Jakeddesign

I thought I would share some of my testing with MatterHackers NylonX. Its an interesting material, very rigid, nice texture, and supposedly stronger than most other materials. It has a 100mpa ultimate tensile strength according to the data sheet, which makes it similar to Nylforce Carbon Fiber. (http://gr5.org/mat/) this is my test piece: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1819242 Settings: 0.50mm SS Nozzle (3D Solex Hardcore) 0.45 line width 0.2mm layers 2 walls (Copied an old profile and forgot to change this to 4+) 20% fill 260* C print temp 60* build plate (glass will elmers glue) 40mm/s print speed The parts were printed quite a bit oversized, so I couldnt fit the latch into the main body. I was able to snap the body in two with my bare hands, but this was only printed with 2 walls, so, I cant really expect much from it. The surface quality was somewhere between interesting and not so great, so I am unsure if it always prints this way or the material is slightly wet. I will toss in the dryer overnight before the next test. Overall, it printed easy, had hardly any warping, incredibly stiff (like PLA) but definitely stronger than PLA. Let me know if you have questions, I will post my results when I print round #2. edit: I measured the cross section of the break ( outside HxW - inside HxW) and multiplied this number by the rated tensile strength (14,500 psi/100mpa) and came up with a theoretical ultimate strength of 1300 pounds. I doubt I even applied more than 50 lb of force to it before breaking. Obviously, there are many factors that could contribute to this, but I suspect my print settings are not correct (or material is still too wet) which cause a very week print.

Before I left work on Friday, I started a 50+hr print of a prototype part I am working on. I spent a lot of time updating all my settings since I was using MH Pro filaments and I really wanted this thing to be a good show piece. So Monday morning I roll into work to find this: After writing up a very long post in the HELP section, I started listing all my settings just in case someone noticed something out of place. But no worries, I found the problem: For some odd reason, I unchecked the retraction button. A facepalm moment if ever there was one... (the PVA is a bit old, hence the underextrusion you see towards the end of the print)

I think it will never rival PLA in aesthetic "quality", but it is very strong, and doesnt like to delaminate. Very flexible depending on how thick you print the walls. I use it for glue templates in production. When they get gummed up, we just toss them in acetone overnight to dissolve the glue and they are like brand new the next day, ready to go.

I forgot to mention that I did turn OFF retraction. I had a suspicion that it was getting stuck in the nozzle. My model was also much less complex than yours, although maybe similar in size. good luck!

I did a few things, not sure which it was that worked. a.) I put the filament in my dryer overnight b.) I was using a 3D Solex HardCore nozzle, but switched back to the UM3 AA Core. c.) I went back to using UM3/Cura default profiles magically, it started working again. I suspect that the material was just wet, maybe the 3DSolex core was also contributing. The 3D solex seems to have a tighter throat where the filament goes through, which seems to cause some issues with material swelling sometimes.

That sounds good! What is it used for mostly, if you don't mind me asking? I work for a prosthetics company, we focus mostly on lower limb, but are getting into upper limb prosthetics as well. Any plastic components were order through Statasys, which is a great service, but quite expensive and long leadtime (unless you pay even MORE money). We have one product that I have printed 4-5 versions using the UM3 - something we would not have done if we were ordering prints from a vendor. Saved a lot of money on mold change costs too, since even printing such complex parts on an FDM printer we were able to identify some pretty serious overlooks. The printer runs for at least 40 hours a week, and if I time prints just right, I can hit 100 hours.

Sorry I have not responded back with any updates, too busy printing to get back to calibrating. When I started at this company they told me they didnt have a use for a printer...then I convinced them to buy and 6 months later this thing NEVER stops printing. Its crazy....my full time Engineer gig is now more than 50% printer technician! Anyway, @yellowshark's tests did reflect my results pretty well. I have just been sticking with the horizontal offset setting, which works well MOST of the time. The rest of the time I try to fix the model manually before printing it, or sand/machine it down later. (We had one fixture with a fairly complex surface, so I printed it out without the Horizontal offset setting, and then they ran it through a CNC to clean up the surfaces and hole sizes). This results sound pretty good to me. Maybe keep an eye on the X vs Y dimensions, you might have a loose belt. The "Horizontal Expansion" setting is probably what you want to play with. @ghostkeeper mentioned that the rule of thumb is 7/8 nozzle diameter= linewidth, this creates overlap, thus a stronger part. It would stand to reason, then, that if you set the line width to 100% nozzle diameter, then although the part would be weaker, maybe it would be more dimensionally accurate? (on outside corners/surfaces at least) Since the "overlap" portion of the line would not be shifting the 1/16 nozzle diameter outwards?

