korneel

Thanks GR5! i absolutely agree on the fact that the makerbot is a pretty bad piece of equipment.. so i was not trying to compare the 2 machines quality wise, i am absolutely convinced the UM2 is way better quality wise. I was comparing them to how they are being presented. you can walk into a consumer store and buy a makerbot.. it's marketed as a consumer device. people get the same impression from the UM2.. but i believe we agree there guidelines are simply needed.. as far as the cold pull, could you explain this a little better? this seems like a very good idea! K.

this is a message to and for the Ultimaker Team, which I hope you'll take some time to review and answer let me start off with a very clear statement; While responses have been slow to my support tickets, I have been following up myself with phone calls and have always gotten correct, friendly and very helpful responses. Unfortunately responses to mails have been very slow or non-existent, but that could have been caused by my own meddling by calling as well. In short, I feel the support staff is helping me where they can and are friendly, helpful and in general very nice. I like to get a response withing 2 minutes but I understand that's not possible. Something did pop up that lead me to this post and this set of questions. first of all, please recognize your target audience. while i understand you might consider 3d printers for the technical savvy, and for people with some existing knowledge of 3d printing, I think you might have become a victim to your own success. I believe that, in general, when people look at 3d printers, they see the Ultimaker 2 in the same line as the Makerbot's of this world. A printer that is ready for the technical consumer. I for one, while having a technical background, did not expect the amount of tinkering I've been doing. I don't mind it, but looking at the printers I would expect the Ultimaker Original to require tinkering, and the Ultimaker 2 a much more consumer ready product. my experiences so far have not been underwriting that. error on my part for which i take full responsibility, but please consider that i might not be the only one. i think a lot of your UM2 customers (just check the forums) that bought a UM2, opted to buy the UM2 versus the UM-O because they wanted something that would be ready to go and require little intervention. once again, perhaps error n our part, but this is a mindset that you might need to address. I also found out that apparently running 30 hour prints is heavy usage. I think with the large buildspace of the UM2, a 30 hour print is not heavy but should be considered normal. I have had serious extrusion issues and have logged a case for that. in the end, it turned out replacing the complete hot end fixed it, since the Teflon part completely fused into the metal isolator part. something that could have been avoided would it have been replaced sooner. something I would have done happily, if I knew what to look for. This lead me to some questions that I think would help me and most of your UM2 customers; 1)can you give us some estimates on when to replace parts. I now understand I have to change the Teflon Isolator every now and then, but guidance for that would have been nice. do i also need to replace the hot-end every X hours? when do i need to perform the Atomic Cleaning? every time i change materials? or not when i go ABS to ABS? it would be nice to have directions like ; every 500 hours you have to replace the teflon isolator. every 2000 hours you have to replace the hot-end etc. etc. 2)can you post some simple youtube videos showing the replacement of the parts. I had to go all through github source files to find out that i needed 1mm of space between the teflon isolator and the metal isolator. a link on your parts page would have prevented that search and that mistake. 3)why are the replacement parts so expensive? if a teflon isolator has to be replaced every 300 hours or so, why is the thing 16 euros excluding shipping? looking at the amount of UM2s already shipped, you should be drowning in these by now because of the sheer amount of parts people need.. same goes for the hot end and the metal isolator. they are very expensive for parts easily fitting in an envelope. please don't see these questions as a complaint. I love my UM2 but i am desperate for some guidance on when to replace and why to replace parts. obviously this is needed because there have been some statements about parts being worn. I will be at the ultievening this monday, bringing my printer, but this is not an option for most of your customers.. just my 2 cents.

i would not trust that design to be honest.. as soon as higher pressure is needed you are relying completely on the slipperyness of the bowden tube. there is a bearing in very other design i've seen to help move the filament when the pressure is high..

dank voor de tip Dirkels! heb ook zo'n plaat besteld

i'll be there.. taking my UM2.. i think i need spare parts for the teflon stuff and the extruder... perhaps the bowden tube.. still under warranty.. the support desk knows me

are you using ABS or PLA?

