chrisr

Thanks Harold. I'll try the atomic clean :-) - I did measure the XT with a vernier before I loaded it and it's pretty much spot on 2.85mm which is the setting I have in Cura. But thanks for the heads up! I'm using the ZETOFF fan shroud (http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/8003-fan-base-improvement/) fantastic with PLA, and I saw a considerable improvement (for the UM robot especially around the ears) with PLA prints looking generally just "sharper" around the edges. But I found that anything above a fan speed of ~40% with it and the head had difficulty holding it's temperature. So I tend to stick with 30% as "full on" I'm wondering whether it's something about white, as I had a lot of trouble printing with UM's white PLA. The silver on the other hand was perfect.... ?? Onwards and upwards (or in my case probably sideways) ;-)

I printed Marvin solid, I left the infill overlap at the default 15%. When I've aborted prints, the infil always seemed to be well connected to the walls, so I donlt think it could be that. Thanks for your help by the way. Maybe I just have a dodgy reel of white XT... :???:

I'm subscribing to this topic. I'm having real bother getting white XT to print out neatly. http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2679-using-new-colorfabb-xt-transparent-pla/page-5

In folks experience, is the transparent version of the new XT generally easier to print with (for small detailed parts with overhangs) than the coloured versions?

I tried your settings Harold and this is the result I got. I watched while it printed. Part of the problem is the overhangs. XT curls up on the edges. So on the next pass of the head this curved up part is forced to flex downward, resulting in that (underside) surface becoming rough looking. Sometimes small blobs are picked off by the head and pushed around. I've seen this curling on fill with a larger more complex print I did which had 30% fill. The edges of the fill wicked/flexed up and (generally looked terrible) When the head did its travel move over the fill, they had hardened enough for the head to bump into them giving the bed a noticable shake. You could hear the "thump" as well... which was a bit worrying... Yesterday I printed out a large hollow cylindrical spacer (in XT) at 70mm/s, 240C, 0.2mm height, No fan and it came out absolutely perfectly. There were no overhangs or fill I guess. I think if I can cure the "curling" I'm seeing I will be closer to getting XT printing more reliably. It seems to be a much fussier material to print with than PLA. Any suggestions, anyone? :smile:

Wow, I've been getting nothing like that for small/detailed parts with XT. The Marvin looks incredible. Was that at 232C/234C ? It's late here but I will definitely be trying your settings tomorrow.

Is this with the newer XT? I just don't seem to have any success with printing small parts slowly. In fact, the slower I go the worse they come out... I will give your settings a try though- thanks for posting them.

Good advice! Until I read this I was finding getting the settings right for XT really tricky. I'm using this http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8757 as my calibration print and fast speeds (70mm/s and 0.2mm layer height) with fans at 30% produces a much better looking print than slower speeds and smaller layer heights. Printing faster as well seems to have got rid off all the stringing I was seeing before as well. I'm using 240C with the glass bed at 80C which seems to help XT stick quite well to the glass without any glue etc., printer is UM2. Thanks! :smile:

Ah! Thanks I'll try it with that :-)

Just downloaded pauseAtz.py, TweakAtz.py, swapAtz.py. Placed them into the plugins directory but they're not showing in Cura (14.10 RC4) Is there another step besides copying them into Curaplugins folder that I'm missing?

It looks as if the filament feed is starting to "skip" towards the end of your print. Here's some thoughts :-) Which model of UM feeder do you have in your machine? There's a UM updated version available which was designed around mid-year this year to help prevent underextrusion. I'm not sure when that saw it's way into shipped printers though. The newer version has a metal grommet at the feed start and some internal changes to remove friction. It works very well. I'm using that version with no problems, so it may be worth checking to see if you have that in your machine. There are lots of alternative feeder versions by some very talented folk here... IF that's the cause of the problem.... Are you using filament supplied on a spool? I tend to turn the spool a little while I'm printing every now and again just to free and loosen the coils to 'help" the curvature a little that the filament has to follow into the bowden tube. If you're using a spool, are you reaching the end of your filament when the problem occurs? The filament is more tightly curved then. Does the spool turn freely? If you're using loose coiled filament how do you have it placed? Have you tried increasing the temperature of the extruder? What speed are you printing at? What's the filament? The "upgrades" I've done to my stock UM2 so far and have had perfect prints every time with PLA, are 1. UM Upgraded feeder (Ultimaker design) 2. UM Glass filled coupler 3. Zetoff fan improvement Hope this helps some :-)