I did not export any profiles, I simply anticipated the new version pulling in the old profiles (as it had before). Manually copying over my main Config profile and all of the filament profiles did what I needed it to do - So i think I am good to go for now. The print profiles still dont work, but I can live with that. But in the spirit of trying to figure this out for someone who maybe lost more stuff, I have attached a link to my 3.2.1 folder, 3.3 folder (which I have copied files into), and the original 3.3 folder BEFORE i started manually messing with things. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w8qEv_z8oOwrVloSOpTa0HdpdL9u1nc1 Thanks everyone for the help

Here is a link to the zip. I found them in a folder called "Quality" as I did not have a "Profiles" folder. They are also not *.curaprofile, so maybe that is the issue? https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lTUXRu9eKol5X8mV4aqOhj91CAvJ1Q3w Here is the folder I am digging in:

I found the settings, and started copying them over. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, now Cura wont let me select a profile? It grays them all out

I had the same issue!! Not good....

Same here!! I just upgraded to 3.3 (from 3.2.1) and lost all my printer information, materials, and profiles! Is there any way to get them back manually?

Ive been printing with PP all week now, it is a bear! When it works, it does make some nice prints (I print for work, I am using the PP for these glue templates so that when they get too caked up with adhesive, we can just soak them in solvent). I have had it start to tangle in the extrude gear a few times, and other times the nozzle clogs up. But no adhesion issues, thanks do those fancy UM adhesion sheets. :-) I have had the most success printing at 40mm/s and no retraction, with no other significant changes to the profile.

I would recommend getting the 3D Solex HardCore, which allows you to replace the nozzles. It is very difficult to replace a nozzle on the OEM Ultimaker 3 Cores.

For some reason, cura connect (Show Print Jobs) is showing not only the wrong print job, but a job that I did about a week ago. I figured after a few reboots it would go away. I even cleared my browser cookies/cache just in case. Does anyone know how to get this to reset? UM3, Cura 3, Google Chrome, WiFi printing Edit: Just to clarify, this is the "Show Print Jobs" on the webpage using google chrome. the Windows 10 desktop app Cura 3.2 shows the correct information.

3D Solex has a "HardCore" nozzle/core system for the UM3. Their standard nozzles are still brass, but you can buy a hardened nozzle for the system as well. this guy has everything you need: https://thegr5store.com/store/

I searched around the forums and could not find much information on my particular issue. I have UM brand Polypropylene and I simply cannot get a part to print well. I am using UM adhesion sheets, which are amazing, and do NOT have any bed adhesion problems. However, after the first 10-20 layers or so the nozzle starts to clog and I get severe under extrusion that results in just little wisps coming out of the nozzle. I started with all Ultimaker defaults, increased temp, lower temp, 0.1mm and 0.2mm layers, 30mm/s speed, 70mm/s speed. The filament doesn't make any popping noises or anything, so I don't *think* its wet (and it was brand new out of the package). I even cleaned out the extruder cooling fan to ensure air flow, and cleaned the nozzle really well (cold pulls, etc). Has anyone else come across this problem? I am running an UM3, AA0.4 Core, Cura 3.2 Edit: the underextrusion I am describing looks like this guys prints (except I am printing PP)

Right on, thanks for looking into it. I definitely suspect I am creeping up the capabilities of FDM printing, it just seems to me that it is consistence enough that software could compensate so I was hoping there was already a setting built in that I had not yet discovered. I will update if I come across any other clever solutions.

Busy day today, but finally got around to posting. @yellowshark I ran a PLA part today for better comparison purposes, pictures are below. My OD numbers are actually pretty close, I measured 0.13mm oversized, but the part was 0.25mm oversized at the bottom. (indicating taper, I suspect this is plastic shrinkage). The ID was measuring 0.4mm undersized. I ran (4) walls, 20% infill. I will try (2) walls on Monday and see if that changes it. If I recal, I had printed some test cubes a while back that had 1, 2, 3, and 4 walls and I noticed that 1 wall measured perfect, and 2 walls was the same as 4 walls as far as oversized. But I will try again on Monday. @SandervG I would say it is more or less consistent, I do notice a slight difference between X and Y of less than 0.005" (.13mm) but maybe this is as good as it can be? I have checked the belts, on Monday I will measure for square and report back. I have Cura 3.2.1 Project file attached. UM3_111222_dowel_fixture.curaproject.3mf

