couple of print issues

[Danieljenzen 0]

Hello!

I'm Daniel and i've had ultimaker2 for about 2 weeks.

Before i go to topic, i really need to say that im happy i bought a 3d printer, i absolutely love the machinery, and recieving it was the day my life got "extended", i felt like.

But now.. im kinda in doubt and misery. I'm having a deal of problems and been reading forums and other websites for help. I love it when i get prints 100% good and working, but this rarely happens at this rate.

First of all, the filament is slipping in the feeder behind, it does this all the time, even when loading a new filament, it starts making this slipping sound, and when this happens mid print, it ends up grinding the filament so much down, it cant provide plastic for the nozzle, ending up with the printer just flying in the air with nothing coming out. Ive read about increasing temperature to get the flow easier for feeder, but even then, the whole vase was full of strings inside, and not waterproof in bottom. Fan was at 100% and trevelspeed about 100 or 150.

I tried a ton of things, decrease flow rate, speed and some other things, but i just cant seeme to figure it out.

I then tried the "spiralize" mode to prevent traveling over the vase, wich made it quite perfect inside and out, but the bottom was still not waterproof. now im printing it with 2mm solid bottom, still waiting for the results. So if someone has tips on how to better and faster adapt to situations like this, im excited to hear them!

Vases isnt that big of a deal, but i want to be able to make everything i can if people want them from me, i cant tell them i need 5 days to figure out how to make them, just to turn them down and say i can't.

Vases:

PLA

210c Temp.

0.2mm

1.0mm shell

1-2mm bottom.

0 infill

30-50mm/s

And then i tried to make http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:271769

About the same settings as vase. All the numbers around got stringy ALOT, so i has to cancel the print.

Anyone else getting annoyed with thingiverse, that 90% of the object posts does NOT have proper instructions or ANY tips or hints about settings they used when they upload a perfect picture of the damn thing?

Apart from vase problems, a differential was absolutely perfect!

But my machine consistently keeps slipping the filament nomatter what object i print. just sometimes more than others.

I made this post in a haste, i hope i didnt miss anything or made anything unclear. Hoping for some really good discussions!

[swordriff 119]

Dear Daniel!

It could be in the feeder,

Clogged nozzle

Destroyed Teflon (if you "left it on" at 240+ for many hours without filament moving,

Intermittently working temp sensor.

Not well connected heater cable (easy to find on PCB)

First Feeder:

Can you go in advanced settings heat nozzle.

Then remove the horeshoe clip holding the Bowden collett on the printhead assembly, Hold down the ring and remove the bowden from the print head assembly.

The end of filament will stick out of the tube.

Turn off power. Try to drag the filament out from the back.

There should be very good resistance from the turning of the feeder wheel.

If not, tighten the feeder pressure according to instructions;

= 1 Problem solved.

If Not; turn on power, advanced move material.

Jog the wheel and move material. Be aware that the material can have a bump inside the feeder, so you need to "help" it past that by pushing hard from the back WHILE you turn the wheel.

Now; the filament should push out VERY STRONGLY, almost so you can not hold it by hand, and pushing against the had inside is literally torture.

By know we know your feeder works.

Next glogged nozzle:

Berform 3-10 Atomic Pulls.

Check the Epic instructions at www.3dverkstan.se in english, one of the two best shops in Europe, btw.

Use PLA and 210/90 or 210/80 if the pullout is very soft and elongated.

Nozzle is now clean.

Teflon check

Pro-way: Dismantle head assembly, take out Teflon piece and check inner end. Must be straight, have no "lip" or inside cavity. If it has replace.

Save the day by cutting/drilling away the lip.

(Teflon decomposes slowly, and hyperbolically fast at 230+)

It will become softer and when hot it will collapse into your filament and grip it.

Lazy way:

Heat head to 220.

Wait 10 min.

With a piece of straight filament (use hairdrier and straighten a 15cm piece for this)- try to feel if the teflon grips the filament when you move it up and down.

