uncle_bob

Hi Unlike thermistors (which come in an almost infinite number of resistance / temperature combos) PT100's are all pretty much same / same. If you find a part that fits the pads, it likely will do the job. This isn't 100% of the story. If you spend $1,200 on a lab grade device, it *will* be more accurate than a $1 part off the shelf at Mouser. I don't think that a 100C heated bed temperature that is sensed at +/- 0.005 C accuracy vs "only" 0.1C is going to ruin anybodies prints ..... One other note, the 100 ohm RTD (PT100) has a cousin that is 1,000 ohms (a PT1000). Get those two mixed up and you *will* ruin some prints. Bob

Hi Just to add to the list of "electromagnetic sources": A cell phone is a big source. If you are talking on it, that's pretty obvious and you likely will work out what's going on. What's not quite so obvious is that they "wake up" every so often to chat with the base station. It's sitting there in your shirt pocket seemingly doing nothing. At the "wrong time" it's making every bit as much of a racket (but for a short period of time) as if you were having a conversation on it...... Not an issue on a "does it every time" sort of problem. It could be an answer to "why does it fail once a week / month / year?" Bob

Hi If this has been mentioned before ... sorry for the repetition .... If you are printing a part and feeding from bucket B on your material station along goes the print. You wander by and notice an alarming lack of filament on that spool. What can you do? Well, you can load another spool into bucket C *while* a print is in progress. How cool is that !! The normal load process works fine and the print keeps chugging along. Not (yet) sure if the same process works replacing a recently emptied spool ..... (say there was a spool in C and it's now empty, printing off of B, put a new one in C). One of the "wonders" of having 750g spools on UM3's and printing things that *always* seem to be over 375g is that I have a *lot* of short spools running around. Bob

Hi I'm most certainly *not* going to dive into the disassembly without guidance. That indeed *could* raise all sorts of interesting warranty issues. I'm not quite sure that "official channels" would be any better at blowing a piece of loose crud out of a sensor than I would. I'm also not sure that my doing it would have any different impact than their doing it. Yes, that *assumes* a specific answer to an as yet un-diagnosed system illness ..... Indeed if the cover (or whatever) comes off and there is a pile of broken bits where the feeder used to be, I haven't done anything of value opening up the device. Part of my guess here is that I have a simple / common / normal issue rather than a full system failure. Bob

Hi I have an S5 Material Station that behaves like there is something caught in the filament feed sensor at slot A / extruder 1. That seems like a pretty common sort of issue to have. Obviously I have absolutely no idea if this is the case or not. It's just a guess at this point. It *is* a feeder and they *do* get junk built up in them. To see if my guess is correct or not, I would need to get inside the Material Station to look at the gizmo. Then I could tell if it needs a clean or something more dramatic has happened. So - how do I disassemble that part of the Material Station? If I go into the various "error number" diagnostics, I quickly hit a bunch of "our repair partners are qualified to work on this" sort of verbiage. If that's the case, and this an every two weeks sort of cleanup (the device has been here less than 2 weeks), *somebody* will be paying a lot of postage ....... Given that the shipping box arrived with one side caved in, just the cost in replacement shipping boxes will get a bit crazy. I realize that there is a desire to keep poking fingers out of here and there on these printers for safety reasons. I also realize that some tasks are more difficult to do correctly than other tasks. I feel pretty confident that after designing and manufacturing electronic gear for the past 50 years that I can stay safe. My ability to follow instructions may be open to debate 🙂 Also - this is in no way a knock on the support people either at my supplier or at higher levels. I've dealt with a number of them over the years (this is not my first printer ...) and they have been very helpful. My point is that users *do* need to be able to do routine cleanup type work. Bob

Hi I think it's a bit early to declare the material station dead. If you want a tried and tested device, wait a year. That's true on anything associated with 3D printing. There are always issues early on. Generally they get worked out. What will the device do a year from now? Who knows .... Here's what I'd *hope* it will do: 1) Dump way less filament on startup. If that much is required for some odd filament, make the process configurable. 2) Stay primed as the default (rather than un-prime at the end of a job) 3) Have at least *some* instructions on using the device (like loading ....) 4) Have a bit more documentation on setting up custom filament profiles. (and how to test them). 5) Do a *much* better job with feed failures ( = save the print as the primary goal ) 6) Provide some sort of estimate of the filament in the machine ( if I have 5 partial rolls, what do the tags say they have left on them ....). 7) Turn off ( or at least turn down) the lights 8 ) An option to "piggy back load" filament . ( = just send in the next batch and accept that retract will be an issue) 9) Control over which spool to start a job with ( as opposed to just using first loaded) 10) Eliminate all "reboot to exit this screen" error messages, regardless of cause. Those are in no particular order. I'd bet half a warm bottle of beer that no more than half of them will ever "make it" to production. That's fine. They are only a wish list. ======== Edit 20 hours later ..... At this point bucket A on the material station is down with something seriously wrong. The sensor that normally detects filament insertion on load no longer does. This came up last night ( = Saturday night). Indeed come Monday, I'll start making contact with the support people. That's the only option I have. Not knowing what it is, that *may* be the only approach. From past experience with filament sensors on other devices ... something is stuck in there and it needs a cleaning. With no instructions on how to get to it, that's not an option. ( Full details on the failure: Filament extracted about 8" back from the extruder and then jammed. That part has been cleared .... at least I think it's been cleared ... Filament is not sensed in either the extruder 1 or extruder 2 inputs for bucket A ) Bob

