drofnas

Hello, So just getting back into printing more stuff, turned into a daddy this year, so I've been a little busy with my daughter. I was reading about all the awesome Mods that people have been doing since I first bought my printer over a year ago, one of the most interesting is the Olsson Block. * Right now when my head gets all clogged up I do the Atomic Method to clean it out, which works AWESOME. Would this still be something I need to do when/if I get the Olsson Block? * Are there other advantages other than printing faster (right head for the job) that the Olsson Block provides? * Opinion: Do I need it? I'm planning on printing in Colorfabb XT / Taulman T-Glase, Nylon (from Taulman), Colorfabb Bronzefill, as well as the Colorfabb Woodfill stuff. I'm already looking into ordering some more PTFE Isolator Couplers due to the issue I hear people having with them warping after printing the PETT/XT style stuff from the high temps needed, so figured I'd get a few other supplies (like this O-Block) while I'm at it.

Hello, So my wife wanted her folding desk thingy back, which I had been using hold my UM2 and all accessories/filament for it. While browsing my favorite DIY Furniture site, and came across the MICKE Drawer Unit on Casters, checked the dimensions of the top along with my UM2 and BAM, perfect fit. While doing the obstacle course known as the "IKEA Experience ", I also saw some clear drawer liner and picked it up to. click for images for larger view The width of the drawer liner was a perfect fit for the top of the MICKE unit, just needed a single cut along the left edge (as it was a longer roll). I didn't want my UM2 to accidentally slip off the top of this unit, hence the reason for this little purchase, plus it clear and looks good. The bottom drawer can hold 10 Filament spools (approx 8" diameter x 2", same stuff I get from UM and Colorfabb). There is also a center caster to help support the weight of the bottom drawer, since it's meant to hold file folders. I have Loose Filament in the second drawer, and 2 small spools of Taulman filament in the third drawer. The Top drawer is where I keep my misc little tools I used (snips, long tweezers, tooth brush, etc). I wanted to get one of the drawer organizers from IKEA, that fits in the top drawer, but sometimes you just can't seem to find what you want in that place. Also the depth of the smaller drawers aren't as deep as the larger bottom drawer, so you can't fit 2x Standard Spools in those, but you can fit a Standard Spool plus one of these Mini Spools just fine. Which would mean you can have a total of 13 Standard Spools + 3 Small Spools in this compact little setup, if you just wanted to store filament in the drawers. Welp, that's it, I hope you like my compact little printer setup.

Welp, seems I may have used the "Jump to Conclusions" mat on this. Doesn't seem to be a filament issue, but something is wonky with my printer. I just changed over to use the Colorfabb Blueish White filament, which I've used successfully before, and I came back to this: I had JUST re-leveled the bed too, guess I'll have to sit down and try and figure this out. I was trying to print a SD Card holder (this one), and I used the Normal Print settings in Cura, plus the default PLA setting of 190F from the Printer Materials type menu (that you choose after changing filament).

I seem to be having some issues printing with the UM Natural Filament I purchased a while back. Was wondering if anyone has had any success with this filament, or maybe I've stored it toooooo long (purchased Aug 2014), got a bad batch, or I just need to tweak something else on my printer itself. Here's a little temperature test I printed to try and see what temp this works best at. Seems like it didn't matter what the temp was, it still had issues. I colored the tips of the overhang issue with black marker, since it was really hard to get a picture of that with this semi-transparent material. You can also see how the material kind of warps upward (better shot of warpage). This was printed using the "Normal print" settings in Cura 15.04.2. Went from 220F to 190F (bottom to top), in 5deg increments. Picture of how the fill just seems to fall over (190F, "normal print" settings): https://www.dropbox.com/s/ov0f7978yv5eiby/um2-filament-natural-issue-b-orig.jpg?dl=0&raw=1 This is how I store my material (gallon zip lock + silica gel packs): https://www.dropbox.com/s/ye43aizujdvr01m/um2-filament-natural-storage.jpg?dl=0&raw=1

Thank you so much, this solved my problem. Here's what the clipped off end of the filament looked like with the 3 times I cleaned it. Then what my first few layers of that filament clip looks like now, seems pretty darn good to me: Thanks again for your help solving my issue. Still new to this 3D Printing thing and so far very happy with this UM2.

Awesome, I'll try this out tomorrow when I get a chance. Thanks for all your help with this. I've also updated my original post to use the forum media gallery, that way it's not tied to an external service.

1) Hmm, don't think it's slipping. when I get a free moment I'll try your suggestion. 2) It seems to be fine, no grinding happening. But I'll definitely take a closer look when I try a test print again. 3) I've only ever printed with PLA so far. But I did accidentally leave some UM Black Filament out and connected for that week off. When I tried doing a quick print with that week old filament, it was all bubbling up, guessing it was a bit too humid. So I changed that out and tossed it in a bag with a desiccant. Wonder if I should turn up the temp a little hotter, maybe 235c, and run a bunch of PLA through the hot end to, maybe to clean up an gunk that might have built up. I'm also about half way through the filament spool for this UM White filament, so maybe it's a but too tight and causing issues? Is there maybe a better way to deal with the end of a spool? As for images, I think I'm still 4-5 posts from being able to do anything regarding attachments. Since I was required to validate my email address before I was able to even login to this forum.

