jsw

My guess is that you have some parameter set which precludes the use of the entire build plate. 'Travel avoid distance' is one likely suspect. Be sure that you have brim/skirt turned off and that you avoid all auto-generated supports when you need to do prints that use the entire build plate.

This is an otherwise well-behaved S5, using the default of 60 on the build plate. This particular print (10mm spacers) is the only one so far that I consider troublesome.

I've never had any significant issue with elephant's foot, until today when I printed a few small spacers. The pop-up says to use negative numbers to compensate for elephant foot, and I've tried -.05mm, -1mm, -1.5mm with little if any effect. All of those still give about a .1-.2mm ridge on the bottom, which I have to remove with the Dremel in order to get them to fit. I'm curious as to what numbers others are using. Thanks.

I'm not an Ender guru by any means, but some of the things I've found out WRT doing max print sizes in general using Cura on the Prusa and the Ultimaker are things such as turn off skirt/brim, set avoid travel distance to zero, avoid auto-generated supports. Now the Latest And Greatest (tm) Cura (5.00) does seem to have a fractional millimeter issue at max X build size.

Thanks for the warning. The main PC in our home office is still Win 7 due to a couple of applications. I'm glad I tried 5.00 (and backed out) on the Linux machine in the bedroom. (And, if you have a good restore point, you should be able to back down to the state the machine was in before the abortive 5.00 install.)

If you will post the .stl file, I would be willing to slice it and see what I get. My experience is that .stl files downloaded from the usual suspect sites vary from very good to terribly corrupt.

I have the MK3S as well as the Ultimaker S5 and I mostly use PrusaSlicer for the Prusa, but occasionally Cura. I have no clue where the so-called default Prusa MK3S profile came from (my original Cura came from our local makerspace some years ago) but it was UGLY! I assume that yours may be the same or similar. The big issue was the printing speed, particularly on the first layers, which is supposed to be slower. It was MUCH too fast. I set the initial layer print speed from 30 to 20, the initial layer travel speed from 60 to 30, and the skirt/brim speed from 30 to 20 (for the typical PLA filaments). Cura usually has nozzle temps a bit lower than PrusaSlicer, but they seem to work acceptably well for me. With the speed changes, there's very little visual difference between the 20mm test cubes done with PS and with Cura. Both PS and Cura have their strong and weak points. Cura, in particular, seems to deal with supports, in general, better than PS. The 'fuzzy skin' (first in Cura) is better, but the 'ironing' (again, first in Cura) is best described, at least the last time I tried it on the MK3S, as butt-ugly, with the same function in PS being far more visually appealing.

I have Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS, and I downloaded the 5.00 appimage to try, as it supposedly has quicker print times than 4.x. I just downloaded it, did a chmod to make it executable, and it ran fine and appeared to pick up the parameters that I use for 4.12. The 'usual suspect' test prints (cube, etc.) sliced fine, but I had issues (another thread) using it to slice a large model with a width of EXACTLY 330mm. If I scaled it down a fraction of a percent to 329.4mm it would slice. It's a 2+ day print, so I hoped to save some time with 5.00, but with that issue I figured that I should do it using a known version, so I sliced it with 4.12 and it is now printing (and will be for some time). (And as an aside, I might presume from your user name that you use 3d printing for model railroading. That's the main reason I took up 3d printing a few years back.)

I know this will only affect 0.001% of the users out there, but I sanity checked and the issue does not exist in 4.12.1, which I have been using. I have a model which is EXACTLY 330mm wide. (I will post the .stl if necessary) When I first did test prints I set things up according to a previous post detailing what needs to be done to get full build volume, things like no auto-generated supports, zero travel-avoid distance, no skirt/brim and I always got successful slicing for a full-width print on 4.12. Now I'm ready to do the 'production' print. I was intrigued by the promise of a faster build time (this is a 2+ day print) so I said 'what the {heck}' and downloaded 5.0.0 and gave it a try. (Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS on a fairly beefy desktop) When I loaded and centered the model, it remained grayed-out (zebra-striped) and I could not find any obvious setting that was interfering with it. I played around a bit with scaling of the model, and I found out that 329.4mm is the magic number at which it would slice. Am I missing something here? Is there some other setting that needs to be tweaked? Is this a bona fide bug or issue with 5.0? I went back over to the 4.12 version and it sliced just fine, and I figured I would use that for the actual print, which is running now, rather than give up a fractional percentage point of the width. Speaking of settings, I quickly noticed that the supports on build plate only or everywhere option is missing (by default). I assume that this is buried in the preferences menu, but this is a very important option, particularly when you are using externally-loaded support shapes. IMAO, it should always appear by default. Thanks.

