Big mess, need advice.

[brandf 1]

My UM3 has been working really well since I got it, and apart from a few bad first layers, I haven't had any major failures.  Until today:

I'm pretty new to 3d printing, so I could use some advice.

1) What's the best way to fix it without causing more damage?  The plastic is rock hard.

2) What would cause such a fail?  Obviously if I caught it sooner, it wouldn't have been as bad, but I'm not sure why the plastic is shooting out from above the nozzle...what's up with that?

3) The rubbery white material that surrounds the nozzle was embedded in a big glob of plastic (not shown in photo), and ripped.  Where can I buy a replacement?

4) Can I take the whole fixture off somehow?  It's hard to remove plastic while inside the printer.

Thanks for your advice.

[Alkalbani 3]

what filament did you use.

thats not a standard ultimaker filament color.

and what was the settings in the printer, and cura?

it looks like a very bad nozzle leak from printcore1

before trying to fix this, phone ultimaker and ask them.

again it looks like a leak from the heating block of printcore 1.

cleaning this might damage a printcore.

you can remove the whole printcore block out. But check with ultimaker first.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Guest

[neotko 1,417]

I would contact the reseller asap, removing the plastic near the bottom is problematic since there's a small board there. Is doable but not for a new user.

[brandf 1]

This is PLA from MatterHackers. I was using the normal PLA setttings for Fast Print in Cura. I believe it's 200C/60C.

[Alkalbani 3]

I agree with Neotko.

call ultimaker. its very easy to damage the printcore block.

[SandervG 1,519]

I would also recommend to get in touch with your reseller, they should be able to help you. What you could do is use a blow-dryer to warm up the plastics and remove it with some pliers, but in any case I would verify with your reseller first. Maybe they suggest to just replace it.

However, I don't think it is a leak coming from your printcore, unless you made some modifications to it. I am more inclined to think your print got detached from the bed during your print and the plastic just crawled up in your printhead and forming a blob of plastic. The silicon, when in good condition and installed correctly, should prevent this. But perhaps it was either not in good condition, or not installed correctly.. or you just had a lot of bad luck. But if you would ask me, that is what happened, and not a leak. Your reseller should be able to help you

Good luck and keep us updated!

[brandf 1]

Thanks folks.

I contacted MatterHackers (my reseller), and they said something similar to what SandervG described above. It may have been a faulty part, or I may have just been unlucky and the PLA detatching eventually flooding the print core. I just got the thing a few weeks ago (no mods or non-default settings), and it's been working great before this, so I'm inclined to believe it was just a fluke.

The good news is that they offered to replace the printer, so apart from some downtime it's not a lot of hassle. So despite the issue, I'm very happy with the customer service of MatterHackers and would recommend them to others.

[BrayChristopher 36]

That is a pretty awesome bubble gum fail.

Was there a big blob on the out side of the hot end as well?

I have had similar fails twice with ColorFab XT, on our UM2E. The problem was that I didn't have good bed adhesion. The part came loose from the bed and it got drug around by the print head. Then it got stuck to the print head and it just kept pumping out plastic and forming a horror movie monster blob.

Luckily I just needed to heat up the nozzle and pull all of the plastic off.

[tomnagel 123]

The root cause of this is bad bed-adhesion. All default settings in Cura are geared towards Ultimaker materials. With UM PLA you should not have these problems. Depending on the part that you print, you may want to enable the brim to increase the surface touching the build plate. A second option is to apply some glue to your plate before printing.

You may choose to use other filaments. These may require other slicer settings for good adhesion (esp. temperatures of nozzle and buildplate, possibly first layer speed).

[kmanstudios 1,120]

On 2/11/2017 at 8:09 AM, tomnagel said:

The root cause of this is bad bed-adhesion. All default settings in Cura are geared towards Ultimaker materials. With UM PLA you should not have these problems.........

Even UM materials cannot overcome a build plate that is not properly cleaned. Any oils or other substances that get between the materials and glass will cause failures.

[Kokanee 0]

I've been using hairspray on my UM3 print bed since I purchased it last month, and nary a problem with bed adhesion.

[neotko 1,417]

8 hours ago, Kokanee said:

I've been using hairspray on my UM3 print bed since I purchased it last month, and nary a problem with bed adhesion.

 

I been thinking lately about this bed problems with Cura since now I actually use cura for my bcn3dsigma, and my 2cents about this issue is that the origin (apart of bed glass issues or even if the hairspray is applied) is the crossed lines infill.

 

Cura default cross paths infill does scratch/neosanding/Ironing every time layer after layer, pushing the print layer after layer, making the print adhesion a bit problematic if isn’t rock solid (more than needed imo). 

 

What I mean is that if the infill is done on both directions at the same layer there’s material being scratched when the infill lines cross.

 

I’m too sleepy now but I hope I explained myself right ?

[Kokanee 0]

You totally explained yourself just fine!

 

The hairspray trick was something I learned with an upgraded glass build plate in my old makerbot replicator 2x, and just carried it over to the UM3 successfully. I have not had a single print come loose from the build plate so far, and I'm pretty sure I've surpassed 50 prints easily.