jones007

I'm using AA0.4 as well. Pretty much all my parts use 0.25mm for the build material, but it won't allow 0.25 for the breakaway. I'm building model aircraft parts that are extremely hollow, so 0.48mm walls and very low percentage fills. It's pretty amazing what you can get away with if you really push it. @Emerald: Thanks for the tip - the Minimum Support Area took care of that issue.

@Emerald: thanks for the tips. I'll try those. I haven't had too much trouble with the prime blob tagging along, but I've made sure to apply glue to the entire print bed, including where the prime blobs go. @Johnse: I try hard to avoid skinny support towers, as they always fail, but I have yet to get the support-removal option to work as intended in Cura. I guess I need to look for some YouTube video to demonstrate use, as intuition is failing me here. I have run into other support issues that are super annoying. I have been printing a lot of large shell structures, where I need support underneath to support the top part of the shell. Unfortunately, I have some small bolt holes adjacent to the hollow parts, and Cura seems to like to add support for some radius around where it is really needed - to include on the opposite side of a vertical wall. This includes stuffing microscopic, useless strands of support in vertically oriented bolt holes. I have not figured out a way to prevent this, and of course, they always break and end up as junk stuck in my part. For the most part I love the S5s. They print quite accurately, and pretty large parts. However, on both of them I have had to disable the filament detection. On the first S5 it worked for a month or so before the detector failed. On the second it never worked. In the end, it's very nearly a useless feature, for me anyway. The idea is that it would pause a part if you ran out of material and let you swap in a new spool. In principle this works, but if you let the part cool before swapping in the new spool, I've found the layer adhesion to be rather poor. Most of my jobs are multi-day, and if the spool goes out in the middle of the night, the part is really wrecked anyway, so no point in restarting. I should qualify this - this has been my experience for parts that are intended to be structurally functional. If you're printing something that just sits on a shelf, I think this would be a useful feature. The auto spool swapping from the new S5 Pro Bundle might resolve this, if they could get the filament detection system to be more reliable.

I have both a U3 and several S5s, and I can report pretty much the same experience. The U3 is actually easier to work around. It never heats nozzle 2 enough for the breakaway material to ooze during active leveling. I just need to remember to clean the tip well before leveling starts. On the S5, I have not found a fix other than babysitting the printer - to include 2 or 3 aborts and restarts for each job that includes breakaway material. I too work at a facility that does not allow me to dissolve PVA into water without treating the water as hazmat afterwords. I generally like the performance of the breakaway support material - with the exception of the startup procedure. It seems to stick a little bit too much to some materials (CPE, for example), but generally works well. Is it possible that perhaps retracting it a bit more at the end of a print, and feeding a bit more into a prime blob would help out here?

I'm not sure if this issue has been addressed before - if so, perhaps someone can point me toward the appropriate thread. I have an older u3 and a couple of S5s, and the S5s have been driving me crazy with auto-level failures due to ooze on breakaway support material. The U3 suffers from a similar problem, but it is easily remedied by carefully cleaning the tip with the breakaway material before active leveling begins. On the S5, no amount of cleaning fixes the problem. Here's what is happening: The printer is ready for a new print, either still warm from the previous print, or completely cooled after a rest period. I make sure both nozzles are clean. I start a job with a build material plus breakaway support. The S5 starts to heat the nozzles and build plate. As the nozzle with breakaway material heats, some material oozes from the nozzle. I clear it. It moves the head to the back right and appears to try to squish any material on both nozzles on the build plate. It then re zeros x,y and then goes through the leveling for nozzle 1. As it does this, breakaway material starts to ooze out of nozzle 2. It re zeros x,y then switches nozzle 2 to the down position. By now there is a glob of breakaway material that has oozed out of nozzle 2 and cooled. It hits the 3 level check points, but incorrectly measures the depth of nozzle 2 due to the cooled glob. It then starts the print, but the breakaway material is emitted too far from the build plate and does not stick. A short time later I check to see if the print is working and discover a huge rats nest of breakaway material floating around the build plate. I abort the print after screaming some profanity at the printer and repeat. After about 3 or 4 tries at this, apparently the nozzle has oozed enough and the print succeeds. This entire sequence requires about 30 to 45 minutes of babysitting the printer to make sure the jobs actually start correctly.

Hummm, so far I've only found a single prime-blob switch. Guess I better look again. I've had many failed prints when prime blob was not enabled for material 2 (breakaway support material). It likes to use a sparse structure on the 1st layer, and if it's not primed and the support area is smallish, there may not be any material at all on the 1st layer. However, if I enable a brim using material 2 then it will prime itself on the outer layer or two of the brim, and this works well - it just requires the use of a brim, which is a bit time consuming. Edit: OK, I see now that the enable prime blob check-box is per-material, even though it's in the adhesion section, with a selection for adhesion material right below it. Hopefully that helps when a brim is not used.

I just aborted a job on the S5, and during the abort process it retracted the material about 8 or 10 inches. I thought the machine had locked up during abort, as the print nozzle remained stationary on the build for a very long time. I had to look closely to see that it was retracting material for 20 or 30 seconds. Unsure if this is a Cura or printer issue, but I've never seen it do that before. I've also noticed that with "prime blob" enabled, it only creates a prime blob for material 1, never material 2. As stated above, if it doesn't create a prime ball, and if you are not using a brim made from material 2, the print will likely fail, as some or most of the first layer will be missing while the head gets primed.

