Xalara

I agree, black is a weird colour for them to advertise but the good news is they do also sell white and natural versions. I also edited my update to say that I've run into a ton of issues with LW-PLA-HT so I've had to go back to basics and rebuild the entire profile. I'll post an update once I've got it going. If y'all have profiles that work for you I'd love to see them too since I'd like to see what settings are causing issues despite things working great for the old LW-PLA.

Edit: I spoke too soon, despite the calibration tests being successful, I've been having my issues with prints that have required me to go back to basics of sorts. I'll be posting updated settings once I've locked things in. It's been a few years, but I figure I'd update this post because ColorFabb has a new LW-PLA-HT material. For LW-PLA-HT, outside of the flow rate, the settings above still work well on my Ultimaker 3. For the flow rate, I had to lower it from 50% to 44%. Which is good, since it means LW-PLA-HT is foaming better and I get more weight reduction! These settings should also get you close enough on newer Ultimaker printers since they all still use the same print cores.

Update: I spent the last week tuning the Generic PLA profile on my Ultimaker 3 to work with ColorFabb's LW-PLA and managed to get it to reliably print at a 50% weight reduction. I've attached an image highlighting the settings I used to get there if others want to try printing with it. I highly recommend reading their article on how to print with it first: https://learn.colorfabb.com/print-lw-pla/ I'd like to get it to a 60%-65% weight reduction, but so far I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to expand further and am happy with just a 50% for what I am printing. Some explanations: - No retraction: Due to the foaming nature of the filament, retraction can actually cause clogs. While this does result in stringing, they're easy to sand off and remove. Most of the things I print end up being sanded/painted so stringing isn't an issue for me. - No cooling: Again, you want this to foam which requires heat. So you don't really want to cool it. If your part requires bridging, you can play with this setting. - Acceleration/jerk: To keep the parts dimensionally accurate, especially on sharp corners, you do want to have fairly high acceleration compared to the generic PLA profile to avoid over extrusion. This does result in some ringing, but it's not a concern for what I was shooting for. - Build plate temperature: I have to set to 30 degrees because for whatever reason PLA prints deform on my UM3 when set to the defaults. I also almost never print without Ultimaker adhesive sheets. You will want to tweak this if you use a straight glass bed.

Updating for anyone that stumbles on this thread in the future: I ended up sending the printer to Ultimaker to get repaired at the factory. It does indeed turn out that the pulley was originally installed backwards and they have fixed the issue by reinstalling it correctly. Thank you everyone for your help.

Thank you, I'd like to avoid having to lubricate the edge of the belt since it doesn't solve the core problem. I took a square tool and it seems like the UM3 is lined up. At this point I might have to send the printer in for repair unless there are other ideas.

I noticed my Ultimaker 3 making some squeaking noises and saw that one of the belts is grinding against the side. I've tried reseating the belt, but it just moves back into position grinding against the side. There is also rubber dust around the area. What can I do to fix this problem? Video of the problem is here, notice how the belt tilts from side to side: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TaaKxnoPsj6U6_DtYu8TmP99toA2VJoa

I cannot read German, but luckily Google Translate does 🙂 Thank you for the link. For those finding this thread in the future: I also reached out to ColorFabb themselves and a material profile should be out on the Ultimaker Marketplace soon.

Has anyone used Colorfabb's LW-PLA? If so what kind of settings are you using? I'm interested in trying out the material. It seems to get similar results to Ultimaker PLA you want around 230-235C for the nozzle, and flow to 40%?

I think we got derailed by SLA a little bit here. That said, I think a lot of angst is coming from the fact that one of Ultimaker's chief competitors released a refresh of their SLA printer that came with significant engineering upgrades and the price remained the same. Whereas I look at the S3 and I see a relatively minor product refresh that is significantly more expensive. The S3 is still a great product, which is why it's getting great feedback, the problem is that Ultimaker hasn't justified the price increase. That is why people are giving pause to their praise.

The Ultimaker S3 seems... Meh? It comes across as a minor refresh three years after the original that happens to be $900 USD more expensive. Don't get me wrong, I love my Ultimaker 3, but when there's a big price jump I do expect a bit more than what comes across as a minor refresh. If it were around the same price as a UM3 I'd be a whole lot more excited.

Truth be told, the 5S is basically a UM3 with a far larger build area. So if you are happy with the UM3 and you want a larger build area then the 5S makes sense. However, if you you don't need the build area you may as well save your money and get a UM3.

I think, given my experiences with my Ultimaker 3 there is a pattern with the launch of a new printer being relatively rough. I know for several months after the launch of the UM3 the documentation wasn't fully fleshed out. So the launch process is definitely an area where Ultimaker could improve. Cura is the best free product on the market and has been improving by leaps and bounds. It's arguably better than certain paid apps so I am confused about the complaints here. Granted multiplatform support always gets weird. Beyond that, I had a rough few initial months with my machine. However I am really happy with it. The biggest issue facing FDM at the moment is that, as a process it's reaching some upper limits. Unfortunately FDM's natural progression, polyjet, seems to be patented to heck, so it'll be interesting to see where Ultimaker goes from here.

