jsw

I have both Prusa and Ultimaker printers and use both PrusaSlicer and Cura. Have you asked about the relevant PS issues over at the Prusa forum?

Is there an easy way to simply extrude more filament when the purge when loading did not clear all of the color from the old filament out? This morning I finished a print with jet black PETg, unloaded the filament, then loaded in a light colored transparent PLA and let the purge while holding for 'consistent extrusion' to run as long as it could. It still did not clear all of the black out of the system, and the bottom of the new print was 'stained' with the residual black for a few layers. I had to abort and restart the print. Is there a simple way to continue or restart the purge, or any other easy work-around for this? Thanks.

It just finished and a test print (a 20mm calibration cube) is now printing. It took less clock time than I expected. The only thing I noticed is that it appeared to wait at the '2 minutes to finish' point slightly longer than two minutes.

Thanks. I just downloaded both the Latest and Stable and I'll probably try it with the Stable release, at least at first. Since the upgrade from 5.8.x to 6.5.x appears to be a true 'trap door' situation, I want to be 100% sure of it before I try it. I feel more comfortable doing it locally from a memory stick than to risk a network disruption during the process.

One other thing I noticed is that the new Cura appears to use less support material. I noticed this when it was printing, and also when the time to dissolve the supports was far less than on the previous print.

Is it my imagination or does the new Cura produce slicings that print quicker? I just reprinted an item that I swear took about six hours originally, and it printed in just over four hours with the new Cura. I know I used very similar, if not identical settings.

Is the upgrade process to 7.0 on the S5 running 5.8.2 reliable and robust? I've had the machine almost a year and I've held off on the firmware upgrades due to reports here and elsewhere of users 'bricking' machines when attempting such an upgrade. When I upgraded to the latest Cura, it generates a front panel version warning when I submit print jobs and one of the team replied in another thread that I need to upgrade the firmware to resolve that. I just want to be sure I'm not going down a black hole that will take a service call to recover from. Thanks.

Here's another thing with the new Cura (4.12.1). This print ended up with quite a few artifacts in the form of little 1/8 inch or so 'streamers' growing out of some pieces of the model, most centered around one particular diagonal piece. It's nothing that can't be diked off and sanded, but it's definitely something unexpected. This is with the new Cura with default settings for generic PLA. Rather than futz around trying things, does anyone have any specific reasons why this occurred? Is this maybe the way the new Cura handles things like retraction and/or combing? Maybe something related to the way it's supposed to produce better surfaces? Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Is that safe to do now? I recall a previous thread where at least one user 'bricked' the machine attempting to do this.

I just installed 4.12 and one issue I have is when I send a print to the printer, it displays a warning that for 'best results use Cura 4.4 or greater and I have to manually clear the warning before it will start preparing to print.

This morning I dropped in on Make Omaha, a local Maker Faire (for lack of a better term), which was cancelled last year for Covid. One of my former employers (UNMC) had an exhibit of various 3d printed body parts, including a hand with working joints and tendons. (I introduced myself as one of their former Clinical Engineers and we chatted a bit.) I asked one of the presenters what type of printer they were using for the items on display and he responded that it was the S5 (with the media station). He said they use that one so that clinicians and students can concentrate on designing and making models, and not getting all wound up with the day-to-day issues with most 3d printers, and stated that the S5 is about as close to 'you push the button, it does the rest' as you can get. Of course I then told him that's what I have at home, without the media station, of course.

I seem to recall that there is some kind of metal piece (nut or insert) in there, but I could not swear by it. (I'm not going to tear it apart just to check.) 😉

The indicator should move up/down with the turning of the screw. The screw head needs to be inside the case of the feeder for this to work. It's somewhat counterintuitive, as turning the screw clockwise drives the piece/indicator up and loosens it and turning it counter (anti) clockwise drives it down and tightens it. It's easy to get it wrong at disassembly time and to have the spring go sailing across the room.

For ABS prints on both the S5 and my 'other' printer (Prusa I3) I always use a release agent. Layerneer Bed Weld is what I usually use.

Have you tried the hot/cold pull cleaning procedure? Your issue sounds like it may be a nozzle/extruder that's clogged to at least some extent. This will cause low flow out of the nozzle and a lower rate of, or no apparent feed of the filament. It's very easy and takes only a few minutes.

Thank you! I did not think of it, but I had 'brim' selected for a previous much smaller print and did not think to change it. Changing to 'skirt' removed the grey-out. I guess this can be closed as resolved. 😉

All of the specifications that I can find on the S5 give the x-y dimensions for the build as 330x240mm. I've also verified that the machine settings on Cura are indeed 330x240mm. However, when I try to load a .stl object with x-y dimensions of 310x220mm (20mm less in both dimensions) the object is 'grayed out' with gray and yellow bars and Cura refuses to slice it. What am I missing here? Thanks in advance.

Same here. I'm in the habit of leaving it on unless I know that I will not be using it for several days. I haven't had it forget what filament is loaded (yet), either the Ultimaker brand with the chip in the spool, or third party with the type manually entered.

Mini-Mac and Micro-Mac Techie toys and conversation pieces. Yes, they both really work. Those are actual screen images of the original (M 68k) Mac Os running on them.

I'm putting this in the Cura section for lack of a better section, and due to the fact that the travel path for the support material was indeed plotted using Cura. Here's something I've never seen before. Has anyone seen anything like it? Nothing appears to be wrong, just interesting. This print is the bottom part of a case which has four round 'feet' a few millimeters high on the bottom surface. As expected, only the bottoms of the feet are actually touching the build plate and the rest of the bottom surface of the print is supported by a 'raft' (for the lack of a better term) of support material. As expected, the bottom several layers of support material were laid down very sparse, in a crosshatch pattern, and the feet were laid down with the solid bottom layers and expected gyroid fill pattern. I expected that as the first fully-solid layer was approached, the support material lay-down would transition to a more dense pattern to better support the bottom of the case, but I was surprised to see a 'leaf' pattern as shown in the attached image. This layer took a long time to lay down, and I watched and in many places the extruder did indeed 'trace' the outlines of the leaves. On inspection, the 'leaves' all point to discontinuities in the first solid layer, both the feet and four bolt holes, two of which are placed very near the front two feet and thus do not generate their own 'leaves' in the pattern. I'm curious as to if anyone else has seen this.

I've used dd for decades. However, I have not played around with the S5 enough to even know how to drop to a command prompt and beat on it at a shell level. I figure since it's working fine, it's best not to go {f-bomb}-ing with it, as in ain't broke, don't fix it. 😉 You know what would be a Real Nice Thing (tm) for Ultimaker to do in the name of Good Customer Relations (tm) would be to publish some instructions on how to do just that. I for one would feel far more warm and fuzzy and more willing to upgrade if I knew that there was a safety net to let me put things back the way they were should anything unfortunate or unexpected happen.

Is there any method to do a complete image capture of the drive prior to an upgrade attempt? Kind of like a 'ghost' image used for quick OS replication and restoral? This would allow a worst-case roll-back to a known state.

Yes, gr5 pegged it! One of the people on 'another network' suggested I put a model DeLorean on a street to the left of the building, but I'm not that much of a BTTF geek. 😉 I do have another BTTF reference on the theater in a row of facades on the table edge.

Thanks. 😉 It's my own draft from scratch, but loosely based on any of several generic buildings of this type. Now, does anyone care to guess which specific building this one pictured below was based on? 😉 (Hint: Look at the time.) 😉

Small two-story office building for model railroad. Pieces were built with both the S5 and the Prusa I3.