Torgeir

Yes, got that problem as well, but after a "little" cleaning- no problem. Can do two or three print, then you'll need to clean well again. As I haven't tried anything else but Verbatim, I really cannot say how good or bad Verbatim are versus other brand of filaments. My point was just to tell that RS also sell other brands of filament. I’m quite happy with the quality of Verbatim, but this is just by comparing pictures of the print results others put up. But sure, I’ll like to try some good proven stuff to see how good the improvement can be. By the way, I have so many questions about the quality and why. Yes I’m sure you know.. Cheers Torgeir

Hi Folks, They have Verbatim as well, the (first) one I'm currently use.. See this link: http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/3d-printing-materials/8226500/ I wrote a story about this PLA another place in here, -anyway it's stored in a sealed plastic bag (vacuum packed) and finally protected by a cardboard box. Torgeir.

Hi folks, This is interesting. I have had the same problems, when I started to print those test things after building my printer. I read a lot about all kind of problems with these 3 dimensional plastic printers before I decided to try building one. First thing first, and this is about the filament. As it's not easy to find a perfect filament, you always try to follow other people's experience. However, I come across an offer from a shop selling normal printer stuff as paper, ink, and laser replacement cassette’s and among all this also filaments for 3D printers. They were selling the Verbatim filament, the one I'll remember was selling those floppy disks many years ago. I bought tree (1 Kg) spools of PLA with the color withe, gray and black. All of them were packed in a vacuum plastic bag together with a small crystal bag to keep humidity away. However the withe spool had the plastic bag leaking, the bag did not stick tightly to the filament spool. As I had no idea about the properties for this PLA and how it should be, I just installed the filament and printed this little robot we all know with standard settings that Cura offer you first time. The first print I made was a shiny withe «Ultimaker Robot». When I studied the object a little closer, I thought that maybe the temperature was a little bit to hi (210 Deg. C), so I made a lot of those robots and find the best temperature to be 204 Deg. C for this filament. I also made some test with the «Um extruder test», the cylinder with increasing flow from 1 to 9. During this test, the extruder suddenly stopped extruding; sometime there was a little blub, and then no more plastic from the nozzle. When I looked at the feeder motor it was rotating, but just grinding into the filament. The pressure setting on the feeder was set to lo position. I helped the feeder by pushing on the filament into the feeder, suddenly the filament get loose and started extruding again, but now just into the open as the z-had moved some distance down. I removed the filament by using the software, when the filament moved out, it just snapped off outside of the feeder before the entire filament cleared the feeder. This filament was that brittle, it snapped off easier than those dry spaghetti rods we all know... You would not believe it; well the funny thing is when the filament goes through the heat block coming out as a tiny tread, the «normal» PLA property is back. What do I learn of this, well on the PLA spool there was a warning about when you finish your printing; -remove the spool from the printer and put it into a sealed bag so the filaments properties do not change. Meaning plastic attract water directly from (the normal humidity in) the air, some plastic's more than others!! So what happened when the nozzle stop extruding? If the filament have a high level of water, this water become steam, as the temperature is well above the melting point of this plastic, the steam bubbles form fast and climb easily upwards in the heat block, it will move as far as it can before the temperature fall down to the temperature were the plastic start to be solid again. This seems to occur inside the «Teflon coupler», this bubbles draw «plastic glue» to suddenly have the filament glued just above the heat block. All this is due to too high water content attracted in the filament. There is nothing wrong with the original feeder, just faulty filament properties. After changing to the «real vacuum packed» silver PLA spool all problem gone, I could bend several times on this PLA filament without breaking, not brittle at all! Those lines of yours printing used to happened when I had to high feeder flow, yes I wanted to see what my printing become when fiddling a little with the various parameters when printing. The grooves inside the left coup looks like high water content in the filament. Worth to know is some spools might have parts of the filament with high water content, while some part can be ok. And yes, I got a little like this on the white filament spool… Some learning here, don’t rice the temp sky high in order to loosen up the stuck filament, as this will make things worse and make real sticky plastic stuck inside your nozzle. Make the filament loose at the extruder, then you can feed some good filament and problem will be gone. Well my experience so far. Thanks Torgeir

Hi Meduza, Really liked your way of doing it.. It's a "Roll Royce" feeder unit, imo. I made a very simple belt gear with a 16 and 32 theeth 2GT Pulleys. I used same belt as the two short ones in the UM2. Two small (outer dia. 10mm and inner 5mm) bearing a 5mm shaft from a model helicopter and two adapted 6mm plexiglass sheet. Sure there is 5 ea 18mm spacers in there too. I have been printing for about 11 hour in this way, an it does not make much noise -only the stepper backtracking is noticed, but this is like the other steppers. I've made this with normal hand tools, not very nice but work very good. Do you share your stl files for other? I would love to make your pro. ver.. Thanks for sharing your idea. Regards Torgeir.

Hi Nicolinux, I liked this idea, actually very smart -and don't worry about the wiring as it can be long enough for the ext. version, so when you go to the standard version the wire bundles is just clamped behind the side covers. Even the Z axis could be the long one, going through the roof into a cylinder cover in short version configuration. Great idea... Regards Torgeir

Hi Mick, Do you still have the old nozzle block? If you have, -with the wires intact, try to use this one as it should be ok, hopefully.. Well, you can use a 100 ohm resistor to check that the temperature is reading approx. 0 deg. Celsius. You'll need another resistor at 180 ohm for a hot check, when connected to the board it will show approx. 212 deg. Celsius. This is an easy way of checking your main boards response to a resistance equivalent to our PT100 (platinium sensor). You have to be very careful when installing the termoistor, do not bend more than once on the wires going into the termistor block.. It is very easy to break, or to make a close break become an intermittent connection as you have. Those resistor should be very easy to find at your place.. But I'll guess you just order a few of those PT100 as spare, -as they fail now and then. Good luck. Regards Torgeir.

Hi Didier, Thanks for the welcome, and you was right it was set to private.. Well, i'll learning something new every day. Regard Torgeir

Hi «Ultimaker 3D printer community», As I'm a complete newbie in the 3D printing world, I've been lurking around here for about 8 months in order to learn as much as possible. I come from the aviation working as an avionic engineer. Hence I've been drawing (with Auto cad, Solid Edge and Solid Works), -this is the reason I'll like to make something that can be drawn -but never made in the traditional way.. The time from design and drawing to a model is just some hour away, amazing. Originally I was looking for the Arduino printer, cause of all the interesting electronics devices and project herein. I was looking for some «free» slicer software, when I happens to find Cura and the Ultimaker printer.. After some studies of Ultimaker 2, I realized that this is the 3D printer I want -but cant afford.. :( The only way for me -was to build one myself, so I started to collect/buying various parts. Among those parts I've got some six NMEA17 stepper motors, 1,7 Amp and 200 step per rev. At this time I did not know that the extruder stepper should have 400 step pr rev. I also learned from this forum about all the problem with this extruder as; hot shaft (as the knurled wheel is mounted directly on the stepper shaft that soften the filament) and too lo torque for feeding the filament under some condition. As the stepper I had needed to be slower (half the speed), I made a 2:1 reduction «gear» with one belt and two pulleys. I used the same belt (200-GT2) as the two short one's already in use in the U2 -and the same original feeder unit. I'm just use the four original holes for the feeder stepper motor for this modification. Doing it this way does not require any firmware changes or modification of the original files for UM2. I just posted this thing to show an alternative that's a little simpler and can also use the original 400 step per rev. stepper motor for feeding the filament. I've added two pictures of the modification. Thanks Torgeir.[/media][/media][/media]