Awesome! The dimension should be 1.852" or 47.04mm. I am printing a boatload of calibration cubes this afternoon to try and see how exactly some of the settings affect the parts. So I will post this information later on as well. The attached "cube" is 1.500" (38.1mm) square, with a square hole that is 0.600" (15.24mm). test cube 2.stl

I think we are not on the same page regarding scaling, so I have attached a screenshot of Cura with the part scaled to the correct size. The dimensions should read 57.1x57.1x25.4mm. The small hold inside of the part is 6.15mm in diameter, but measures 5.77mm. To be fair, I am not too worried about this particular hole, but I am worried about the larger inner diameter shape on top of the part. For some reason, the "Horizontal Expansion" option does not adjust this wall, so even though I can get the outside of the part correct, and the "square" hole correct, the upper lip does not compensate for some reason. I have tested the nozzle by printing a calibration cube with 0% infill and (1) wall. Then measured with width with calipers. Width in Cura is set to 0.35mm and I measured almost exactly 0.35mm. I am printing another test cube right now with the "Outer Wall Line Width" setting changed from 0.35 to 0.25mm just to see what happens.

Good catch, its in Standard units. So it needs to be scaled by 2.54. The numbers in Cura 3 match up.

There are a few other topics floating around that discuss accuracy and calibration of the printers, but my issue seems to be above and beyond. First off, I am running a UM3 with 0.4mm Cores, mostly MatterHackers PRO PLA and PRO Nylon material. The issue is that my parts are consistently 0.010" (0.25mm) over size on outside dimensions (OD/PIN), and 0.015" on inside dimensions (ID/HOLE). I have spent a lot of time printing calibration cubes and if I print a single wall cube with 0% infill, my print comes out perfect - as in, +/-0.001 with the occasional 0.005 outlier - but I can live with that, this is a CNC machine. However, as soon as I add multiple walls, the part grows (consistently) to +0.010 overall. This is true for 2 walls, 3, 4, and so on. I can print 6+ walls with the same result. Since the single wall part prints perfect, I have to assume that my material calibration is correct - right? Hopefully this describes the issue thoroughly enough. To combat this issue I have tried: -->negative horizontal expansion This *sometimes* works, but some surfaces (typically inner diameters) and angled surfaces do not get adjusted, so they end up being oversized pins and undersized holes if the surface is not perfectly vertical. --> outer before inner walls this helps, but does not seem to do enough --> adjusting line width I have 0.4mm cores, which default to 0.35 line width. lowered it a few 0.01mm increments with no success. This seems obvious to me since cura just shifts the shell thickness over and you are left with the same "over extrusion" --> Model parts with 0.010" smaller pins, and 0.015" larger holes works, but is pretty inefficient. A lot of the jigs and fixtures I print are typically meant to be machined, but we have been trying to print them in order to save some machine time. Not everything needs to be made from metal. If we know this ahead of time, I can make sure the parts are designed with extra clearance, but this is not always so easy. --> adjust flow rate This is obviously not a good solution, but I tried it and its pretty tough to dial it in and of course underextrusion results in weaker parts I want to point out (again) that I understand this is not a CNC machine milling metal and that +/-0.005" is asking a lot of a printer. however, this parts are consistently oversized, so I feel that there is some tuning or Cura setting that could be changed to compensate for this. Some part that require extra precision will be post machined with a single pass or something, not a big deal, but I dont want to do this with ever single part - kind of defeats the purpose. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be thorough. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. 111222_dowel_fixture.stl

I was trying to find a way to determine how many hours total my UM3 has been running. I found the page where it says how much time each printer Core has been running, but unless I plug in each core, and make an estimate of which core was running while the other core was waiting....I don't have a good way of figuring out the total runtime. I understand maybe this is not the most important piece of data to collect, but every other printer I have used has this information - so maybe I am missing something? I use this printer for work purposes, so it would be somewhat useful to know total hours run its lifetime or from year to year for possible budgeting purposes, or convincing management that we use it alot, etc.

OH man, this is perfect, I also have the same issue, replacing the spring with one from another UM3 core solved the issue, but I would like to get another (better) spring if possible so that I can re-assembly my UM3 printcore. Does anyone have contact information for 3D Solex. (Carl?). it doesnt appear to be on their website for some strange reason....