Should be nothing. This is a bit difficult and requires some feel and experience.

Heater and Temp sensor:

There are temp sensors which do not work correctly over a certain temp.

They are made with spot welding inside, and sometimes the connections somehow undo themselves at high temp.

Heater has been known to not be well connected. Newer machines have a another fastening method on PCB. Pls check.

How to check:

Heat head to 220.

Watch temp. Should be stable.

IS it really hot?

Touch from outside of nozzle with filament.

Should melt a bump immediately.

Re-assemble:

Make sure the Bowden is FULLY inserted into white teflon.

This is more fiddly than one may think.

Hold the clamp ring down while juggling tube and watch closely.

You will get a sense of when it is fully inside.

If you fail here: endless trouble.

Good luck!

[DidierKlein 729]

Tip for vase in Spiralize:

If you want it waterproof increase the flow to about 110% on the bottom layers. Make sure to have a couple of layers at the bottom 5-6 is good 10 is better.

Then for Spiralize, it will do the wall in one pass, if you have a 0.4mm nozzle (standard on the UM2), I like doing 0.6mm walls. The layer height can be 0.1mm or more.

If you have trouble extruding, slow down and/or increase temperature. Ultimaker PLA (which i assume you're printing) prints well at 210°c, you can slow down speed at 30mm/s

I you still have trouble extruding then there might be an issue somewhere that we can track down.

The tower of PI i've looked at printing that but it looks like a hard print, if you have strings you can decrease this by increasing the travel speed to 250mm/s and decrease the temperature as much as possible to avoid the nozzle from oozing too much.

If you have pics that might help please show them

And stay positive, a 3d printer takes some time and some tries before mastering it and get beautiful awesome prints, one good point already, you are here asking questions and reading the forum, you can only get better

[mfknjohn 6]

I have an Ultimaker 2 Extended and was having the same issue, after coming into the office with a few prints halfway done and my extruder gliding above with invisible filament I also got pretty angry.

The first thing I did was tighten the filament feeder on the back of your ultimaker. Theres a little white plastic square that shows how tight it is, all the way to the top is loose and the bottom is tight, If you tighten the screw above the feeder ( Little Allen-wrench hole, the tool came with your ultimaker) you can see the white plastic square move, once its in the middle that should help out a lot.

If the problem persists you can try messing with the extraction settings, I found that sometimes the filament would get grinded down like you said, but after tightening the feeder on the back this hasnt happened to me again.

Hope all goes well!

[Danieljenzen 0]

Hello! I have some picture that i hope will help.

Here are 4 vases i tried making, all of which failed, starting from left side first. I forgot to uncheck “solid top” though, other than that, its not waterproof and its VERY stringy, the second one aswell.

Third one was done by spiralize, with absolutely 0 strings, its perfect, but again, its not watertight. 4rth one I made thicker in bottom, I think 2mm bottom, and 1.2 shell. It still leaks like a river. It didn’t even finish, I even set the temp to 240c before I left home to return back to this.

All vases was done with 30-50mm/s. at least 1mm thick shell, and 1-2mm bottom. 0.2 layer height. 0% infill. I very rarely print above 50. i have a thing for quality and patience.

Last picture is of 2 of the first vases I tried, at this time I couldn’t figure out what went wrong until I was the filament in the back was completely chewed up. About same settings as other vases.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:89274

I even tried printing this thing, but the 2 “towers” in the front wouldn’t stick to the plate cause of their small area of bottom. They someone got pushed over and knocked away by the nozzle, I think they had tipped over a littlebit, cause one of the side to peak and get hit. I tried lots of different support, brim and everywhere.

I have absolutely NO idea what im gonna do, if I adjust anyone, something goes wrong in the other end. And 99% of the objects on thingiverse NEVER updating with print setups for their perfect made objects, I need to make several attempts, wasting LOTS of plastic and time on this. Should I just forget vases? I mean its not even advanced, and it’s a great gift to make, and great to start off my “3d print career” im trying to build, by making some attractive objects to get people attention. As told before, I printed differential, which came out great. And I thought 3d print was download and print.. I guess im VERY wrong.

