Projects

I may just put a little high temp hot glue lol

Thanks!

On the smaller guide rod going front to back, the one where the black block holds the rod upside down....the rod is falling out/rocking back and forth. I guess I need a couple new black mounting blocks?

Thank you for the feedback guys! After removing the prints, there was enough z shift that I could just peal off the section with ease. easier than supports lol. with that said the more towards the front of the printer, the larger the z gap, which means that the bed was leaning forward a good bit. I also noted that it seemed to be an issue between bottom layers section and the rest of the body. the top layers were also not right, but it was not a z issue, just seems to be shifted in the X or Y (not sure which). I will upload proof of that where a hex was printed, the pics are adjacent sides of the hex with focus on top and bottom layers. It is meant to be a tapered hex btw, so if you noticed that, it's supposed to be. I have 2 U5 printers, so I will print the same thing on both printers to see if they both have the same result. I do oil and check tension on the motion regularly, they seem fine to me. The build chamber is normally between 100f and 120f depending on the material. Nylon is what this material is, and this printer normally is printing with ultimaker nylon. The other U5 (with no material station) normally prints carbon fiber pp or carbon fiber htpa.

Facts: I have not changed any speed/feed/material settings. Printer is now intermittently seeming to lose steps. A few days ago it printed and looks like in the front to back axis it lost a good number of steps and shifted the whole print forward between 1 and 2mm. yesterday it seems to have dropped the build plate too far by at least that amount. Oddly, the front of the print is significantly more gaped between layers (so the build plate is leaning forward? I have no idea how many print hours are on this machine, the printer does not store that kind of data. My guess is that the increased heat environment is causing issues with the components over time. I also assume the only solution is to slow down my speeds in all directions to reduce the chance of stalling steppers....and start looking for a water cooled printer :D Any other thoughts/experiences welcome!

Yeah, not super happy about the response from BASF...to put it lightly. fair to the advice. I would say the same. If I can find a = or better material out there for this use case, I would switch. Fingers crossed, because I do like keeping the printer on its native material thickness. I have not heard of the LUVOCOM stuff. Please let me know where you get it from and how it works! Impressive that they say it works for material station, I didn't think any chopped materials worked in the material station. I have another U5 with material station doing all our "regular work". Im honestly not super happy with the thing. It still seems like I have moisture issues, even in an enclosed room with a dehumidifier sub 10% humidity on the meter in the room...materials in the station still pop at times. It could be that I never actually dry any of my material because it always stays in that room after opened. looking at z measurements from design to final parts....I honestly don't have accurate enough measuring methods to do a good job at z. It seems like I am getting a little shrinking using just a digital caliper between two printed surfaces of the same part. (I am not sure if I could use bed to printed surface as a real proof, because that first layer I could see being slightly thinner than designed. measuring for me is most often fit related, and in that respect I feel like I have actually had less contraction than other exotic materials like CPE+ (that stuff is tough, but print quality is nasty). ANYWAY it seems like I could be getting anywhere between .2mm to .5mm z-direction shrinkage. but again, I really don't trust my measuring methods on this.

I am having similar issues. I changed to a 1.75mm material, changed machine settings to 1.7 (actual material size) and it seems to extrude same rate as 2.85mm without changing flow. I also tried changing material to 1.7mm, did not seem to change anything. prints were not printing hardly. Ended up boosting flow to 235% and that seems to have fixed it? but its a really dumb game to play. I wish I could just change the material size and it adjust everything needed to match. Seems like Ultimaker Cura is over-riding this setting? I have an S5

so, I actually contacted BASF about this issue. They said that they get complaints all the time about the 2.8xmm CF15....and what was shocking is that they had no solution, in fact they said to let them know if I found one? lol, whatever. not here for what I think about that 😄 I honestly think it has a lot more to do with the composition of how they are making the PAHT. Its highly modified Nylon, higher temp resistance and far less subject to moisture, but this makes it super stiff stuff. Like, right now we are getting crazy performance from it. we put it in a soap mixing/making application with up to 400in/lbs of force on less than 100sq/mm of surface (a shaft key). What is far more crazy is that it is in a steam saturated and near 200f environment + essential oils/vegi oils...all crap that can really wreck plastics. The chemicals we use literally melts PVC into mush in hours. AND that is the conditions for hours at a time multiple segments per day 5 days a week. All to say, this stuff may be the most tough plastic I have seen that can be printed on an ultimaker/like machine. What I ended up doing is converting one of the UM5 printers so it can do 1.75mm because the PAHT CF15 that is 1.75mm has absolutely no issues according to BASF, and that has proven true. Just know you have to change some CURA settings to get it to work. you also will need to make a few modifications to the feeder and tubes. For me, well worth. I wish really high end printers were out there (ultimaker quality + build volume at a reasonable price) that could do 1.75mm out of the box.

