Brulti

That still gives me a basis to work from, I'll have to make some tests anyway. Thanks for the info.

@yellowshark Thanks for your answer. For printing PLA at 0.3mm layers with a 0.4mm nozzle, what temperature should I use?

Faut la mettre sur un plateau tournant! ?

Thanks @fergazz and @Daid for your answers. So, as I understand it, it's best not to use layer height that is higher than half the nozzle size (0.2mm for 0.4mm nozzle, 0.4mm for 0.8mm nozzle) but it can be pushed to 3/4 if we want to, but that's the upper limit, and you need to change a bunch of parameters to avoid under-extrusion and the like. Now I'm beginning to better see the usefulness of the 0.8mm nozzles... So, for printing at 0.3mm, it would be best if I used the 0.6mm solex hardcore nozzle that I just received for testing abrasive materials. As @gr5 said, I can keep the same profile than the 0.4mm nozzle, change line width to 0.55mm or 0.6mm and I should be set. I hope I got it right and it works, and I don't have to spend days fiddling with settings to print something that would take less than a day to print with standard settings. Customers sometimes... ?

Hi everyone, The demands of a customer spawned a question and I cannot seem to be able to find the answer on the UM website or this forum: what is the resolution range for the 0.4 nozzle of the UM3E? I know that the lowest resolution is 0.02 mm, but what Is the highest? Can I print at 0.3 mm, for example? Or 0.35? I guess that printing at 0.4 mm is impossible since the nozzle is 0.4, thus the layers would barely, if even, touch, and I'd probably end up with a bird's nest. But did anyone tried at 0.3, for example, and, if yes, what was the result? Did it affect the solidity of the print very much?

That was a very interesting read, thank you @SteveCox3D. I would like to point out that more and more 3D software have add-ons or plug-ins that allow you to check your model before you export it in CURA or any other slicer. I'm learning to use Blender, and it has an official add-on for 3D printing that can check for overhangs and any default in the model, as well as ensure that it is manifold. While it is not perfect, especially when it tries to fix a model, it's still a great help and catches most of the very bad design faults that would make printing impossible.

Yep, it still shows up on Firefox:

Je suis parfaitement d'accord avec toi. Le jour où l'impression 3D sera devenue 'plug and play', c'est qu'on sera arrivé à un niveau de technologie similaire aux réplicateurs de Star Trek.

Tested with another browser, it works: it doesn't appear on the home page anymore and only appeared on the first topic I browsed as guest.

For me, it appeared on the front page of the forum. I wasn't browsing any topic yet when it popped. I'm on my desktop, using Firefox. And I agree that it should only appear once a day, not on every topic you visit.

@FalmouthLouis I saw your report on Breakaway, and I find it very interesting that it worked so nicely with a complicated form like your bird, while UM advertises this for long flat surfaces and advises to use PVA for things like your bird. I have yet to try breakaway, but I already have a positive view on this new support material. As for working with an open front, past experiences have taught me than it is way better to keep the front open when printing PLA, especially for long prints like yours. I've lost countless prints until someone here on the forums suggested to leave the front door open to ensure better cooling, and it improved my prints tremendously.

I've printed some tall and big things, and I don't remember hearing the sound your describe at any point. As far as I know, if cooling is done properly, there shouldn't be any expansion of the material during a long print. Did you print with PLA? Did you have a front door or an enclosure? The only reason I can see that the movements of the bed could deteriorate is if there's something blocking the way on the big screw, like a bit of filament stuck there after a print, or a lack of grease that makes it stick. Not much you can do if the prime tower gets knocked over except stand there and catch the filament being extruded to prevent a bird nest and ruining your print. Also, prime towers aren't mandatory when printing with UM materials. Their settings are quite good now, and there's little to no leakage when doing dual printing. I've yet to test breakaway, but I recently did a dual print with PLA of different color without a tower and there was no mix between both colors, no tiny bit of one color leaking while the other color is being printed. That being said, it also depends on the material: I wouldn't try a dual print with TPU without a tower, given how leaky TPU is.

