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ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+


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Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

Having extensively used a UM2 for over a year non stop and another newer UM2 for almost three months straight makes me want to do an honest no bullshit review of the UM2 without any bad smell or auto calibration nonsense, and focus on explaining what it does how it does it, and why its my FDM printer of choice, even after bad times.

 

.. please, be my guest! I would love to read that from an honest, long time user experience. :)
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    • 4 months later...
    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Very interesting and thorough review!

    We also recently tested the U2+ following our independent testing protocol.

    Overall, our conclusion is it's a great desktop printer! We experienced some issues with Cura but it was due to an older version we were using, once we updated it was much better. We gave it a 4.1/5 rating.

    You can see our full review here, let us know your feedback!

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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Since more than a year I haven't levelled the bed on both my UM2 printers. No need to.

    Using the "salt method" to glue PLA to the print bed, my models stick like rock solid when hot, and pop off by themselves when cold. So I never have problems removing the models from the plate, I never need force, and never need to take the build plate out of the printer.

    So, for me autoleveling would be useless. (Although I can understand that people who daily change nozzles and materials might see things differently, especially if the nozzles are of different length.)

    Instead of autoleveling, I would rather prefer a thicker and more stable aluminum plate and glass plate, which don't vibrate, are totally flat, and do not warp when heating up. The current "unevenness" of the glass plate may be less than 0.05mm, but when printing the first layer at 0.1mm, it becomes visible.

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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    @Martin3D: I just read your review of the UM2+. When it comes to Cura, sadly you've got the workflow wrong. You don't need to print all parts with at the same settings. The Ultimaker 2 introduced a new Gcode variant called "UltiGcode" where you have material profiles stored on the printer. When you tell Cura that you have an Ultimaker 2, it automatically sets gcode to "UltiGcode".

    The benefit of this workflow is that you need to slice a model only once and then print it with several different filament sorts/brands. You can select the material profile on the printer itself.

    With to the "old" workflow, you needed to slice the model again if you used another material. So this is a feature not a bug.

    And besides, you can set the gcode variant in Cura 15.x to regular gcode at any time (Menu "Machine" -> "Machine Settings").

    Secondly, you don't have to wait for the slicing process to finish when you work with Cura 15.x. It will automatically slice in the background and restart the slicing process as soon as you make a change. Compared to other slicers this is a big plus because you can actually start to see any difference your settings had right after you make them.

    So for example you activate the "Layers" view mode and start changing slicing settings. The layers view will need to update but if you set Cura to show the first layers (slider on the right side all the way down), you'd already start seeing the outcome of your settings.

    Compare that with the other slicers. There you start the slicing manually, wait until it is done (which could take several minutes), then switch to layers view mode. If you are not happy with the results, repeat...

    And apart from that, Cura is blazingly fast when it comes to slicing. I don't think slicers come close.

    Cura 2.1.x is different. Both in a good and a bad way. But the nice thing about it is that you can use both Cura versions without problems.

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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Totally agree, except..

     

    Compare that with the other slicers. There you start the slicing manually, wait until it is done (which could take several minutes), then switch to layers view mode. If you are not happy with the results, repeat...

     

    Sorry, S3D even with very complex 3d objects, takes just 2-4seconds. Then you can capture a screenshoot, change settings, process again, take another, and check the gcode viewer (that it's years ahead still of what cura offers) and when you learn to read it you can pinpoint the errors and correct it before printing (but that's a great learning curve or passing hours in front of the printer while works and doing lots of tests). But for real, it's just 2-3 seconds, for very very complex stuff.

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    Posted (edited) · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Btw why review a printer with the slicer? Indeed it is made by ultimaker but isn't the inly slicer available and since its more than open it isn't mandatory to use it. It's just an extra development of ultimaker that works with many (well not perse the last version) printers.

    It's like judging a beer by the weather of the day you drink it.

    Edited by Guest
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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    One more think that I never understood about ultiflavour. Indeed it allows to change material but without fan settings added to that materials, what good it's? You can't print something from pla to abs or other materials without changing the fan settings since cooling it's something very close to the kind of material you use and pla without cooling it's mostly useless, but abs without cooling can work. Why fans never was included on this material settings?

    Sorry mostly offtopic...

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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    It's like judging a beer by the weather of the day you drink it.

     

    I just wanted to say I just love this metaphor :p
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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    @neotko: Ok, S3D might be better, I haven't looked at it in a while so this might have changed.

    Regarding the material settings - fan speed is present in material profiles so that's covered too.

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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    That's nice. Then indeed you are spot on. Must be nixe to have a really advanced firmware controller.

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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Sorry, S3D even with very complex 3d objects, takes just 2-4seconds.

     

    Eh. No. I've did the comparisons. In most cases s3d is about 3-4 times as fast as 15.04, which implies that the major difference between Cura and S3D is that S3D is multi threaded.

    I do have to note that because they generate supports before hand, they don;t have to do it in the slice step, which saves you another ~30% slice time.

     

    and check the gcode viewer (that it's years ahead still of what cura offers)

     

    Again not really the case. They actually "fake" it by using a shader. It just -looks- 3d. It doesn't give you a whole lot more data. It does give more feeling of control.

    I do like their g-code viewer though, especially the scrubbing part.

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    Posted (edited) · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Umm. When I do test for my text 0.33-0.37 nozzle I use it and it's quite close to the real think, specially to warn you about posible holes on infill when doing small areas. And more importantly I can see if there will be gaps between two perimeters so I can adjust the nozzle size and see if on the text way there will be gaps along the way.

    It's true that I stopped using cura long ago, but without the possibility of comparing one gcode view it doesn't matter if you don't have a 'save setup point for latter compare' an option like photoshop 'capture' from history it's a must to really use that advantage. When using s3d I can simulate that by fixing the camera, process, screenshoot, do changes, process, and compare both images. Also the amount of info I can read on the viewer it's much cleaner and easy to understand to the naked eye (specially with the different views of tool/speed/andkindofstuff (forgot the name). Also I can actually 'see' the wipe movement and distance, the retracttion points clearly even when they are little, and do play/rewind of the printig process.

    Also, the support generation it's only if you preprocess them, you don't need to pregenerate supports, unless you want to make them by hand 'painting' them.

    Edit: Lots of edit

    Edited by Guest
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    Posted · ALL3DP review of the new Ultimaker 2+

    Thanks for these details Nicolux!

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