phantom object in the upper right corner (Ultimaker 3 PLA+PVA print)

[Resi 0]

Hey,

I have an Ultimaker 3 extended and want to print with PLA and PVA as support structure. When I look at my model in the "Layer Mode" there is an additional object in the upper right corner. It seems that it is alternating PLA and PVA. What is this for? Can I remove it? Is it necessary for the print?

[gr5 2,167]

That's called the prime tower aka wipe tower. You can enable visibility of that setting and then uncheck it. It is not mandatory. The idea is when one head is cooling a little filament oozes out over a few minutes and printing on the tower first leaves the little tube there.

However the prime tower is a common problem and cause of failures because it defaults in the back right corner and a lot of UM3s shipped with that corner lower than the others so it often falls over unless you fix your glass first. You can change the tower location but it prints faster there where the nozzle change is occurring. People who print without the prime tower are usually pleased with the results but you do get occasional holes where pva landed on a print and caused a tiny hole in the wall of the print.

prime or no prime - neither is perfect.

[neotko 1,417]

However the prime tower is a common problem and cause of failures because it defaults in the back right corner and a lot of UM3s shipped with that corner lower than the others so it often falls over unless you fix your glass first.

 

So you think that the problem isn't the prime but the bed glass of the um3. Is there an official report I didn't saw about that @sandervg ?

[Danielrug05 0]

Hey guys,

I am having the same problem with this option. Although, i uncheck the "Enable prime tower" box, the path of the print keeps being the same as if i was printing with it checked. The print heads just go to the pint you will see below and stay there for 2 or 3 seconds, and then they continue printing. How can we fix that?

[gr5 2,167]

That's a different feature. Cool head hop? something like that. It should be under cooling somewhere. I recommend you don't turn that off. It only does this on layers where there is very little plastic to print and it takes less than about 10 seconds to print the entire layer (the pla part) and gives it a few extra seconds (to add up to 10 seconds) when it does the Z layer change before printing the next layer. If you don't do "cool head lift" then it often comes out pretty bad quality. Although I suppose insce the head is moving to 6 different "islands" in your photo above maybe you can just disable it for this part. But if it's only one island keep the feature on.