calimero

Hi everyone, A few days ago the nozzle of my UM2 got completely clogged halfway through a 18-hour print. When I woke up and went to check how the print was going (approximately 3 hours from the estimated end), print head was hovering approximately 3 or 4 cm above the print. It looked like extrusion had just been disabled with the print looking very decent. Anyway I decided to try the heat up/cool down/pull out filament method to clear the nozzle. I then tried using a small 0.30mm drill bit (smooth end, not the drilling side) and ended up with PLA oozing around the drill bit. But the nozzle would still not clear. Moved to a 0.40mm drill bit with no better luck. I then decided to take the printing head apart. I left everything connected so that I ended up with the fans, head "frame" and nozzle dangling around. I headed the head up to 200° and using a bronze brush I managed to clear the nozzle by getting one or two bristles in the nozzle. I could now see through the nozzle. Once everything was put back together, bed was leveled (the type of paper I use is probably on the thick side because I need to have the nozzle almost scrape it to get some decent first layer adhesion) I printed for 15 minutes a 260° to try and clear leftover gunk. But it seemed the nozzle was not completely clean. When extruding (using the "Move material" feature from the maintenance menu), PLA would curl right when exiting nozzle. I read somewhere that this is typical of partially clogged (or unclean) nozzles. Anyway I decided to try again my 18 hour print. Actually more like a 23 hour print. I decided to use meshmixher to generate support structures. While meshmixer's light "tree" would help cut printing time I decided to print with 0.1mm layers and 100% infill which increased printing time overall. Here's what I got after 23 hours: Some of meshmixer's support "trees" just collapsed. I suspect the "curling" caused such failures ? As you can see there's a lot of "spaghetti extrusion". Surprisingly the print itself ended up very decent even with the failed support structures. I'm pleased with meshmixer even if the print failed to some extend. I was able to just snap the support "trees". Some minor sanding will clean things up. Before the clogging I had been able to print some decent "bridges" which I suspect would now fail. - Is this caused by a partially clogged/dirty nozzle ? - Should I try a few more head/cool/pull cycles to try and get the nozzle clean ? - How can I take the nozzle completely apart (disconnect it from the print head) so that could completely clean up the nozzle ? (burn gunk away with my gas kitchen stove ?) Thanks for your help.

Now that I have a 3D model of the missing wheelhouse of my RC tug boat (see page 75), I needed to add doors, obviously. Just a quick test print to make sure the hinges work fine Door is 82mm*28mm*2mm. I should get ABS rolls from FormFutura by Friday(no news from UM the two ABS rolls I ordered with my UM2) and start experimenting with ABS printing.

Hi, I got my UM2 almost a week ago. It came with a roll of blue PLA but the two ABS rolls I ordered were missing as ABS is currently out of stock. I'm looking to buy some ABS filament to bridge the gap. Maybe throw in a couple of PLA rolls too. I ended up finding "Faberdashery" and "Colorfab" in other posts but from what I saw they only offer PLA. Then there's FormFutura that offers PLA, ABS, Nylon, Laybrick you name it. Anyone ever tried FormFutura's "Premium ABS" (27EUR/kg) ? Or their sooper-advanced "smartABS" (70EUR/kg) ? Is their smartABS worth it for bigger parts where warping may occur more easily ? Or is this just some marketing BS ? Or maybe any other supplier ? Thanks ! Calimero

Ultimaker : Printing nightmares since ... Nice modeling though ! :mrgreen:

My bad ! Fixed now. You T-800 skulls look great guys ! Love'em !