Here's the pictures of a test print I was doing (3mm Filament Clip -http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12516): My wife finally asks me to print something for her, and now my printer doesn't want to work. I've been able to print quite a few things without any issues. The printer had been sitting for the past week, tossed in some UM White Filament, and tried to start printing and now I just get this junk. I've also provided the gcode file I used for this test and my printer settings are: Hot end: 217c Bed: 60c During the printing process I even tried to Tune the temp up to 225c and reduce the speed to 80%, then down to 60%, to hopefully make my print suck less. Thanks for any help you can provide. Edit: Updated to include a link to the my forum gallery for this issue, instead of using an outside service.

Yea, it was doing straight lines for the first layer of the bridge, then did the diagonal lines over top the straight lines. So, looking at your tests, it seems that 180c @ 50mm is the best setting to work with for bridging. This was the last 100mm bridge I tried before moving on to finally printing my "printer upgrades" :-) https://www.dropbox.com/s/v0k6qfj8mtrt7ss/2014-08-18%2010.48.14.jpg I'll have to try your settings when I get a chance tonight, see if those work for the 100mm bridge test.

Oh, very nice. It does load up the Plugin settings as well. I was able to get all the settings back from the gcode I created for a simple bridge testing object. This is awesome, now I can reproduce things much easier. Thanks. P.S. Loving my UM2 so far, already printed a ton of stuff, as well as the Low Friction Spool Holder.

doh, nvm... There is a "Open/Save Profile" under the File menu. This is what I get for not clicking all the "obvious" options.

Is there a way to save the print settings I had for specific model? The reason I ask if I've been playing around with the "Tweak at Z" plugin and I want all those layer specific settings to be saved, somewhere, so I can quickly reproduce that same print later on. I was planning on using this plugin to ensure my bridges turn out perfectly for a print, but I don't wanna have to manually set these up every time I want to tweak/reproduce a given model. A more generic option might be to just have a way to save/load all the settings into a "ini" file. Then I can have a default.ini for each filament type I own, plus specific ones for different models/filament combos. I could then go back to those and tweak them to make em perfect at a later date, or just print another exact copy.

While playing around in the advanced/expert settings of Cura some more this weekend, I noticed the "Tweak at Z 3.2.1" plugin that was installed. This seems to be a good way to tweak your settings a few layers before the bridge happens, so that you can change the temperature of the hot-end and the flow rate of your filament. I still haven't found the "perfect" settings for the "Ultimate Blue" filament yet. I start printing with 40mm @ 217c, then I reduce the speed to about 50% and the extruder to 200c a few layers before the bridge. I wanted to give it time to cooldown the extruder before the bridge, so I started this process about 5 layers before the bridge came up (this will depend on the side of your model). Then about 5-10 layers after the bridge I would increase the speed to about 75% and 210c, 5 layers after that I went back to 100% at 217c. I did the 75% speed increment, since I wasn't sure if I could jump straight from 50% to 100% due to the extruder most likely not heating up quick enough. Might need even more increments, maybe increase the speed/temp by 10% until you reach full speed/temp. It would be awesome if there was a plugin that automatically setup all of these steps for you. So you could say what layer the bridge starts at, how many layers before and after the bridge you want to ramp down/up, and the final ramp down temperature/speed. Then it would calculate all the increments it needs to jump down/up so the speed/temp stay in sync. Then if your printer needs smaller increments, you would simply increase the number of layers before/after the bridge to get the right values. /2 cents from a newb 3d printer owner

It might be a while before I have any sort of "skilled hands" (eyes) :-) I wish there was a database of knowledge for material X trying to print a model with A, B, C features on it. For example, being able to search for Colorfabb XT and trying to print a Model that has a 20mm overhang. If said search doesn't come up with anything, it would give them the option to toss their findings up. Hmm, maybe if I have time I'll toss something like this together, at the very least to track my own tests/settings. But anyways, I'll try messing around with the temp, speed, and I always keep the fans at 100% (not sure if I should ever change that). The print I was trying to make with the overhang was a calibration piece (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:24238). Even the small (5mm) overhang looked horrid; the overhand in my previous picture was the 10mm one. Thanks for all the help.

What's the recommended process/application if you print has any sort of bridging? I just got my printer today and seem to be having issues with any prints that have a bridge in them. Basically my process is: Download stl's from multiverse (Thingiverse / YouMagine) Open in Cura Position things™ Save gcode to SD Card Stick in printer Print. I have a UM2 and using the Ultimaker Blue that came with my printer. Only calibration I've even done was the initial bed leveling. Bad Bridge: (don't have gallery upload permissions, yet) https://www.dropbox.com/s/cldymxdxo3plv15/2014-08-14%2021.43.23.jpg

Ooh, nice. That will help me a ton. My new printer will be delivered this thursday, so this will come in handy. Looking forward to eventually printing with this bronzefil filament, looks like awesome stuff.

Just picked up my first 3D Printer (Ultimaker 2) and was wondering if I should run this gcode (extrusion test) when I start using a new filament batch? Or is this just a one time test to ensure my printer is calibrated correctly?