Hi I'm sure there is a way to force the filament through manually. The gotcha is that the firmware will not realize the material is loaded ( or it will treat it as an error). Either way you have a failure. Despite the filament being new, I'd try drying it out. I happen to like vacuum dryers, but there are lots of ways to get the job done. Without knowing just what's failing in the load, there isn't much else I can guess as being a fix ( feeder tension would be the next thing on the list ...). Bob

Hi Just to close this out, indeed the bundle, the material station, and the air manager are all shipping at this point. That's not the same as "in stock everywhere". Bob

Hi Being able to dim *all* the lights would be a nice feature. Both the printer and the material station throw out a lot of light. Bob

Hi There are several belts and drive gears between the head and the stepper. Dimensional errors in any of them can throw things off a little. However if that's the case, you should get a scale error ( = it's off by 0.5%). If it's always 0.1 mm, even on a 0.5 mm part then indeed it's some sort of play / slop issue. Bob

Hi I think the simple answer is that they want a "clean break" at the print head. That way there is nothing in any Bowden tube anywhere. With a normal manual feed retract you have the potential for a long thread on the end of the filament. It comes off / comes out from the machine when you remove the spool. With the material station it could be long enough to be who knows where .... There is no way to just deal with it "downstairs" as far as I can see. Bob

Hi Having used multi material setups on other printers, they *never* are as simple as a single spool manual load. There are too many little gizmos in the way. I have no expectation that it will be hassle free. I'd just like to make it through my first material switch out without 6 reboots. Bob

Hi Might I humbly suggest that the "death spiral" of going into a series or error 56,58,61's all of which require power down of the machine is also a bug? The only way to clear them was to unload all 6 spools (including those not feeding the active extruder) from the material station. Indeed this took 6 reboots. I would suggest that any screen that locks up the machine requiring a reboot at least should say "reboot now" on the screen. Some sort of unified instructions / troubleshooting guide for the material station is needed. Calling my supplier at 2AM as these errors spout isn't going to get me anywhere. ( indeed this all happened in the middle of the night last night). If I look at how things like normal loading or hot / cold pulls are handled and compare that with the material station process ... yikes. If indeed those little pictures are needed, then there is a whole book full of them needed for the material station. The *expectation* is that an error situation can be cleared and the three day print restarted to complete the second half of the print. The reboot process pretty much eliminates this. Bob

Hi I suspect that one gotcha is that the printer *may* be powered off between prints. It pretty much forgets everything when that happens. As a result "keep it loaded" would have to be the default / only option. I'd be fine with that. Put another way, let it operate the same way as the S5 all by it's self operates ..... Bob

Hi Given that not all filament manufacturers supply profiles for Ultimaker, there is going to be a lot of manual setup of filaments. I think some sort of detailed instructions on how to set one up are called for..... Back to trying to figure out why B,C,D,E, and F don't work on my printer..... (when loaded with legit Ultimaker filament). Bob

Hi My problem is that the printer is to quiet. I can't tell if it's running or not when I'm in the next room. With most printers, I can tell if I'm on the same floor of the building 🙂 Bob

Hi ..... and where did they hide that feature? ===== Poke poke poke ..... go to settings and under "material" enable "build volume temperature". It's not enabled when you are set to "expert" mode . Bob

Hi Ordered mine S5 Bundle just over two weeks ago. The printer got here in two days. The rest of the bundle shipped end of last week. It's out for delivery today ..... Bob

Winderz

Is the chip the driver is set up for set up with the same selects and timing as the one on the flow sensor? It's grubby little details like that you have to sort through.

Usually it's better to just sit down with the hardware spec sheet and write up the code for the actual device being used. That way you reduce the number of "surprises" when things aren't *quite* the same. At least that's the answer if you do this for a living ....

To get the UM3 to play nice via I2C, you would need to write a driver that is specific to the target device. There is no generic protocol that "just works" in this case.

Hi Two S5's ... nice problem to have ? Might it be "lost connection to the group" ? Bob

Hi Isn't the aluminum build plate coming out this fall? Everybody who *buys* an S5 will get one. They just will not get it with the early printer shipments. .... or am I confused yet again ? ? Bob

Hi A few things to research / ponder while you are waiting for your cool new printer: 1) The build surface is glass. If you drop it on a concrete floor, it can indeed break. At least for the earlier printers a genuine UM spare was relatively cheap. It's worth having an extra "just in case". 2) If you didn't get a bundle of filament with the printer, order some now. You will burn through what comes with the machine pretty fast. 3) Big prints can take a *long* time to complete. A couple of days is not unusually long. If there is any chance of a power outage happening where you will run the printer - get a UPS to run it on. Compared to the printer .... not a lot of money. Compared to the frustration of a three day print getting nuked ... money well spent. 4) Prints are done from models. Models come from CAD software. If you don't already have CAD experience, now is a fine time to start messing around. There are several free programs out there which seem to work for a lot of people. If this is a commercial venture, there are "paid for" versions to look at. 5) It's a big printer and yes you want to print *BIG* stuff. Resist the urge for at least the first few prints. Start small. Small prints run fast and give you a good idea how things all work. Yes, your cube collection will probably get tossed in the trash ... live with it ? Far better to make mistakes in 15 minutes and correct them in 20 minutes that to do it with a cycle measured in days. 6) To me one of the great things about the UM3 ( and the UM5) is the easy swap print cores. I have a few spares "in stock". There are a lot of people who ( rightly ) might say that's overkill. Have fun !!!! Bob