anon4321

Unfortunately, yes. Contact support and see if they will provide you two new drivers. The heatsinks are important. You can stick them back on with this stuff (the alumina is cheaper and probably sufficient): http://www.arcticsilver.com/ta.htm Just note that you need a TINY little dot of the adhesive like less than a pin head. More is not better and will squeeze out onto the pins. I literally applied with a pin and if you have a glob of it on the end of the pin, it's too much. If you need replacements they are everywhere! search for stepstick or pololu driver. Be careful in buying as some will need the headers soldered on and a lot don't have the heatsink. You can twist of the heatsink from a dead driver, scrape off the adhesive and attach with AS TA. Or you can get them from the original source: Note: ALL the ones from pololo require headers to be soldered and do NOT come with heatsinks. http://www.pololu.com/category/120/stepper-motor-drivers The DRV8825 will probably work without a heatsink, while it is pin compatible, the default microstepping is different and you need to adjust some jumpers. I have two on the XY but they are heatsinked. The A4988 Black Edition is a nice upgrade with extra current carrying capacity and is pin and functionally compatible for drop in replacement (leave jumpers as there are). The green A4988 (the one sans the voltage regulator) is identical to the ones you have.

With two fans, the current draw is obviously higher. More current means more of a magnetic field which induces more noise in any nearby wiring. Since the problem is less at 100% when PWM is nearly no longer PWM (I don't know if 255 actually just goes full on or off for 1/255th of a cycle), it is probably due to noise. Twisting may help. If not try the cap, with a little larger value. I think it needs to be nonpolarized so ceramic is a good choice and small value ceramics are the ones always used near ICs for decoupling HF so are a good choice.

It depends. By wildly do you mean changing at a rate that is probably unrealistic (going from 200 to 207 in a blink of an eye and back down to 197 in a second blink)? If so, the fan PWM has been known to generate noise that causes the amp board to report wild fluctuations. Is the temperature change when the fans are at 100% (255) more reasonable? If so, it is probably electrical noise causing the amp to misreport. If it seems PWM related a few options - Always run at 100%. Separate the fan wires from the sensor wires as much as possible and keep the fan wires as far away from the amp board as possible. Twist as much of the fan wiring as you can reach. HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL: solder a ceramic cap across the fan connector pins on bottom of the shield. This should help squelch the high frequency generated by the PWM. I've done this and it seems to help but I wasn't very scientific about it. The value of the cap I used was small, I think 0.1UF

With the new UI, you have the target looking thing which allows you to move the head in the XY direction with the outer rings cause more movement. To the right of that is a bar that allows you to move the Z axis away from the head using the top portion (increase Z) or towards the head using the bottom portion (decrease Z). The closer to the ends of the bar you click, the more movement is done. Finally, to the right of that is the same construct for the E or extruder. See note below then use the top portion of the E bar at the 1mm section (I believe that this is the second segment from the middle) to feed the filament through the controller to ensure that the controller and drivers etc are working. NOTE however that the software has a special "cold extrusion" protection function that prevents the extruder from feeding unless the nozzle temp is something like 180 (or 170 not sure). So be sure to heat the nozzle up to something like 200 before attempting to test. You can do this by entering 200 in the temp box that is towards the middle of the dialog. NOTE that you need to "click out" of the box to get the value to be sent to the printer (or just "tickle" it by clicking the small arrows to bump it up and down by 1 degree).

What are the parameters you are using (temp, speed etc)?

Why does the UM version also seem to have a mix of two filaments? The roof has a slight bit of what looks to be the color used for the other prints?

Make sure you look at the model in Cura's layers view. This shows the actual toolpath from the generated gcode. Sometimes the slicer which is a separate process will remove small detail. Due to the separate process, only the layers view shows this. The other views aren't aware that the slicer removed part of the model.

If the filament absorbs water, it can go to steam during extrusion and cause this. What type if filament are you using, how old is it and how was it stored and for how long? Do you have other filament you can try?

The fan is controlled as part of the print. For the first couple layers, it is off and slowly goes to full speed as the part is printed. You need to prime the extruder until PLA extrudes under a little pressure. The start sequence will extrude a little more to be sure and print what is called a skirt to ensure the pressure in the extruder is stabilized. What temperature did you set in Cura and does the reported temperature ever reach that value and stabilize?

