randyinla

I gave up on Sketchup for 3D printing for this exact reason. Whereas I love the speed at which I can model things in Sketchup, its .stl output for solids is horrendous and more often then not, not printable.

@Labern: What are your retraction settings on your machine? I upped my retraction length to 5.35 and my retraction speed to 45mm/s and I don't get those "ooze-traces when combing" anymore like you show in your photo. The only scratching I get is from the head actually scraping over pre-laid down skin, not from plastic oozing out of the head during the move. edit: I also try to print as low a temperature as possible on a material by material basis to also minimize oozing during moves.

Didn't have any issue with that. I made an acrylic enclosure for the top with an acrylic door on the front. Printing with ABS is a joy now!

I contacted Simon @ fbrc8.com and he's sending me out a replacement pane of glass under warranty. This new "1 year retroactive" warranty comes in handy! @Gr5: isn't this some kind of special glass? I mean, isn't it a special kind of glass to withstand the heated bed? Tempered? Made by Elves? If nothing else, it's thickness is specific so the clips will hold it in place. Would need it to not overhang as the overhung part might be a different temperature than the part that's contacting the heated bed. Might not be a concern, I don't know, just thinking out loud.

1) There was no skirt (or brim) (Couldn't remember the word 'skirt' when I made the original post. Called it 'outline') 2) That's interesting that adding a brim will trick Cura into printing larger! I am curious to try that and see what happens. 3) That's what I did the other night to get it to work. Made it 232 instead of 230... which lead to the right fan scraping the inside wall. Bending the right fan shroud (temporarily, of course) did the trick for that print. 4) Even though the print head is off center to the left, my print was centered more right than center :???: Strange. From what others have said here, I bet if I tweaked my left stop switch a little more left, the Home position would be a little more left as well. Might end up with better centered prints that way.... glass lining up with where Cura thinks it is. 5) For this print, the clips weren't an issue. Plenty of room in the 'Y'. But good suggestion. Will have to remember that if needed. At some point, I wanted to research a new fan shroud. I wonder if mounting a single, more powerful fan somewhere higher/centered and have dual ports split that off to both sides... or even all around the print head? With an LED light ring to boot! That should save 20-40mm. Again, no sense worrying about a future 2nd head getting in the way.

Crap! Last thing I read a few weeks ago was that Daid had been temporarily moved over and was helping out with dual extrusion. Said something like they had made some great advances and were shooting for 1st quarter 2015. This sucks :( Thanks for the update!

Oh. One of those things.. That's a... um... you know, for... connecting with that other widget thingie for... ? I got no clue. Great looking ninja flex print though!

It is a stock, factory-assembled U2. The part wasn't tall enough (talking Y axis) to come close to the metal clips on the glass corners. It remained grayed out in Cura no matter where I tried to drag-n-drop it. Seems it's a Cura thing and not a limit switch thing as adjusting the limit switches will have no effect on what Cura assumes my build area dimensions are. Though, for fine tuning the machine, checking those switches seems like a great idea! The Cura machine settings had defaulted to 230mm x 225mm when I originally told it I had an U2. Cura only allowed me to generate gcode after I told it my U2 was 232mm x 225mm. Hey! That's cheating!! :-P If I had a 2nd hot end and some water-soluble support material, I'd GLADLY print on an upwards angle! I thought Ultimaker finally solved their dual-head dilemma a month-or-so ago and are implementing that as a kit? Supposed to be 1st quarter of 2015, no? Either way, I'll have to manually move the gantry left/right and measure where the single head lines up. I assumed the published 230mm width meant I could print that with the machine as it was when purchased. Never said anything like, "230mm (with purchase of dual head upgrade)"

I tried printing out a panel that was 225mm wide with no brim or "outline". The specs state the build width can go up to 230mm. When I import the model into Cura, it's grayed out and I can't print it. I went into printer specifications and told it the U2 can print 232mm wide. Only then would it allow me to print. The right fan bumped/scraped along the right inside wall, so I aborted, bent the fan shrowd in just a tad and printed again with no issue. Even though I chose "center on print bed" in Cura, the entire piece seemed shifted to the right by maybe a cm when printed. I have to print up a new revision and will try manually moving it to the left in Cura a bit and see if that helps. Possibly related: The right 2mm thick wall of the piece also came out very thin. Maybe .5mm. Don't know if that was Cura or maybe a bad edit in Solidworks? Shouldn't I be able to print to the full width of the specs of the machine?

