danilius

Belay that, just noticed where I was downloading from (github) is ancient. Is there anywhere I can download it without having to install it?

@nallath, I will check that out pronto. I just grab a zip from git, rather than install a DEB. Is that OK?

@landway, there are several stages to bed levelling. 1) obviously, start the process 2) bed lifts up to roughly 30mm away from the nozzle 3) now you have to turn the dial many times so the bed starts to lift up, this will go quite quickly - this is pretty important in your case 4) press the button to go into rough levelling, the head will move to three spots, so get the nozzle near the nozzle within about 1-2mm and press the button every time 5) then you go into fine adjustment mode, same thing all over again, three button presses and this is where you get the nozzle within 0.1mm of the bed. Then you are done. So, make sure you read the manual first, and then read the instructions on the screen and amazingly enough you will find that not only will the Ultimaker raise the bed all the way till the nozzle, but it will be more than adequate for your customers!

@nallath, I sobbed when I saw this image. Such compassion that drives you to create such a beautiful tombstone. What a wonderful person you are. And it was a she, not a he. And a shubunkin, not veiltail. And we did not flush it down the toilet. We ate it. Waste of good protein otherwise.

I just downloaded CURA from the shiny new page that screamed "ALL NEW CURA - GET YOUR FIX HERE", and clicked on the captcha button to confirm I was not a robot. Thing is, how did the captcha know I'm not a robot? That was really freaky! Maybe it can see me through my web cam? I'm getting really worried here. But that's not all. I installed the download and ran CURA, and discovered my goldfish died. I was really shocked. How could this new program kill my goldfish? I asked my wife, and she said that the goldfish had been dead for a while, and it probably had nothing to do with CURA, but I'm not convinced. Well, the shock, horror and disappointment did not end there. The new CURA looks exactly the same as the old one. Right down to the models I loaded into it. The models looked exactly the same as the models I loaded into the old CURA. Where was the "make awesome" button we were promised? Where was the all-new singing and dancing wireless neural interface with the Minority Report blue holographic interface? Then is occurred to me. I am a humble Linux user. For me, the world is grey and drab, and all the world looks down on me as a sad freak. So does CURA. It hates me for being too geeky, so it makes itself look like CURA 15.04. There is a lesson to be learned from this. When releasing a beta onto a fickle public, they will whine, gripe and complain incessantly about all those things that have very little importance despite the fact you spend long hours trying to make even that part look pretty. They will ignore the rocket engines and turbocompressor, superchargers and laser cannon you installed under the hood only a few buttons and a trigger pull away that took nights of electric shock therapy and nitric acid baths for your eyeballs to get it all in to such a crammed space. And you will weep. You see, I too was a software engineer, and I loathed marketing and despised the management, for they thought only in marketing terms. They would describe a good meal as a "upward-moving consumer-facing victual for discerning gastronomes, going forward". They knew ought about software development. And the users made me shudder. They gave me sleepless nights because they persisted in asking for picayune and useless functions that they could have sorted out quicker with pen and paper. And so dear CURA developers, you have my sympathy. I know exactly how you feel. And I empathise. I weep for you too. And so, if I don't get my CURA-Pink-Unicorn-for-Linux-fix soon, I will hang my head and shamefully join the ranks of the chatterati, discard all my morals, empathy and sense of justice and rant and rave about how badly thought out the title bar border was. Just to annoy you.

@gr5, the 3dverkstan pages are a good start. Troubleshooting can be split into a few top-level areas: mechanical, electronic, software and printing. Printing itself can be can be subdivided into bed adhesion, quality, noises (eg. kickback tocking), weird stuff. Of course there can be various second-level categories that might point towards the same response. Certainly using images as well as text to describe each category would certainly help. If most people who regularly respond here write in the wiki as well, and point links to the wiki, it should not take more than a few months to get a comprehensive guide up and running.

You want enough tension on the filament that you can see bite marks on it. Next, if you are getting kick-back, you might have a clogged nozzle as @cloakfiend suggests, or the temperature of your material is too low, or your printing speed too fast. There is no set speed for PLA or any other material; each roll can and usually will be different and therefore you have to learn the extrusion volume/temperature/speed ratios all over again for every new roll you get.

I have had quite a few issues with the cool head lift, so instead I print a wipe tower or a few copies of the same thing. That way I usually get one decent print. I have found that cool head life always results in goo everywhere, even with longer retraction.

Maybe I have completely misunderstood what you are asking, but I wonder if you have levelled your bed correctly, and that accounts for the gap?

