zews

gr5, I have put the stl file in my dropbox. The link is https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66542951/Lathe%20power%20knob%2002.stl If too many polygons is the cause of the moire patterns, I could create a mesh with fewer polygons in Rhino. I don't think I would need Meshlab for that.

gr5, I'd like to send you the STL file so you can have a look at it. What is the best way to do this. Can I somehow upload it to the forum, or should I put it in my Dropbox? I wonder if my conversion from a NURBS model in Rhino to a polygon mesh for export to STL might have been the culprit. Maybe I created the mesh with too many polygons, which would be appropriate for HiDef printing by a commercial printing bureau, but is way too many than any FFF printer can handle anyway. Either way, I'd love to get that file to you in the hope that looking at that might give you some insight into those weird moire patterns.

gr5, thank you for your continued support regarding my trials in getting better prints. I hope other beginners will also benefit from your guidance. I will give your suggestions a try. Regarding "make the bottom layer .1mm" I have another question. As you can see in the images of my Cura setup, in the Basic tab under Fill, I have .8 mm for Bottom/Top thickness, and in the Advanced tab under Quality I have .15 mm for Initial layer thickness. Isn't this what you are talking about? The way I understand this, is that my initial (bottom) layer is .15 mm, and the total thickness of the bottom shell is .8 mm. You want me to change the .15mm to .1mm, even though it is already half of the default of .3 mm. I don't quite understand that I can't get the leveling right by following the procedure, and that I now have to adjust the nuts "While the printer is printing the skirt ... " In this case I assume I will indeed have to turn the nuts counter clockwise to bring the build plate closer to the nozzle. But if I do this arbitrarily "adjusting the 3 screws a little bit" would I not risk to be off level again? I don't get how to do this accurately and predictably. What do you think about my idea to do the leveling with a metal feeler gauge instead of paper. I can use a feeler gauge that is thinner than paper, and steel does not compress like paper can. Is it possible that the fact that paper can compress when it is pushed in between the build plate and the nozzle during the leveling procedure, could mean that the level can be off a little. How do I adjust the flow during printing? What do you think might be the cause of the moire patterns on the sides?

Moderator, there are a lot of blue lines in the area of the hollow section of the part. Instead of uploading a few screen shots as you requested, I made a movie of going through the layers of the part. As you can see, there are also blue lines in the areas where I have indicated there is "stringing" inside the infill (previous post). I wonder if it is all related, and if this is indeed a slicing issue. I have a feeling that if it is indeed a slicing issue, there is nothing I can do about it. Strangely, when playing back the movie, the frame is trimmed in the browser, but it can be viewed full screen.

My final issue with this part is the large "moire" like pattern (the curved lines) on both sides of the knob. This happened both times I printed the part. What could possibly have caused this and how can it be avoided?

One of my original concerns were, which the moderator mentioned, was stringing. Albeit inside the part, while printing the infill, so it was not visible once the part was finished printing. But I wonder if this has something to do with the overall bad a quality of the print because of my bad settings. I first noticed this when I printed the knob part for the first time. I took a photo while I was printing it the second time. It is a bad photo, but you get what I am trying to show. When I printed the first few millimeters of the part again to check if I had done a good job on leveling the stringing happened again inside the infill. What causes this, and how can it be avoided.

I have redone the leveling procedure, and as you can see in the photo it is a great deal better, but still nowhere near perfect. Now I have several new questions. 1. Can I get this better, or is this a good as it is going to get. 2. If I can get it better, what do I need to do? Do I a. Try leveling using a metal feeler gauge instead of a piece of paper? b. Increase the nozzle temperature and/or build platform temperature? c. Print slower? (This was printed at 50 mm/sec, initial layer thickness .15, bottom layer speed 20 mm/sec) d. Something else? I still have a couple of other issues which I will post about separately.

Being totally new at this, I must confess that I a bit taken aback by these statements. Of course I assumed, that the various temperature settings for nozzle and build plate for PLA and ABS, were settings I would not have to worry about. In fact I was grateful for Ultimaker to have taken care of this for me. And now I find out that the settings are "ridiculously bad". To say this is disappointing is an understatement. The temperature settings on my printer are (taken from the LED screen on the printer): PLA. Nozzle 210C, Build Plate 60C, Fan 100%, Flow 100% ABS. Nozzle 260C, Build Plate 90C, Fan 50%, Flow 107% What should the correct settings be? I agree, that it would be much more convenient to be able to control these settings from within Cura, instead of having to fiddle with them on the printer.

When I save my profile setting to the clipboard and I look at the "Cura Profile String" I get something that I am sure I should post. Instead I post 3 screen shots of my Cura settings of my last print, which was Knob 2 (BTW, this is a replacement power know for my lathe which broke in half some time ago, and for which I cannot buy a replacement) As you can see I printed at 50 mm/sec. When I first got the printer I took screen shots of the default settings, and this was the print speed. When I "mouse over" this field it says "A well adjusted Ultimaker can reach 150 mm/s, ...", so I thought 50 mm/s would be reasonable. I don't remember the speed settings for Knob 1, which I tried first and came out worse. Note how the blemish on the outside conforms exactly to the hole in the part. The depth of the hole is 20 mm, the blemish on the outside stops at the depth of the hole.