If you read all this, I appreciate the time spent trying to help me a lot, cause right now, im at rock bottom, at least when it come to vases. And who knows what other objects I cant solve in the future?

[gr5 2,167]

@mfknjohn - that may help filament grinding but won't help the feeder from slipping backwards suddenly which is set by the current going to the stepper motor.

First of all, spiralize is kind of a hack. You need to realize that it will do the shell in one pass so if you ask for a 1mm shell it is trying to overextrude by 600% (1mm/.4mm)^2

That's a lot! .6mm is much more reasonable. At that extreme I would print around 5mm/sec max I think. Just guesing. I'm wondering if when you printed the thingiverse item you messed up and didn't uncheck "spiralize" as that would explain your issues with that.

If you still have problems please post *all* your settings. You can save your "profile" and then open that in notepad or any text editor and paste it in a posting here. There are many settings that seem like no big deal but can ruin your print - for example setting the shell to .6mm when your nozzle is .4mm (shell should always be integer multiple of nozzle unless you undestand the consequences) or your infill speeds. Or spiralize.

Regarding waterproof - the spiralize feature was written for Joris and he uses .6mm nozzles (ask if you need to know where to get alternate nozzles) which gives you a much more watertight result although many people have been successful with .4mm nozzles.

In general here are some guidelines for printing temperature and speed - if you are impatient go for 240C - it's a reasonable temperature to print at but you will get better quality at 210 and printing much slower.

Here are top recommended speeds for .2mm layers (twice as fast for .1mm layers):

20mm/sec at 200C

30mm/sec at 210C

40mm/sec at 225C

50mm/sec at 240C

The printer can do double these speeds but with huge difficulty and usually with a loss in part quality due to underextrusion.

[DidierKlein 729]

For the bottom to be waterproof, please follow my advise about increasing the flow to at least 110%, since i've been doing that, i always had waterproof vases.

You'll see that with spiralize and correct settings the hardest part to make waterproof is the bottom. Usually the walls will be okay (assuming you don't try to print 1mm walls in one pass with a .4mm nozzle)

[Danieljenzen 0]

DidierKlein, thank you for Your reply!

Do you have an "overall" setting for making vases? including expert settings and Advanced?

I see small tooltip on each and every expert setting there is, but is there anywhere i can find more detailed tooltips about them? maybe Picture on what differance they make and when to use them for best results?

[DidierKlein 729]

Maybe have a look at the support page for Cura

For the settings i usually use for vase in Spiralize:

0.1 or 0.2mm layers

0.6mm walls

speed 30mm/s

Bottom height 2mm

Increase the flow to 110% (you can use tweakAtZ plugin for this or do it in the Tune menu of the printer).

The rest of settings are the default settings

[gr5 2,167]

Daniel, what country are you in? Please update your location settings.

[Danieljenzen 0]

Hello! Im back for more questions! I recently picked up ninjaflex to try make some iphone covers. This is how it looks like

The bottom got very smooth and nice, but overall, it looks shit tbh, how can i improve this?

Settings used:

0.4 nozzle

0.2 layer

1.2 Shell

Retraction enabled (forgot to turn this off after reading alot of recommendations)

1.0 top/bottom

100% fill

15mm/s and overall speed

100mms travel.

6hours 50min.

After seeing some layers at start, i tried to experiment abit to try improve the print. I dont know what the problem is or how i can fix this underextrusion?

I tried temp from 220-245c. 75-100% speed. 100-120 Material flow.

All these settings in differant ranges and combinations, i never quite figured out a setting that would make the layers flat and smooth, they all look liked like this the whole print time.

Earlier i had problems where the filament started knotting up in the feeder, i fixed this by lubricating the bowden tube with oil.

So is there a way to make this print smoother? without any holes like this allover the print?

