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In the current issue of MAKE, the UM2 came out on top: "Best in Shootout for overall print quality"! The old MakerBot Replicator 2 (last year's winner) came in second. The new MakerBot Replicator 5th Generation came in 5th after PrintrBot Simple Metal (3rd) and Lulzbot TAZ4 (4th) So it is conclusive, ... all the multiple issues I have been having with bad prints since I got my printer have most definitely mostly been due to my lack of skill and patience. With the possible exception of issues with Cura 14.09 :wink:

About a month ago I had a lot of trouble with creating a good print that seemed to be related to a poorly performing version of Cura. It was version 14.09. After I had posted about this Robert uploaded gcode for my model that he had created with Cura 14.07. When I then downgraded to 14.07 I was able the create the same gcode and print my model successfully. I am now still using version 14.07 What are people's experiences with version 14.12? Are the issues with 14.09 fixed or should I stick with 14.07? Were there no version 14.10 and 14.11?

illuminarti, Thank you for your explanation of how Cura (and probably slicers in general) interprets the multiple polygons of meshes that are STL files. That does not explain however how IRobertI, and I after him, was able to produce a near perfect print of the part in question with a setting for shell thickness of .8 mm in Cura 14.07, and I failed to do the same in version 14.09 The blue lines of the nozzle movement tell the story. I will try this next time I make this part, which I will have to do with slightly different dimensions. It seems counterintuitive to have to tell Cura to do it this way though as it seems a workaround for an issue that one would expect Cura and other slicers to understand, because the model the mesh was made from is a "closed solid polysurface" (Rhino lingo). I purposely chose .8 mm as the wall thickness, this being 2x the nozzle diameter, thinking that this would make things easier. Would Expert config > Balck Magic > Spiralize the outer contour achieve the same result?

I completed my prints for this project. I am very happy with the results. Here are a couple of photos. It is a funnel and coupler for a home made pastry bag from a large Ziploc bag. The Dutch people here may appreciate what I am making today as an appetizer for a Thanksgiving party we are going to today. Saucijzenbroodjes!

Tell me about it :wink: I reinstalled 14.07, loaded my .stl file and generated the gcode with your settings. Bingo! It showed the blue travel lines they way I wanted them, exactly as in your gcode. I then printed the part, and the result was exactly like yours, ... and the way I intended. The only, very minor, flaw are the spots where the Z axis travels down, where you get those bumps on the surface. However, in this case these bumps are much smaller than I have ever had them. I wonder if I activate spiralize these bumps may diminish or even go away. I printed at 190 degrees C. This is now the very first perfect print I have made since I have had this printer, which has been almost 6 months. Thank you very much for your support. Not just IRobertI, everyone who has chimed in too. I assume I the conclusion of this exercise is, ... Cura version 14.09 is defective.

shiremog, That is a very different photo than the one you posted yesterday. Your result is definitely better than mine, and as I stated earlier, it still shows a fair amount of internal artifacts. The kind of print I am after is like the one IRobertI showed. Obviously the hardware is capable of that. The blue lines in layer view tell the story.

IRobertI, When I load your settings, a weird thing happens. In Basic, shell thickness and bottom/top thickness are ,8 (comma) instead of .8 (period), but layer height say 0.1. You also seem to have no platform adhesion. Your travel speed in Advanced is also much higher at 250 than what I had at 150. Nothing seems to change in Expert config. What temperature did you print at? When I load my model with your settings in Cura 14.09 I still see blue lines all over the place and not at all like yours. I will try to reinstall 14.07 and see if I can get your results.

