cloakfiend

Heres is the same face after acteone. Ill spray it tomorrow just in case it cracks as i dipped it just an hour ago and i want to let it sit overnight, but im pretty sure with UM blue ill be safe as houses. Looks real good to me, but we can only see after the undercoat! Right now, who knows? lol. (well i do)

This is everything stock with my posted setting above but infill 20. Try printing it really small see what happens. Just try loads of things before you replace the head, i thought my head was ruined at one time as well but realized i didnt do atomic pulls correctly and had the printer in a room that had way too much air conditioning. all the top layers looked exactly like yours and the sides too. Everything was melted and looked weird. even worse than yours. but i managed to sort it. now even with my dying coupler i can still print stuff manually doing all the feeding and pre heating my self.

Maybe, i have to admit i have no idea what a bad nozzle print looks like. can you print anything right or just what you have been trying. try printing the ultimaker robot on its back. i just did to see how the flat top cam out and one side looks slightly better than the other for some reason, but seeing as im going to acetone it later i dont mind, as long as the layers are perfectly aligned i dont care. Something looks wrong with your layer height alignment thats for sure. maybe dirt in the twisty thing the build plate moves up and down on or in the holes. Im sure you've cleaned it. Try another nozzle, they arent expensive, not that ive changed any, but i also have been printing very heavily since i got it and its seems to be going strong? I regularly did 54 hours long prints too so im not sure what your issue is. Until you do tests and post them regularly, you wont fix your issues unless you do it on your own. how can people help you if you dont show your progress?

Systematically change each setting at a time noting down when things improve. Its the only way im afraid, kinda like assigning IRQ ports back in the day, lol.

What are those settings you printed with now? as compared to the settings you printed with before? did you play with temps, how many passes does it make for the floor. Like folks said if its one, aim for like 3-4 to be safe. with shell and walls 1.2 you should not be having problems, do a few more atomic pulls and try printing something with the filament cut off the roll to eliminate snags on the filament and the feeder. Go from there. Change one thing at a time and you'll figure it out. off the roll test removed any weird lines for me. This is how i print every time now. Never looked back. It gives you the smoothest possible result no matter what kind of feeder you use period. It eliminates ANY possible chances of serious snags and poor feeder behavior. This completely eliminated the clicking sound for me which i admit had me wanting to smash the printer on a few occasions. But I'm very happy now I know how to deal with any issues, and I hope you sort yours out too. Once you do, you'll be fine.

Any new pictures? try it at 60mm/s and layer height 0.1 or something. or just slice off a section and try lots of different things, other wise 54 hours is a long wait for a fail. I have not really had any fails after the initial first month of owning the printer. Like someone said here on the forum. The UM2 is very nicely calibrated with cura out of the box, so if you use that you really should not have too many issues trying the settings shown. I only had this weird problem when i had the top/bot at 0.8. As soon as i made the top/bottom 1.2 in both boxes i had no issues what so ever. The ONLY settings I use for what its worth! If i print 0.1 I use 50mm/s as the speed thats the only thing i change.

Do it! once you get the hang of it, you will only use this method. Just try to avoid getting the acetone on your hand as it melts the PLA sometimes and when you touch it, it smudges the model and sticks to your hand, (like what happens with the ABS but much less) and if you don't touch it, its 100% safe if your're doing it outside (for the health and safety purists!). You can touch the model after like a minute or so after dipping it, so its much easier than ABS, and leaving it for a few more seconds will not do drastic damage to the detail unlike ABS. Here is the head in UM blue, this material has NEVER cracked on me so im going to dip it tonight just to prove it and to get it as smooth as i can. The bottoms of the ears are messed up as i forgot to put the supports during modelling. P.S. if you want ZERO lines or as close as you can get to zero (because there will aways be VERY faint lines), im afraid you will need to spend at least a few minutes with very fine sandpaper on the problematic areas (i used 400 and 600, that way you cant really oversand as its too fine. You'll learn how to identify them merely by looking at your model in different angles in the light relly close up. Good luck!

