davek17

Bump! Anyone else had this issue before?

Hi Everyone So my usage stats are totally wrong on my U3, can anyone help as I am currently passing this machine on to a new home and it has been raised. The printer has not been used much at all in the 2-3 years I have had it as a prototyping machine. I have attached a picture here of the report and it has me really puzzled. It has to be wrong as days hot at 4568 days would mean the machine has been on for over 12 years!! Any help on this would be much appreciated, or how I can correct or reset them. Many thanks Dave

Oh I was going to add that i've seen a few videos of people printing nice phone cases with TPE or TPU? Seems to print much betteron a UMS3 or S5. Maybe we are at the edge of the capabilities of our printers now?

We've tried in vain to print flexible stuff on our UM2+ and UM3. We did exactly what geert_2 said. We printing really nice moulds in PLA in really fine detail. Then we used Silicon just poured into the mould. Actually silicon moulding is super fun. you can colour it any colour, you can get stuff thats easy to use and doesn;t have manu bubbles in it without having to pressurise it first. And a big benefit is that you can make loads of moulds and mould lots of things in one go so it can be really fast. You can use the theatrical/skin silicon that like real life skin and super soft. We later needed to make more comilcated objects, so we just made 2 part moulds that clicked together and were held tight with tape or rubber bands. We made a tonne of bespoke silicon socks for barcode scanners with pistol grips that were abused daily by bad workers!! Did the trick.

Hey guys, sorry for delay in getting back to you. I'll go and try those places then. Sounds like I just have to hunt for a raw screw then. I was hoping there would be standard place someone else had bought them from before to make life a little easier. These ones on the UM3 seem to be very soft, the UM2 ones I have seem to wear much better?

Hi There We have been having a few issues with our UM3 which has meant we've been needing to unscrew the print head a lot. so the 4 long screws that pull the whole print head together with the hex tops are failing. The hex tops are just no longer biting the hex bits we have. Can someone help me out with where we get these as I tried UM, our reseller and am drawing a blank. Any help appreciated

So I have found what might be a temporary solution, not sure how temporary, I will come back and comment in a few days as I have a fair few hours to do on this UM2+. I slid the small gear off the motor axle and saw that there was some grease on the axle so I cleaned everything up, put a blob of super glue on the spindle and then re-fixed the gear. Loaded some filament up and as I did that I held the filament going into the bottom of the feeder and heard the normal feint click. Good news as this means the gear is no longer slipping. So the above might just be some of the tooth oil getting caught on the spindle, it might be a design flaw, or we might just need metal gears or a screw to stop slippage?

Hi There So I have been rooting around in the feeder box at the back of the UM" and think I have the root cause here. If you look at the image, what I did was to remove the back cover and then put the UM2 into filament loading mode, just so I knew the knurled knob was turning the right way slowly. I then hold the knurled knob and I can easily stop it with my fingers. So I took a look at the gears, the smaller one can move a little freely along the motor axle, however not enough to lose connection with the larger gear. The gears are aligned and the teeth in good health. Then I saw the slippage. It is the small gear that is just stopping and slipping around the motor axle. So the motor seems fine as it is not stopping, the small gear however is stopping and spinning around the axle instead of being fixed to it. I can see that the axle and gear have a flattened side to ensure they stick together, my smaller gear is simply too easily able to be pushed around and I can freely spin it around the axle with my fingers, like well easily able to do that. So that's the issue. I have not really done all that much printing since the upgrade so I think this part is suspect. Does anyone know of a place I can get a replacement or better part?

TY for the reply. So it was a warm day here yesterday in the UK, but 21 degrees I think so not warm really! I'll check the temps of the motor and PCB and try to cool them and see if it helps but I don't think its that because its happening ASAP after startup. I'll take another look at the feeder box on the back and check out the gears and the knurled wheel too. Will get back to the thread as soon as i can, busy day here though today (7am in the UK right now)

I have been 3D printing for about 3 years now and have 3 printers. I upgraded my U2 to a 2+ about 2 months ago, as soon as the kit became available and have been really chuffed with it. Prints were great, reliability good, 10+ hour prints with no issues. I then tried my hand at some rubber printing and had some good success with that. Changed back to PLA for a customer project and cannot get the printer to work any more. So the issue is a little odd. basically the filament is not feeding but I am getting no kick back, the actual wheel just stops rotating. If I give the filament a little push underneath the feeder box then things work OK, however if the filament comes up against any resistance all at the knurled wheel stops rotating. Normally you get the clicking as the wheel is biting into the stuck filament but this is different. So i double checked i'm not using rubber settings. I moved the tension on the feeder right back up to the top (Although tried bottom, middle and in between) I have changed the nozzle, rebuilt the hot end, checking everything there, all brand new really since the upgrade. Filament easily pushes through the nozzle if I manually push it. Filament moves easily through the tube if I unattach the tube from the hot end. But if i put it all together it just stops feeding, like I said above, no clicking, just stops. I read something about the motor being the wrong way, but it has been fine so it can;t be that. Everything feeds the right way anyway. Just hoping someone can shed some light on it as this is the first time I have been beaten by what is otherwise a wonderful piece of kit. Any help is much appreciated.