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aroth

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Everything posted by aroth

  1. My money would be on the filament. That was the 12th attempt overall, but the first attempt using the black filament. The other attempts were made using a dark blue filament. I kept trying the dark blue originally because it was the best filament I had in terms of consistent extrusion and buildplate adhesion at the start of the print. But the dark blue seems like it's also more prone to deform when there's lots of retraction. That one never made it past the 15% mark. The black filament did better.
  2. I had similar problems and was able to resolve them using this: https://www.ultimaker.com/spree/uploads/113/original/Ultimaker_2_Atomic_Method.pdf I now do that every few filament swaps, and it seems to keep the printer happy.
  3. Twelfth time's the charm, apparently: Not as nice as the green one, but printed slightly faster at 50mm/sec.
  4. Got it. So essentially if my printer seems to be working fine with no gap, I should just leave it alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and all that.
  5. After cleaning the nozzle and dialing in the feeder tension: Welcome back, Ultimaker 2! You're a delicate and yet strangely robust kind of beast. Edit: And why isn't the gallery image being thumbnailed like normal?
  6. So is there a problem if that 1mm gap isn't there? My PTFE couple sits flush against the top of the isolator. No gap, and I'm not able to force there to be a gap due to the spring. I suppose I could wedge a 1mm piece of just about anything between the two parts, but that seems like it would be a very bad idea?
  7. If you're happy with the stock feeder, then I'd say leave it as is. Print out a copy of the alternate feeder so that you have it available if/when you need it, but stick with the stock feeder until you do. And as far as needing the alternate feeder goes, I switched because the stock feeder tended to deform the filament on prints with a lot of retractions no matter how I adjusted the feeder tension. Eventually it deformed the filament so severely that the only way to free it was to open up the feeder. Trying to get the stock feeder back together was a pain, so I decided to try the alternate version at that point. IRobertI's version is much easier to install. So if you're not printing things with lots of retractions (or if you stock feeder handles such prints better than mine did) and you're happy with the stock feeder, why mess with it? Just keep a copy of the alternate feeder handy in case your stock feeder ever gets completely stuck, and enjoy your Ultimaker. As far as performance goes, I've had successful prints of the extrusion test using both feeder systems. Either can perform well, although with IRobertI's feeder there's a much wider 'sweet spot' in terms of adjusting the feeder tension. I don't know if there's a difference in terms of the absolute maximum speed attainable, as I'm more interested in quality and retraction handling than sheer speed. And both feeders have issues dealing with lots of retraction, at least for me. IRobertI's feeder has a slight edge there in that if/when the filament deforms there's a quick-release latch that makes it easy to free the filament without having to open/detach the entire mechanism (and potentially have the spring go flying across the room to who knows where). But only if you're NOT using the optional filament guide. If you're using the guide and your filament deforms...heaven help you. Some people have reported breakages when using IRobertI's feeder, though I've not been particularly gentle with mine and it's still in one piece.
  8. I went through several 'atomic method' iterations: ...and now the printer works much better: That's not the best extrusion test I've ever had, but that run was done fresh after cleaning the nozzle and without attempting to optimize the feeder tension for the green filament. At least the printer is usable again. I was beginning to think I'd never get it back. Now it's back to the more mundane 'trying to get the first layer to extrude perfectly uniformly across the entire buildplate and stick nicely without covering the thing in glue' type issues. Edit: And the next followup question is, I see a number of resources which indicate that it's important to have a small gap between the PTFE coupler and the metal part that it slides into. Like what's shown here: However in my printer the PTFE coupler sits flush with the top of the metal part (and I think it has always done so). I cannot force there to be a gap there, as the spring just pushes the parts back together again. Is this an issue, and if so, how do I ensure that the appropriate gap is maintained between the PTFE coupler and the metal bit?
  9. Wow, counterintuitive. Even with your instructions it took me a couple of tries to find it. I'm bookmarking your post. Also I've edited the previous posts to use the gallery images. Not particularly thoroughly (I found a small needle and verified that I could poke it through the hole in the nozzle), as I could always push filament through if I tried. I'll give this a try now and see if it makes any difference: https://www.ultimaker.com/spree/uploads/113/original/Ultimaker_2_Atomic_Method.pdf
  10. Actually I'm hosting them on my own Apache instance. It runs on a weird port, so maybe that's why they're not visible for you? Here's a direct URL to one of them: http://aroth.no-ip.org:65534/DSC00540_crop.jpg Does that work for you? And also, is there a way to post pictures directly to the forum so that I don't have to drop them on my own webserver? I looked around for such an option to begin with, but wasn't able to find one. There's the 'My Media' button, but when I click it I have no options to actually add/attach anything.