If you use PLA/PHA blends, then you CAN also use acetone to smooth it. Dont listen to all the people who say otherwise, they clearly have not experimented at all otherwise they would be agreeing and recommending acetone to finish with as you cant beat the results in my opinion. people only appear to still associate acetone with ABS but for me that is lame and you lose way too much detail, with PLA you lose much less, but im constantly trying to persuade people otherwise. UM Blue PLA smooths fantastically (the best in my opinion, which is kinda convenient for the UM brand as im using an ultimake as well, and you can even apply the acetone with a brush to do it, but colorfabb is a little trickier, and tends to crack if overdone and needs a bit more of a sand before/after. Im doing a tutorial but want to get it right so all the health and safety concerns are addressed for those with children and the paranoid who generally dont work with chemicals. BTW acetone is the safest solvent you can get and does very little harm to your body unless you pour it all over yourself repeatedly, or drink it, or do dumb stuff, and unless you contain it in a closed space and set fire to it, its really not that dangerous. You need to have a bit of common sense when using it, like anything in life. Its paint thinner, so just keep it in an air tight jar outside or in a garage away from anything flammable and bring it out for your dips. The pictures should speak for themselves, that way you know what to expect. The model was also printed with UM blue PLA/PHA or whatever UM use to make its blend of PLA. And no sanding at all for the lazy! https://ultimaker.com/en/community/view/10412-acetone-finishing-on-pla?page=5 EDIT: UM FILAMENTS DONT SMOOTH ANYMORE BTW, THEY CHANGED THEIR MANUFACTURING PROCESS.

How does the print look? I have given up on all feeders, and have not looked back, I just measure off what i want before hand and balance it on the roll holder. I waste the length of the bowden tube every time, but get a perfect print every time. I think the trade off is well worth it. I found that rolls of filament just don't unwind without snags all the time and when they snag, they instantly create print lines on you model which is annoying, even worse, a fuzzy layer. then when it clears a perfect layer on top. Roberts feeder is meant to feed the plastic in better, but i cant be bothered anymore, and don't think it will make so much difference. as my pfte coupler is dead, so i need to separately feed in filament by hand manually each time anyways. and with the filament off the roll i have no issues with it, so i dont need the feeder.

Sorry, to add supports, just load it up in maya or max or cinema or blender, or any program and just make two cylinders from the base to the model ears. You will later cut this off but you need it to start printing the bottom of the ears or its too thin for curas supports. If you go to youmagine.com and look for my buddha then look at the pictures youll see how i did them there. You can even see how someone else printed it with the supports in the photo. Hope that helps, im not by my computer at the moment. Just type buddha in the search and its the gold shiny one

To stop the overhangs ruining the print. And making it stronger and more stable during printing. You could try 0.8 but i cant get good results that way. The top and bottom sometimes leaves holes. With 1.2 you cant go wrong with anything. Might be a touch longer but with 0 infill you make up the time. Nice paint job, it'd be nice to see better quality photos though. Its 2015, i expect clear photos, lol! Close ups would be better! Im a big fan of close ups!

If it doesnt work, then try to print the model hollow with support everywhere ticked, and 100% infill, that way you determine how thick the walls are and the support will let you do the flat bits, but dont add the bottom or else it will not work. Remember to not close your model though as if its closed it wont do support and e top will fail.That should work 100percent. And regarding the screw and the feeder, i hear you, it doesnt do anything. i ended up snapping my alan key on it, lol. I just put it back, as it was not even sure of how i twisted the screw back properly or not. I put it on backwards first time by mistake and it was in reverse, lol!

The thinner the layers. the more of them, hence the 45 hours, but in my personal experience with everything stock when i print in .2 i set the temp to 230. And i understand about time, in your case everything is square so you can get away with more speed in my opinion. i did. I made some keyrings for work and my settings were: 20 or 30 infill (i think 30?) , speed 50mm/s temp 230c layers height 0.2mm and shell 1.2 top and bott. I knocked out quite a few with no issues what so ever. here are some pics with UM blue and colorfabb red, both done with same settings. my advice to you is to hit the tune button on the front during print and play with the temps, that way you know what works best for your printer and filament! Some people said there was something wrong with my printer if i need to go to 230, but hey thats my printer, and it gives great results, so what do i care what they say. Do what works best for you.

When you look down the nozzle can you see through it after an atomic pull? if not then its not clear. And even if it looks clear it doesn't mean that it is, after i figured this out, i have had zero problems, and my PFTE coupler is melted and on its way out, so its not that for sure, i've been printing non stop since November last year. I wouldn't recommend clearing the head with anything other than atomic pulls as you may damage it and it doesn't mean you will get the bits on the edges just inside the head out as they are also the problem bits and cause slight blockades. You are basically avoiding thorough cleaning if you use a drill bit.