@gr5 - I only mentioned ABS because leopard said he bought some but could not get it to stick to the plate. It looks like the same questions are being asked over and over again, so I think a wiki with all these issues compiled into one reference work will really make some sense and help noobs/the more experienced to sort out their printing woes.

Well, stay with the machine for the first two layers or so. Try an easy part first, and a large one, say around 8cm x 8cm. Watch it printing to see if you are getting the results you want, and tune speed/temp until you are happy. Then you should get an idea of what works for you.

Check out this link first, it looks like under-extrusion.

I think that there is an issue anyway with the temperature not varying automatically according to speed. This makes little sense, since printing speed can vary considerably during a print (think about printing a cone for instance, where the bottom could be printed at 60mm/s and the top perhaps at only 10mm/s for a quality finish). In this scenario the ideal temperature might be 210C for the bottom and 190C or even less for the top. I know there are custom firmwares that can do this, but currently I do not have the time to investigate them properly and I do not want to trash my baby by doing something silly.

I wrote up my experiences in assisting a piano tuner repair an old joanna on my bleauge, but here are a couple of snaps.

Aside from what Didier said which will explain why you are not getting a proper feed on your filament, I think your bed is too far away as well. Try loosening up the screws a little to get the bed a bit closer to the nozzle.

Really floppy filament is just asking for a good cry. The only success I have had so far with elastomers has been NinjaFlex, which is slightly stiffer than the other noodle plastic I bought.

Check out this model: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:113117 There is a lot to learn from it, so download it and see what this fellow has done.

There is no joint that is universally useful. There are ball joints that are pretty good for articulated figures, but that might have too many degrees of freedom. Hinges with dimples in them that allow for click-positioning. Yada yada.

That is very peculiar. Peculiar can happen of course, but not very common. Do you have a stock bowden tube? 3,05 still fits if the ID is 3,16mm. If your feeder doesn't influence the diameter of your filament at all there is no problem. But since that is not always the case, 2,99 is a safe line. Your not experiencing more friction when nearing the end of a reel? I have a stock UM2. I don't think I had any particular issues with the end of reel. I forgot to mention that I made myself a reel holder with ball bearings (gotta upload it to Youmagine at some stage) that site directly behind the feeder, so the filament does not bend through 90 degrees when entering the bowden.

@gr5 - that's seriously crazy. I know nylon is waaaay stronger than ABS, but to find two PLAs or two ABSs that are wildly different in strength? I have an ABS filament that at 30mm/sec and at 260C gets badly discolored and the surface finish deteriorates. That's why at 30mm/sec I reduce the temp to 230C.

To make things work for me with ABS, I heat the plate to 110C, the filament between 230C and 260C depending on how fast I'm printing, slather UHU stick glue all over the bed, close up the front with blutack and paper, and put a concertina-fold cover over the top, keeping everything inside nice and toasty. This is not a fool-proof method, but so far has yet to let me down. Of course, I have not printed anything in ABS for more than 20 hours at a time. Perhaps if I try a 100 hour print that might just change....

Sander, I have some filament that is 3.05mm on average and the UM2 handles it without a problem. This looks like the coupler is too high as Didier says. It does not really explain why the two other colours both failed and the silver did not, but I wonder if that issue is dealt with if the red and black will sort themselves out.

You might consider a Lulzbot Taz 5 with a flexy dually whatever bla head. I have no idea if it will do a dramatically better job, though, so you need to hunt around a bit. And report back here if you can find anything useful!

I had this issue. Ultimaker GB replaced the coupler (actually sent me a whole nozzle kit) and I took 20 minutes to replace the coupler with my heart in my mouth. Fortunately although it is really fiddly, I succeeded without any mishap, and all your problems disappear. So I urge you to do likewise!

Sander, a wiki is definitely the way forward, if the input comes from the community as well as Ultimaker. So many of these questions are repeated in so many different parts of the forum which means valuable answers scattered all over the show, and one central place for answering a question like "how do I keep my prints sticking to the plate" would allow users to find 10 different solutions in one place. 10 solutions are great. All in one place - awesome. Currently Ultimaker are probably the best people to host such a wiki. I am quite happy to host the wiki, but I'm just one user. There is no real continuity in that, responsibility and oversight, prevention of spam etc. Another great tool would be a wizard to help anyone in these forums who would like to assist in triaging the problem. In this way the specific issue can be guessed at by the wizard before we even look at the problem. So before w try to solve the issue, the wizard eliminates as many variable as possible. It will also encourage the user to enter as much info as possible.