dylanweber

I currently own a kit-made Ultimaker that I've had for over a year now. I have only used the original PLA plastic spool that came with the printer. Just last week I bought the heated bed upgrade kit and now I currently have a functioning Ultimaker Original with a heated bed. Since then, I've been printing a lot of objects for my engineering class, but I've noticed that there was a tiny under extrusion, but I shrugged it off since the general shape of the object is all I was aiming for. Beginning yesterday, the under extrusion got worse. The gaps on the walls got much more noticeably bigger. I decided to try to manually push the plastic into the extruder at 214 degrees to see if it was clogged... it was difficult to push but plastic came through. I'm not sure how hard it should have been so I tried cleaning the extruder using the atomic method. After heating to 260 degrees, plastic pushed through the extrusion head very very easily. Once cooled to 90, I couldn't get it to pull out in a perfect arrow tip but no carbonized material was coming out with the plastic. I repeated the cleaning 4 times. After that, the printer was printing fine for a short while. I was able to print a 12.5 cm cube without any noticeable issues. Prints afterward were worse. My first print after the cube stopped mid-way because the temperature sensor wires fell out. From what was already finished, the result still had gaps in the walls. After reattaching the wires and attempting to reprint multiple times, I couldn't even get the first layer to print on a well-leveled bed without extreme under extrusion. Further looking into the issue, I believe it is the extrusion mechanism that pushes the plastic into the bowden tube. It's been pushing holes into the plastic a bit more than it normally used to. It maybe slipped once or twice in the past day. My bowden tube has also seen some tough love with pliers in the past. Could the bowden tube have too much internal friction? Could the tension on the extruder be the source of all my issues? How hard should it be to push the plastic into the extrusion head manually with my hands?

I made a mistake. Can a mod move this topic to troubleshooting?

I've been using my printer for some months now, and I usually refrain from printing prints that have overhang. Since I built the machine, overhang has been a problem for me. Most of the time, hanging plastic curls up. Here are a few examples of prints that have poor overhang and their print settings. Print One: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:202774 Print settings: Speed: 50 mm/s Print temp: 205 C Layer Height: 0.1 mm Shell thickness: 1.2 mm Bottom/Top Thickness 1.2 mm Fill density: 20% Retraction speed: 40 mm/s Retraction distance: 3 mm Travel speed: 150 mm/s Print two: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8757 Print settings are same as above except: Speed: 35 mm/s Print temp: 195 C The average room temperature during these prints was 75 F. Do you think the room temp would affect the print quality and/or rising of the plastic while hanging? What improvements could I make? I already have this fan shroud installed as a replacement to the stock one.

Can you please elaborate or give some reference information?

I tried copying every setting possible, including retraction speed, shell thickness, etc. Here is my result, something that is a lot more pleasing than my previous ones: Instead of printing two whole robots, I just printed 1 robot and had another solid block be the "go to" for continuing on the same layer. It took me some playing around, but I found out that you can place multiple models into Cura, and export them as an STL and reimport them to have everything build at once, synchronizing the layers. You can see more detailed images of the print here: https://imgur.com/Yo7wTaa,JhCdoYh,hLUJFVu,2KeSK6n,tpK92DX,PUAADBI,1zeHsvT,6kLq4Qf,3PXgX3F,jZReNsZ Any more tips on improving? The "ears" of the robot still don't look completely pleasing and there is still some messes inside the handle at the top. Also, the top of the 40mm tall block I printed didn't close completely, probably fixable by adding more top thickness. Edges of the same block aren't completely sharp, but instead slightly curved before the turn and bumpy in nature. Walls are smooth.

Corsair Vengeance K70. I recommend Cherry MX Blue switches

I've fixed my printer in terms stopping plastic leakage and replacing pulley screws. Is there any way I can fine tune my printer to make these print better? Overhang seems to kill the quality, and I would think an Ultimaker is expected to print a model that came with it's own software, no?

After attempting to tighten the brass tube into the aluminum heating block to prevent the leakage you see, the brass piece broke in half. Is there a way I can get a replacement or do I have to purchase all 4 pieces for a new head? (aluminum heating block, nozzle, brass pipe, and PEEK)

So, the same.

I'm planning on printing a lot of gears, nuts, bolts, etc. I already printed a set of nuts and bolts but they fit somewhat tight, while some gears and axles I've printed barely fit together and do not spin as intended. Upon measuring a 10 mm cube, I get 9.79 * 9.64 * 10.18 mm. Is there any way to improve these dimensions? These results are consistent throughout prints and all pulleys have been tightened as much as humanly possible.

After a few hours of tinkering and troubleshooting, I've finally got a nice product: Some screws were loose and they were very difficult to get to. I'll stick to the ones in there right now unless needed, unlike now.

I printed the regular demo robot, and here are my results: After many painful hours of troubleshooting, I was finally able to get it to print a decent first few layers, but as you can see, it went downhill from there. Any tips you can give me?

Already a step ahead of you. I bought ~2 inch tape since I couldn't find any thicker, however, I've seen some thick tape on some interesting Ultimaker-related sites that seem pretty tempting.

Thank you. After many attempts, the tape on my bed has gotten scratched and worn a lot. I think I should replace it. Any tips for me since I couldn't even do a simple print? I'm assuming I should move the bed down, take it off the screws, replace the tape carefully, put the bed back in, and relevel the bed. Any details I might be missing?

I printed a 10 mm cube with an empty top. Here are some pictures: Top: https://i.imgur.com/yAtoblh.jpg Bottom: https://i.imgur.com/6PiwNAk.jpg Head after printing: https://i.imgur.com/738BKXq.jpg