoing some of the advices here and it is depressing because of the printing times. Given your and others experience, it might be the only way. :( However, I run a test print yesterday-today with the following settings: Layer: 0.1mm Bed: 60C Shell: 0.8mm Head temp: 240C Speed: 60mm/s Flow: 100% Retraction length: 4.5mm Retration speed: 25mm/s with very acceptable results. The results were even slightly better when the speed was 100% (=50mm/s) and the flow was 80%. There were no underextrusions with these settings, and overall quality was excellent. I would love to try the Faberdashery filaments but their shipping costs are outrageously high, the Colorfabb and UM have much more sane pricings. Bottom line - it seems like I will end up using your suggestions. In the meantime, I will struggle a bit, trying to keep up the speeds a bit higher, in a hope to find an acceptable compromise. Your help is most appreciated!

OK, next step. Tried these over the last day and night, still underextrusion. Layers were 0.2mm, speed - 50mm/s. First, 230C: Then, 240C: Since these horisontal lines didn't go away, I set the feeder to 120% at some point, but apparently with no effect. First case, retraction length was 5.5mm and retraction speed - 35mm/s. For the 2nd try these were reset to the defaults - 4.5mm, 25mm/s. Should I play with these settings? Another thing was the clicks of the feeder. Normally, there is only slight squeaking of the filament roll as it turns slowly. From time to time, the feeder runs the filament back and forth, nnothing special again. But as it seems, there are some "clacks" from the feeder when it runs the filament back, and then - a stroke of the underextrusion. Not sure though, but I tried to follow this pattern for a while. All in all, there is need to provide consistent walls of acceptable quality. Any ideas are welcome. On the bright side, there's no slightest sign of warping or curved edges at 60C bed, brim or raft. Update - it's definitely the feeder. Set to print stretchlet at 0.2mm, 50mm/s. Very soon, the "clacks" come. When I put my fingers on the filament going into the feeder, I can normally feel it slowly going in. Then, all the sudden, the "clack" comes, instantly setting the filament a few centimeters back and causing the immediate underextrusion. What is it and how it can be avoided? My respects, Alexander P.S. Now run the stretchlet at 0.1mm, 50mm/s. I had to set the speed to 130% and the flow - to 60% in order to get rid of the clacks and the underextrusion. There were some formulas to try and determine the optimum flow rate, who can help me to set these correctly please? I'm a bit limited in time right now...

Witamy w UM community! Yes, there is a letter from Sander saying that they giving a coupon, but I'm yet to have any reply from anyone in UM as of how to get or use it. BTW, my wait time was slightly over 9 weeks. Now, as this fantastic machine did arrive, it's a pure magic happening in front of me. You won't be sorry, I hope!

gr5 - you were 100% correct. My shell was default 0.8mm. Once lowered to the recommended 0.4, everything went beautifully fine. Thank you!

Yes, Sketchup is in front of me. Will check the tinkercad, too. Looks promising nice. Many thanks! Off topic: Sander - would you please reply to my PM asking about the expected availability of missing filaments? The support email received no reply, either...

Hi there, As my 12-years old son obviously started to show deep and keen interest into father's new toy, there's immediate question of children-friendly, i.e. - simple software to create stuff for the printer. Can anyone suggest something suitable? We use Windows machines.

OK guys, that's quite a bit of the information to digest and to try. Really, this forum is one of the reasons to choose the Ultimaker. Just have to say to Mr. Waldorf - my luck is relative. :mellow: I only got blue filament, the UM didn't care to update me in advance that other colors are out of the stock, so we will resort to the regular roses meanwhile. :wub: So far, lowering the bed temperature to 60C did the trick - no more deformations! Will set the retraction settings as you suggest. In the recent prints there is still some irregular underextrusion - lines of holes in the walss here and there. Even at the sale height, i.e. - layer they might appear from one of the sides of the model. Will try to print with 230C to see if it helps. I really do not want to lower the printing speed from the current 50mm/s, on contrary - the printing times are already too high. Will attempt to reach some acceptable compromise at this speed, if possible.