  11. Yep, new part is on its way. In the meantime, I removed the excess lip from the PTFE coupler and put it back in the printer. I'm still a bit at a loss with respect to what's going on with it. When I start a print now, the filament tends to flow quite nicely during the initial 'priming' step (where the printhead is held over the left corner of the buildplate and some material is allowed to extrude). But then the flow tapers off to almost nothing as soon as the print actually gets started. I've checked my buildplate levels several times, and that doesn't seem to be the issue. If I manually push the material through the feeder while it is printing, I can get better results. This shot is fairly illustrative: The more-solid part in the middle is from when I was manually pushing the filament through. The areas above and below are what I get when I leave the printer to its own devices. Is there anything I can try while I wait for the new coupler to arrive? I get the impression that there's probably a more serious issue at work here.
  12. My UM2 has gone from being able to print most things relatively easily to not being able to successfully print anything at all. It seems like there may have been a gradual dropoff in performance, as when I first started noticing issues the printer would start showing progressively worse underextrusion the longer a print ran (initial layers would be fine, but subsequent ones would get worse and worse). Now, however, the printer can't even get past the first layer of a print. It also seems to have become rather prone to clogging. Here's the first such clog that I encountered: Clearing that clog didn't fix anything (well okay, the printer want from zero extrusion to some extrusion, but it's still far from usable). I've disassembled the hot end, and can't find any obvious problems (the nozzle itself is not clogged), apart from that the white plastic part looks a bit scorched and deformed: Is this normal? If not, could it cause the sort of issues that I'm seeing? And more importantly, how can I fix it? If it helps, I'm using https://www.youmagine.com/designs/alternative-um2-feeder-version-two, and have tried every possible adjustment with it (from screw fully tightened to fully loosened, at half-turn increments). It makes no difference what settings I use (as opposed to prior to the start of the issues, where there was a wide range of adjustments where I could get a successful print of the 10mm^3/sec extrusion test) or what filament I load. Most of my previous printing was done at 210 degrees, though with the printer in its current state, I find that in order to get any extrusion at all I need to set the temperature to 230. All printing has been done using PLA only.
  13. Long story short, I ordered some filament from a local supplier, and it came on spools that wouldn't fit on the stock UM2 filament mount. Keeping in mind that I might encounter subsequent iterations of the same issue in the future, here's my solution to the problem: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/um2-quick-swap-filament-mount The modified backplate design allows spindles of any diameter to be quickly attached/detached (provided one has been designed and printed in the desired diameter), and there are designs attached that will suit 31mm, 38mm, and 49mm spools. That last diameter will work with the stock UM2 filament spools, albeit with a slightly loose fit. I've been printing for a few days using this setup, and have had no issues so far. Swapping between spools is very easy, even when incompatible dimensions are in play.
  14. Multithreading doesn't actually make the 'car' any faster. The top speed is still the same (or in some cases, reduced due to the TDP of the processor which can cause throttling when all cores are at 100% load). What multithreading does is let you be in more than one place at the same time. If you think of it as driving in a race, being able to be in multiple places at once may or may not help, depending upon the rules of the race. Maybe all you have to do is pass over every part of the track exactly once and not in any particular order, in which case multithreading will let you complete the race in far less time. But maybe the rules say that each part of the track must be touched in sequence, and starting mile 5 before completing miles 1-4 results in a disqualification. Now multithreading won't help you, because even if you can be in 12 places at once, the rules prevent any of the extra 11 places from being ahead of where you'd be when using only 1 place at a time. And I think slicing falls more into the second case than the first. The problem is that what you do in one layer depends at least somewhat upon what you do in the layer that came before it. So you can't (easily) start 'Layer 2' without waiting for 'Layer 1' to be done, and you can't say 'Processor 1 will do layers 1-10, Processor 2 will do layers 11-20, ...' and then expect to get a usable result. At least not unless Processor 2 waits for Processor 1's result before it gets started. In which case the multithreaded version would perform worse than a single-threaded version, because now there's added overhead for synchronization and inter-process communication.
  15. I've had no issue with the latest release of FreeCAD. Though as in Kayoo's case, I've always installed Cura first and then FreeCAD. So it's possible that the installation order is significant.
  16. Probably a bit late to be related, but this eBay listing seems kind of sketchy: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ULTIMAKER-2-3D-PRINTER-/131267544424 They've got a 'brand new' UM2 up on a 2-day auction (listing says 1 day, but appears to be incorrect) with no reserve price. No pictures of the actual printer (they just have a couple of stock photos up), and the listing text is just a copy/paste of the https://www.ultimaker.com/products/ultimaker-2. I can't imagine that people are buying UM2's at retail for the sake of reselling them on eBay (especially without setting a reserve price), and it seems odd that someone would otherwise turn around and sell their personal UM2 without unboxing it and using it at least once (and without including a story about why they're parting with it in the eBay listing). Perhaps that person received (knowingly or not) one of the stolen printers, and now is trying to unload it?