Errr sorry, looks like adafruit has cables up to 2 feet / 61cm http://www.adafruit.com/products/1731

30cm flat cable, don't know if it will be long enough and don't know if you can go longer due to electrical reasons. http://www.adafruit.com/products/1648

http://iepas.net/using-pla-for-long-term-outdoor-applications/

So one thing to remember is that the first layer is usually 0.3mm. This is going to give you a little more blocky results when a round surface begins in the first layer. Basically, if you are printing on 0.1mm layers then the top of the inlet/outlets are printed at three times the resolution as the side that is towards the bed. I can think of three options. Others might be able to come up with other fixes. Reduce the first layer to the thickness of the other layers. However, if you go to a first layer of 0.1mm, level and distance to the nozzle is going to be very critical and difficult to achieve. Offset (outset) the core by 0.3 or 0.4 so the inlet/outlets are not part of the first layer. However, you will need to print with support and you will need to post process the support to remove and clean the area. You won't get a nice finished surface unless you finish it and it will be a different finish than the rest of the part. split the part in one or two spots and print vertically and super glue back together. For example split into three parts, the fin section and two end caps so the seam is somewhat natural when the end caps are glued back to the middle section of fins. Then print so the inlet/outlets are vertical so they are nice and round. You might be getting over extrusion. If you have calipers measure the filament size and set in Cura. Slight overextrusion will occur if the filament size is bigger than what you set in Cura. For example, Cura has 2.85 but the filament is really 2.95.

let's start a pool.... My guesses are heated bed kit for UM1 (duh) dual extruder for UM2.

Can you temporarily uninstall FreeCAD? looks like it is picking up stuff from the FC installation.

Been so long since I used the default "Print Window" UI but there is a progress bar at the bottom. Stupid question... Did you click Print in the print window? Less stupid, what does the temp read? Is it increasing or just reading room temp? Even less stupid suggestion, go to File -> Preferences and change the print window type to Pronterface. It is much better for interacting with the printer.

in my experience, the arduino and shield are probably fine. Something is causing the firmware into an error state as soon as it is reset. This trips up Cura's attempt to communicate with it. You might have better luck with getting more info using putty.

Hmmm I've seen the white squares when the temperature error occurs. Check the connections for the sensor all the way back to the board. Also try putty which will allow you to connect directly. The problem with Cura is if it doesn't get exacltly what it expects, it sequences through the baud rates. The might prevent you from seeing the error. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html You can probably update the firmware through the arduino ide. One way is to download the source, compile it and let the IDE flash the firmware. There are other ways but the IDE might be a little less technical. Source is here: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Marlin%C2%A0 If you don't have git, use the download zip on the right. Arduino IDE is here: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software See Compiling here http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Marlin_firmware_for_the_Ultimaker

In Cura go to the Machine menu and the open the Machine Settings item and review and set for your printer. Review the "Machine Center 0,0" setting. Change it and see if that helps.

Also look in output.txt in C:\Program Files (x86)\Cura_14.07

I don't think CuraEngine is the UI. Pretty sure it is the slicer. Try running Cura.bat from a command line to see if it gives you any information. The Cura UI is written in python and that is what the .bat starts.

sorry then I got nothing. You can get the version of Cura that was working at the link below and install it and then get the firmware from it and try flashing it through the Arduino IDE. http://software.ultimaker.com/?show=all Do you have the ulticontroller? Does it display any messages? You could try a terminal program like putty to connect directly and see if the print is outputting anything. speed will either be 250000 or 115200 Check the implicit CR with every LF option under Terminal and force local echo on.

Is it still stock? did you mod anything like a different extruder/hotend with a different temp sensor?

Do your have a heated bed and did you select the UM1+self built heated bed option (possibly by mistake)? If so, Cura flashes the firmware for the soon to be released UM1 heated bed upgrade. The problem is that the upgrade uses a different temp sensor than most self built kits. This means the firmware is basically wrong for a self built bed. This causes the firmware to immediately enter a BED TEMP error mode. If you have a self built bed, you can rebuild the firmware and reflash it and the printer will work. However, in my case, for reasons I don't understand, I needed to remove the arduino and use the arduino IDE to flash the firmware as Cura was completely unable to communicate with the printer

Cold bed + Blue tape will work with XT. See this for more info: http://learn.colorfabb.com/print-_xt/