I'm getting pretty good results now if I use a brim made of the breakaway material. It takes a few minutes longer than what was previously done in 4.1.0 for the UM3, but at least now it seems consistent across the UM3 and UMS5. For sure I would advise turning on prime-blob in the adhesion settings. If you're printing with a brim, then you'll probably be OK, but if not your support structure will likely fail.

I just loaded the official release of Cura 4.2.0, and it looks like the problems mentioned above still exist. In summary, here's the issues that seem problematic: 1). By default, prime blob under build plate adhesion is disabled, but my experience has been that this will wreck a build unless brim is turned on with the support material selected for the brim. Wi9thout this, the first layer of support will be broken up or missing, and if that happens, all subsequent layers of support will also fail. 2). Without skirt or brim enabled, the first layer of breakaway support is actually what is expected for layer 2 (compared to what 4.1.0 produced for the U3). The support structure on the build plate is sparse, and may fail, particularly if prime blob is disabled. the workaround is to enable brim with the support material. 3). In 4.2.0 Beta, I only experienced these issues on the S5, but now they seem to also exist on the U3. I suppose it's preferable to be consistent across different printers. Now that I've actually been able to get prints made on the S5 with breakaway support material working correctly, it does produce superior parts to the U3. The surface finish is notably better. Not sure if this is merely because the printer is new, and the U3 has been in use for a year or so. The part in question has very slightly off-axis faces, and on the U3 there are consistent ripples due to stepper-motor advance I guess. On the S5 prints, this sort of defect is undetectable.

Quick update - I was just playing around with options in Cura, and if I select "skirt" for Build Plate Adhesion, it adds the full floor on both support areas. A brim using the breakaway material looks even better. I'll try one of those tonight, but it's an 18 hour print, so I won't know for a while. Actually, I'll know early if it fails. Second update: it seems to be doing well now with a brim around the part with breakaway material, however, I just noticed that it wasn't producing a prime ball when starting a print. On the brim, the outer few layers are broken up or missing while it primed the nozzle. I just looked in Cura, and prime ball for the build plate adhesion was disabled (I didn't know that was even an option until now). Seems like default "on" would be a smarter option. Third update: Now I'm really confused. Now that I have enabled prime blob, I'm getting a floor on the support area that looks the same as on the U3 - and that's with the S5. Even stranger, if I now uncheck the prime blob box, it still creates a full floor, in fact, i cannot find a way to get Cura 4.1.0 to fail. If you look back at the beginning of the thread, at that time it skipped the first layer altogether. Now, reopening the test file I posted here a few days ago, 4.1.0 slices correctly, and I cannot figure out why, or rather, why was it slicing incorrectly before? 4th update: Even more peculiar - I accidentally had loaded the .3mf file generated by Cura 4.2.0 Beta into 4.1.0, and 4.1.0 now slices that file exactly right - if it is a .3mf file generated in 4.2.0 Beta. However, loading that .3mf file back into Cura 4.2.0 Beta, it still fails to generate the first layer of support correctly. It appears to build the first layer exactly the way the second layer should look. There is also now some issue, perhaps due to having both copies of Cura loaded on the same machine, that has partially wrecked 4.1.0. As mentioned, the .3mf file loads and slices fine, however, if i load the STL file from scratch, now slicing stalls out half way through, unless I turn brim on. Perhaps an incompatibility in a shared parameter file or something?

Very strange. Here's what I get - first on the UM3 with Cura 4.1.0, and second on the UMS5 with Cura 4.2.0 Beta. I included a snapshot of the Cura version info in case you are using a different version. I've tried playing with the stick-on adhesion sheets, but the material sticks to them so well that I can't get my parts off of them. I end up tearing up the adhesion sheet, and some of it remains on my part. Maybe if I used a raft under the part?

Unfortunately - no joy with 4.2 beta. It partially fixes the slice issue. There now is support material on the first layer, but in some areas it builds a complete floor, and in other places it tries to build a very sparse structure right on the build plate. The sparse structure won't stick, and the part fails. I'm not sure if this would be considered a Cura issue or a printer issue though. The same part sliced by Cura 4.1 for the U3 gets a full floor anywhere the support material touches the build plate. On 4.2 Beta, however, the support is the same as for the S5. I haven't yet tried a print on the U3 with the weaker support first layer. At this point, I'm seriously regretting the S5 purchase. The U3 has been bomb proof, but I have yet to get any decent prints on the S5. I seem to have trouble getting the breakaway material to feed properly most of the time. It comes out looking kind of burnt, and clumps up. It never sticks in the support tower. I've attached files for the u3 from Cura 4.1 and for the S5 from 4.2 Beta. Any suggestions on how to get the S5 functioning properly would be greatly appreciated. UM3_Test2.3mf UMS5_Test2.3mf

Awesome, thanks, I'll try the Beta.

Thanks for the feedback. Is there a known remedy, or is the S5 just not usable with breakaway support at the moment?

Here you go, the files for both printers. UM3_Test.3mf UMS5_Test.3mf

I've had a U3 for some time, and recently purchased an S5. I'm having a strange issue with Cura 4.1 where parts that print great on the U3 will not print on the S5, and it seems to be a Cura issue. I'm using a variety of materials for the parts (PLA, TPLA, CPE, ABS, PC, etc), but all use the breakaway support material. If I slice a part for the U3, the areas that have support material get a solid floor on the first layer before starting to build up the hollow support structure on the layers above. Slicing the same part for the S5, it always skips the support material on the first layer. On the second layer it starts adding in the hollow support structure, but there is nothing for it to stick to, so it fails miserably. Is this due to a parameter set wrong on my end?