ChrisInNewark

Thank you.

It's an UM2 with 1043:28 printing time. As first it starts printing fine but usually somewhere on the first layer (depending on the size of the print) it stops extruding. What I'm suspecting is happening is when I'm using the atomic method and pulling the filament out the filament is breaking off and remaining in the hotend. When I then feed new filament in its the peice that's remained in the hotend that's first extruding and the new filament is pushing against this which then is causing it to have the plug at the end which results in the blockage. I may well be wrong though. As for the Teflon you mentioned I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this and even less sure on how to check it. Lol.

I've been having problems for a while now changing my filaments and extrusion. Whenever I go to change the filament it doesn't extract and gets stuck in the Bowden tube. What appears to be happening is the filament has a bulge or 'plug' at the end which is causing it the jam in the Bowden tube as soon as starts to retract. This usually means that I have to remove the Bowden tube from the feed and push the filament to unblock it. I've tried cleaning the hotend with the Atomic method numerous times without issue but now I'm finding that when I reduce the temperature to 90°c and pull the filament out its not coming out cleanly. In stead of finding a nice, cone shaped, end on the filament I'm getting a blunt end. What I'm suspecting that's happening is as I pull the filament out its somehow sticking in the hotend and breaking off. I'm also guessing that this is causing the issue I'm having with the fattened filament end. Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone have a solution?

Thanks for this. I'd never used Meshmixer (I presume you meant Meshmixer and not meshmaker) before but a quick YouTube search and I was able to add additional supports and have managed to print the part. Many thanks. Yeah my bad! Can you show us the supports you made and the print itself ? Sure, here you go. I added the supports to hold the part as it was wobbling around too much. When I tried printing the part the first it didn't print with any support for the top of the part, although it did print support for the bottom of the part (I'm not sure why). When I reprinted them with my added extra supports it also printed support for the top of the part however, the added extra supports were still necessary. They didn't print fantastically but I think that that was more to do with my layer height settings and speed but I'm glad to get them out of the way and can now move on and print the next parts I need. Thanks again for your help, it was most appreciated. Chris

Thanks for this. I'd never used Meshmixer (I presume you meant Meshmixer and not meshmaker) before but a quick YouTube search and I was able to add additional supports and have managed to print the part. Many thanks.

I'm looking for a bit of help from the community with suggestions for the best way to print this part. I've tried printing it laid down on the build platform but it uses a lot of support material and it doesn't print well at all. I thought I'd solved the problem by printing on its end but as it got to the top of the print it became too unstable, rocked around too much and failed. I don't know if anyone has any suggestions for the best orientation to print this but I'd be most grateful for any ideas/suggestions that anyone may have.

trim.47830CCE-C28B-4449-A1CD-EC16C0ACD2E3.MOVtrim.47830CCE-C28B-4449-A1CD-EC16C0ACD2E3.MOV

Been having a lot of issues lately simply getting my prints to stick to the bed. Out of the box my UM2 worked beaitifully and I had no problems getting my prints to stick using hairspray. After a few months of printing I decided that the glass plate could do with a clean so I took it out and washed it with hot soapy water before cleaning it again using acetone and refitting, releveling and reapplying hairspray. From that point though I've not been able to get any of my prints to stick. I've tried using a gluestick too but with no luck. I'm thinking that the issue may be a combination of things and isn't helped by the fact that my filament doesn't seem to be extruding out of the hotend correctly. Instead of coming out in one long strand it's curling up and sticking to the tip of the hotend. Any ideas what's causing this? I've tried cleaning the hotend with the atomic method but it doesn't seem to have helped. Here's a video to try and show the problem.

Thanks for the advice. Changing the minimum time between layers setting to 10 secs seems to have fixed the problem. That was a setting that I never even knew about but I think will come in very handy in the future.

First of all apologies if I've posted this in the wrong place. Currently I'm trying to print this part on my UM2. Up until now I've never really had any issues printing anything and have been very pleased with the performance of my printer however I'm struggling with this particular print so thought I'd ask if anyone can help. The issue I'm having is when the printer gets to the very top of the part it doesn't print it (see pictures). If you look at the picture of the part as it should be you can see that top of the shaft should be tapered but when it comes to printing this its just not happening. I thought it might be a speed issue as by that point the area being printed is quite small so I've tried printing it at 50mm/s and 30mm/s. I even tried reducing the print speed to 10% when it got to printing the shaft and that got the closest to printing it correctly (the first of the three pictures) but still failed to print the last 10 or so layers (I could see that no filament was being extruded from the hotend at this point). I've printed lots of other things without any problems and the part itself isn't that small and intricate for it to be an issue (or so I thought). Can anyone suggest what the issue might be? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The filament was the one supplied with machine. This was only my second print.

Bloody typical that I get the problem that doesn't have a straight forward solution. Lol. Thanks for the response though, that link made for some very interesting reading.

So I saved up and I bought myself a nice new, shiny UM2. After printing the customary robot as my first print I decided to try and print something for my other 3D printer, namely a filament oiler. As you can see from the picture it started out printing fine but then, as it got taller, I started to get these bands/grooves/artifacts (call them what you will) where the layers haven't quite fussed properly (as well as stringing on the inside of the oiler). Can anyone tell me what the likely cause of these are and more importantly how to fix them? I printed the part at the standard 210 degree for PLA and the default speed of 50mm/s in Cura however I reduced the speed to 80% on the printer when I started to see the bands. Thanks in advance, Chris

How did you reattach the extruder? I've just got an UM2 I had a similar issue whereby my filament wasn't feeding and the stepper motor was clicking as it missed steps. I thought I'd have a look inside the extruder to see if I could see anything and that was a HUGE mistake. Taking out the four screws meant that the stepper motor is now loose and because it's inside the machine I can't get to it to be able to line it back up with the screws to hold it in place.