cloakfiend

I did it by hand using the metal thingy trying not to overtighten, i printed the ob holder but am holding off using it as things now appear to be improving, first time i printed i heard a kind of hiss and pop, then drool of filament, but nothing since then. It appears to be getting better. just now I accidentally dialed in a 0.6 nozzle using a 0.4 one but the results look suprisingly good, even at 0.04? Weird, i must investigate this area more. The surface looks peculiar but ill see after it finishes.

I also just screwed the nozzle in with my fingers and the metal thing without printing that whole device, is that a problem? Do i need to use the ob holder thing? Oh well i guess ill see...my problems seem to be over which is good, but my prints also look different.

I never thought the fan did that much before, boy was i wrong! Im not sure ive got it right with the ob. Some pics of the ideal arrangement with the old um2 fan shroud and the ob would be nice, as otherwise is hours of trial And error. I still find the out of the box setup very good on the um2 side, tweaking doenst improve much in my opinion, its a well balanced machine from the outset. My bridging appears much improved now, that is plain to see. Thats after some fine adjustments. Bending the fan too much here and there can seriously affect the print. I think i am happy where i am at, but for the sake of r&d im gonna try every filament i own.

Thanks for the write up! Pics would be nice! Lol, but ill cut and paste this for a rainy day when i transition to the 35w heater. If im happy with my setup, then i may leave it be a while, but the heater does drop temps more rapidly than without the ob for sure. But seeing as i manually tend to lower them anyway its not that big a deal, maybe takes me a few minutes mor than before, i always print the first layer hot anyway and cool down progressively. Im sure i could write a gcode for this to sav myself the hassle, but it all depends on the clicks so gcode would be useless. Im doing extensive testing at the mo with lots of different materials and high and very high resolutions just to see if im happy but sander said he would help in any case if i had issues so it more R@D i got this machine for character development so as long as i can print them in a moderate amount of detail im happy. And so far so good with 0.06, now 0.04 with the ob to test...

Any guide for the extra steps?

Hey Sander, If there is a current guide to replace the heater with diagrams about the wiring end would be helpful just to know, before i unscrew th bottom panel just to know what to expect as i heard the ends differed? The ob is working so far, fingers crossed, lol.

OK haven't posted here in a while, as ive been testing the um2 with the ob. out one of my prints cracked after acetoning which meant it was weaker, the other just done now held up, in um trans green (old um filament never cracked on me though so ill try the red out and see.) been doing a lot of front cover remake sculpts in zbrush to practice, harder than i thought, the twisted body position was a nightmare to match on the worm thing.no teeth, lol, still thinking how best to do the as they are so tiny. Perspective and camera angle is almost impossible to match as its from a drawing. it serves its purpose.

do this at your own peril and dont blame me if anything goes wrong, but as long as you lay your filament on the back roll like this, you cant go wrong. It is physically impossible for it to get tangled. this is an early pic i keep posting as it was one of my first, but you can get up to 10 m worth of filament on the roll like this. All you need to make sure is its a perfect spring shape, which guarantees no tangles. If you just chuck it on after you randomly pull some from a roll and break it off, then its not different from printing on a roll if not worse. I speak from experience on this one and over a year and a half of non stop printing with no room for errors, so telling me otherwise is futile because i am right and you wont convince me otherwise. This is the best method hands down. Period. Even safer than the UM2+ feeder as well as that can still tangle. But start as new thread if you want to elaborate as this is about the OB not the feeder/spool. my latest print came out ok, ill keep testing to see the failure rate...

I have to disagree with you completely on the loose filament side of things, i've had many people say that to me for some reason, but i found them all to be careless, or you aren't laying it out correctly, because if you do then there is a zero chance of a tangle. Tangles are the sole reason i never print on the roll any longer. its why i don't do atomic pulls anymore, or ever get nozzle jams, or have any problems with the um2 printer feeder. Printing off the roll solves all these problems.

Yeah i only did it as i have a spare heat sensor as well, however i went into a panic as i thought i damaged my 25w heater which i may/may not have. I have a spare 35w heater now and a spare thermal sensor as well, as my main fault was the fan shroud. I can break the heater and sensor again and im still good in terms of spares. Im not giving up, its just im hoping my current print will not fail, my attempt before fan shroud calibration and block height did fail and produced weaker layers. Acetone brings out weak layers immediately by splitting your object. I hope this model holds up. Its what i bought the printer for after all, everything before this has just been playing and practice. Im trying to stay away from sla printers due to cost, as i tend to print a lot of stuff for friends and family as well and i get a lot of free filament from some of my friends, which means i am incurring practically zero costs. If i can produce what i did before then i will be happy. As for blocked nozzles, well seeing as i only use pla ive yet to meet a nozzle i cant simply clean, and now i understand how it works i believe blocked nozzles are a thing of the past as i dont print on the roll anymore. You only get blocked nozzles when the roll jams or the temps are too high when it gets stuck or.... The many other reasons, none of whoch i suffer from. Its a total non issue for me. In my honest opinion only people who print on the roll will get blocked nozzles, or beginners. I am also aware that my posts are way too long, lol.