  17. And another one: I'd like to have the option to use 'tree' style supports. Like what PreForm does: ...or like whatever illuminarti used when setting up his dragon print: http://www.thingiverse.com/download:404127 I just broke a print while trying to remove Cura's 'grid' style support (w/ 15% infill), as the support structure was far stronger than some of the overhangs it was supporting. It's reprinting now with the 'line' style of support, but even that looks like it might be somewhat tricky to remove. The 'tree' style supports used in other applications seem like they strike a better balance between supporting the print and being easy to remove afterwards. Especially if they can be generated with a configurable 'density' option.
  18. I'd like to see greater capabilities for displaying and manipulating the print parameters graphically. For instance, if Cura put little indicators against the model wherever it's going to have a solid wall/shell that show the thickness of that wall/shell, and then allowed the relevant build settings to be adjusted by just playing with the indicator. So that I could look at the graphical output, decide "no, I don't think that's thick enough there", and then click and drag the indicator to increase the thickness without ever having to type a number in a settings box. Bonus points if the feature could be leveraged to print different areas of the model at different thicknesses, instead of having to use uniform thicknesses for the bottom, top, and shell. Building on that sort of idea, I'd also really like the ability to graphically indicate regions of the model (in terms of a vertical column/bounding-box that extends from Z-min to Z-max with configurable X- and Y-coords) that will receive more (or less) infill than other regions. I've found it quite common to have parts that require very little in terms of internal support, except for in a small handful of places (mounting/screw holes, clips, and so on). What happens now is that I essentially have to 'overbuild' these parts in order to make sure that those small handful of places are strong enough to do their job. It would be great if instead of overbuilding the part I could get a top-down view of the build, select an arbitrary rectangle, and say, 'within this rectangle use 100% infill' (for areas that I want to reinforce), or 'within this rectangle, use no infill at all' (for regions that are not structurally significant), and so on. Being able to do something along those lines would save a ton of both filament and build time, and also get rid of a lot of trial and error with respect to trying to dial in the right compromise between reinforcing the important portions of a part and not overbuilding the non-structural components of the same part and/or making the print take excessively long.
  19. Got it. Tried a print with the spring tightened to the second indicator mark (counting up from the bottom mark) and it failed much more rapidly. It looks like illuminarti had the right idea; I loosened the spring all the way, and managed to get a successful print of the part with retraction enabled. However, it looks like a side-effect of the loosened spring may be underextrusion. I guess it's necessary to strike some sort of a compromise between extrusion rate and retraction-handling?
  20. Does that mean moving the white indicator up, or down?
  21. I don't believe so...unless it's off by default? I haven't changed the combing setting from whatever it starts out as. 14.07.
  22. I was printing at 100 microns, 50mm/s, 210 extruder temp, 65 buildplate temp, retraction enabled. Here's a picture of the exterior surface: ...and here's the interior of the same object: What you can't really tell from the interior shot is that the bands of blobby parts repeat with great consistency and regularity. They run around the entire interior circumferance, and they occur at regular intervals, always at the top of the little oval features. The regularity of the artifacts is what makes me wonder if maybe Cura is paying less attention to the interior surfaces since it expects them to be hidden in the final part. The design I printed is available here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:45315
  23. I've tried a few times now to print this part with retraction enabled in Cura. What happens is that eventually the filament gets crushed/deformed to the point where it can no longer be advanced, and the print fails. My filament ends up looking like this: If I turn retraction off, the part prints just fine. With retraction on, it never makes it more than about halfway through the print before the filament gets stuck. I'm assuming this is a particularly challenging print as far as retraction is concerned, as Cura shows retractions all over the place: Is anyone able to complete a print of this part with retractions turned on? If so, what settings did you use (both in Cura and for the printer's retraction options)? Or more generally, is there anything I can do to stop the filament from getting stuck when there are lots of retractions in a print? And a word of warning: If you try to print this part and it gets stuck early on, you'll end up with hundreds of tiny plastic pieces that aren't attached to each other that need to be scraped off the build plate. They tend to fly everywhere when that happens.
  24. Here's a patch that also moves the graphics/'processMatrix()' updates onto the manually triggered computation: http://pastebin.com/L6kKaRe4 Caveat Emptor I haven't had time to test this thoroughly, but it seems to work as expected (I can rotate, scale, and configure my print parameters with zero delay, hit 'Ctrl+T', and then get a successful slice) and with only minor side-effects (if I scale an object outside of the build volume, it won't always turn gray until I hit 'Ctrl+T', etc.).
  25. I just tried posting a design to Youmagine through Cura, and ran into a few issues: Some (but not all) images would be uploaded twice. After sitting for a fairly long time with the upload dialog open, Cura will declare an upload to have failed, even when it has succeeded (and in some cases, succeeded more than once). The design was published successfully but I've still got the "Publishing design..." spinner in Cura, several minutes later. Here's an example of what happened:
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