Zwakie

Thanks @neotko for the quick response, unfortunately this confuses me a bit. Your answer seems to be the way to align the rods for X/Y. Where does the "removing droop in the lower part of the belt" fit in? Can you please elaborate a bit more on how to just do that then?

To be honest, I was afraid that it would have a noticeable effect on strength, so I just went ahead and tried to see if this idea would be viable. When the print was done I was pleasantly surprised that I could not feel/measure any decrease in strength or rigidity compared to a previous non-permeable print of the same case. Of course time will tell how it will hold, but I am quite confident it will do just fine.

With getting the NFC issue out of the way I felt I was on the roll and have a look at the pully as well to quickly find that I thought of this task a little lightly. Maybe I am completely overlooking something, but where exactly are those pulley screws located @neotko ? From your wording i understand it's not in the white block, right?

Unless you want to tiny holes I discovered this phenomena myself the hard way recently, but instantly found a way that I benefit from this behavior in one of my prints: I just finished printing an iPad case using Innofil3D PET, which is to be mounted behind an airplane instrument panel. For this application I definitely do not want the thing to be airtight because that would create pressure differences between the inner part of the print and ambient pressure at flying altitudes, which in the end would destroy structural strength due the tiny bits of flexing that would occur at each flight (think of it as metal fatigue). So what I did was simple: used a rather thin line-width for the infill and used zero room between the PET and PVA. That this idea worked out perfectly was shown when I submerged the print in water: zillions of tiny little air-bubbles rose out of the print when it was slowly filled with water. Funny experience this print Long story short: I guess what I am saying is that there might always be a good application for phenomena that in most cases are unwanted

Yes @SandervG, that was my first thought too the first 10 times or so that I checked this (just kidding). Even though I was convinced there was nothing wrong there, I decided to have another thorough look, and found what was wrong: I must have bend one of the little male pins during one of those inspections (probably first time over I think), and it was hardly visible this pin was off because it almost 'fused' with a neighboring pin. Needed a loop to spot this. Hmmm, I thought I saw it all, but shame on me for being so stupid all this time :( Anyway, problem solved with a little less sturdy connector in my posession now, haha. Thanks for your help!

The NFC recognition still does not work. Any suggestions @SandervG for what I can do myself to troubleshoot/resolve this?

The flow percentage should be hardcoded in the gcode. That means it is being applied, but didn't show in the tweak menu in the firmware. That's where I got of on the wrong foot... OK, that explains the extensive blobs I was getting. Thanks for explaining @bagel-orb, and I think I will follow @ultiarjan 's advise on this one and stick with settting it to 100% in Cura...

Hi @SandervG, thanks for passing on the feedback, others may benefit from it My UM3 is getting close to running perfect. I have not yet checked the NFC recognition, and the 'drooping' X-belt aft of the front panel need to be fixed (see another topic on the forum for details on this). The ticking noise is (almost) gone by manually leveling the build plate (I did that in a bit of a rush, so for now I am assuming that the last tiny bit of kicking noise will disappear once I have done that accurately. In summary: I'm quite happy with the UM3 apart from the few minor issues remaining that hopefully will be fixed shortly. Thanks for asking!

I agree to what you are saying @neotko, it seems to me this is the best option in case the number of teeth top and bottom part of the belt are the same. I don't think we have another option than what @avluis is suggesting if the number of teeth are not the same, or is there? (I guess I'll be counting teeth shortly and yes, x/y calibration is part of the plan on matter how this is fixed)

Thanks @nallath, take it easy as there's no rush to get this resolved from my side. I will read your feedback here in due time.

Thanks @Labern and @avluis for your replies. Question for @avluis: basically what you are saying is that the belt is one tooth off, causing the bottom part of the belt (which is 'drooping' a little) currently having 2 teeth more than the top part of the belt?

Thanks for replying @neotko, but that is not the belt I was referring to. I don't have a picture available, but it's the one running parallel to and just aft of the front panel. Any ideas how to increase the tension for that one?

I was experiencing the same type of sound the last couple of print jobs and also could not pinpoint the source of that ticking sound. Good to know the auto-levelling mechanism could be the source, I will check once the 31 hr job that I just kicked of has finished. I did notice that the pully belt on the front X-axis is a bit loose (not nearly as well tensioned as the rear one), and suspected this to be the cause. Needless to say that I have to correct that, anyone can tell me the proper procedure for that?

