exforma23

Bobby, The slippage that I was experiencing was definitely not due to wear on the knurled drivewheel. My my switch to the Bondtech was the result of my desire to not reduce speeds on certain materials/strategies that were inherently more prone to slippage. Ultimately, I could always find a setting that worked with the stock feeder. However, the Bondtech simply grips the filament better and leads to fewer failed prints. Especially with larger nozzles at higher speeds. Like you, I generally don't mess with settings and prefer an out of the box experience. I would say that you can clearly do without the Bondtech extruders. But, you will be able to push your printer to go faster with more reliability if you try it. And, I do not find that it degrades the quality of my prints.

Keep in mind, I am not liberally hosing down the inside of the printer. I do a light application with the nozzle right up in the hood, let that layer dry, then do a one more light application. You can see a slight hazy cloud of the spray trapped in the hood. After a few seconds it settles down on the surface.

Geert, Fortunately for me, your theory does not apply in practice. I have been printing for 3 years on two different printers using this method. I've done this hundreds of times with no discernable overspray.

I made the spray hood that I showed above. It works perfectly. No overspray at at all and I don't have to remove the glass. Where I live, "Aqua Net Extra Super Hold" is readily available and cheap. No clumping. I usually apply 2 light coats. I also have a little USB fan that I aim at the bed to speed the drying. Sprays on smooth, as it should, and leaves the mirror finish of the glass as after heating the bed it kind of glosses over smooth. Superior adhesion with PLA to any other method that I have tested including several types of glue stick, glue/water mixes, blue tape, and geckotek surface. Let the plate cool on it's own and the part usually pops right off on its own. Others have mentioned fumes and/or flamability. However, I don't believe that either of those are a practical concern. Others have mentioned chipping off chunks of buildplate glass. I have never seen anything like that. So, not a practical concern for me either. I rarely use brims with PLA. I installed a geckotek plate because of the claims about adhesion. In my experience, it works great on nylons and PC and other difficult filaments. But, IMHO, for PLA nothing beats hairspray.

Is there a way to adjust the height of the bed when using active leveling? I have added a geckotek magnetic plate to my UM3E and with the added plate thickness (about 4mm more than glass) it raisees up and hits the nozzle during the leveling function. This happens on the gross upward move before it even gets to the fine adjustment. Active leveling is not working and I think this is contributing to the problem.

So, I installed the geckotek magnetic base on my UM3E. The total combined thickness of the aluminum and the steel plate is about is about 7.4mm. So, this is about 2x as thick as the stock glass. Active leveling does not work because it raises too high and hits the nozzles before the fine tuning even begins. Is there a way to reduce the initial raised height when it runs this process? cjs, What are PID values and how do I change them? I am new to putty and only used it so far to adjust the e-steps for the bondtech DDG

Somehow, after a reset this a.m.everything is kosher again. Strange, because I reset twice yesterday with no effect.

I tried this and my browser cannot connect. Timed out

Same problem here

Has anyone else had a problem with solex printcores arriving damaged!? I have purchase four of them and they ALL have been damaged. The first had the spring loaded clear tab broken off. The second had a bent infill tube. The third was bent at the heat break just below the red heatsink. The fourth with another bent infill tube. They come packed in a sexy little metal box with foam. It looks great but they appear to be wedged in too tight and get bent. Has anyone else experienced this? Or, am I just extremely unlikely? Maybe I have an angry mailperson........:-P

Anders, I have a tool for already for that. I printed a part that is 14mm thick. This is the prescribed distance between the top of the Alu. deck and the bottom of the heated plate. So, I can eliminate that from the equation. Keep in mind that the deck aluminum deck is not even close to level. So, I set the 14mm at the front and the back is a about 1/8" thicker. Also, I manually leveled it prior to using the garolite plate. So, I can eliminate that too. I'll test it some more to see if I can get the active level to work.

I'll be sure to check this out when I get a chance. I bought the garolite from mcmaster carr (Part#9910T15) and bonded it to a borosilicate plate using this adhesive https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CAO06FS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I have to give credit to youtuber "safety glasses required" for the idea. Here is what I ended up with It works a bit too well with Nylon. It can be pretty hard to pry the print off. I just have to be careful with the razorblade and scuff the surface with some 600 grit sandpaper. This is why I'd like to experiment with Geckotek. I've heard mixed reviews.

I have a garolite build plate bonded to glass. It's essentially phenolic resin (quite hard) Active leveling does not work when I use the garolite buildplate. The specific heat of glass is .84 J/gm and aluminum is .9 J/gm. So, it appears that you are correct. I never would have thought. It turns out that they are actually extremely close.

