bbaker

Thanks and a member of the Digital Factory Team did reach out to me and we went through my issues in great detail and it was extremely helpful. For posterity, I do want to add some final comments so my initial comments do not come off as too much whining. My fundamental issue was at one point everything was working very well and dozens of users were using Digital Factory any Ultimaker printers very easily. This was so successful that I made the process mandatory; however, an admittedly very small change in the implementation caused the next group of students to not work in the same way - although possibly I could have forseen that. This lead to a complete disruption in my workflow and every student reaching out to me individually which is just too much trouble and the frustration causes students to lose interest. However, once I fully understood the new process it was very easy to bring in the new students, although this also had an impact on my old students, so while not perfect, I was able to remedy the issue pretty quickly. So there is good news. First off, UltiMaker was EXTREMELY responsive and helpful and I think we both learned something during this issue, and secondly, I learned that the new process now also incorporated MakerBot (yes, I know the companies merged a year or so ago) so now my Digital Factory includes my MakerBot printers which currently outnumber my UltiMaker printers and now makes Cloudprint.makerbot.com (which I like a lot less) not required. This was an unexpected but very welcomed change. Bottom line, thanks UltiMaker, specifically Sergii for the great help.

I apologize in advance for what will just be a complaint and I have already opened a ticket but now I already know more about my situation. First a little background, I have been part of this since the beginning. I remember the days of "host" printers and the start of DigitalFactory. I designed and manage a 3Dprinting curriculum at a University that supports 100s of users and I have always been reluctant to adopt cloud based solutions and just this week UltiMaker has help proved again why I have avoided cloud based solutions. I can make my lab work on a local network fine but personally I love DigitalFactory and it was I always used both at home and at work so last semester (Aug2023) I made my students register for an UltiMaker account as a trial for my course. This went so well that this semester (Jan 24), I made this mandatory and I was planning on going to an all cloud based solution (I have 2 other system that also work all cloud based) but low and behold, UltiMaker has changed something (~Nov23?) where Teams are gone and are replaced by Workspace or something? I am sure the change was intended to be seamless but it is anything but seamless to me. I cannot get any of my students into either my Workspace or my Team and this is causing continual frustration right at the start of what is otherwise an awesome course - so thanks UltiMaker, you are doing an great job of ruining my student experience.... Yes, I am sure there is a solution; yes, I am sure it probably related to my University's overbearing IT rules but I have made it work before; and maybe I will get there but for now I have to go backwards and go back to LAN only and also try to explain why cloud based printing does not always work. A teacher just simply cannot do this to students: if you make the process difficult, students will disengage and the process will become laborious not educational. To make it even better when a vendor makes these changes midstream with what appears to be limited overlap it just begs this type of problem. I am sure I will catch some heat back from this but not nearly as much as I have from my students. I just cannot begin to explain my frustration with something that should have been simple... MORE than happy to discuss in person. I am an easy guy to find. R/Ultimaker Innovator 2020 (although even that link is dead lol )

Absolute +1 on the ability to control/dim lights on both the Material Station and an easier way to do the same on the S5. I have a very practical reason: I have video video cameras in my printing labs on the lights on my Pro Bundles prevent the cameras from going to night vision mode. In other lab areas the camera are much better when in night vision mode. I will probably work on a physical hack soon (tinting glass, installing blinds, or some other hack).

I know this is a blast from the past, but I have this same problem with just a slight twist and the links above are dead. My issue is with an S5 but is the same idea. My S5s are connected hardwire to a private network that is very tightly controlled. The S5s will never have direct access to the internet, but I do now have both DNS and DHCP service on this network and the server (a VM of Windows Server 2016) does have internet connection and I am assuming can somehow provide time to clients. I just cannot figure out how to do it yet. I would even be ok with setting the time via SSH or other as long as the S5 could "mostly" stay on time. My S5s rarely get secured and are on a UPS. Thanks in advance.

Adam, Sorry I did not see this earlier. We have had good connection with Ultimaker for a while. I am Brad Baker and am the Director for the MakerSpace at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Our website is here: https://www.makerspaceusna.com/ and you will see several different aspects where we use Ultimakers and a range of other printers as well. We have at least one video of one of our graduates showing how to use an S5 (https://www.makerspaceusna.com/how-to-printer-videos?wix-vod-video-id=faa3d3f1d91d40918d56f89298df1bb7&wix-vod-comp-id=comp-jy1te1ch). Our primary interest is AM education but we also do research for several other organizations. We currently only have 2 S5s but I am trying to order 2 more S5 Pro Bundles before the holiday break. I already have quotes so do not need any assistance on these. We have a wide range of research projects with one of the most notable projects being using an S5 to print the intake pipes for our FSAE car (no great direct link but a good image is here: https://www.makerspaceusna.com/fdm-fff). In the next 1-2 years I anticipate expanding our MakerSpace and replacing our current generation of FDM/FFF printers (about 20 printers). I am currently working on deciding which way to go and our evaluation of the Pro Bundle this Spring will weigh heavily into that decision. We are very interested in different filaments (a recent summary is here: https://www.makerspaceusna.com/filaments ) and we are about to start attempting to make our own filament for some very custom projects (we have a patent pending process). I will be reaching out to Ultimaker separately in the next few weeks (most likely to Mr. Elfering directly) to offer an opportunity to come to USNA and speak to an AM elective class that I teach (over 80 engineering students). We are very happy Ultimaker customers (we have some other favorite vendors also to be fair) and are very open to further collaboration. - Brad Brad Baker, CAPT USN Associate Professor USNA 590 Holloway RD Annapolis, MD 21402 (410) 293-6502 Office bbaker@usna.edu www.makerspaceusna.com

Thanks. I thought the part was already cool already since it had been sitting for some time but maybe not cool enough. Any idea if the problem is made worse by PC? We have not printed much with PC yet. Thanks also for the link for a new plate. The very first thing I did was order a new plate from matterhackers.