In the user manual on p. 37 you see a foto at the bottom. On this foto you can see a recessed 'lever' just above the big lever that released the feeder. With this recessed lever you can adjust the friction.

Never having worked with PC, I have read this and the other post about the Polymaker PC-MAX with great interest, and decided to start my first tests using your findings about temps, raft, flow% etc. I would like to share my findings with others because my sweet spot has some settings that are a bit "differnet" . First prints were a big disappointment: blobs, stringing and what more. On the positive side I have to mention that I have not seen any warping, I use the Buildtak in combination with 3DLac, this combo made taking the print of the plate quite easy too. After quite a bit of testing, I have come up with settings that work for me (quite interesting to notice that most is close to what Polymaker recommends). In summary: - like others I found that it is critical to keep speeds low (I like 40mm/s even better than 45mm/s) - unlike @Artiz I kept flow at 100% - the 135% mentioned caused excessive blobs in my testing - l found that playing with the different line widths had a huge effect, mostly the line width for top/bottom (with my .4 nozzle 50 gave a very nice and smooth surface (I still have to find out how to best minimize the stitches from shell infill to wall though) - I found that lowering the line width for infill can quickly lead to under-extrusion - In my case the best remedy against oozing and stringing was using retraction (6.25mm @ 25 mm/sec); 2mm Z-hopping also helped a lot. - Surface of walls was much smoother when printing outer walls first, and doing the infill after the walls; this also eliminated signs of the infill on the outside, and the result was identical to the design dimension-wise when insetting the outer wall 0.025mm (half the difference between nozzle size and wall line-width) - I found that the size of the air-gap between raft and first layer makes a HUGE difference in getting the raft from the print nicely. I found that using 1.5 times layer-height works very well. I have just published my first PC-MAX print on Youmagine, if you find the little thingie usefull, feel free to print for yourself On the pictures you see the result as it came straight of the bed (so without cleaning up, sanding and finishing).

When I got mine I had some issues with getting filament out the nozzle as well. In my case I was not aware the feeder was grinding to the point it could not feed the filament into the tube. Make sure yours is not grinding in the feeder.

@neotko The USB connector was not fully seated in the A20, all that was required was a gentle push without touching the board and the font connector came to life I have not yet checked the NFC issue as I am currently quite busy testing the Polymaker PC-MAX. I will address this in due time... FWIW: No way QC can be held responsible for this as the connectors can come (partly) unseated during transport because there is no strain-reliefs around the A20 board. Maybe UM Development or Production can have a look at this as there is a bit of room for improvement here so it seems

Good to hear you nailed it @Yoter! Nonetheless I would like to make a remark on the dis-colorization around the soldered connections: to me it seems that these soldered connection's integrity degraded significantly (likely due to ingress of moist and oxygen), which significantly increased the resistance of the connection. Physics tell us this will generate HEAT, and from experience I know such connections can get REALLY hot! This certainly is something you need to deal with since this is a breakdown waiting to happen, and what's worse: a breakdown with accompanying fire hazard!

Experimenting with Polymaker PC-MAX I discovered that the flow percentage provided in Cura does not seem to picked up during printing. I have noticed this in 2.3.0 and 2.3.1, for both versions I have to manually tune the flow after the printjob started on my UM3. Is this a bug or am I overlooking something? BR Marcel

Same here, but downloading and installing it manually is not a big deal. I just installed 2.3.1 on my Mac, and all personal settings are still available

Diese Felder waren auch in 2.3.0 ausgegraut, komt mir ein bisschen komisch vor... Auch Ich möchte diese Funktionen gerne aktiviert sehen.

Thanks for the information @neotko, I clearly hear your disclaimers and will not not do this myself

Thanks @neotko for the warning, for the time being only carefully using S3D then (only for single extruder prints and making sure the second nozzle stays cold. Can you please also confirm my suspicion where to go look for possible loose connectors for the USB port?

I have checked it last night, two other USB sticks I regularly use are not recognized either, so I guess first thing to do next is check if I have a loose connection. Before opening up the machine, can you confirm my assumption that the board(s) to look at are located in the bottom?

Kudo's to S3D support: I have already received a profile for the UM3, took less than an hour! Is there a way to make it available on this forum?