Xeno; once you start building your larger ultimaker, would you like some help with that? it might also help you source you with cheaper parts if you buy multiple.. I want to have a larger build area, but not completely sure on how to proceed. you seem to have this under control i'd be your extra pair of eyes

are there any plans for releasing an ultimaker with a large rbuild volume? i would definately buy one... i have an ultimaker 2 now..

i'm hoping someone from the ultimaker team can give us some insights into what the solution actually is and what direction they are thinking into?

just wondering... what was actually announced where? ultimaker original+ ?

ok, will play with the tension a bit, will also order some 618 for cleaning. got some additional advise (seems i will not be patenting my cleaning method) to heat up the nozzle to 260, then do the atomic cleaning method but instead of cooling down to 90, cool down to 210. so will try to see if i get it even cleaner after this print

so the problem is not in the feeder.. although the stock one isn't much good. i'm printing a new one now that should make it better. however, i did find a way to make it way better. after cleaning the printhead yesterday night, and getting so frustrated in the morning, i gave the atomic cleaning method some more thought. i was using PLA to clean.. but what about using ABS? so i heated the printhead to 260, placed some abs in it till it extruded, the did a quick pull, no cooling down. came out al black. did that a couple of times until it came out nice and clean and it also extruded clean. i then did it again, but now let it cool till 150. came out clean. put in pla again, factory default settings, so 210 degrees, and did a print. while not perfectly satisfied, it seems it has resolved quite a bit.. seems i need to patent my own atomic cleaning method where you don't cool off the printhead and you only use ABS... these are my current prints; as you can see, most definate an improvement but it seems the top isn't filled out completely.

no clicking. cleaned everything. even took the printhead apart last night, will try again in a few minutes. also atomic cleaning method. printed at 30 degrees using the ultiarjan's rail system for the spool. stock feeder.

so i was completely fed up yesterday evening and took apart the print head; the reason behind that was the quality of my prints. i tried printing the stand for my engine, which is a 50 hour print, but after 10 hours in, the printer stopped extruding. i had to print at at least 225 degrees (ultimaker PLA) to get it to extrude and after some underextrusion i had to pump the temp temporarily up to 250 to get a decent flow again. this is the result before it completely gave up; the pictures above are a mix of the parts i took out of the print head and took pictures of the seperate parts; to me it seems the teflon spacer is just fine, but the copper print head has nothing but "gunk" in it. i used the method as described in a differnt topic using a burner to completely burn it clean. i cleaned the head, made it all pretty again, i could see through the small nozzle head, completely cleaned it, it all looked perfectly. print head was nice and shiny again. as you can see in the pictures there was a lot of debris in there and i burned all of that out. put everything back together, started my print of the extruder yesterday, with the default print settings for PLA, so 50mm/s, 0.1 micron layers and 210 degrees with a heated plate of 60 degrees. these are my results; suffice to say, i'm not happy with these results.. when everything cooled down, i tried another print, but there was no extrusion, print head clogged again. i don't know what's happening ... any ideas?

thank you for the reply; to address some points; i print XT at colorfabb's instructions, 40 mm/s, 250 degrees, fans off. no issues whatsoever. when i tried switching back to PLA that is when the issues began. i have just ordered some needles, hope that will help resolve issues. i always clean the head, but i also noticed every now and then a bit of XT will burn unfortunately. so i tried a new strategy last night, will post below.

well, i'm now forced to print PLA at 225 degrees.. that seems to give a sort of consistent solution. will try replacing the feeder.

i guess the answer from my ultimaker is no... any suggestions?

cleaned the nozzle a couple of times.. both with the cold pull as well as a wooden toothpick. i'm running the UM2 extrusion test now..