We have had 2 S5s in my MakerSpace for a while and they have been performing very well. We just recently started going with other filament choices and a student printed a few PC pieces for a project. When I went to remove his most recent PC part this morning it was very strongly adhered and I used my standard thin metal spatula approach to peel the part off and the entire build plate shattered quite dramatically. The part had been sitting for several hours and I am not sure if he had set the plate to cool after print (although the bed was not warm when I removed his part). Anyone seen this type of issue before? Also we are very use to either keeping the build plate warm in the LulzBot version of Cura for a TAZ6 but I have not seen this option in Ultimaker Cura. I am guessing it does exist somewhere. Are most people keeping their build plate warm to remove parts? Or reheating the bed to remove parts? My students send jobs at all hours so it is not uncommon for a part to sit for hours so normally I do not want them to keep the build plates warm. Any help is appreciated.

Here the full guide for anybody who might need it: Edited July 24, 2018 by freesbee I finally gotround to settings a static IP to my first of 2 Ultimaker S5s (the other one is currently printing). The process was super easy and I do not really see any issue with it. I know there is a lot discussion of why to set a static and then why we have do it using the way mentioned, but as long as everyone accepts my reasoning for wanting static, then I am willing to accept this method to do it. Personally I had not problems or fears using this method and it appears to have worked fine. I also only have a rudimentary knowledge of linux but did know how to use SSH so I had no problem. I even changed a slaved cura connect printer and the host re-recognized it with the new IP (I am guessing by Mac). Thanks!

Thank you for the understanding!!! I completely agree and do not want to start a static/DHCP argument but I feel that some situations lend themselves to static and some are fine with DHCP. I have found that I have continual problems discovering printers when going DHCP, but I will also admit that my situation is unusual and potentially not optimal, but bottom line static just works for me. I looked around my router interface and did not immediately see a way to give the Ultimakers a static IP and I plan to shift my router to AP mode very soon anyway. I only use this cheap router as a way for students to WiFi directly into the pvt printer network. Ideally it serves no other purpose. Thanks for this as well. I did see this post during my first review but I saw things like "ugly workaround" and people seemed to indicate that this process was difficult so I shied away from it; however, if it is just using SSH and simple commands lines, I am willing to give it a shot. I have a feeling my next question is going to be how to factory restore an Ultimaker 🙂 All of this is pretty time critical (for me). My MakerSpace came crashing down this week - mostly due to other printers - so I need to completely reconfigure the whole lab this weekend or my Monday at the latest.

I just added 2 Ultimaker S5s to my University MakerSpace colleciton of 20+ printers and the Ultimakers appear to be the best so far by a large margin. I apologize if this is not the correct thread to post my 2 questions but this seems like a well moderated thread and I have not been able to find complete answers elsewhere. Here goes... Can/how I give the S5 a static IP and I apologize in advance for rehashing this question. I see references here how to do it but no complete answer. Also I would prefer to avoid the "why do you want static, DHCP is better?!" discussion. I live in the uncomfortable world between incredible unbelievably rigid IT professionals (I would love to rant against them here but will refrain) and students, whom if you do not make the solution fool proof, will give up and complain. I do have my 2 S5s connected via ethernet to a private network via DHCP but they have already switched IPs a few times making things difficult. I currently have a very cheap WiFi router (acting as a router) giving DHCP to some devices on this pvt network, but I plan to switch this router to AP mode and ideally make everything static at the device. I do assign all my lab devices static IP (around 50 and I keep a detailed table). Yes, I realize this has drawbacks but it works for me. Every other brand of printer I have has a reasonable easy way to create a static IP (some use Octoprint). Second question regards how the queuing function works especially if printers have similar but different filament loaded. I REALLY like the queuing function of Cura Connect and plan to use it. I do have 1 printer set at the host. I would be more than willing to read up on this is someone can point me in the right direction. Here are my specific questions: - It looks like only the host shows up Cura although I am getting inconsistent results in Cura. - If I slice for a particular filament and send it to the queue what happens if a printer becomes available but does not match exactly the filament? I know this sounds obvious, but what if it is just color difference? (color rarely matters to me) What if the difference is in the 2nd extruder but the job is only 1 extruder? I know I can probably just test all of these features out but it would be nice to know how Cura is handling them. Thanks in advance, so far so good. I now know why a colleague of mine has gone exclusively with 50+ Ultimakers in his lab rather than my mix.

I just want to jump in on this topic largely in hopes that I will get notified when/if this changes. I manage 20+ printers on a private network and just added 2 Ultimaker S5s. Switching them to static IP via DHCP would be highly desirable. I will also look into configuring them as static on my router. I am IT literate enough to the point where I know enough to get myself into trouble, i.e. I will probably destroy my pvt network. Semi-related, it looks my S5s show up in my router table with their original name (or some version of it). I give all my printers unique names (thanks Ultimaker) but this assigned name does not come up in my router table. Sounds petty I know, but picking the name out of the table is easier.