robobartz

Our engineering department is disappointed with the quality of the original Ultimaker slides. The rod literally fell out of the rear bracket which possibly have caused other damage. These printers are $5000-$6000 and they should be made with better parts. Its sad when when my budget home printer @ 1/10 cost of the 5S has more robust parts. When locating a rod good mechanical design practice to using a complete hole instead of a horseshoe type receptacle where the rod can wear its way out of the open end. Ultimaker should redesign this and offer replacement parts (even if we have to buy it). Someone has already done the redesign work they would just have to reverse engineer it. There is a printable part that works for awhile but wears out too. (our machine ship is going to make one out of aluminum) 3D Printable Ultimaker S5 Slider Block Retainer by Kevin Oehler (myminifactory.com)

As a design improvement I think the flow sensors should have 2 modes- or warnings vs. errors. The "warnings" would display a message but continue the print. The "error" would stop the machine. The "error" mode detects weather there is filament/no filament, the "warning" mode monitors the "flow" of the filament. The user could select weather they want the warnings to stop the machine-definitely want the machine stopped when filament runs out. The Creality CR10 V2 has a filament "presense" sensor it only tells you if the filament is present or run out.(at least thats how mine works) This works really well (KISS principle). I think in a lot of cases all people want to know is if the filament is out and thats the only reason to stop the machine. A lot of our issues, and the issues I've read above are caused by the sensor reporting a false condition that really doesn't exist. For example, in our case when we get this message we just acknoweledge it and the print continues fine. If it were a real problem the print would be bad, and its not. So therefore the message is stalling the machine for what would be an acceptable print. Regarding the spools. i think haveing the spool in the back of the printer is not the best idea (especially double wide) Reason is because you have these on a stanard 24" or 32" table/counter/desk sometimes wall behind it and you have to pull out the machine to get at the spools. If the machine is already close to the edge the person has to hold on to it so it doesnt topple onto the floor. Ultimaker might consider an optional side mount, 1 material on each side. Or you could put slots in the side for that, and sell it as an accessory. (both could have a material sensor it just Y's to a single connector like you have)

I've used the support blocker but beware sometimes it doesn't always work as expected. Recommend doing a preview or else you could waste a lot of high priced PVA. For example, I cubed around two tiny holes running horizontal through the top of the part and it turned the ENTIRE PART into ALL PVA support material even below and outside the support blocker cubes. My other gripe is the getting the initial support cube to appear on the screen. Once its there, your "over the hump" & it behaves the same as the scale and move. Clicking enough combinations of the icon, part, or build area and you'll figure it out. Addressing the other comments on being non-intuitive it would be handy to RC an icon and select help to either take you to a video hyperlink, tooltip, or step by step instructions. The software is free so I'm thankful for that and can't complain too much(our company does own a 5S though).

Thanks Enigma, we did not know that!

We had an incident not long after we bought our 5S that the print head crashed and pushed the glass free of the clamps and scratched the aluminum platter below. It happened on the weekend during a long print. When we left the factory on Friday, it was operating completely normal. We think it was due to a power spike/fluctation surge as our facility is in a rural area. The hot end actually came in contact with the aluminum under the glass and put a scratch into it. In order to do this it pushed the 3D print to the side and overcame the resistance of the bed clamps. On Monday we found the glass pushed to the side. Call it impossible, but it happened. Since that time our right/left belt is loose. It must have tried to self-correctedsomehow because it proceeded to print the rest of the 3D print as a birds nest of material. A major design flaw of the 5S is the inabiltiy to adjust belt tension on the main belts (you can adjust belt tension from the drive motor to axis, but that is only 1/2 the tension required. Ultimaker should take note of the cheap consumer printers like Creality where you can adjust belt tension easily. We like the Ultimaker overall but just pointing out something to improve in the future.

To answer the question about the sensor. Yes, the ultimaker brand materials have a rf chip in the paper of the spool and the sensor to read it is in the spool and there is a plug that connects it to the mothership. Regarding the crumbs in the tube from PKlemm. Agree- first thing we try after the message. we've had that issue and it works to blean out the bowden tube. The issue we were originally having is we bought a 5kg spool of PLA and the traction motor is not rated to turn a spool of that mass. We verified that with Ultimaker technical support. It might work for you, but touch and go. Also we had some poorly wound spools where the material was binding and it couldn't pull out the snag. REQUEST TO ULTIMAKER: Please, if you can, include the specific spool# of this error in your error message in your next firmware update(if it can interface w/hardware that way).