To add to demontd's inputs, I received my UM2 after about 9 weeks instead of declared maximum 8 at the time of purchase, but this is in the past already. Together with the machine, I ordered a few more filaments. Guess what - they did not come. There was a letter from Sander, explaining that some colors are out of the stock and they will be sent at no cost once they're available. The problem is that I need these missing colors. If Sander or anyone could notify me in advance, there was plenty of time to get them from other suppliers. Adding more to the dissatisfaction, both Sander and the support did not reply yet to my question about the expected delivery dates - in 3 days. I am waiting...

gr5 - I appreciate your advice. It seems like you're always here to help. So, to combine both Ian's and your suggestions: Put zero on all two retraction settings and uncheck "Enable combing" (not sure what it will do, please confirm) Raise temperature to 220C - I could already see on other prints tried yesterday and today that it seems to be the optimum temperature for UM Blue The shell thickness was unchanged, so it is 0.8mm by default The speed is left on default 50mm/s One more thing - on some of the prints there is some curving inside, even like on this test: Is there a way to get rid of these?

He-he, "YIPPPPEEEEE" is not enough of the word... It is just like sci-fi came alive in front of me, it is unbelievable... To the best of my knowledge, the very first UM2 in Israel or among the very first ones, at least. I'm proud of myself. Many thanks for the inputs, will certainly try them. Leveling - yes, making leveling with flu fever is not going to get any good results. They should've mention this in the manual. :smile: About the retraction - do you refer to these settings: ? Would you recommend to put zeroes there? What about speed/temperature? Are they good as they are? Again, many thanks! P.S. Just FYI - I left you a message a while again, still shows as "unread" by you... Maybe, just missed it.

Well, I got stretchlet1 but it didn't print well - the inner edges are combined together, so it cannot stretch. Any other ideas perhaps?

First of all, I'm happy to say that my UM2 arrived yesterday, and even with some stickers with it. The machine is superb, running smoothly and quietly for many hours, real pleasure. Using UM Blue PLA, I print on glass, 75C and it sticks excellently. Now, to the business. Yesterday, 4-hours print of a toothbrush head holder run perfectly - cannot be better. Then, I left another build overnight - Brim, 0.1mm, 50mm/s, 75C bed, 210C head (I think - the default setting). Is it a leveling issue: ? Why did it get so much underextrusion from the middle of the print? Much appreciate your help.

One question, even more off-topic - there are some old 8mm Super films and I'm yet to find a good way to digitize them. There are still some services to do that on the Internet, but I'm reluctant to send this family treasure overseas with no real proof of quality. Any recommendations, perhaps?

gr5 - thanks! Was able to slice the stretchlet1 properly, but only using the "spiralize" - no other way.

Yeah, one day we will reach the point where 3D printing will be done in just one minute... Here's the link: http://sdrv.ms/1aUNs5M. It was taken from here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13505/#files. gr5, you beat me by a few minutes! :-) Well, just for the challenge - what should be done with the one I tried to make?

Hi there, Just wanted to prepare a simple stretchlet for print: And this is how it gets sliced: I played with different combinations of "Fix horrible" settings, most of them had no effect. One of the combinations printed everything as a solid block with infill everywhere. This weird slicer behavior was aslo experienced on some other models but there it was neutralized by the "Fix horrible" play. Here it can't be done. Can anyone help please? :ugeek:

Just thought here - we do have a pretty warm weather in general and even now in particular. These PLA things do not like the warmth, as it's mentioned in several topics. So, what settings should be tried for ABS? Shall I opt for ABS at all? What would be the ramifications?

Arrrgh! Sander - could you please put some of the stickers tomorrow in the box as you pack it? :wink: Ian, Nicolinux - it's +20C here BTW, herzlichen willkommen!