tojiero

I have owned my Ultimaker 2 for a few years now and have become very frustrated and disappointed. The parts I print are always very fragile with appalling surface finish. I can only assume there is something fundamentally wrong somewhere. At the moment I am using a 0.4 nozzle and NGEN Co-Polyester. Parts are fibrous and seem to have very poor layer adhesion. They crack & split apart. Also the exterior surface, except where bonded to the build plate, is like velcro. any detail is impossible. Can somebody help me get something at least half decent from this machine?

"If you are printing 40 cubic mm per second you will indeed want the temp at 240C" So where did the example figure of 40mm^3/sec come from? Is that a spec of a 0.8mm nozzle? ".......try 0.3mm layer height, 0.8mm line width and 40mm/sec and 210C....." This implies a flow of around 10mm^3/sec. I'm assuming (from the temp) this would be using a 0.4mm nozzle. Is there an ideal printing volume flow (or range of) for each nozzle size and material? Would that be a good place to start from?

I have reset my UM2+ to factory settings and copied the 'material.txt file then read it in Notepad. Apparently the nozzle temp for PLA through a 0.8 nozzle is factory set at 240C. Is this correct even though it's outside the range (200-230C) quoted on the Ultimaker branded material label? The temp. value I'm seeing in the UM2+ Materials Setting is a temperature value given immediately following the material name in the MATERIAL.TXT file and doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything. At least I have found where the nozzle temperature is driven from now. Thanks gr5, for pointing me in the right direction.

In Cura, at the top of the menu, there is a selection of materials. There are several PLAs listed (in the main list and in an 'Ultimaker' submenu list. My material carries the Ultimaker brand name so I selected the appropriate colour from the Ultimaker submenu. Written on the the spool is a temp recomendation of 200-230C. After installing the material on my UM2 and selecting PLA on the UM2 menu, it shows a temp setting of 210C. When I start to print the machine shows a nozzle temp of 240C. In the next fields, I have selected 0.8mm nozzle and 'Recomended'. With recomended selected you cannot see hardly any setting values so I don't know what i'm running. If I try changing something in Custom I lose the (invisible) Recomended settings and cannot see how to reset. If I click back to Recomended, the slice time doesn't change, indicating that the settings have not reverted. I have changed the Infill %age and even after closing and restarting the app it holds on to those changes.

I'm having huge difficulties with my Ultimaker 2+. I have owned it for more than a year now and I'm still not able to get predictable or particularly satisfactory results from it. The combination of Cura settings and machine settings is a minefield of complexity. I cannot get a handle on where settings are being driven from. At the moment for example, no matter what I do, the machine insists on printing PLA at 240C with very messy results. Materials settings in the machine shows PLA at 210C but when I print something it 'strings' all over the place. If I then look in 'tune', it shows nozzle temp at 240C. The gcode was generated as PLA but the temperature settings appear to be hidden. Where is this 240C coming from ?! I've read through many tutorials that just say how wonderfully simple and intuitive it all is and followed instructions to the letter. 'Getting Started' examples for download are stl files with no gcode. I have reset my machine to factory defaults several times. Cura has been updated and has a totally new look now. The hints and prompts on settings are usually meaningless dead ends and every link to 'support' on this website leads to an article about how good their support is, instead of actual support. I have been trying to print a large but simple shell like part in PLA now for 3 days without success. I am very frustrated, disappointed and desperate for help now.

Is this the only route to support for 3d printing with my Ultimaker? I've written a couple of questions/posts. When I hit submit it just disappears and I can't find it again. How do I get replies or responses? I've tried searching on my account name, but posts just seem to disappear.....What am I supposed to do? How do I get notified of replies?

I am completely lost and cannot find any support. This website is a maze. I have written a post in the forum this morning to ask for some help. Now I cannot find any trace of the post and don't know if anyone has answered. If I try to login to the chatroom it just circles back to the login. I am becoming annoyed because I cannot find any support that this website writes so much about. Tojiero

I'm having trouble printing parts of any real quality. I'm printing in NGEN with a 0.4 nozzle. My parts are coming out with a very rough surface finish with lots of fine whiskers hanging off. Printing time seems excessive, often being 5 or 6 hours. Also the parts produced are fragile and brittle. There are so many settings to be adjusted and I cannot find any coherent explanation of their effects and how I should work through them. I am finding this website extremely cluttered and the chatroom doesn't work, so I'm struggling to get any support. Can anybody help me out? All at sea Tojiero