danilius

A couple of points. I always print ABS with the bed at 110C and the hotend at 230C for speeds around 30mm/sec and 260C for anything faster than 40mm/sec, and I enclose my printer with A4 paper held together with blutack. Secondly, there are numerous issues apart from too low a temperature than can cause one printed part to be weaker than the other from the same machine. So, what you need to do if you are really interested in pursuing this is to print two identical parts that are designed to be tested for breaking point. Mark down ALL the settings, and there are a lot for the Ultimaker. Speed, acceleration and jerk settings, temps, layer thickness and so on. Print several samples of each from both machines, log the results of testing their break points and then let the community have a look at the data. This would be useful for everyone.

What would be really awesome would be to pool the stats from users. Ask them to rate every job. Build a sophisticated database of materials, temps and speeds. The bigger the dataset, the more useful it will become. This can be easily incorporated into the firmware. At the end of the job, ask to rate the quality of the print. Record the tem(s) used, the speed(s) and anything else you can think of. Allow the user to specify which brand/sort of filament used. In this way, we all help ourselves to predict the best settings for the job. I just printed a fighter jet model I designed for my boys at 100mm/sec using ABS at 260C. It turned out as good as some of my better PLA prints at 40mm/sec. That's the kind of info we need to pool in a big way. The cloud works for that.

Ninjaflex is a nightmare to work with. What I found was that printing at 20mm/sec gave me mediocre results, and at 10mm/sec far better results. You will never get perfect results in an UM2 using ninjaflex, you really need an extruder sitting right on top of the hot end. Here is a tip: although ninjaflex is not aggressively hygrophilic like nylon, baking it in a cardboard box at around 45C with some rice for a couple of hours helps towards getting smoother extrusion.

Just search these forums for ABS juice, hairspray and glue stick. There are loads of methods that will make your prints stick, and everyone swears by their method. I swear *at* my method, but that's a different story.

ABS is not something you want to play with if you are a noob. Start with PLA, get comfortable with your printer and then move onto ABS.

If supports and surface quality are a major issue I tend to split model into two or more parts and assemble them with superglue. In this way I can print support-free.

I'm not sure why you want to add blue tape in top. Model you support as a hollow, then you can make the top as thick as you want. If you have a gap that's 0.15mm between the top of the support and the bottom of the surface above it, it should print just fine and separate very easily. Being quite thick, I have failed to understand your explanation for why you can't print this on its side.

Perfect first layer is down to several factors: speed temperature bed gap adhesive Print your first layer really slowly - 10mm/sec or maybe 15mm/sec - until you are more used to printing. If using PLA, print your first layer at no hotter than 210C (you might have to increase that once you have eliminated all the other variables) Even if you have levelled your bed perfectly, if the gap is too great your first layer will be messed up, so once you have calibrated the bed watch the traces of your first layer. If their cross-section is round, then you need to reduce the gap between the bed and the nozzle. Your traces on the first layer should look squashed. Adhesive is very important. There are loads of recipes: glue stick, hairspray, ABS juice, wood glue, painter's tape, cow's snot (OK, that last one is probably not genuine). I'm sure they all work equally well if applied in the correct manner, so pick your choice (pun intended for cow's snot, but don't laugh if you feel it will simply encourage me) and then stick to that until you get some kind of result that looks good. Don't fiddle with all the variables simultaneously. Lastly, do some research yourself. Read what everyone else is writing. Go through the forums. 3D printing is complicated, in its infancy, and no-one has all the answers. Or most of the answers. Or, in some cases - Makercoughcough - any answers :-)

You might have an issue with too high a temperature on your first layer. This can cause the filament to bubble up and get dragged off by the head. Also, try printing your first layer much slower. Lastly, and the most probable cause from what I can see in your photo (a higher res and closer=up shot would confirm this) your bed is too far away from the print head. Try reducing thei a little. I use a spark plug gauge, the 0.05mm thickness. Then while running the first few prints I adjust the bed manually. Ideally, your traces on the bottom layer should be squashed down flat. No so thin that the material becomes translucent, but enough that you can quite clearly see it has been squashed. This will help your first layer sticking.