Im doing what works for me from now on. I dont care what any readings say, as long as they dont fluctuate i can just try to figure out my new setup, im going to try to print something today. im not going to turn the temperature up, whatever anyone tells me. Turning the temperature up is always a worse idea than turning it down if you arent getting underextrusion. Actual temperature is totally irrelevant, its the result that matters.

This was my final callibration result after trying to get everything as best as i could. numbered from left to right, no infill, good bridging, and smooth tops 3 and 4 look best so that will be my place of choice for my next print test. from left to right in degrees, 55, 50, 40, 45. and some steeper ones underneath which i knew would fail. printed in UM silver it shipped with. 0.06, 175c (without the ob and using the other sensor would be 185) and all my usual settings. when im done with my new model we'll see how happy i am with my 'upgrade'. the odd one on the right is at 50mms the others are at 30mms

dont overdo the oil though! lol, just enough to coat the horizontal rods. dont touch the two fat ones that hold the plate, just the ones that move regularly and the ones that hold them. if you dont print everyday all day you dont need as much. just touch the rods to see if they are dry, if they are then one drop max per rod. and i always do it mid print, not cold.

after my first pfte change (10 months in) I had at least 10,000 hours on my last um2 with no issues, but if i would recommend anything then it would be to buy some sewing oil and regularly put it on the x and y rods to maximise the life of them or else you will need to tighten them to prevent skips on the teeth which will look like like a layer shift on your print.

im sorry i dont have a umo so my advice is somewhat limited.

retractions shouldnt be an issue, smaller stuff is harder due to heat being more of the problem, also id have either 100 % or zero infill as weird denominations on tiny stuff can damage the surface due to the walls still being affected by movement of the nozzle. and yes don't print loads of different shaped stuff at once unless you dont mind seeing layer lines due to mismatched cooling times per layer. Colourfabb red is fine, i swear by traffic red i highly recommend printing like 4 at a time, 2 may not give enough time to cool. Not sure if my settings will work given that each machine may read temps differently but i use... temp 185 layer height .06 speed 30. all walls 1.2. and fans on full from the very start. tats it everything else default on cura 15.04.2.

@sambianchibazzi, trust me if the fan shroud is touching the heater block, it wont hold temps at all with any fans on.... ok i have my new sensor and 35w heater, so rather than just installing them i thought id ask a few obvious questions... my last heater cracked completely along the line highlighted in the pic (still appears to work though), does that matter as the core is slightly exposed at the connector?, as it stuck out too much and the original metal shroud i bent down to get it in ended up smashing and grinding into the top left motor as a result and now my head wobbles a bit and i have a high pitch grunding noise from the pulleys or motor but only when the head travels left, not up and down or right. also what do i do with the heater wires? which one is positive or negative considering they look identical, does it matter? ive got the ob working with my broken heater and spare temp sensor, and only now do i realise the confusion with the temps, as i really ont know what to believe as the temp sensor is giving totally different readings than the last one, it appears 10-20 degrees less than the last, so what i would normally print at 185 i would print at 170 or something? it turned out that the block was indeed touching the shroud somewhere, so ill just take the blame for that as i was focusing on the ob being 1mm away from the pfte which i have now ignored as that is far less relevant than the block not touching the shroud which is basically life and death. here is a pic of the current heater that split where the wire met the heater. (25w). still works but seems more powerful than before, or the sensor is reading weaker than before? basically changing my ob created a big headache when all i wanted was a better fan shroud. be careful what you wish for, lol. if i ever manage to get it back to out of the box quality, im gonna leave it regardless of any future upgrades available. ive learnt my lesson. i've stopped caring about wanting the new fan shroud now. i just want to leave everything as it is, like marriage, for better or for worse. ive always tried to get the best out of my um2 and have come to realise i cant get better so that's that, its just in my nature to keep trying even if i break things. the ob is installed now but i think ive damaged my bearings or something that hold the head onto the rods as if i try to tilt it, it wobbles on one axis a bit. gr5s tut pic is the best guide in my opinion. its what i ended up using as i am a big fan of arrows, it takes the guess work away.(below)

Sorry for being dramatic, like many other people here I was merely assuming some of the information given on this forum was correct, I've clearly broken more than one item now, including both the sensor and heater and god knows what else, im gonna wait for a few spare parts and try to repair it, if not then I may need some kind of help, but Ill give it my best. I need a little break as all this has done my head in, and I just dont understand the issue with my shroud wether the thermal properties of the copper are cooling the heatblock too much or what, it never fit as expected to begin with and the exposed back may also be affecting it. Eitherway i need a bit of a time out.