I just looked at the mailing bag and I can't make out the actual vendor, but I got it through Amazon just by searching. I know that Dynamism sells them individually. I got a whole bag full for less than what they would charge for one plus shipping.

My first question would be along the line of how close to the Z build limit is your model? I've had to futz around with various settings when my models were close or at the X and/or Y limits, but never the Z.

I've had great luck with the Ultimaker PVA, and I'll probably keep using it despite it being significantly higher in price than other brands because, well, it works well, and in the Ain't Broke Don't Fix It category. Any soluble support material of any brand will absorb H2O from the room air. On a couple of occasions, like when I have not used it for a few weeks, I'll pop it in the air fryer, set it on dehydrate at 105F, and let it run six hours.

For the 2, that should work, but not for the S series. However, it looks like a good place to start, as the wheel has been invented.

Another way a bearing setup might be handy is for some of the spools that fit very loosely on the Ultimaker spool holder. I've had a few brands (RepRapper is one) where during the print the spool will kind of tilt and suddenly re-orient itself with a very audible 'bang' which is annoying and disconcerting. I did print an insert to reduce one brand of spool's hole down to something more sane, and it does help a bit.

I see they now have an 'experimental' version of this for Linux. Previously it was for Mac and Win machines only. I'm downloading it now, and I'll give it a try. It could come in very handy.

This happened to me some time ago, and I don't remember if I got the solution from here or from 'another network', but the issue was that the fitting that holds the tube into the feeder was defective, as in had a weak grip. I ordered a supply of replacements (third party) and popped one in and it has not happened since.

This is not a design, but a comment. I've had this issue, particularly when using the 3mm filament, when the spool is mostly empty and the spool is old and has been exposed to room air for a long time and has absorbed H2O and has become brittle. I've found that drying the filament (~6 hours in the air fryer on dehydrate at 120F) cures the issue.

Thanks Smithy. Please let us know when you receive it.

Thanks. I have the S5 and I'm looking for something larger. I can't seem to find anything on line WRT sizes available for Prima Creator. I have found some larger plates, but those would require some shear work to get them to fit on top of a standard S5 glass plate. Still looking, I guess ...

Gauthier, do you have the exact model of that plate, or at least the dimensions?

Thanks, please let us know. I've seen some advertised as allegedly for the S5, but when looking at the dimensions, they would require some cutting-down to properly fit.

I am looking for one as well.

That's really not a simple solution, sorry. Other manufacturers have an easy method to simply extrude material. How much effort would that be to include that in the Ultimaker? Who should I go to, officially, to request such a function?

I'm sure it would remove most of the contaminating filament, but what I'm looking for is something simple, as in no futzing around disconnecting tubing and such, preferably one (or minimal) keypresses, just something to effectively purge the darker filament from the extruder, which the procedure for loading filament fails to do completely. Something simpler than starting a sacrificial print and aborting it when the color is adequately purged.

Thanks. I looked through the printer front panel menu and I did not see anything that allowed just a manual extruder flow. On my 'other' printer (Prusa I3) when you change filaments it purges for a while and asks 'Is this the correct color?' and if you answer NO it will repeat as many times as needed. It also has a manual Extrude Filament option as well. On the S5, it purges for a while after a filament change and runs for quite a while, asking for you to confirm, but it eventually stops and in my case, before all of the black had been purged out. I have to do another black PETg print today, and when I change filament after that, if it's a light color, I have a calibration cube on a memory stick and I'll probably just start that printing and abort after the new filament looks OK. I'm wondering if maybe there's a quickie gcode to do such a purge?