IRobertI, That looks absolutely perfect! I did not ignore your print, ... I was right in the middle of writing this response to you. You responded while I was writing my response. I got your gcode and opened it in Cura (14.09). In Cura I can only observe the model in layer mode, however I can see right away from observing the tiny blue lines, that this is exactly the way I wanted the nozzle to move. From the blue lines it is obvious that the nozzle only moves within the thickness of the wall, which is .8 mm thick, so it prints two passes side by side for each layer. Even when I set the fill to 0 and turn spiralize on or off like others have suggested, the blue lines in layer view are still all over the place for me when I load my model in Cura. Which will result in unwanted artifacts. Your gcode has none of that. Would you please tell me your pertinent Cura settings since I cannot see those from loading your gcode. I can only see that your layer height is .1 mm since your gcode gives me 320 layers. But I cannot see any other of your settings, like Basic, Advanced or Expert settings. I wonder if I can achieve your same results with Cura 14.09 or if I should downgrade to 14.07. That is why I would like to know your settings, to see if I can get the same results in 14.09 Please understand that I did not ignore your print, it is beautiful and exactly what I am after. I had just not completed this longer response yet. And of course I had to download and examine your gcode first too. I also spent a bit of time loading my model and trying to get to the same looking results for the blue lines as yours. I was not able to achieve that, which is why I would like to know your settings.

Frankly that print does not look a great deal better than mine. It still has plenty of artifacts internally that do not belong there.

I have tried to print this part at different settings and a different temperatures. All with the exact same terrible results. Material: PLA from Ultimaker. First attempt: Layer height: .1 Temp: 190 Speed: 20 Second attempt: Layer height: .05 Temp: 210 Speed: 20 Cura: 14.09 It seems obvious from the blue movement lines in Cura, that this is all wrong. This is a hollow circular part with a wall thickness of .8 mm, i.e. twice the nozzle size. The nozzle should just be moving in circles, and nothing else. It shoudl be laying down two passes of filament side by side per layer, and nothing else. Why does Cura create all those lateral movements and with it all those internal artifacts?

I have uploaded the st and gcode files as a small ZIP file to my Dropbox. The link is https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66542951/Funnel.zip

That's right. After 5 months of printing, I have yet to produce a flawless print. I am not expecting resin printer quality, but I was at least hoping for what I have seen FDM printers can do. This particular print with all the added internal artifacts now holds the record of my very worst print ever. Most of the time I don't even complain about the quality, I have more or less given up that I will ever be able to make this work. Since I use the printer mostly for prototyping, getting a rough idea of what a part will look like when fabricated is good enough for me. This particular part however was something that I will actually use as it comes off the printer.

Wow! "We're very bad at keeping them". Can't be bothered to update a web page, so the user base can read what to expect from a release.

I was extruding at the default temperature, whatever that may be, using Ultimaker filament. I would assume Ultimaker would know what temperature its filament to extrude at, so I decided to stay with the default as set by Ultimaker. But then again, today on a different page on the UM website when filling out a support registration form, where one field is marked as "optional", when I left that field blank and tried to upload the information, I got an error message telling me that the information could not be uploaded because one "required field" was left blank! What is wrong with these people?

I would not mind doing that, however I would prefer to first do what illuminarti suggested, if I know where and how to upload my stl and gcode files. BTW, the Ultimaker website is such a mess. When I was searching for a list with previous releases from where to download version 14.07 at https://www.ultimaker.com/pages/support/manuals, which is a page with manual. Go figure. BTW, this editor is a mess too. Every time I write a URL the text immediately following that URL becomes part of the URL. i.e. it is blue and underlined. WTF?

I'd be happy to. Where and how do I upload the STL and gcode?

Interesting to see that even though we are now at Cura version 14.09, on the Ultimaker website they have not managed to get up top date with the release note. The latest release notes on the site are for version 14.03. It seems that they don't even pretend to care anymore. And, ... ALL of my prints continue to have artifacts on the surface that do not exist in any of my models. Cura simply makes up stuff that does not exist. I simply no longer believe that it is I who makes this happen. I strongly believe the fault lies with Cura and/or this printer, which is nowhere near what I was expecting and promised. Here is yet another extremely bad garbage print of a very simple model. The entire inside surface is covered with these knobby artifacts that do not exist in the model and that Cura introduced. The entire inside surface, not just a spot here and there, the entire inside surface. This is insane.

