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Geep

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Posts posted by Geep

  1. I've been having issues with my S5 for a while, and decided that perhaps the Bowden tubes were the problem.  Yesterday I received new ones, replaced them, cleaned both extruders, cleaned and lubricated the feeders and reset the tension.  Tried a test print on the job I was working on, and it failed.  I was using toughpla in extruder 1 and PVA in 2, with the correct extruders.  After the printer cooled down, I went to unload and store the PVA.  The process went as usual, except instead of waiting for the extruder to heat, the printer tried to remove the filament immediately, and failed.  There appeared to be no heat up time so the material would be free to move.  The extruder was cold and the material stuck.  I finally put it in the clean mode to heat the extruder and then went back to unload successfully.

     

    Anyone else seeing this issue?  Is this a bug or has something failed in my printer?

  2. After finishing a long print job and starting another, my S5 went somewhat wonky.  Prints were failing right and left.  I cleaned print cores, reset XY settings, and generally tore hair out until I figured out what had happened.  The number 1 extruder tension adjustment bolt had burst through the housing, removing most of the tension from the extruder.  The material was still feeding when loading and unloading, which added to diagnosing the problem.  Finally, when I got smart enough to realize that all the problems I was having were due to under-extrusion, I inspected both extruders.  Number 1 had a bolt head showing that hadn't been there before. Hmmmm.

     

    To make along story much shorter, it appears that the bolts holding the extruder together had somehow loosened, allowing the adjuster bolt to leave it's mounting, and release all the tension on the material.  There was just enough for it to move but not enough to extrude properly for a print, though it appeared to do so when loading.  I heard something make a loud noise when this happened, but it wasn't obvious what happened.

     

    The solution was to take apart the extruder and reset the bolt.  To do this you need a number 8 Torx driver and a small pair of needle nose pliers.  Unload the print core and remove the material.  Remove the Bowden tube from the extruder by pulling out the horsehoe clamp, pressing on the connector housing and pulling out the tube.  Take the two bolts that hold the assembly to the frame out and carefully remove the housing.  It has a short cable attached.  CAREFULLY pry out the 4 pin connector.  The assembly is now loose and can be pulled completely off.

     

    Take the assembly to your work surface and remove the four bolts holding the cover on.  It takes a little wiggling, but eventually you can take it off.  The Bowden tube connector and the metal ring at the bottom will immediately fall out, or at least mine did.  They're meant to do that, just remember where they go and put them back in the correct way.

     

    The adjuster bolt sits in a slot just inside the housing.  Inspect the slot on both sides of the enclosure to make sure that it has not broken.  If it has, you are now out $105 plus shipping for a new one.  Mine was OK. 

     

    Extend the adjuster to it's minimum setting.  You screw the bolt into the spring assembly to do that.  Turning it counter clockwise increases the tension.  It's easier to get it back in place with most of the tension off.  Make sure the arm is closed. 

     

    Make sure the Bowden tube holder and the metal ring are back in place with the assembly still lying on your work surface.  Have your bolts and Torx driver ready.  Place the top cover back on the bottom assembly but don't start bolting yet.  Use the Torx driver to compress the tensioner bolt so you can slip the head into the slot. It won't stay there, so you have to have the rest of the assembly ready to close up for it to stay in place.  It's a little tricky to do. Once you have it aligned and closed -- make sure the two parts that tend to fall out are in the right place, I had to take mine back apart because the bottom ring had shifted -- tighten the bolts and adjust the tension so the indicator is back to the center position, if that was where you had it.  I use Ultimaker materials, so center was right for them.

     

    Now you can go back to the machine and reinstall.  You should probably lubricate the gear that drives the extruder now, as shown in the manual.  Then, carefully grab the wiring and connector you took loose and guide the 4 pin connector back into it's socket.  The wires are short, I found the easiest way to do it was to use needle nose pliers to grab the wiring close to the plug, guide it into the jack and then use a small screwdriver to push it in.   Return the assembly to its mounting spot, and put the bottom bolt in first.  Easier to align the top one that way.

     

    Re-attached the Bowden tube and don't forget the horseshoe clamp.  Turn the machine back on, reload your material and you should be good to go.