Hi guys and gals This is my fifth print with my UM2. And its the first "useful" print (previous prints were just tests). A little context first ... After almost fifteen years of storage at my parents' I've resumed build of an RC tug boat. Hull is a bit over one meter long. Back in 99-2000 we - my father and I - built the hull. Anything from the deck up was still in the boxes. Lots of ABS sheets with die cut parts. A few ABS vacuum formed parts for more complex shapes. Here's a picture of the finished model (from the kit manufacturer's catalog) And here's a picture of one of the actual tugs the model is based on. I haven't been able to find the wheelhouse which was clear plastic. That missing part was the tipping point when deciding to get a 3D printer (*). I'd been following RepRap on-and-off for years but didn't actually get one. Anyway, long story short here's the 3D model based on measurements on the 1:1 plan from the kit and pictures of the actual tug boat: Here's what it looks like once printed in PLA (and some deburring/sanding): I decided to print it upside down with the ceiling acting as a good "base" with Cura generating support structures. Printing took 15 hours. Settings: Layer: 0.15 Shell thickness: 0.8 Retraction: enabled Top/bottom thickness: 1 Fill: 100% Speed: 60mm/s Support: everywhere (and Cura means it !) Brim Temp: 230° Bed: 67° Total: 155g of material (114g if support is disabled) While the walls and windows look great I'm not really satisfied with the tapered faces at the top. Corners didn't print out very well. I'm wondering how to improve the print quality. I could print right-side up but that would have Cura add a lot of support material (Cura says 355g total, that's 220g of support material!). I loaded my model in Meshmixer and fiddled with the support tool. Suggested print orientation is tilting the wheelhouse 45° and adding very little support struts ... Might give it a try. (*) don't we all have some rationalization for our geek toys ?

Here's what it looks like on my UM2 (UM blue PLA @ 230°C): Upper (fastest) layers (High res 4752x3168/5.5MB) Complete test print (High res 4752x3168/5.5MB)

Will do. I'm in the middle of a 17h print right now. Bold choice for a fourth print but things look pretty good when I left home to go to work.

Well, that's what you call consensus I guess. I'll do another print with bed temp down to 70 or even 65° and maybe another print with a different fan angle. Right now it's printing my first own design for one of my RC boats. We'll see how that goes. Thanks for your swift responses, guys !

Continued ... Things get a little more interesting (or obvious ?) with the third video: If you skip to the 3 minute mark, you'll notice that the "serrations" ("rings" ?) of the robot's arm don't look the same on both sides. While the right arm (left of picture) is clearly defined, the "rings" of the left arm seem somehow fuzzy. It looks like it was at bit "squished" which I assume means build plate is not level ? What's your take ? Thanks for you help !

Hi everyone I just got my UM2 a few hours ago. I installed it and ran the setup steps including of course leveling the build plate. Here are three videos of my second print of the Ultimaker Robot test file (shipped on the SD card) with absolute default settings, with the supplied roll of blue PLA. Nothing "obvious" to me in this video. Different angle. Again nothing obviously wrong for my untrained eye.

Got it. The two extra rolls of ABS are missing. Only got blue PLA. Will start playing with PLA altough I mainly intend to use ABS. I assume ABS rolls will be delivered in the next few weeks (black ABS is in stock though, a little surprised it didn't ship).

Landed in Paris CDG a few minuts ago. Looks like I'll work from home tomorrow morning to be able to get the printer.

Hooray ! Got the shipment notification a couple hours ago. Might be printing stuff by the end of the week ! I ordered on Jan 30th.

Id recommend Maya. The polygon modeling toolkit is kind of intuitive, and it isnt hard to export models in *.stl format that work fine with Cura. The 3900 EUR price tag makes me a little reluctant, I have to admit. I've been fiddling with SketchUp but I'll also take a look at MOI and TinkerCad. Thanks for your suggestions. There's already a "what CAD software for noobs" topic in the CAD forum with some nice suggestions. Not going to hijack this topic.

Ordered 16th of January, expected Monday (Florida USA), assuming there are no hitches. Nice. Getting closer to my Jan 30 order. Worst part is that even with that 10wk lead time I haven't been able to get at least some basic 3D modeling skills (I'm a total noob both in modeling and 3DP !).