I have tried to level the build plate so many times it's discouraging. When I first got the printer, the instructions seemed very easy to follow, yet I could not get this right. In fact after my first build plate leveling I thought I had done this so poorly that I thought that the nozzle scratched the glass instead of laying down filament. I later turned out that I was wrong about this, and the what I thought were scratches was in fact very thin filament. I later learned that a bad firmware bug and/or leveling bug in Cura had been to blame for that. In the photos Knob 1 03 and Knob 2 04 you can clearly see that I still have a leveling issue. The right side of the objects in both photos does not touch the build plate correctly. Turning the screws COUNTER clockwise does not seem right though. I have done this so many times already, that if I continue to do so, the nuts will come off the screws. To start over, I think I may need to pull the build plate and the thick aluminum plate below it back together a bit, and then start over with the leveling procedure and turning the nuts counter clockwise. I will do the leveling again, and then only print the first couple of millimeters or so of the same object to see if I did it correctly.

I have just uploaded a few photos of some of my bad prints. The are in the Gallery in the album titled Zews' album. gr5 edit - moved to of the pictures here:

Thank you for the very quick response! I will post photos, once I have figured out how to do that. If Cura does not have a temperature setting, why is does that Basic tab have a "Speed and Temperature" section? that is a bit confusing to say the least. I have seen screen shots in this forum from users, where it does indeed have a temperature setting.. Maybe those were form the original Ultimaker printer. Still it is a bit confusing to expect a temperature setting, and then not see it. You are right, my installed version of Cura is indeed in the title bar. I just never looked there, I am so used to see the version under "About". Thanks for pointing it out. Could you please post the change log for the latest Cura update somewhere.

I have had my new Ultimaker 2 for a bit over a month now, and I have yet to make a decent print, which frustrates me enormously. Almost everything I print includes weird irregular artifacts, that clearly should not be there. I do not know how to get rid of them. I also have trouble with Cura. On the screen under the "Basic" setting tab there is a section that says "Speed and Temperature", yet my version of Cura does not have any temperature settings, I can only change the speed settings. Why is this so? I also find it annoying that I get notifications that there is a new version of Cura available, but on the Ultimaker web site I cannot find any release notes for the update. I think I have Cura 14.06.1 installed, since this is the latest dmg file I have on file. The latest release notes on the Ultimaker web site are for version 14.03! It would be nice if Ultimaker would provide release notes. I cannot even check anywhere which version I have indeed installed. The default for OS X to check for software versions is under the name of the software on the menu bar with a link that says "About". Not so with Cura. There is nothing there. It would be nice if Ultimaker would adhere to the Mac OS X conventions regarding this.

I have found it impossible to install the filament guide on my printer. I can get the part in the key hole, but I can't get it flat enough against the back of the printer to turn it.

I just received my first order of filament from Faberdashery. What I did not expect, was that I would receive the filament without spools. Although of course it makes a lot of sense, because it probably saves quite a bit in shipping costs over time. The filament coils that Faberdashery sent me have a much larger diameter than the sample coil of filament that is on the spool that Ultimaker sent me. When I hold the coils against the back of the printer, centered around the filament spool spindle, the coils just barely clear the power cable. It is probably not a good idea to try and force this filament onto smaller empty spools (if I can find empty spools), because it is rather rigid, and I would most likely damage the filament trying to force it into a smaller diameter. So I have a feeling that I now need to print myself some flexible and/or adjustable filament holder(s) specifically for these filament coils that will fit on the UM2 spindle. I have seen some on YouMagine and Thingiverse, but none that I could find seemed ideal for the UM2. Would anyone have a suggestion for a particular printable filament holder that would work well with the Faberdashery filament and the UM2?

Is anyone familiar with flexible PLA from MatterHackers? http://tinyurl.com/on3ofwp If you have used it, what can you tell me about it. Is it reliable to be used in the Ultimaker 2, is it just OK, or should I stay away from it at all cost?

Can anyone tell me of a reliable source for flexible PLA that will print well in the Ultimaker 2. What colors are available that you know of and where can I find them? Is it available in quantities smaller than full spools? (Like Faberdashery sells)

Page 23 of the Cura manual deals with uploading models to YouMagine.com I will try printing with a raft. I had seen the video you mention, and tried to lift the part to put us ports under it. This did not work on my computer. When I try to make any changes to any of the parameters in the Support Generator of try to lift the part (Y-offset), asll I see is "Sampling .. ", or "Sampling surface ... ", but nothing happens. The program either crashes or I have to Force Quit out of it. When I tried to do this again in MeshMixer a couple of hours ago, the same thing happened, and in a new way. When I saw the "Sampling ... " window again I decided to wait a long time. Finally I saw a progress bar. It took forever for the bar to move until finally, ... my computer crashed to a black screen. The only way I was able to get out of this was to reboot. BTW, I am running Mac OSX 10.7.5 on an iMac with 6 GB of RAM

This is my first post. I have only had my Ultimaker 2 a couple of days. I needed to print a part that contained a cylinder. The part needed to be printed with the cylindrical part laying flat on the bed, and the rest of the part with supports (I haven't figured out yet how to print support that remove cleanly) When I printed the part, the side that touched the bed, was not round as I wanted, but had a flat spot along the length of the cylinder. The same thing happened this evening when I printed another cylindrical part laying flat on the bed. Instead of following the curve of the cylinder, the section in contact with the bed was flat. I printed that second cylinder again, but now vertically. That cylinder came out much better, not flat area along the length of the cylinder. Unfortunately I cannot always print parts situated on the bed like that that. I am working on a prototype of a bracelet with which I will have the same issue. The bracelet is a bangle type bracelet in the rough shape of a large thick O-ring. Obviously this part will have to be printed laying down flat on the bed. How do I avoid the same flat section from happening with rounded shapes like that? I wonder if it is possible to upload images to illustrate what I am trying to say.