     

    I thought I'd share my experience since I couldn't find any comments about this problem on the board.  Spencer with Ultimaker was very helpful and provided a link to maintenance for the UM3 extruders, which are similar but not exactly the same.  It's here:  https://ultimakernasupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004264626-Feeder-Reassembly-UM2-UM3- if needed.

     

    YMMV. 

     

    Geep

    Lynchburg  VA

     

    • Like 1
  3. And that is, in fact, the problem with all the print issues.  The other problem regarding the long waits and lack of guidance on why went mostly away with a reload of the firmware -- the SAME firmware -- and a factory reset.  The extruder has been cobbled together, using a nut I found in the junkbox that fit the bolt and a couple of washer to get the tension back to almost midway. It works, but not a permanent fix.  I have a query in to Ultimaker and Matterhackers about fixes and/or replacement extruders.  I'm a bit irritated as I've had this printer only since mid-September, something like this shouldn't be breaking as the machine has been lightly used, and not at all for the last two months.  Will be interested to hear what response I get from the seller and the manufacturer.

  4. I think I have found part or perhaps all of the problem.  I decided to check the tension on the feeder for the left side.  The tension indicator was all the way at the top, which I think is minimum.  I could not adjust it, so I removed it, following the instructions in the manual for gear lubrication.  Took it apart on my bench and found that the adjusting bolt did nothing,  It should, when tightened, force the spring tension higher, and all it does is screw down tightly to the plastic piece inside the spring.  Something is missing that would hold that bolt captive and force the spring closed.  I'm going to tech support at Matterhackers, where the printer came from, to see what can be done.  Looks to me as though the assembly will have to be replaced.  But without the proper tension, I can see why the extrusion was insufficient, and the tough PLA stopped extruding.

     

  5. Aborting the print because when I returned to find the problem way too much time had elapsed and when I tried to resume, the print was ruined.  Continued aborting while trying to figure out why, and things got worse and worse. 

     

    I don't disagree that cool down times are causing it to do this behavior, however, in the past there was an option to skip the cooldown, along with some other screen prompts indicating what it was doing. Those are gone.  The factory reset, I thought, would be an option, but it is grayed out.  It was NOT asking if the print was removed.

     

    I ended up re-loading the firmware, some of those messages re-appeared, but am still having issues.  Despite numerous cleanings of the print head and plastic flowing properly when loaded, extruder one continues to NOT extrude.

     

    I've decided that the print cores have somehow become damaged, and have order two new ones to see if that will fix the problems I am having.  Even when the extruder was putting out material, the print was stringy and appeared to be under extruded.

     

    This printer is less than a year old and has never had anything but tough PLA, PVA, ABS and nylon run through it.  This behavior has just begun, as of the date of this post, and I am to the point of putting in a service request with Ultimaker to try and figure out why the printer has gone nuts.

     

    Frustrated.  Especially when, on the same day that all this started, it did a perfect two color print of one of my designs that was a 16 hour print.  This mess started when I tried to print some keycaps to go along with that project.

     

    Before I give up and get on the phone, I am going to try one more model that has printed without errors in the past to make sure my currently failing model isn't the issue.

     

    Thanks for your comments.

  6. I've had to abort several prints today due to a supposed material runout -- not the case, but printer keeps stopping.  When I tell it to abort, it seems to work, but ends up in some sort of loop with an X on the screen.  After it sits for a while, or I turn off power and return it, it comes back with a print finished message and a yellow check mark.  And sits.  And sits.  And does nothing.  No functioning controls, no way to reset the printer.  I turn off power again and let it sit five minutes and it comes back and tries to re-print the aborted job without asking.  Cura 4.4, firmware 5.5.  Mac OS.  I tried the 4.5 Cura update and had issues so went back to 4.4. I reset Cura connection without any help.  Going to do a factory reset when it will come up again and see if that fixes it, but both reset commands are greyed out while in this condition.

     

    This has become REALLY irritating.  Anyone know why it's doing this?

    • Like 1
  7. I can't make this code work on an S5 with 4.3.0, no matter what the start GCODE says, apparently the firmware is inserting the bed and nozzle heating commands as well as the leveling command prior to the start up GCODE.  I want to use Geckotek EZstick hot as a printing surface however, am experiencing the same problems noted in other posts with the hot nozzles boring holes in the materials and the prints failing with nozzle probes.  Is there some way to start cold with an auto bed level and then heat the bed and nozzles?  I tried changing the z offset but the holes still get bored.  Thanks.