I doubt it will ever work with the material station. It is by BASF. The material is so stiff it already has lots of snapping issues in the feeder. The bowden tubes also can move a lot due to how stiff the material is. I would imagine this could greatly impact the material stations method of feeding. I could be wrong.

Any other thoughts? For now I am going to try and re spool the material into a much larger spool so that the radius is larger. this stuff is so so stiff and brittle. I tried heating it up to 200f and it was able to bend to about 5 degrees before snapping. Its almost like it needs an inline heater to bring it up to 250f before it goes into the feeders (both the feeder behind the machine on an S5, and the hot end.)

Truth. In regards to generic materials, I think Cura should have a check mark for switching materials on empty. Give the programmer the control. Another note in regards to material station, it only works with a small group of materials. It will not work on materials I use a lot of like PAHT CF15. If my machine could switch to another spool without the material station, I could run larger prints with such materials much easier.

The machine already knows when it runs out and what material is in the other extruder...the code already mostly exists (if not completely) from material station firmware...why not just have the machine auto switch on run out? why complicate with calculating spool run out or use a helper volume?

The material is new, the feeder is not too tight from what I can tell. It did fine for the first half of the roll, but it seems now that the material is snapping when the feeder forces it more strait because the material on the spool has a smaller radius as the spool gets lower and lower? I keep my spools in a sub 15% humidity room, but the room is also my print room and so it gets hot, between 95 and 100F normally. I dont generally have a spool for more than a month. The BASF PAHT CF15 that is giving me issues I have had for less than 2 weeks. again, it did about half the roll with no issues. I have tried to put the roll in my material dryer for 24hrs and no change I can notice, so I don't think it is moisture. I got a brand new roll in yesterday, just to be sure it responds the same...I expect it will do fine the first half then start breaking also? Any ideas?

Never mind

Anyone have thoughts or work arounds?

I am using CPE+ and PVA. Generally I have been printing my supports from CPE+ entirely, but in order to get better results on complex support surfaces, I am trying to use PVA as the interface layers. This is causing issues because it does not bridge well at all on top of the gaps of the support below where the interface starts. For this reason I was hoping I could print the first layer of the roof with CPE+ then the other support roof layers with the PVA. Thoughts? Thanks!

Maybe in cura there could be a "combine like materials" setting. This way, when the code is posted to the printer the firmware could interpret the material change. I am sure the material station works nearly exactly this way...its all the same computer/firmware, its just how it manages the materials locally to the printer. Much like pushing notifications to my phone when the filament runs out, this seems like an easy alteration to what already exists (push notifications to phone when job is done already exists). Material handling already exists on the firmware for the material station, effectively the printer without the material station has a material station of 2 materials...it is the same function. Shrug, you guys are busy working on things, you will eventually get it worked out. I know there is a potential that this functionality could reduce cash flow for you guys because the material station would lose sales if the printer could manage 2 materials without the station, but I hope that would not deter the option being added to the S5.

I guess I figured it would know it ran out and that the other material is the same and go ahead and heat up that hot end and use all the same parameters and continue on.

It seems like it should be an option on Cura 4.4 but I don't see it. If I load the same filament into both materials, it seems there should be a way for the UM5 to auto switch if/when filament runs out mid print. I would love to have this feature. we have ordered the material handling station but they have not actually released it yet...so I am stuck. We run 2x UM5s nearly 24/7. With the machines not pushing notifications to us that filament ran out, we have to keep a very close eye on things and I find myself with many almost out spools that I have to manage trying to find good times to use up. Thanks for any help on this...