Well you must not have damaged any parts when doing the switch then. I had the printer going with the old fan shroud back, but the quality sucked big time, overhangs sucked even more and other than printing towers, its was in my personal opinion useless. Im simply assuming my heater was broken by me taking it out. Ive probably damaged some other stuff now or done smething wrong with packing the wires back, or some other random thing. Its all lrobertsl fault he said i would be fine making the switch, Lol. Im like a drug addict on cold turkey at the moment and am in a foul mood because of it. I have a spare 0.4mm nozzle block from the heat kit seeing that ive ruined my original one, so once the new 35W heater arrives, assuming it works correclty(not that ill know if it doesnt, lol), im going back to the stock um2, for good. none of this OB nonsense, i dont print in abrasive materials so for people like me its a complete and utter waste of time. I completely and utterly without reserve regret even thinking about installing the bloody thing. im taking a vacation from this 3d stuff now, this traumatic experience just pushed me over the edge. I just dont have time for this nonsense i have enough to learn as it is without new mechanical issues and thermal issues from the shroud to replacing components in the printer. Have fun people and maybe ill return again later in the year. Sorry for my rants its just how I feel. All good things come to and end and mine just ended, I seriously doubt that i will be able to return the printer to its previous state which is even more depressing.

Then please state that you need a 35W heater with the OB, somewhere, anywhere, its not even stated as a need on the solex website either! I feel cheated and annoyed, why would you ship something and advertise it as ready to use even supplying the tools to install it, yet missing out the key component that drives it? However I fully understand that i'm now in the old machine camp now and you probably don't care because I don't have a UM2+. (even though now i don't really have anything) Shame.

Im more angry about the um2 shipping with the OB but not the Damn 35w heater or any mention of the fact you need it in ANY instructions. Im an artist not a mechanic, and dont really follow the 'modding' or 'upgrade threads' i prefer threads about post work, painting, sanding etc. so how on earth am i meant to know i need a 35w heater? For a start i have no idea what heater my um2 came with as because it was new AND shipped with many upgrades compared to my first um2 i assumed the thing was already compatible with the OB. I cant even tell on the ultimaker website the difference between the two heaters, just ones £2 more than the other, no labeling nothing. No mention of the 35w heater during any video instructions or warning even during written ones, they just assume you know, just unplug and plug in the new one. Yeah right! If you do that then like me you WILL be disappointed, and if you damaged your stuff you WILL be even more disappointed. So right now thats whats really annoying me the lack of mention of requirements. now i usually skim read and just try and remember steps in videos but im pretty sure i looked at a good amount of them and none mentioned you needed the 35w heater.

thanks for the words of support. i had a spare sensor from the hot end pack so ill use that and ordered a heater from solex, and a temp sensor, but after what you said i may regret it. is their heater ok? i still think im going to abandon the ob, but may give it one last chance i also dont like the larger nozzles even the 0.4 is bigger and therefore eminates more heat, its why i didnt like the umo, but even you said 'most' of your problems not 'all', i tried to print something and got incomplete layers at the same point twice when it printed fine before. i just don't trust it. i dont like the gap between the nozzle and ob and the fact i dont have a shroud or handle and cant print one at the mo. im gonna leave it for a while and ponder. ill give the ob one last day of trying, but if i cant match my usual standard its going in the bin after some some stress relief work with a hammer.

before i curl up into a ball and die, i have to correct you that im not doing your regular plating, most of my plates are about 100-200 microns and are far thicker than foil. more like thin metal and is very rigid so it does add tons of structural support. dont forget im still learning here but the plate is real thick in terms of plating. if it was thin i simply would not be able to sand it, period! and i love distressed copper more than neat copper. but seeing as i have now demolished my um2 it will be a while till i post here again....

ive replaced the fan with the original one, but it still seems to be unable to quite reach the correct temp. maybe the block is larger, who knows, but one things for sure, as soon as i get my new heater, the olsson block is going in the bin. i hate it, it does not work at all for me. its a gimmick that does not produce the same quality as the original nozzle. im out. im now seriously fed up with all this unnecessary modding. i was getting perfect prints before, i have no idea what made me do this, probably my stupid copper plated shroud that just didn't fit. nothing is working for me today.....rant over bye. im abandoning my um till i calm down... i might just sell it now. i hate fixing things that i broke. my personal advice to those wanting to install the ob is DONT.