I struggled with this for hours today and discovered i had the skirt turned on which was overlapping in the "preview" but didn't show up in the "prepare". Once i turned the skirt off (I would think same thing would happen with brim) I placed the parts within a millimeter of one another and the edge. Another thing you can try is lock model under the move commmand. You cant drag it with the arrows, but you can type new values to force it wherever you want. It still allows you to rotate the part also dynamically with the wheels. Another thing i found is if the file is saved exactly like it is in the picture, and reopened all the models "explode" and are pushed apart. This maybe due to the fact that under Preferences-->Configure Cura(Ensure Models Are Kept Apart) was checked on. Am scared to try it because i have to print many sets of these and don't want to redo the placement.

In regards to CarloK post: In regards to CarloK's post: I found this post very helpful. In looking at the pressure settings, i found that one indicator was all the way up. Reason: the head of adjusting screw was on top of the feeder instead of inside. In other words, if you can see the head of the tension adjusting screw on top of the material feeder, then it needs to be pushed back inside body of the feeder. To do so turn the screw into the thread all the way so your not fighting the spring. Then put the cover on and back it out to the setting CarloK recommended in middle. The only thing you should see from the top of the material feeder is a 2-3MM hole through the white plastic. Then you insert the Ultimaker supplied tool into it fits into the screw. The head of the screw is internal pushes up against the inside of the body. While removing the cover from the material feeder, the screw must have popped out through the hole, therefore, it was not supplying any tension to the spring. So if you take the cover off the back of the material holder (with the 4 screws) be careful the screw does not "pop out" of the body and to thru the hole. I couldn't agree more... don't use 5Kg spools. If you do, make sure it spins very freely on your holder. To add to it the Makeshaper roll someone bought was wound horribly. The only reason we are using one is because its left over from the previous employees. The spool will sit a long time in the atmosphere before you can use it and risk absorbing moisture. Even printing things 100% every day it takes a long time to use it up. With Ultimakers nice material sensors we have changed 1k spools many times without affecting the print when they run out.

I wouldn't call what we(robobartz) posted the ultimate solution- its just what worked for us.

Ok we have solved this issue for our company and are 95% sure of what the two causes were: It may or may not apply to your situation. We were getting the error every 1/2 hour to 3 hours. Since we did this we have not seen the error in 2 days of printing. CAUSE 1 (80%) Our Ultimaker 5S is on a counter that is too narrow to allow the dual spool spindle in the back to be used. Therefore, we have separate spools on each side. At first we positioned, each spool on the side of the bowden tube that it used. In other words, if the PLA material is on the right, we put the PLA spool on the right. The PVA material was on the left, so we put the PVA spool on the left. The dual factory spindle(which we were not using) is in the center of back. Our side spools both feed from the outside in. This changed the angle/curve at which the material enters the material feed motors and possibly skewed the material away from the sensors. Therefore, if you have external spools, put them on the opposite side of the Bowden tube which the feed into, so the 2 filaments criss-cross in back of the printer. This will mimic the intended setup. CAUSE 2 (20%) We have a 5 Killogram spool left over from the previous employees. Our toolmaker made a nice plastic holder for it, however the axles he made turned too hard. So the feed motor (designed for a 1k spool) was unwinding a 5k spool with more resistance. We remade the axle to use a slippery undersized UHMW material and it spins freely enough to overcome the weight of the spool. Also the spool from a 3rd party was wound very poorly with criss-crossing strands and binding at the sides of the spool.

We have the same error. I agree it should display which extruder it thinks is out of material. (even though neither of them are) We are getting frequent error: “One material appears to be empty”. The error is always wrong because there is plenty of material. This is extremely frustrating and making 3d prints take 5X longer because the error happens after we go home and the unit sits all night idle losing 10-12 hours of print time. Is this as simple as just swapping out the flow sensor? Looks like 1 screw & 1 plug. Here is what we have tried/observed: 1. https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/52577-flow-sensor-error 2. Upgrading firmware 3. Took apart and cleaned out the material feeder blew with light air (breath) 4. Blew out the Bowden tube to remove any residual dust. 5. Ensured the material is not binding 6. Measured the material: It is perfectly in spec at 2.85MM 7. Happens on multiple jobs 8. Message occurs at random time intervals ½ hour to many hours. 9. When the error happens it is using black PLA on extruder 1. Ultimaker brand PVA is in the other. 10. We are printing over the network. I wonder if printing using USB make a difference?

I can print a part from Cura just fine on the USB. The printer is set up correctly with Ultimaker PVA (natural color) in the 2nd extruder. However when I try to print over network, an error message appears on the printer saying "Change material from PVA to "Natural PVA". First, you we can only purchase PVA from ultimaker. I'm assuming "natural" is the color, since its a throw away product it could be purple for all i care. Second, if "natural" refers to color, why does the network printing care what color PVA i have. I cannot find anywhere in cura settings where i specify the material. Please help.