Nallath, I would be happy to share the model with you. Where do I send it? I can send you the original Rhino model, as well as the stl file.

Valcrow, I am not expecting the same quality from my U2 FDM printer as I would from Shapeways or iMaterialize. I use my U2 for prototyping, and the resolution this printer can produce is very different from what I can get from those two service bureaus. That is a given. That is not even a point of argument. Having said that, I was not talking about the printer. I was talking about Cura. I do NOT expect my slicer to introduce geometry that does not exist in my model. That has nothing to do with my printer or the printer settings. And since I am now talking about printer setting. Changing the print speed via "Tune" while a print is active, does NOT change the print speed. And that is just scratching the surface of what seems to be wrong with this. I have been fiddling with underextrusion for months now. I don't even bring it up here anymore, because I have given up on that front. Sometimes prints are OK, and sometimes (without having changed any settings), prints are terrible. This is frustrating, because I now cannot offer my printer for use for printing other people's models, because I cannot produce a decent print.

All my models are watertight, otherwise Rhino would not even produce a good mesh from which I can produce gcode with Cura (or any other slicer). And all my models print fine without flaws from Shapeways and iMaterialize, the only two service bureaus I have used. I like Cura because of its easy of use, but it does not produce good prints. I have tried other slicers, but they produce other issues, the worst of which has been that the nozzle jams into the metal clamp that holds the glass plate of the build platform in place (Slic3r). This is the bracelet test I was talking about. A very simple smooth walled bracelet. Nothing special. Just a test for size for a client. The images show the print on the outside and inside at the same spot.

I have now come to the unfortunate conclusion, that Cura is not a very good slicer. It introduces geometry in almost all of my models that simply does not exist. It destroys most of my printed models, even the simplest ones. Right now I am printing a simple oval bracelet test, and Cura has introduced four ridges that do not exist in the model. I am very frustrated, since there does not seem to be a solution for this.

I followed some of the advice given. Here are my (terrible) results. With "Cool head lift" checked. When I watched the nozzle closely I saw that when it moved away from the part it was fine, and as the part cooled the nozzle would leak a little bit of filament, that would then be deposited onto that random mess on the side each time as the nozzle moved back onto the part to continue to print. This is not a stinging problem, this is something else. I then did two prints while printing the same part twice each with the setting "Print all at once". The first time I did this was at the default temperature. As you can see, bad horizontal alignment on the vertical section of the part. The second part at this first double print was just as bad. I then did the same print again and lowered the temp to 190. Now the horizontal alignment is very bad, and I also got bad under extrusion on the first layer again. I have been reading a lot through the entire forum the last few days, and it seems that a lot of people are having serious issues with under extrusion under many different circumstances. I am beginning to think that it is not me, but that there may be something wrong either with my machine or with the Ultimaker 2 in general. I have now had this machine well over 2 months, and I have yet to produce a flawless print.

What settings do you suggest for retraction?

This is a very small part. There is no infill, even if I would set it at 40-50% it prints without infill.

I have been trying to print this part. It is a very small part, the overall length is 20 mm, and the thickness is 1 mm. The height of the little knob is 3 mm. I am not expecting the fillets as in the drawing to print at this small a scale. This is the result of two separate attempts to print this part. Please note that the size of the little vertical knob is very similar in size to the two antennas on top of the head of the Ultimaker robot, which print just fine For the one on the left: Layer height: .05 Initial layer: .15 Speed: 30 For the one on the right: Layer height: .10 Initial layer: .20 Speed: 10 It seems that the layers of the vertical section did not have a chance to cool and harden before the next layer was laid down. What should I have done differently to print this part properly. BTW, on a small and thin part like this the brim of .2 mm in height is very difficult to remove cleanly. One idea I just had is to create another random part of the same total height as this part with maybe a bit larger foot print, and then set Cura to "Tools/Print all at once", to give this part a bit of time for the layers to cool. Or should I change some settings regarding Cool in Expert config?