Here's how I solved my thin line issue: I had thin, detached lines a few nights ago using Ultimaker blue PLA filament. Not just the 1st layer. Every layer had clearly aligned and unified gaps between the lines, the end points weren't all touching the walls and the walls were all separating. Had a few days of printing white ABS from iMakr.com with no issues whatsoever, so this seemed completely out of nowhere. Was like the hole in my hot end was clogged a little bit, only letting 1/2 the normal amount out. So I cleaned out the head and poked a .4mm needle through the opening and that did nothing. Same result. I upped the material flow under the tune menu as high as 350% with NO change. (later found the http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/23-a-visual-ultimaker-troubleshooting-guide#underextrusion that explains how upping the material flow is not going to do anything) I then remembered that I had upped the width of my material settings on the U2 a few weeks ago to 2.92 to match some new filament. I checked the width of the blue PLA filament and it was just shy of 2.85mm. Changing the material width on the U2 back to 2.85 solved my issue completely. The blue PLA is now printing wide enough to touch each other on flat areas and the separating wall issue is gone as well. bed: 60c, hotend: 210c, speed: 25mm~30mm, layer height: .08mm. If your material setting is wider than the filament, you will get thin, detached lines. If it is set thinner than the filament, you will get over-extruded lines. Hope this helps!

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but... I woke up this morning to a 25mm x 15mm chunk of glass missing from the middle of my platform, STUCK to the bottom of my print! :shock: What in the world do I do now?! Is this covered under the warranty? This happened before during the first month I owned my U2, but it was such a very teeny, tiny piece. Barely noticeable. More of a knick. This, however, is a definite missing chunk, maybe .2mm thick. I will not be able to print over this area anymore. DETAILS: Filament: White ABS from MatterHackers Heated Enclosure: Custom made acrylic covering entire U2 (like an upside down fish tank) Custom made acrylic front door I've measured the inside ambient temperature before with similar bed/hotend temps using my Fluke meter w/temp probe and it is a pretty constant 70c ~ 73c. It's nowhere near an air-tight seal, just trying to keep most of the heat inside and prevent wind gusts from air conditioner from ruining prints. [*]Bed temp: 105c [*]Hot end temp: 240c [*]Model dimensions: Roughly 76mm(W) x 48mm(L) x 2mm(H) Thin plate to mount a small speaker to. [*]Adhesion Method: Wiped thin layer of Elmer's glue all stick onto glass. Smoothed that out with water on a paper towel, then lightly swiped with dry paper towel. Couldn't see any glue, but it was still tacky to the touch. No acetone used (never have). [*]1st layer thickness: .08mm (same as all the other layers, trying to get chamfered bottom edge to print nicely) I had this print fail just before due to clogged nozzle. So for this print, I sat and watched the first two layers go down completely before going to bed. Nozzle did not touch glass at any point. I had some thin areas here and there and adjusted the Z thumb screws a tad on the fly, but it never touched the glass. Filament laid out in nice, even, flat-ish lines with no gaps. [*]1st Layer Speed: 20mm [*]Speed: 25mm [*]Total Print Time: 4 hours When I awoke, the print had completed a few hours prior and the part looked like it had warped up off of the glass. I didn't have to pry or work to get it off the plate. It picked up easily as it was already detached. Upon closer inspection, The part itself looks perfectly flat. It was sitting up off the glass a bit because part of the glass had separated and stuck to the bottom of the part, preventing it from laying flat. So just the normal cool down of plastic and glass caused the glass to snap away and stick to the plastic. I have turned the glass upside down, started another print of some PLA (60c bed / 205 hotend / hairspray on glass) and left for work. Do I have to buy a new piece of glass? If so, do I buy it from Ultimaker or can I find a place locally in Los Angeles that has this size and type of glass? Help!! :???:

Nice resource, indeed. I spent the weekend trying to print out some small parts storage bins that had a 2mm radius on the bottom edge. Was driving me NUTS trying to get a clean fillet. Will change that to a 50% chamfer / 50% fillet when I get home tonight and see if it prints cleaner. Thank you, Robert!

HA! I don't remember anything about replicators! :oops: It wasn't one of my fav shows, but I know I've seen a bunch

oh! Very cool! I don't remember that episode at all!

I was referred to that specific part page by Simon from US support and another guy from Ultimaker support in NL. Make sure to carefully inspect the solder joints from the 4-wire connector to the heated board. All four of mine were pretty bad, intermittent. I desoldered them, cleaned and re-soldered. Also, the wires that go into the screw holes should NOT be tinned! Whenever connecting wire to a screw block, bare wire is the preferred method. Open the panel that houses the main circuit board and make sure the wires going into those screw blocks are also not tinned. Good luck!

Robert: I remember watching Stargate back in the day, but that piece doesn't seem familiar. Is it a single part out of something larger?