There is no way of answering this question logically. You used two different filaments, so without testing both filaments in both printers, you have no way of knowing which filament is better. What temperatures did you print at? How fast did you print? What layer thickness? Did you enclose the Ultimaker to keep the heat in? Basically, you have left out the most important info. As it is, this sounds a bit like a troll. Having used PLA, ABS and Nylon on the UM2 for functional parts I can tell you that even PLA is a really tough material, and my son slashed his thumb whilst "destruction testing" some PLA which should tell you something as well. What, I have no idea.

I really can't see myself connecting my printer to the cloud for the foreseeable future. I spent a lot of money on that machine, and I don't want anyone else messing around with it. As it is, when a print starts, I have to hang around and make sure it starts off nicely. In almost every instance, once the print has started it finishes off quite nicely, so I can go and have a bath or jump into bed. Another though: this whole "let's open up 3D printing to the world" jingoism is really not addressing the single biggest issue facing 3D printing: beyond the most basic of objects, 3D modelling is insanely difficult and it is this which is a far bigger issue than the printing. What's the point in having a bazillion printers in the world, when only a tiny percentage of the population - perhaps 0.001% - know how to design things for them?

This was the question I was raising. Where will we get hosting that will be of sufficient quality/longevity? If Ultimaker offered to host such a wiki, that would be a reasonable solution. Another option would be to have it mirrored by several people. I am quite happy to store a wiki on my site for the moment. If we have five or ten such offers, and simple way of mirroring the wiki, that sorts out the problem then and there.

Agreed on all points. Now, where on earth can we get such hosting?

I have seen loads of suggestions, and tried a few. By far and away the best one so far that works for me (might not work for you, your sister or the pope) is spreading UHU branded glue stick over the bed with the temp as 100C. Slathering the stuff on. Twice. In two directions. Then I check for spots I missed using a torch and add some more. I found UHU glue to be better than the stuff that came with the printer and some cheap garbage I bought at the local discount store (the cheap stuff is actually quite good for PLA, but right now I'm in ab ABS mood). Now you won't get a shiny bottom surface, but if your bed levelling is good, then the PLA will stick like crazy on the stuff. Trying to pry it off with a tool will cause damage to the print, will probably cause damage to the printer and when you stick a razor sharp blade in your finger during the removal process you will begin to wonder what you were thinking of. So how do I get the prints off? I wait for the plate to cool down. If I have printed ABS, then some 20 minutes later they will usually pop off themselves due to shrinkage. With PLA, I have to tug a little, perhaps employ some dubious language or as a last resort freeze the plate and the the prints come right off. Again, this might not work for you. However, if all else fails or does not seem appealing to you, try this. You might just be surprised. Or shocked. Depending if you are earthed or not :-)

@gr5, I think that a newbie guide (with an explanation for why these suggestions are being made) would be a great idea. I have a list of things to put into it, so please feel free to PM if you want to get something off the ground and would like some input.

Yay!