Well, obviously our experiences differ. I've been using CURA and my UM3E for close to a year now, and I have yet to experience an issue that is really crippling or disturbing the way I work. So far, all I've experienced were minor annoyances that could be easily remedied to one way or another, even before a fix was issued. YMMV. Following your line of reasoning, they should just stop development and focus on fixing bugs. Then resume development only once all bugs are fixed. Which would be nice, but that's not a practical solution. Why? Why would I have to chose between being up to date or having stability? As of right now, CURA offers both, at least in my experience. It works well for me, produces nice prints with my printer, and, if I want to try the new features, I can go down to the 'Experimental' section and give it a try. If that fails, well, I knew beforehand that it was an experimental feature, I've been warned, I can't really complain. I could make jokes or snarky remarks about the 'microsoft insider program', but that would be too easy. ? As @nallath replied above:

Latest version of CURA has circular prime towers, much less likely to topple. Also, it is best to move the prime towers away from the default position in the corners and put it in the middle of any sides. I put it middle-right, other put it middle-back, but don't keep it in the corners due to the deformation of the glass in the UM3/E. And make the tower a bit thicker: you can manually set the thickness of the tower, instead of letting cura calculate it on it's own, thicker tower will be more stable.

I don't think an LTS release cycle would be a good idea. I'm a fairly basic user of CURA, still slowly discovering the intricacies of the software and all the options and features hidden in it. I also use it for my business (I'm running a small 3D printing company) and I'm fairly ok with the current release cycle. I don't take part in the beta-testing due to lack of time to do so, mostly, and I give my heartfelt thanks to everyone who takes time to do it, and even more to those who can and will code fixes for bugs that are detected. I couldn't code to save my life. I don't see the potential for bugs making through the beta-testing period and into the stable release as being such a problem. First of all, because the people at UM and in the community react very fast when it happens, second, because I can still revert to the previous working version, third, because, no matter how hard or how long you beta-test something, there will always be bugs somewhere. And major bugs rarely make it past beta. The last bug that I experienced was at the release of 3.3.1 when it wouldn't work if installed on a different drive than C:. It was only mildly annoying, could be worked around by installing 3.3.1 on C temporarily or reverting to the previous version which installed on another drive fine, and, it was fixed within 24h or 48h tops, if I'm' not mistaken. So, it had zero impact on my business. Software will have bugs no matter how long you test it, simply because you cannot test everything in every situation for every setup. And because there are less testers than there are users, and users will always find things that testers missed, try out things that testers didn't, and so on. (As a side note, I'll say that anyone who expects 'stuff', be it software or a car or whatever, to work flawlessly all the time is a fool. The first rule of our universe is entropy: 'stuff' will break down and experience malfunction.) Also, I am interested in new features (CIRCULAR PRIME TOWERS! ...*coughs* Sorry...) but also in stability, which is why I quite like the fact that some new stuff is first released as 'experimental'. You have a working version of CURA, and you can also play with the new stuff, but you're warned that the results can vary from what is expected. I did some tests with the Tree support feature, which is quite nice and saves on support in many cases, but it eats processing power like nobody's business... 'Experimental' features is basically a beta-test under another name. Finally, if the LTS means that UM looses 25%-50% of development time to maintain and fix older version, then that's one more reason for me to be against the LTS cycle. I'd much rather have them include bug fixes in a new version, along with some new features, and release more often, than have them maintain 2.0 and 2.1 and 2.2 and 3.0 and 3.1 even though they just released 3.2. That kind of thing always seemed a waste of resources to me, in most cases.

A Mandelbrot? You are evil with your printers... ?

It's not (yet?) related to 3D printing, but it's yet anoter example of how sci-fi has such a great influence on our world: Of course, for those who forgot, the great scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: We never knew what Madeline wanted...

The RFID will hold with no troubles. I put a spool of PVA to dry for 3-4 hours in the oven at 60 degrees and it still works.

It's fixed for me. Thanks.

I have the same result with 'Z Seam Alignment' set to Shortest. It does the same even when choosing 'User Selected', there's still that wobble. Strange.

Mind to share the stl so others can try and see if it does the same on their computers?

Personal experience with UM-Nylon shows that it does tends to soften when put in water, did that quite a lot to get rid of PVA support on pieces I printed, but it usually gets back in shape and hardens once dry, without loosing it's mechanical properties. As said aboive, brim or raft are mandatory for Nylon, the glass must be squeaky clean, and some glue can help, depending on the size and shape of the pice, as well as the print time. I haven't seen much of a difference with using a closed door or not though.

The message in the footer is gone today for me. Windows 10 with Firefox, both are up to date. I have the default ipboard theme and the same message in my Account settings than @geert_2: [[Template core/front/global/profileNextStep is throwing an error. This theme may be out of date. Run the support tool in the AdminCP to restore the default theme.]]

Then maybe you could release the plans and specs, and the engineers in the community would probably be able to work out the kinks and such and create their own upgrade kits?

It's alright, I forgive you @kmanstudios. ? Welcome @PowerMechGuy! As Kmanstudios said: you are obligated to keep us up to date on your progress! ?