  8. I printed the model last night and despite the time differences between just the face place and the full model, it printed nicely.  Before printing, I zeroed the Z axis to make sure the model was sitting flat on the build plate.  So the portion that you mentioned that was below the plate should have been fixed.  I don't have that feature turned on, just make sure by observation before each print that the model is properly placed and not below the build plate surface.

     

    • the large bottom area is 2.25mm thick and is printed solid because top and bottom shell thickness are both set to 1.2mm
      • That was the area that I was referring to, and you have given me the answer.  The first time I tried this print, it was only .5 mm thick.  This time the thickness was correct.
    • the smaller rectangular area on top is 2.75mm thick - sums up to exactly 5.0mm
      • It should be 5.25 mm, 2.25 plate and 3 mm for the display plate.  Cura shows 5 mm.  Perhaps it truncates to the nearest whole number.
    • i don't know if it is intended, but one of the four counter-bores in the corners is deeper than the others, on another corner the hole is not round
      • Doing things like counterbores in Tinkercad is not easy.  You guess a lot at measurements, at least I do.  Not intentional, but given the thickness of the plate, it is close enough.
    • the model in the first file (without text) has an serious amount of mesh errors (non-connected faces), it seems like Cura can use it anyway, but that's perhaps another reason for abnormal print times
      • That could certainly be.  I imported the plate to MeshMixer and it reported no errors.  I ran the automatic fix anyway, and exported it.  What are you using to observe the issues?  I'd like to let the Tinkercad people know, since the entire model was done there, and, IMHO, shouldn't have these issues.  Once again, I am a complete novice at CAD design, and if I could figure out how to do things in TurboCad or Vectorworks, I probably wouldn't have these problems.

    Your layer height comments noted.  I need another one of these plates for a second project and will try it with a larger layer height.

     

    Once again, thank you very much for the comments and help.  I am learning.  Slowly.

  9. I mis-stated the thickness of the plate, it should be 2 mm. I thought that dimension was correct in the file I attached, but apparently I was wrong.

     

    Loaded in another model with that dimension and sliced it, still had no infill in the base plate.  Increased the base plate thickness by .25 to 2.25 mm, which still allows the plate to fit flush to the face of the box it goes in, sliced it, and I still see no infill.  Cura does see the total height of the plate, which is now 5.25 mm -- shows it as 5 mm, however.  The base plate is 2.25 mm and the display portion extends 3.mm above the surface.  It is actually 5 mm, but is placed 2 mm below the surface of the faceplate to make sure it anchored in place and the mounting holes go all the way through.

     

    I returned to Tinkercad and re-positioned all of the components, re-exported everything.  I am attaching a new faceplate file, which Cura says will take 24 hours and 6 minutes to print using ABS an a .06 layer resolution.  I chose the extra fine print as I wanted the best finish I could get.  Also attaching the merged print with labels.  Cura says that one will take only 21 hours 47 minutes to print.  I still do not see any infill on the 2.25 mm layer in the preview view, either just the face plate or the combined project.  I don't understand how it could possibly take 4 hours less time to print the combined file.

     

    Your comments are most welcome and helpful, thank you again.

    UMS5_LightHack 2 Face Plate Merged REV 4 .3mf UMS5_LightHack 2 Faceplate REV 4 .3mf

  10. If you go into preview and look for the infill, it isn't there.  I did include a second file, putting it up again, of the project as it is supposed to look when all the parts are merged.  The merge adds text in two places and arrows in four.  If you slice that one, you'll note that the print time gets halved or more.  Perhaps I don't know what I am looking at in the plate file, but it did not appear that the infill is not present in the 3 mm thick plate, only on the display rectangle.  Thank you very much for looking and commenting, any help greatly appreciated. This file title says Rev2 but I think I mislabeled it when saving.  It should be OK

    UMS5_Lighthack 2 plate merged.3mf

  11. Since I am the only one replying to this thread, let me try once more.  After spending an inordinate amount of time looking for topics that resemble mine, and failing, I finally went back into Cura and started looking at the sliced model.  I found that Cura is not placing any infill in the first 3 mm plate of the print.  It does fill the 5 mm high rectangle that is attached to the 3 mm plate.  That would be the reason, I would guess, for the slicing errors.  Infill is turned on at 20 percent.  Increasing it to 50 or 100 percent does nothing. I mocked up another STI file to see how that would be sliced, and the infill is present, along with the long print times I would expect.  But my original model will not slice properly.  Does ANYONE have an answer for why this is happening?  I am sorta disheartened that no one, not even the admins, have offered any support.

