solonari

I think this thread really should have been split into separate issues, if there is an intention of constructive criticism. Like a number of people here, I ordered my UM2 and went a long time without order feedback. As someone here suggested, I gave a call, and whatever was holding things up suddenly got unstuck. Then I had to fight with FedEx/Customs in the US, and of course I only imagine someone at FedEx getting upset and tossing my box around, but the result being what arrived on my doorstep was not exactly what left the manufacturer. However, that being said, I can tell you far more than what a simple "I paid money and it arrived" would yield. In short, if you survive the wait, you will be in possession of an incredible machine that is backed by fantastic people. For the gentleman awaiting his replacement hot end ... okay, I cringed. Someone else mentioned Chris helping them out. Chris is indeed nothing short of amazing, and she corroborates the report of doubling the size of the Support team. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Chris saved my sanity and set the bar for other companies' service and support. When the broken printer arrived, she ran through the usual "did you try?" but very quickly realized and respected that their customers tend to be a little more techie than other demographics. She asked what I'd done, considered it, looked at the pictures I sent in and said, "you know what? We need to get you a new machine." And that is precisely what she did. Now, I was terrified of another wait, more Customs fun, and all that. Not the case. Seems Ultimaker really wants to have best-in-class service, and they were in the process of partnering up with a company here in the states. So she introduced me to one of their people here, and over the next week we (all three of us) chatted about 3D printing as my new machine arrived. New machine arrived, was unblemished, and aside from not receiving a damaged machine the first time, I cannot imagine how things could have been improved. Now I'm not trying to rub anything in anyone's face. What I _am_ saying is that the Ultimaker product is worth the wait, and if you run into any trouble whatsoever that can't be answered right here, their team is second to none when it comes to making you feel like you are their only customer and that you mean the world to their business. So far, I know that ... - they have pretty much doubled their support staff in the last two months - they were having an issue with their ticketing system, but seem to have resolved it - they answer their phones -- I've never had to leave a message on a machine - they do not simply read from scripts when you call and ask for tech assistance - they have expanded their global service presence on both support and part distribution - they maintain a presence in all the big shows and they respond to feedback they receive there - they are agile and shift resources within their teams to meet the needs of their customers - knowing what I know now, if I could go back and choose again, I'd still be an Ultimaker customer

Running a UM2 with 14.07 f/w (I know, I know, but waiting for 14.10+ with fixes for the 14.09 travel issues and whatnot). I apologize if it's fixed in 14.09, but I did not see it in the release notes, so figured I'd post it here for review. Being relatively new to printing, I'm not sure if the following is something that Cura is placing in the gCode, or if it's something the firmware is responsible for. Was doing fine with Initial Layer Thickness at 0.15 and my Layer Height at 0.1 ... Printer would warm up, extrude a small pile, then pan the head and raise the plate. Then I wanted to do a couple quick and crude prints, so I set the Layer Height to 0.25 (on the Basic tab, didn't look at the Advanced tab at the time). Suddenly the printer would warm up, extrude a small pile, raise the plate to sink the nozzle into the pile, and then pan the head to drag that mess into the print area. Setting the Initial Layer Height to 0 causes the print to behave normally again. Didn't do the obvious additional tests (was pulling molten and congealed plastic off the bottom of my extruder), but thought it was worth mentioning in case someone working on the code happened to notice something along the lines of if (initialLayerThickness < layerHeight) { dragThePile(); } ...

Not sure if this is the right place to post it, but I was curious as to the popularity and feasibility of such a feature, as it would need support both in Cura and in the firmware. This feature would purely be for the "print one at a time" option. Cura would embed a gcode comment or comment block at all object transitions that clearly indicates "new object start" in some fashion. The firmware would add an option during print, whether juxtaposed to the "Pause" in the Tune menu or as part of the "Abort" menu perhaps, which simply allows the user to "Skip to Next Object" ... Selecting this option would cause the firmware to find the next object marker within the gcode, jump to the marker and start printing the next object. We've all had prints fail in various ways, and I've multiplied an object a few times and one of them came unglued or curls during the print. Sometimes I'd rather not start over and I'd also rather not waste more time and filament on a corrupted object. In this case, I would be able to skip to the next object and be on my way again.