Sheared prints in y and z axis

[Lonelyalien 0]

Hi

since a few weeks we have been using an ultimaker 2 after a year of pain with the makerbot 5th gen. I want to start out with saying that the Ultimaker is an awesome printer.

Nevertheless, we've come across a minor, but still significant issue that should be fixable:

When printing, the z-axis gets sheared a couple degrees over the x-axis towards the y axis. I printed this simple Arduino case to illustrate the problem. When you compare it to the graph paper, you can see the print is not straight. Also if we turn over the top part and place it on the bottom part, the don't match really well.

Does anyone else experience this? Hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible!

Thanks in advance.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Guest

[gr5 2,173]

Are you sure the Z axis is involved? It looks like your X and Y axes aren't perpendicular. I can't tell from the pictures if the Z axis has anything to do with it. But assume X and Y aren't perpendicular - it can only be caused by the rods not being perpendicular. Either the two thinner rods or the 4 longer rods.

DHL and other shippers seem to do a horrible job and seem to let elephants sit on the boxes as part of the shipping process such that an originaly square Ultimaker arrives as a parallelogram.

I would measure these axis carefuly with a carpenters tool or you can measure the corner-to-corner diagonals at the top to see if everything is square (see if diagonal distances are equal). Using a small carpenters "square" is easier. The problem should be solely in the gantry area. In theory you can loosen all the edge screws, clamp the box a bit *past* square in the other direction and then tighten everythin up again.

Alternatively, if you are lucky, it's simply either the X or Y blocks aren't lined up and one or both of the thinner rods that go through the head aren't square. This is much easier to fix - just loosen the pulleys for the 4 long belts - one pulley per belt I think should do it - so only 4 pulleys need to be loosened. Push things back to square and then tighten the hell out of those pulleys - the set screws in the pulleys need to be so tight you are twisting the hex tool (2mm hex wrench needed).