[gr5 2,167]

Add oil to the filament. I tell everyone to do it, but people are afraid to do it. They think the oil will somehow cause pockets or something. It doesn't. They think it will make the knobbed sleeve too slippery. It doesn't. Just do it. Take the filament out of the bowden add a drop or two of light oil, put it back in. Then loop the filament down to the floor and put 1 drop of oil every meter or so and it should run down the filament towards the floor.

If that's not enough just slow it down some more and heat it up some more. To get absolutely perfectly smooth top surfaces I had to slow it to 10mm/sec and heat to 240C and add oil. You can get almost as good at higher speeds or lower temps.

[danilius 118]

Ninjaflex is a nightmare to work with. What I found was that printing at 20mm/sec gave me mediocre results, and at 10mm/sec far better results.

You will never get perfect results in an UM2 using ninjaflex, you really need an extruder sitting right on top of the hot end.

Here is a tip: although ninjaflex is not aggressively hygrophilic like nylon, baking it in a cardboard box at around 45C with some rice for a couple of hours helps towards getting smoother extrusion.

[Danieljenzen 0]

I dont know if i told, but i did use some oil on the filament, it didnt slip or get twisted at any point, making the phone cover.

i did the cover with 15mms, and will try 10 now to see if it makes differanse.

what printer would be best to use for ninaflex in that case?

[danilius 118]

You might consider a Lulzbot Taz 5 with a flexy dually whatever bla head. I have no idea if it will do a dramatically better job, though, so you need to hunt around a bit. And report back here if you can find anything useful!

[Danieljenzen 0]

The lines that goes upwards the print im making? how do they occur?

0.4 noz

0.2 layer

30mms

10-15% infill.

i think 0.8 or 1.2 wall. not sure at all

[gr5 2,167]

That's where the outer shell starts and ends.  The shell starts on one side of the "line that goes upwards" and it prints a loop and then returns just on the other side of the "line that goes upwards".  I'm not sure how to fix this - different versions of Cura have different issues with this "z-seam" and different slicers are able to improve this somewhat.  I really don't know the answer.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Guest

[danilius 118]

There are several ways of dealing with this. First of all, every material is different, some suffer more than others with this sort of thing.

I would try printing slower and colder, and increasing the retraction length and speed.

[Danieljenzen 0]

Hey again! thank you for great answers, but i got a new question!

These pictures below, is from my first printer, its printed with

¨

0.2 layer

1.2 shell

30mms on everything

10mms bottomlayer.

210c.

10%infill.

Can you see the rugged and thick lines? how does with happen? but not with my newest printer? ive done atomic pulls and everything, is it time to change nozzle?

its been printing for 925 hours. 963M

This is from my newest printer. no problems

[gr5 2,167]

oops. bad post. Was confused. Total rewrite:

This could be several things - most likely your Z stage isn't moving 0.2mm each time - some times too far, sometimes not far enough - when not far enough you get too much filament and you get a stripe that sticks out - when you move too far it sticks "into" the model. Check the Z movement carefully, make sure there is no binding or nothing is rubbing - it could be far from Z screw - it could be something rubbing anywhere on the stage. Try adding some grease to the screw and oil to other parts.

Or it could be filament diameter - cheap filament will vary quite a bit even over just 1 meter and you will get this kind of pattern. Check the filament with calipers. This is one advantage of 3mm filament I think maybe.

Or it could be temperature. Look at the temperature readings while it prints a "bad" layer. See if it moves more than 3C - it shouldn't - it should be steady.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Guest

[gr5 2,167]

Also try printing something tall and skinny - maybe a cylinder. Then when it is done print another one and see if the horizontal lines tend to line up - repeat in the same patter from print to print. If so then it's definitely related to Z screw or Z hardware.

[Danieljenzen 0]

Thanks for feedback! I figured it out.

i Changed the nozzle and the prints looks alot better!

I think the previous nozzle had take too much beating from alot of experiementing, as it has been my first nozzle with 0 experience printing what so ever.