All; I've received my Ultimaker 2 a month ago, and it has been printing almost non-stop. very satisfied, but now i'm running into some issues. it is completely original apart from the UltiArjan Rail System i installed to get rid of some underextrusion issues. i've printed the light saber and some other stuff in Ultimaker blue PLA, which turned out perfect. I then switched the Ultimaker Red PLA, also went fine. the one thing i noticed was that if my printer cooled down, the nozzle became clogged and i had to run the Atomic Cold Pull method which got material flowing again. I then moved to my newest project; the 5 cylinder engine from thingiverse in double size. I printed the moiving parts in PLA red, which all turned out great. I then printed all the non-moving sizes in Colorfabb XT, which was even better. very satisfied with the results. now when i switch back to PLA, nothing but issues. I have serieus underextrusion, and it seems there are other issues. when i switched back to XT, now also the XT is showing the same issues. here are some examples; wall is peeling off with XT some of the prints; it looks like quite bad layer adhesion and underextrusion. also the top is very badly printed. i then went back to retrying the print with XT, and now the top and bottom are perfectly smooth but when i try to print smaller things, like gears, there is all kinds of "rubbish" attached to the gears; any ideas what is going on here? thanks; Korneel

Ok, i'm trying to build an Arduino monitor to give me some insights into my Ultimaker. What i want to know: temperature of my stepper motors (they are incredibly hot) if the build platform is up or down (to signal end of print) amount of filament used (measure length of filament passed through feeder) while I know of easy ways to accomplish the first 2 things, I am breaking my head over how to resolve the measure of the wire length used by my printer. Maybe a sort of an optical sensor? has anyone tried this?

yes, should have been cleared, it is the rail system.

ok so let me start off with how much i hate this forum software. this is my third time typing this, inserting URL's is just the worst thing ever. i am actually typing over my finished post in a different tab that i cannot edit anymore since there is a URL insertion pop-up box that, when i try to click it away, tells me if i'm sure.. clicking ok or cancel does the same thing.. NOTHING. anyway, so much for the rant, here is my reply. yes, typed over like a caveman, not copy pasted since you cannot paste things like URLs.. or click away popup boxes.. but i digress; I have been following this thread and been testing this quite a bit. I noticed a lot of extrusion issues when printing especially with "tougher" materials or when reaching 60 percent of the spool. helping the feeder by hand helped, but that's not something i want to do during a 24 hour print. some softer materials just made it worse and i ended up with throwing away quite a bit of chewed up filament. being tired of this and listening to other people with similar problems here and in the forums, i started testing. moving the filament spool away from the back made stuff a lot better! i also cannot see the good of a solid iron feeder head when using softer filaments. the risk of immediately chewing into it when there are a lot of retractions or ifthere is any small obstruction caused by anything, from impuraity up to diameter changes in the filament is just too big. so i thought to look for it in the feeder. i am trying to install Spirit's feeder since a belt driven "helper" to the feeder just made a lot of sense. unfortunately getting the right materials in NL is a disaster. the belts and bearings are either impossible to get or impossible expensive. i had someone quote me 25 euros per bearing. so off to ebay and some people in the US and i got the materials (plus a lot of spares so if anyone wants to print this feeder as well, let me know and i can supply you with the materials such as bearings, belts, bolts and nuts). anyway, this was taking too long to get to my place, so i had to figure out something in between. seeing were my issues started and where the chewing occured and when, i tried moving the material.to better fit the feeder. i ended up with UltiArjans solution last week and the be honest, this solved everything with the STOCK feeder. i have now been printing continuously, using the stock feeder and motor in the setup as described by ultiarjans rail system with ZERO issues. no chewing up material, no retraction issues, using Colorfabb XT and Ultimaker PLA (went through 3 rolls in a week!) and zero issues. not even one where i had to unclog the nozzle.. very happy. I will still change the feeder for the belt driven one so i can reliably print soft materials and i don't like the steel head, but very impressed with the results so far. this would really be the first thing i would recommend to people.. install the rail system, get a good straight feed, then start troubleshooting the feeder. one sidenote, i have noticed the motors becoming incredible hot. not just the feeder, but all of them. i have attached some Fluke temperature sensors to them now and will post some results. i don't know the factory specs but they seem to get into the 60 degrees celsius range.. hope this helps.

happy to see the voting helped

I just printed the rail system, Ultiarjan, what did you use to extend the cable? You should be able to add an extension cable, whioch cable did you see at Conrad?

Í've had my UM2 connected to a APC SmartUPS1000 for a while now. works like a charm. no power cuts eperienced but it shows me it could support up to 30 mins..