svanbennekom

Hi all, First of all, very sorry to hear about these problems. You'd help us greatly in figuring out what the cause is by answering the following: 1 - What UM number is on the spool label? 2 - What batch number is on the small sticker? 3 - What settings are you using to print? 4 - What problems are you encountering?

It's also possible to use different gcodes. Assuming A=non conductive, B=conductive: 1. First you print an object with A. The print finishes 2. Switch material A->B 3. Then you print an object with B. You have to make sure that the position of the print is exactly on top of the previous print, and that the print head moves in such a way that it does not hit the previous print. Basically insert gcode so that the head moves above your previous print volume, and then moves towards the print area. Print finishes. 4. Switch material B->A 5. Similar to step 3, make sure your layers are exactly on top of the previous print and that your print head moves in such a way that it does not hit previous layers. This is workable even if the conductive material is not all in one layer, but it will be very laborious.

Dear US, We know you like the imperial system. However, the rest of the world has switched to a superior measuring system. Seems like it would be simple to switch.

Hoi Victor, Wat voor filament gebruik je? De printer gaat namelijk uit van 2,85 mm. Mocht je toevallig 3,0 mm gebruiken krijg je dus overextrusie. Meet voor de lol eens met een schuifmaat de diameter van je filament. Anders kun je met de flow setting spelen (lager dan 100% zetten) om hiervoor te corrigeren.

Hi Robin, This material has high melt strength. That means that you'll have to watch out with retraction heavy prints and print slower in general. I'd say try 40 mm/s @ 0.1mm and work from there. If you keep having trouble it might be a nozzle clog or your teflon is worn out. Hope this helps!

Replying in english because my german isn't that good: Check our shop soon for a new material called 'UPET'. It has a higher glass temperature and should survive the summer

Hi Mariem, Could be a multitude of issues unfortunately. You'll generally get grinding if: Your nozzle is starting to clog, so that the feeder needs to push harder but can't and instead grinds into the filament: Solution: Try to print an underextrusion cone, you can find them on the forum. Also try the atomic method to clean your nozzle. Your teflon is deformed, so that the same thing happens Solution: Open up your head and inspect the teflon, replace if needed. You do a print with alot of retractions (the material is moving back and forth alot) Solution: Tinker with your retraction settings The material you're using is too soft Solution: Try a different brand of material, or a different type Your feeder axis becomes too hot and heats the filament, which then loses stiffness and gives way Solution: Put a fan or it, or try a feeder design with a gear reduction And if you're unlucky: A combination of the above Solution: Reserve a sunday and stock up on pizza

Met direct drive doe je wel concessies aan de snelheid waarmee je kunt extruderen. De motor is dan namelijk snel gelimiteerd op koppel. Heb je al geprobeerd om herringbone gears te printen en die te gebruiken? Dan heb je als het goed is ook minder backlash.

Is this with a printerbot? It really depends alot on your setup. A good idea is to create a gcode that extrudes a certain amount of material, say 100 mm, and then measure what your machine actually extrudes. Multiply that by the average diameter of your filament, and you've got the total volume extruded. Divide by the diameter you've set in cura times a hundred and you've got the flow rate you should set, unless I'm mistaken or made a math error.

If you find such a website, please let me know :-P

Hi pikata, What brand of filament are you using? Is this a fresh nozzle, or have you printed other materials before this? Have you tried cleaning the nozzle using the atomic method?

We are aware that the nozzles wear down when printing materials with hard fillers. This is due to the nozzle currently being brass, which is unfortunately fairly soft. Whether this is what happened here, and the result of the glow-material, I cannot say, but it seems the most likely explanation at this point. Unfortunately it isn't possible to design something as an open system and foreseeing all possible use-cases, but we'll keep trying anyway

Regarding your original post, I think 0.2 mm x 50 mm/s should be attainable at 240 degrees on an UM2, going by some tensile testing I did on printed test bars.

You're spot on that the heat gradient is the killer. I've predominantly seen PVA glue used to combat warping. Other options are building a wall around your object that keeps in hot air, or modify your printer to be enclosed and heating it up to just under the glass temperature of the material. I'm not so sure whether your idea would fully work, since shrinkage is proportional to the size of the object, and changing the direction of your lines just changes the direction of shrinkage. Have you tried to write any gcode for it to do some experiments?

Try to find out who manufactured the spool and send it to them and ask for a new spool. If it's from a reputable manufacturer they'll probably send you one. If not, well, you tried. In the worst case situation you have spent 20-30 on information on where not to buy spools.