You need to do about 6-8 Atomic pulls in my opinion (or whatever it takes). Then go from there, i had this problem, and it was the fact i was not cleaning the nozzle enough (i mean i wasn't doing it properly). Do it with white until its all white after each pull and you don't see any burn marks or discolouration. Also try printing in 0.1 or less as the more layers it does the cleaner it gets. It looks from your picture that its burning the plastic as it goes over it, which suggests a block to me.

Heres a gcode for the buddha, i tried uploading it to youmagine, but that website is completely usless and slow and contantly resets during uploads and gave me errors on files size and just about everything else so I gave up. but you may need/want to add supports for the ears as i forgot to! so i added the OBJ files as well. Cura doesnt seem to put the support on the lowest part of the overhangs for some reason just slaps them on its grid, and they really should be closer than it is now to the actual model in a perfect world. " my wish for future cura improvements!" https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9um3hqt8yco1z4/buddha_girl.gcode?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/1pctc9qotvq5w6p/buddha_LISA.obj?dl=0

OK as i got a bit drunk yesterday and really couldn't be bothered getting rid of the line as I had already undercoated it and then sprayed it gold. I thought I'd just print another out and see if it splits. as well, if so i need to figure out why. But i think the filler would be easier to work into the plastic when there is no paint on it.? its just a clean test.

Well turns out it split even more as a result of the spray paint or something and the putty just wasnt up to fine sanding and didnt stick well enough. Ill need something more resiny and gluey to fill that annoying split i may wait for it to settle and come back in a few days, as acetone in pla needs some time to cure, and i didnt wait more than an hour after the dip before spraying it. But other than the crack im very happy with the result of the acetone as with the help of some utra fine sanding before the acetone in problem areas the model looks almost flawlessly smooth.

The 'fine' print look i think you are talking about 'IS' the acetone look. without it you have lines. No settings will remove them. You have to physically remove them yourself. And the another reason for the 1.2mm shell (top/ bot) that may seem thick for some people is that it gives you a little more freedom when it comes to smoothing out the undersides (via sanding) and sharp inclines without going through the model shell, as they ALWAYS look lame in very thin layer heights. I read somwhere that i can change the distance the model is drawn from the supports and making the gap less may improve this. But hey ill send you the same model as above which is kinda poly heavy as its my first attempt at Zbrush, but it wont look the same as the picture above without post work. I didnt spend too long, maybe 15mins but still ive made an effort to make it look nice rather than slapping paint straight on it as some people tend to do. Aletrnatively you can just go through free models and look for the most detailed one and print it at 0.06mm layer height. And also just to let you know i am printing with out of the box settings, and never really touch the advanced setting in cure, just the basic ones as mentioned above. Good Luck. im not at my desk but if you want to try to print my buddha then go to you magine and search for it, its there.

i print everything with the same settings and print everything in pla. my settings are 0.06 layer height, 210c sometimes 208c temp. and all shells 1.2mm no in fill, speed 35mm/s. im going to do a tutorial on the post processing with acetone as some people who have no arts and craft experience tend to freak out at the mention of acetone, and get paranoid they will kill themselves or blow their house up. when in actual fact there is next to no danger what so ever, its all hypothetical. if you go to the tips n tricks section, you can look for acetone smoothing with pla and get the general idea of what you need to do.

Ok here is my latest print of my first Zbrush mashup model after acetoning for 1 minute. i do 1 minute for colorfabb as its not as diissolvable as UM PLA. The model is hollow and shell 1.2. it cracked after the acetone treatment as the layer must have been disturbed by the building air conditioning during print or some other factor. This is my first attempt at filling a hole with putty. Im using milliput, reguler, maybe should have gone superfine, but ill see how this turns out after a quick sand down when its dry.

Yes they are auto rotated, otherwise i need to crop them like this.... Pic is same model as above post acetone, unfortunately the model split on me for some reason, o well, one line is not so bad to deal with, a bit of putty should do it.

Got a ghost email, so i thought, what the hell, ill post something seeing that im here now. Well after learning that my PFTE is dying, i was worried that my print would be ruined, but alas it came out ok! It is my scanned buddha with my friends face on it. First Zbrush 3d print! yay! now on to aliens... Another thing, i wish you could post portrait photos without having to crop them to prevent them from being rotated.

Cheers Sander, i got the printer via my work, so ill have to get the details off them first thing monday. Ill PM you as soon as i do.