This is a bit of a bee-in-a-bonnet for me, but worth airing out methinks. At least I will get it off my chest and get free therapy in the process. 3D printing is an end-user product for people who have a geeky streak, or worse yet are seriously geeky. That's because designing anything beyond the simplest of objects for 3D printing is really, really hard. Much harder than learning Photoshop, for instance. 99.99% of the planet have real lives and have no interest in learning CAD or modelling packages. That will simply not change, and until one can find more than 20,000 parametric products available free or at low cost no sane person will buy a 3D printer. It's too much money up front for what it offers, and the filament is bonkers expensive. Within five years I fail to see how all the current problems we have with even Ultimakers will be solved. The variables involved in 3D printing are far and beyond those of laser printers. What's worse, each of those variables affect almost every other variable, compounding the problems massively. There is a vast gulf between the reliability, ease of use and practicality between inkjets and 3D printers, and that gulf requires a lot of research to cross. 5 years is not optimistic, it's head-in-the-art-draw-sniffing-magic-markers thinking. Just look at dual head printing, which is a prerequisite for making 3D printing practical in the home. It's a disaster, and no-one has cracked it at the prosumer level. Oh, I know there are dual head printers all over the show, and they all rubbish at doing dual-head printing. I doubt Ultimaker is selling their printers with the USP of "careless printing" since they would be breaking the law in the UK, for starters, under the Sale of Goods Act 1979. The UM2 is easily the finest printer within its price bracket, and from what I see of other printers the easiest to use as well. It is still anything but careless. If you don't believe me, dive into the forums. If my washing machine would work like this, I would sue the shop I bought it from. My point is this: yes, 3D printing is awesome. The UM2 is awesome. Just don't forget to check into reality every now and then. CURA needs more geeky options because the majority of the people who use Ultimakers are geeky, very intelligent and realise that there are times when you have to crack open the hood. Don't believe me? Just look in the forums. If you want the "careless printing" version of CURA, you need to buy a different printer, one that has not yet been manufactured. Me, I want all the whistles and bells I can lay my hands on, and heck, I might even write some myself once Pink Unicorn is released. Judging by the forums, most users do as well.

@gr5 - I am no expert, but having bought over a dozen different brands of filament I have discovered that the speeds you recommend really don't pan out. PLA performance differs wildly between manufacturers and - get this - colours even of the same brand! I have PLA that will not print well below 230C, and I have used two rolls of colorfabb at 210C - 230C and they were both quite different. The lilac was quite buttery, and the green much more viscous. I have blue cheap no-name Chinese stuff that outperforms colorfabb and some similar stuff in orange that is insanely brittle and prints at 220C, and some similar stuff in neon green that sits in between those two extremes. I have some Spanish stuff that is lousy at whatever temperature. My favourite PLA at the moment is black from 3dfilaprint.com. I have not tried their other colours so have no idea if they are any good. Then in a world of its own I have no-name cheap ABS from the bottom of ebay's barrel. At 30mm/s at 230C the quality is beyond anything I have witnessed so far in PLA by a wide margin. At 260C I have it banging away at 60m/sec up to 80mm/sec and the results are still pretty good. I haven't tried it any faster than that. Anyway, the point I'm making is that there is no recommended speed/temperature combo that makes any practical sense. It depends on each filament and one simply has to experiment. I think that this thread is indicative of what that kind of recommendation can do. If the OP would have simply tried print at 235C or even 240C right at the start, this issue would not have cropped up. In my considered and oh-so-very-humble opinion the "official line" should be something along: Start at 210C/30msec with PLA and 230C/30msec with ABS and then experiment with higher/lower temperatures and lower and higher speeds.

What tend to do in this scenario is first check that the temperature reading is correct. Heat the nozzle to 210 and press a piece of filament against it. If it melts easily, your temperature is fine. Next, atomic pull as everyone has suggested. Should not take more than ten minutes if you are doing say 5 pulls. After the atomic pulls, feed a twist-tie (that you get with sandwich bags) through the hot nozzle. It should slide in easily for around 30mm or so. Use tweezers or pliers to feed it in. If there is a blockage, this will help loosen it up. Next, listen to your extruder. Is the motor going tock every 10-20 seconds? If yes, then you are pushing too much plastic through the nozzle. This means either hotter temps or slower speeds. Or both! Another thing to do is get a roll of PLA from a different supplier, or try printing with a known-good roll again and see if you have an issue. If only the orange is a problem, you have a dud roll. Nothing unusual about that, but does not happen too often. I have had rolls whose quality changed in mid roll! Lastly, and this is just for the overly paranoid, bake you PLA. Either put it in your oven at 45C (any hotter, you will get close to the glass transition point and you will cry or will be shot) or what I do is to put it on a hot radiator. Essentially just find somewhere really warm, put some silica gel crystals or a cupful of rice in a box with a lid, and dry out the filament for a few hours or even 24. If you are desperate enough, put it in a pillow case with a cupful of rice and run it in your dryer for a couple of hours. Then try printing again. Occasionally I have bought some plastics that are more hygrophilic than others, and this baking helps.