Thank you. For me frosted glass is good enough since it will have LEDs behind it and I need to diffuse the point light effect. However at the moment the criss-cross pattern of each layer is really dimming the LEDs.

I am attempting to print a translucent part using Ultimaker Transparent PLA. However, due to the way Cura alternates infill direction my parts are coming out more opaque than they should. How do I stop Cura from alternating infill direction and instead have the infill the exact same on every layer? It's not a structural part so all I care about is it letting a good amount of light through. For context: Normally I would achieve this by printing the part on its side so that the natural print layers will achieve this but I can't do that for this particular part. Details: Cura 3.5, Ultimaker 3, Ultimaker Transparent PLA

One tip for warping in the bottom layers on an Ultimaker. To get rid of that warping set the build plate temperature to 30C, then set the "Initial Layer Build Plate Temperature" to 60C. Doing this will also require you to use tape or some other form of adhesion method. For whatever reason the default print bed temperature settings for Ultimaker PLA have major issues. @SandervG this might be something you guys at UM might want to look into since I've run into it a lot when printing with UM PLA on my UM3. I've found a workaround, but admittedly using the UM adhesion tape is annoying, despite being effective.

I think the issue with remote monitoring, is that to implement it in a relatively secure way would require a ton of resources from Ultimaker. They could allow remote access directly to the printer but that's a giant security headache waiting to happen. I suspect then, Ultimaker would want to follow the model of ChefSteps. Where ChefSteps Joule device connects to ChefSteps servers in the cloud, and then when you want to monitor your Joule, your app connects to ChefSteps servers and not directly to the Joule device. The problem with this approach is that it would require a bunch of developer resources, and by developer resources I'm not sure how many distributed systems/cloud engineers Ultimaker has on its staff, but I suspect it's not many given Ultimaker's area of focus. So they would likely have to do a bunch of hiring for a type of engineer that's not cheap to hire. P.S. You can already enable remote access in dev mode, but it's heavily discouraged for security reasons.

I've gotta echo what's being said here about the MAC address. It is incredibly surprising that it's not on a sticker on the outside of the machine or at the very least, in an easy to access spot in the menu.

You will need to heat it up to 55C for several hours (can go to 60, but I've found I ruin the spool when I go to 60). To do that you'll need an oven that can go that low, or better yet, take a food dehydrator and put the filament into that. I personally use this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008H2OEKK I used snippers to cut a spool sized hole in some of the grates. Beyond that, Ultimaker still doesn't have settings for PVB so it comes down to starting with PLA settings and figuring out the specifics from there with trial and error.

The past few weeks it seems that my Ultimaker 3 has stopped reading the NFC chips in the filament I feed into it. This happens with both old filament and new filament. What steps can I take to troubleshoot this?

Yay, and yeah I'm pretty sure the one I'm hoping for most (PolyMaker) manufactures their own, or at least they are closer to the manufacturer side than other filament makers simply because they offer materials I don't really see elsewhere

So then, what I'm extrapolating here is that Ultimaker is working with a number of filament manufacturers to include Ultimaker profiles for their filament in a future update to Cura? Release date still TBD. The reason I'm extrapolating here is that from the filament manufacturer side of things I have been hearing whispers of how stringent Ultimaker's tests are. Not a bad thing since we want profiles to be reliable.

Thank you for this, I'll add some tape since I'd really prefer not to replace my cable again My thought is that electrical tape will be what I should use here?

Speaking of print head cables. If the print head cable breaks will it be easier to thread the replacement cable through the case? I know on the UM3 replacing the print head cable is a royal pain in the butt. Well, ideally the print head cable doesn't break in the first place but it seems to happen with heavy use it on the UM3.

As a small time maker who owns a UM3, I'm clearly not in the target market for this printer, but even for small business and small enterprise the price seems to be pushing it. My armchair analysis is that while this printer is going to be amazing, at a $6000 price point it creates a big opening for competitors to come in at a lower price. P.S. where's my PVB profile in Cura :[

My wishlist: Better maintenance support at launch. This has mostly been resolved for the UM3, but for the first few months after launch there weren't many official sources of documentation for maintaining the UM3. Even now I have to write to support/sales if I want a spare part, which is unwieldy. fbrc8.com has a spare part section for the UM3 but it's rather sparse. Better wire accessibility. I recently had to replace my print head cable and trying to thread that thing through was a nightmare. The UM3 seems to be built for ease of maintenance and modularity, so it was surprising how user unfriendly replacing the print head cable was. This is especially worrisome since it seems that the print head cable is one of those parts that might fail more often than others. Enclosed spool holder with a little area for silica packets. Humidity is my #1 enemy, especially when printing with PVA. Speaking of PVA, better options for cleaning the print cores would be nice. Even when printing under optimal conditions I find I have to do cold/hot pulls to clean out my BB core every few days. This takes a lot of time. Support for PVB. Yeah this is more a Cura thing, but it'd be nice to at least get a generic PVB profile in there. I've got something that mostly works using PLA as a base, but I suspect a real profile that's been fully vetted will improve quality by leaps and bounds. More reliability/ease of use. This is the big one, while the UM3 is still better than most printers, it's still got a long way to go before I would recommend it to even my less hands-on techy friends. Don't get me wrong, I love my UM3, but there's lots of room to improve