  12. I thought I had perhaps found the problem.  I tried using an older version of the face plate, thinking that I had done something while modifying it.  No dice.  The plate alone slices as it should, and adding the 2nd extruder text pieces to the design and merging them into the design results in the same problem.  I also tried 4.0 and 4.2, as I had printed this design successfully with the lettering in an older version.  Still no dice.

     

    Hasn't ANYONE got a suggestion other than to start over and recreate the whole thing???  This is so frustrating.

  13. I removed the finished plate this morning, and the reason the time was cut back was that the slicer only used perhaps 10 layers for the main plate.  It is very thin at .5 MM instead of the 2 MM it should be.  Something very strange happening as slicing only the main plate results in what looks like the right amount of time as well as the right thickness.

  14. A follow up.  I returned my S5  to version 5.2.xxx firmware, and decided to try the slicing of my face plate again. Didn't really think the firmware version on the printer would affect Cura, but...I sliced just the plate, and it gave me a 22 hour print, about what I expected.  It's fairly large.  I added the text pieces, merged the files and sliced it again.  The time went down by about an hour.  ????  Finally, I unmerged the print, changed the text parts to print on the second extruder, so I could have the color contrast.  Sliced again and the time was cut in half.  I am going to start the print and see what it does.  Makes little sense to this novice that the time should change so drastically and in the wrong direction.  Using Ultimaker ABS for the print.

  15. I am building a face plate for a project.  When I try slicing just the plate, it is sliced as I expect.  When I go into dual extruder mode to slice certain parts of the plate in a different color, Cura slices only a portion of the face plate.  The majority of it shows in preview but is greyed out, and when running an animation, it is not included.  I've tried repairing the face plate and all the add on pieces in another program, but to no avail.  I created the plate and all the parts in Tinkercad.  I have successfully sliced and printed this plate with the embedded label parts earlier, using the beta of 4.3.0 but that isn't working now.  Any ideas appreciated.

  16. Slow learner.  You hit it.  I redid the model, placed the arrow in the correct spot on the keycap model, exported the arrow only, then selected and exported the keycap.  It sliced correctly, printing now to see if it works on the printer.

     

    Thank you!  It wasn't obvious from the models I looked at how they were done, but your origin explanation triggered my brain.

  17. I understand, after playing with the merge function for a while, the concept of two duplicate models with one fitting into the other.  I looked at Cura's example, and sorta see how they do it.  Not having a great deal of luck duplicating the process, however.  I have created two of the key caps I want to print in Tinkercad, one with an arrow shaped hole and the other with the solid arrow I want to have appear on top and embedded in the cap.  When the models are merged, rather than my arrow being black (2nd extruder) and the rest white, it comes out half black and half white, with the top completely black.  I did mean "merge
    rather than group.  Regardless, the moving of the two models is still an issue.  Sometimes I can click on one or the other and be able to grab one of the handles, other times they won't select at all unless I click on the legend on the bottom left, and when one of the handles is touched, the selection goes away.  THAT is frustrating and hard to use.  I think the problem occurs only when more than one model is on the surface, or so it seems.  Thanks for your comment.  Back to the drawing board.

  18. I am having this problem as well  When do the developers plan to fix it?  This really sucks.  As a new Cura user, I am most disappointed at several things that appear to be flaws, for instance, when trying to group two models, I can't drop the second model on the surface of the first.  I tried turning off the drop to bed plate function, which did allow me to raise my second model far enough above the first to place it, but when grouped, they separated rather than combined.  Trying to create an imbeded arrow in a keycap.  So far it has been impossible.  I managed to create an imbeded label for a project but was able to make the hole in the first model all the way through so I could place the second one.  I can't do that with a keycap, the stem will disappear.  Somebody needs to fix this problem.  I like Cura so far, but I find it far more difficult to use than my former slicer, Simplify3D, which is not recommended for the Ultimaker S5.

     

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