The original knurled feeder looks brand new. No wear and tear. I will say that from day one the "optimized" profiles for PLA in Cura have infill speeds that are too high for the stock feeder. My printer has always underextruded PLA on infill using the 80mm/sec setting in the standard profile. In optimal conditions the stock feeder works just fine. However, there are many variables that can contribute to friction/blockage that will cause slippage. Here are just a few: 1. Coming to the end of a roll and the filament is tightly bent. 2. Adding a drybox with additional tubing that the filament has to go through. 3. Some filaments appear to be more brittle/hard and are not gripped as well by the feeder wheel. 4. Carbon buildup on the nozzle in the middle of a print causing partial obstructions. 5. Faster print speeds 6. Lower heat at the nozzle etc. My experience is that these can contribute to failed prints with the stock feeder. However, I am finding that the Bondtech is gripping the filament so much better that it mitigates most of these problems and allows me to print at much faster speeds.

Nope. I do have a hardcore printhead but that's another 3rd party product that I haven't had a chance to test out. Do you know of issues with using a bondtech feeder with abrasive filaments?

Cjs, I have other non-glass build plates that are hard and active leveling does not work. So, hardness is not a determining factor. Also, aluminum is a far more thermally conductive than glass. Therefore, it takes less time to heat up not more than glass.

I'm wondering this too... Anyone?

I had posted on a few other threads about issues that ultimately were related to feeder wheel slipping/grinding/just not keeping up. So, I thought I'd just post a new thread... After lots of frustration with another print failing and having to lower speeds so that the extruder could keep up I finally got around to installing the DDG Kit on my UM3E. I had been apprehensive about the firmware tweaks due to some issues that others had posted. HOLY COW! What an improvement! I had been lowering speeds to about 40mm/sec with the stock extruder and still getting slippage from time to time. After installing the bondtech I'm printing at 80mm/sec with none of the underextrusion issues that I had experienced before. I'll experiment some more to see just how fast I can go. Especially looking forward to the improved results with flex filament. The hardware swap out was super easy. The firmware edits using "Putty" were really very simple. I hit a few snags but they were all because I wasn't patiently and carefully following the instructions (or my careless typos in the command line :-P) Anyhoo.... If you're hesitating, Don't. Ultimaker should be selling machines with bondech feeders as an option. Just like the olsson block. The Bondtech feeder is clearly superior to the stock feeder.

Holy Cow! That looks tricky!

So, I slowed the infill rate from 70mm/sec to 50mm/sec. Bumped the PLA print temp to 210 C. Slightly increased the tension at the feeder. All appears to be well. No more knocking and grinding and the infill is nice and robust.

It feels like such a shame to pitch the entire printcore. However, I'm a user that would prefer to spend more time printing and less time tinkering. So, I suppose that I should get with the program and replace a printcore or two when needed. Although, I'm pretty sure that's not my trouble here. This is what brought me to this thread. I have been happily printing for almost a year with no trouble. The problem that I now have is a large shape with a lot of infill relative to the amount surrounding wall thickness (see photo) The feeder wheel is shiny and new like the day it was born. So, I can check that off the list. I cleared out the feeder. I did about 10 cold pulls to clear out the nozzle (after it got pretty mucked up) so I'm confident clogging is no problem. I also removed my filament from my dry box (I though the dry box was adding friction to the works) and let it feed off the spool holder. After doing all this the print failed quicker than ever before with a PLA print (the one in the photo) I will say that I have always seen under-extrusion on infill layers. Usually, this is a fairly short duration of time before it moves on to wall or next layer. So, it doesn't lead to grinding. On this particular shape the first few solid layers are perfect. It's when the infill starts that I see trouble. So, I believe that the knocking and grinding is caused by the feeder wheel just not able to keep up with the faster speeds on infills. I will crank up the tension and see if that helps. Other than that, I have high hopes for the Bondtech DDG kit

I have a UM3 ext. Recently, I have also been hearing a knocking sound. On my machine, the sound is from the knurled feeder wheel slipping and grinding the filament. This is especially pronounced while doing infill layers. I too will be looking into changing the nozzles. Are the UM3 nozzles sold anywhere? I have hardcore nozzles but I’d like to find ones with the little rubber o-ring just like the stock ones. Also, have a Bondtech DDG kit on the way to help with this problem and chronic underextrusion with infill.

DidierKlein, Yeah I know. no need for PVA anyway. Just experimenting with settings. My goal is to use PVA for the support interface but PLA for the support which is supposed to be a new option. KristelB, As I mentioned previously, the object is flat on the plate and prints fine when support is disabled. Cura is elevating the part when I enable "support interface" I have had plenty of success with the default profiles. I have reason to want to use "support interface" which means that I will not adjusting the default profile. I can print with a floor PVA floor under the part, I'd just prefer not to so that I get better adhesion.

This should say "PLA lays flat"

tomnagel, This is from Cura 2.4.0 This is one of several attempts at PVA support and uses the "zigzag" setting. The PVA elevated off the bed is the result of using the "support interface" feature in Cura that creates a "roof" and a "floor". It automatically creates the floor under the entire object. "Lay Flat" was already used and resulted in what you see. When I turn off support the PVA lays flat against the bed. I believe that I figured out the gooey issue with the PVA (my temps were too low). However, the default behavior of the "support interface" elevating the object for a floor is still problematic. I'd like to be able to have a "roof" without having a "floor". However, this option does not appear to be available in Cura 2.4.0