Wow! Just completed a couple of prints with this fan base design. My prints are coming out notably "sharper" looking with better defined edges compared with before. Seriously pleased with this. Thank you very much Feik :-)

Thanks Guglielmo, that looks to be printing out perfectly! It continues to amaze me what the UM2 is capable of :-)

Guglielmo, in this orientation? Having pealed my print off, it took a lot of sanding to make the front look acceptable and neat to the eye. Frankly the over sized "ZETOFF" lettering just makes the whole thing look like crap marring the front face. I'll try printing this again in your orientation tomorrow. My main concern in orientating the print as I did was to ensure that the important air channels printed out faithfully.

Ok, I printed this "upside down" from the orientation that Cura loads it. i.e the ventilation grill sits on the glass plate (see photo) I used support "touching buildplate" (35% fill, 40mm/s) With the part "upside down" Cura estimated the build time as 3hrs 54mins, with the part "normal way up" 5 hours 45 mins. Quite a difference... as well, the only support material I have to cut away upside down is around the ventilation grill. I aborted the print when it reached the two "tangs" which I guess are there to just tidy up the fans wiring? You can see this in the photo as the two cross hatched areas on top of the print. Couple of suggestions: 1) Loose the tangs. They're not really necessary (imho) and just add complexity to the part. * 2) Can you make your ZETOFF label a little smaller? (it's a bit in yer face) and just adds extra complexity. 3) You could probably loose the ventilation grill altogether and just have a hole in its place. I hope these observations are helpful.. I'm really pleased with the print and can't wait to fit it to my UM2 and try it out. Really nice job Feik in putting this together! :smile: (Edit * or are these for the heat shield... oops me bad - they are for the heat shield)

Nice fan design, :smile: very tempted to print this out and try it! Basic questions: which orientation do you print this in? did you use supports? Also, where are the details for the heat shield which gets mentioned (and where does the shield go)? https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.youmagine.com/uploads/image/file/46629/Shield-20140508.png

Just took the plunge and ordered a roll of white (and a few other colours) each from Faberdashery and ColorFabb. Thanks for the advice all. I think one of the items I'll shortly be printing is a wide filament holder from Dim3nsioneers suggestion. @Daid: Interesting about the lower temperature band of ColorFabb - that's good to know :-) @DonMilne: Strange as I had the opposite experience with UM's white. The silver printed beautifully on the default settings, not so the White. I had a real struggle with the first few meters of it, I just couldn't get it printing nicely despite trying various temperature settings and speeds. I was on the verge of giving up with it and then curiously, after the first few meters had gone through the printer, it seemed to "settle down" and now prints quite well (210C/65C/40mm) alhough the silver still produces better results for me. Looking forward to trying out ColorFabb and Faberdasherys filaments. All fun! :-)

I'd like to order some more 2.85mm PLA filament. I'd prefer to stick with UM's silver (or white - now that I have that printing ok) but I'm hesitating ordering directly from the shop (sorry shop - I don't trust your service) so I'm wondering which other filament manufacturers forum members have had good experiences with and would whole heartedly recommend :smile: Faberdashery and ColorFabb are two which seem to get a lot of mentions (+ve and -ve) quite often here... Are there any other manufacturers folk have tried with good results?

That would be v useful :-)

Now that I'm designing my parts with a 3D printer in mind and having completed some dozen or so designs. Watching the head outline the part and place circles for the holes to be, before filling in around them and building the part up, the precision of it all still amazes me! There's something about the magic of seeing a part I've designed take form in front of me. I'm hugely happy with my UM2. Just wanted you to know. Ultimaker, you guys rock! :cool:

Hey! Gloucester as well (Hucclecote) but shortly to be Newnham :-)

Daid, does this require the firmware updating as well? Or has only Cura changed? Currently running firmware from Cura 14.09. (UM2)

:sad:

The Try setting the communications manually in Cura. Their default is set to AUTO which always seems to cause problems when you try to update the firmware. The settings are in the machine/machine settings/communication settings/ tab in Cura Hopefully that will work for you :-)

Maybe this thread may be of help? Specifically try manually setting the machine settings under the machine/machine settings/communication settings tab in Cura. http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/6297-help-lost-firmware-to-um2/