There's a very simple test you can do. If you scale your object 200%, and the error is still 0.3, then it is most likely bed leveling. If the error scales with the size of the object, then something else is going on.

Hey Jimbojoe, Reliability is one of our focus points for sure. Unfortunately, while we are working hard to find solutions, the technology is still prone to these problems. My guess is that some of these problems will stay for the years to come, even in high end printers. Stratasys has been working on this technology since the eighties, and their $50,000 printers still break down. Compare it with 2d desktop printing, which has been around longer and has seen much larger R&D investments. They've come a long way, but paper jams still happen. And these machines work with ISO-standard paper, with a set weight and dimensions. Many expect our printers to work with whatever brand of filament they throw at it. You can do alot to make these problems happen less. You're already cleaning your filament. Are you using 2.85 mm? Have you tried different suppliers? Different materials? PET+? Nylons? Fresh nozzle/teflon? I can tell you straight away that the UM2 is not the do-all end-all. But is it one of the most reliable, if not the most reliable fdm desktop printer out there right now? You bet!

Het tikken dat je hoort is de stappenmotor die stappen overslaat. Dat betekent dat het teveel kracht kost om het filament door de printkop te drukken. Dit heeft meestal een van de volgende twee oorzaken: - De kop is niet heet genoeg voor de snelheid waarmee je probeert te printen. Probeer een lagere laaghoogte en/of snelheid. - Er is een blokkade in de kop die extrusie geheel of deels bemoeilijkt In beide gevallen kun je de bowden tube (de doorzichtige buis) loshalen door de clip los te maken en de bowden tube te verwijderen. Je kunt dan met de hand filament in de kop drukken om te kijken hoeveel kracht het kost. Bij lichte verstoppingen wil dit nog wel eens helpen. Anders kun je met de zgn. atomic method proberen je kop schoon te maken. (even naar zoeken op het forum) In het ergste geval moet je je nozzle en een teflon deel vervangen.

Both machines had gotten new nozzles before this test. Yes, the quality of the printer and the adjustment is very important for getting a good result. But once you've adjusted your machine as such, there are large differences between different filament suppliers. We are doing our utmost to improve both machine and material.

In the case that you are printing with an SD card, it might be that your SD card is corrupted. If so, have you tried another SD card? And do you use 'safely remove SD card'?

Hey Nico, Great find! My guess is that by denting the filament you introduced stresses in the material. Polymers tend to exhibit relaxation and heating the PLA above its glass temperature allows the chains to move. If only we could change back entire prints into spools

Hi Nico! Van is my middle name, so, try again Well, we've seen that a well adjusted UM2 with a new nozzle and teflon part should be able to extrude PLA at 10 mm/s without problems. That said, in older printers differences between PLA's are highlighted. Some PLA's still extrude well, while others don't. I hope to be able to publish a report here soon where you can see the differences that I'm talking about. My main task at Ultimaker is materials research. This encompasses improving printing and understanding of new materials, as well as developing new materials! So if you have any serious questions about materials, drop me a message!

There seems to be alot of confusion going along in this thread! Let me please start off by asking anyone here to be careful with their claims. Speculation is fine, but please refrain from stating it as truth. As far as we know here at Ultimaker, there seems to be no issue with printing the PLA's we've tested at higher temperatures. We regularly print PLAs at 210-260 degrees, as others in this thread have done. JohnA is exactly on the mark. When you print faster, the material has less time to be heated, so higher temperatures are required. Keep in mind that thermoplasts degrade when you heat them. In fact the filament you have is probably already somewhat degraded with respects to the original base material it was made of. So obviously, when you print PLA at high temperatures, it will degrade faster. But that's bound to be true for *all* thermoplastic filaments! Also keep in mind that every PLA is different. There are different compositions out there, with different fillers, additives, etc. This makes it harder to find out what's going wrong when someone experienced failure with 'PLA'. If you read about such things, or experience them yourself, please, keep that in mind. The problem you have with your particular PLA might not be present with other PLA's. No doubt you've found out for yourself that certain colours give better prints, or that one brand is easier to print than another. I hope this clears up some of the confusion. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions!

Hi there, I'm in the process of designing a qualitative test for comparing the warping tendencies of different PLA's. If you experienced warping using PLA at bed temperatures of 50-80 degrees you would greatly help me by answering the following questions: Did you experience large scale warping in printing with PLA on a heated bed (Such as on the UM2)? What were you printing? What kind of warping occured? Good pictures are very much appreciated ofcourse! Any other input/insights are also very welcome. I'll post the test once it's finished so you can compare your PLA's at home.