Based on other posts I found in this forum, I switched from glue stick to using http://www.amazon.com/Aqua-Net-Unscented-Aerosol-Spray-11/dp/B002K33AFM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420937948&sr=8-1&keywords=aquanet+hairspray+unscented for PLA, along with 60c heated bed. It's the purple-ish can. I spray onto a paper towel and wipe across the glass just so it looks wet. I haven't had any problem with PLA sticking since using it. Never spray the can directly onto the glass while inside the build area! Don't want hairspray getting over any moving parts. After running out of the supplied glue stick from Ultimaker, I found a few posts suggesting that http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000U6FJQE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 works great for ABS and I agree, it does. However, I also built an acrylic cover and front door for my build area, creating a heated chamber. That also helps in printing warp-free ABS. Make sure your first layer goes down with the plastic slightly flattened and not simply laying on top of the glass. If it's not flattened slightly, go through the leveling process again. You don't want to print too fast either. There is a setting for the first layer speed. I typically set this to 20mm per second.

Same thing happened to me! I hadn't used my printer in a few weeks, then sliced something up and printed, only to find it stopped half way through the print. Cura still had the pause at z plugin from the last thing I sliced and I totally forgot about it. I was thinking it was strange that Cura persisted the plugins from one slicing to another. Seems that should have different behavior. Glad you got your speed issue resolved.

I encountered the same situation with a previous failed print that left 1/16" of plastic coated around my print head. I am posting my chosen way of cleaning as a warning to avoid doing the same. I used a Dremel tool with a soft wire brush on lowest speed to clean the head and surrounding metal. It worked beautifully! The head looked brand new and all of the plastic was removed. However, after a few days of printing again, I noticed my surfaces were not nearly as smooth as before. I guess I inadvertently reshaped the nozzle around the opening and made it slightly rounded, like a ball point pen. This resulted in the laid down plastic forming teeny tiny concave troughs, almost like the grooves in a vinyl record, rather than flat lines. I tried using a fine, flat file and scraped across the bottom of the nozzle to flatten it back out. That seems to have worked. It may be a micron or two too wide because of the outer vertical slope of the nozzle, but my print surfaces are back to being smooth again. If I ran into the same situation again, I would probably just heat up the head and wipe away the excess plastic with a cloth while wearing an oven mitt or something. I'm keeping everything abrasive away from the head from now on!

You'll want to print the feeder out of PLA so that if any particles rub off and on to the filament, it'll be melted in the hotend. ABS melts at a higher temp, so any of that would get clogged while printing something out of PLA which has a lower melting temp. Read through the description and comments for the feeder. I cut off 1/4" of my bowden tube and pushed it into the bottom of the feeder so my filament is never in contact with the PLA. And while you're at it, print up Robert's Low Friction UM2 Spoolholder. It incorporates bearings for an ultra smooth spin (watch the video) https://youmagine.com/designs/low-friction-um2-spoolholder

FYI the wires going into the screw block should not have solder on them! Cut off the ends and re-strip the wires to the same exposed length and give each one a few twists before re-connecting. The reason you don't want them soldered is that the solder is hard and the screw doesn't compress into it. Over time, the screw can come loose from vibration, resulting in intermittent connections. I had issues with my heated bed and found that 1) wires were tinned. 2) all four posts from the connector block had cold solder joints on the heated board (beeping from the screw to the board confirmed any slight wriggling of the connector caused a break). 3) the thermistor was bad. Ultimaker sent me a replacement heated board that had much better solder connections to the board and a working thermistor. However, the extra cabling they sent also had tinned exposed wire! I contacted Simon @ fbrc8.com and he said the cabling was old stock and that moving forward, they should no longer be tinned. By the way, GREAT service/support from Simon. If anyone is in the US and your communication with Ultimaker directly is too slow for you, try reaching out to him. He is illuminarti on the UM forum and the US support rep/company for Ultimaker. No idea about Taiwan local support. Here is a link to the thermistor in question from Newark I took the original, failed board and cleaned the 4 connections, resoldered them, soldered in the replacement thermistor and now have a working backup board. Good luck to you!

And longer electronic cables. Will these items be sold by Ultimaker individually or possibly as a U2 upgrade kit?If the parts were bought elsewhere and I wanted to maybe increase the Z by more than just 4", say 6", would my U2 firmware and Cura be configurable to know about the higher build area?

Awesome model/print job! Might have to attempt this some time in 2015 :-P

+1 on Robert's feeder. Have you also tried Robert's spool holder with bearings, as Labern suggested above? The slightest pull on the filament causes the spool to rotate freely. The original spool holder was just plastic rotating on plastic. The friction alone could sometimes cause feeder slippage. Since using both the new feeder AND spool holder, I have not noticed any feeding issues whatsoever.

The underside is nice. I like the indents for the component wires to fit into. I'm gonna have to try my hand at this technique for the next board I make. Well done.