As it happens, almost everyone flogging printers give roughly the same impression, that all you need is a 3D printer and then the world is your plastic oyster. The shining exception is this video: in which Brook Drumm states quite clearly that 3S printing is hard.I never expected the Ultimaker to be a walk in the park, but as it happens it turned out to be a flatter learning curve than expected, largely because the Ultimaker 2 and Cura combination are simply superb for what they offer. With regards to ABS, I love the stuff. Weirdly enough for precision parts or quality surface ABS seems to do a superior job over PLA.

Bang on. The biggest issue by far, well before the ease of use of the printers, is the fact that 99.99% of the world's population have no practical way of modelling anything they need or want, and what's more, that is not going to change for the foreseeable future. Even Sketchup - which is really unsuitable for 3D printing - is only used in the most simplest of ways by most non-professional users. I have watched professional users of Sketchup trying to design something for 3D printing and have winced in sympathy. So, far more important than getting 3D printers easy to use is to get end-users an easy way to model things. Now that is one helluva challenge. I fail to see how that can be done for anything more than the simplest of use-cases.

OK, I have replaced the PTFE coupler and that seems to have done the trick. Some observations are in place though. These are not criticisms, but observations. They might be helpful in designing the UM3! Then again, maybe not :-) The biggest issue I had was with the wires. I was really worried that they might snap because of the force I had to use to get the old coupler out. What would be useful here, now that the PTFE coupler has become a consumable, would be to have a plug that all the wires would go into, and in that way when working on the head one would simply unplug the connector and the whole thing can come free. It would make servicing the head much easier. The process was very fiddly. Now, I used to work as a jeweller, making high-class jewellery. So working with parts that are less than 1mm in diameter in very restricted space is something that has become second nature to me. Yet I still found the process quite fiddly. I think that my observation regarding the plug to make the whole head removable would go a long way to making the process easier. These two issues amongst all the other ones the Ultimaker suffers from should really explain why 3D printing is not ready for prime-time. Your average Joe cannot be expected to deal with all those issues, unlike their washing machine or car which usually just plods along doing its thing. It was worth doing nonetheless in order to gain a better appreciation of the design, machining and build quality, all of which is really superb. Ultimaker is still a young company, and that means that service is a bit, how should I put it, wobbly. Not bad. Not poor. Just not quite polished yet. Nonetheless, service GB came through quite quickly for me. I had no hassle from them. I am not complaining about the service, just observing that there is some way to go till the service is as good as the product! If you have ever dealt with John Lewis, for instance, then you will know what I'm talking about. Having said all that, the Ultimaker is still one of the finest machines out there for the money, and if someone asks me what to go for, it's still the Ultimaker. By far.

Well, you have certainly proved it now! A hot end pack arrived today, so it looks like I'm going to have to take my heart in my hand and operate on my baby. I need to find some down-time, though, since I run it almost 24/7. I have bookmarked that guide and it looks less painful than some of things I have had to do in my workshop, such as the time I had extract a rat-tail file that got embedded in my arm, and I am very squeamish! All in all, well done!

Here comes another theory: check the plugins page to make sure you have not inadvertently set the extruder temperature from layer 1 upwards to go too low. Happened to me - I had used Tweak-at-Z for a previous print and forgot about it, only to find mysterious problems with subsequent prints. This might explain why your bottom layer is perfect, and goes down the pan from there. An obvious test to run is to download a suitable model from Youmagine or thingiverse and print that. If that shows the same horrible problems, then you might have a dead duck on your hands. Also, reset you UM2 to factory settings, and do likewise for Cura. Then have another go. That will help to eliminate really difficult to find issues. You won't really lose much by doing this since factory defaults are spot on for almost everything with the UM2 and Cura.

Looks like I have a new coupler on the way! Hopefully it will be here by the end of the week.