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Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions


SandervG

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Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
21 hours ago, Fauxmaha said:

The short version of the question is: If the UM3 build volume is sufficient for our needs, is there any reason to consider the S5?

Not really.  No.  There are reasons but they are minor and if a print fits in my UM3 or my S5, my UM3 wins every time.

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Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

Hi, I have just got the S5 up and running - my fist 3D printer - very keen to see what it can produce.

 

I had a question on protecting the filament on the rear of the unit from humid conditions ---- I live in the middle of Australia, regularly in temps over 40 degrees, and the house has an evaporate air conditioner, which makes the air laden with moisture. I would be concerned that the filament that is on the rear of the unit might take on too much moisture. 

 

Would it be possible / recommended for / against to install a cover -- I'm thinking half a bucket type setup -- that would sit almost permanently over the filament spools and spool holder, and extend up to the bottom of the filament flow detector. This bucket would also contain a desiccant pack.

 

Similarly, due to the significant airflow through the house from the aircon, would people suggest the installation of a cover (similar to those for the S3) to help reduce the airflow around the head during printing? Would the increased heat retention from the cover mess around with the print qualities from cura presets?

 

Cheers!

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    2 hours ago, xxTIMMYxCxx said:

    Similarly, due to the significant airflow through the house from the aircon, would people suggest the installation of a cover (similar to those for the S3) to help reduce the airflow around the head during printing? Would the increased heat retention from the cover mess around with the print qualities from cura presets?


    I wouldn't suggest it. Completely encasing the printer will change pretty much everything that's going on in the machine. It can be done, but it's not for the faint of heart. Since this is your first printer, try to get a bit of prints done first. After you get a bit of knowhow / feel for it you can consider modifying stuff.

    The printer does use plastic parts, so you should take care that the inside of the printer doesn't exede ~50 degrees.
     

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    As for the spools of filament, you can make a drybox like this: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/drybox-for-pva-ultimaker3

     

    I'd say that a drybox is mandatory for PVA, and strongly advised for PLA and Nylon. I tend to put everything in the drybox for security and simplicity (I don't have to move them when I change the spools) but they're probably not that useful for other filaments like TPU or ABS.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    I would indeed use a drybox for pva and nylon but Ive never used it for pla... Think that would be Overkill. As the containers are cheap I keep a few and just leave the spools in there also for storage.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    I've seen an increase in the quality of my PLA prints and a decrease of fails when I started putting the PLA in the drybox. Though, we've had a series of very rainy and humid days, and humidity went up to 60% inside the room where the printer is located. I tend to go by 'better safe than sorry' so, since keeping the spools dry won't affect the other filaments, I put them all there thus I don't have to move the drybox away from the printer except when I service it.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    My S5 arrived today. Delivery was quick and packaging was good. When unpacking, the first irritation was that there is no aluminum plate; there is supposed to be a replacement delivery, but without a scheduled arrival date given.

     

    Putting everything together is easy, and it actually powers up. But so far that's it…

     

    • The S5 does not recognize the NFC spool with Ultimaker tough PLA.
    • I could not get it onto my network because the MAC addresses ar not labeld anywhere.
    • The first installation setup does not work as it loops after loading the filament (choices: cancel, or load filament; can not skip or proceed).

    So it does not work to start right away printing. My first impression is that the S5 is still a bit work in progress, more a pre-production evaluation sample than something you can work with right away.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    18 minutes ago, asb said:

    My S5 arrived today. Delivery was quick and packaging was good. When unpacking, the first irritation was that there is no aluminum plate; there is supposed to be a replacement delivery, but without a scheduled arrival date given.

     

    Putting everything together is easy, and it actually powers up. But so far that's it…

     

    • The S5 does not recognize the NFC spool with Ultimaker tough PLA.
    • I could not get it onto my network because the MAC addresses ar not labeld anywhere.
    • The first installation setup does not work as it loops after loading the filament (choices: cancel, or load filament; can not skip or proceed).

    So it does not work to start right away printing. My first impression is that the S5 is still a bit work in progress, more a pre-production evaluation sample than something you can work with right away.

    This has not been my experience. My S5 purrs liuke a kitten and has had no issues.

     

    The NFIC chip may be at fault, so I would not be so quick to lay blame on the printer for that.

     

    My setup with my router went smoothly as the printer and cura connect are looking to it for availability, never had to choose a MAC address.

     

    And, it is possible it may have been damaged in shipment as the Looping is something I have not heard of before.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    39 minutes ago, asb said:
    • The S5 does not recognize the NFC spool with Ultimaker tough PLA.
    • I could not get it onto my network because the MAC addresses ar not labeld anywhere.
    • The first installation setup does not work as it loops after loading the filament (choices: cancel, or load filament; can not skip or proceed).

     

    Ok, I assume this it not the issue, but just to ask the obvious, you did plugin the NFC cable correctly and it sits deep enough?

    image.thumb.png.08473cd625ffd7b9a1dc7cb41e15bf9c.png

     

    I had no network issues, plugged in my lan cable and the machine just got an ip address,  im on a simple home network though, so noting complicated just a router.

     

    With regard to the initial setup, I remember Ultimaker assumes you'll set it up immediately with the delivered tough PLA and PVA. I remember I had other plans and was simply able to cancel out of the setup and select other material later (I started with some material with no tag, in that case you can just select the material in the menu ( click on the material, click on the 3 dot's in the right top corner, click select type)

     

    though I understand Ultimakers choise to have you load the material thats delivered in the box, I think specially for new users it would be wise to leave the PVA packed and start getting some experience with single material printing first. The PVA degrades (humidity) when not packed, so you better only open it when you start using it (or better, keep it in a dry box...)

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    @ultiarjan: Yes, that's what I did - just canceled the complete "first installation setup" since I do not even know if it does something what I could not do manually as well. If it just queries for build plate and material, it's totally redundant anyway.

     

    Yes, the NFC cable is connected and sits tight. If the chip is broken… well, for that a little self-diagnosis untility would be handy. Since 3rd party filament does not come with NFC tags, it does not matter too much for me if it works. It's just a crappy setup experience.

     

    Though, the networking is a serious issue. I am on a network which filters on MAC addresses, so without disclosing the MAC address, the S5 won't get onto the network. What really stinks is that I can not find the MAC address anywhere, e.g. under "About this printer" or "Networking". Also weird is that enabling Ethernet doesn't work, either. I get a rotating cog when trying to switch on Ethernet, then it just jumps back to disabled. So no need trying to connect with a cross cable and laptop.

     

    …and I guess that my next issue will be setting up a static IP address, unless they have fixed or documented it (same issue existed on UM3).

     

    Since this thread is about impressions & opinions: "Key features: Fast setup […] & Designed to connect" - IMHO no, definitely not. Quite the opposite. Getting the S5 operational within a couple of hours is limited to (undocumented) environments, be it open WLANs or maybe Apple computers.

     

    Now I'll try to print something legacy style with USB stick…

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    About the "chip" being broken. I think @kmanstudios meant the tag on the spool not the machine. Did you try to read different spools?

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    @SandervG, can you help out?

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    First test print completed, a little calibration object (100mm on X and Y axis and 50mm on the Z-Axis), printed from USB stick. Resulting object in Ultimaker Tough PLA is 100,5 × 100,3 × 49,8 mm. That's similar like our UM 3 Extended from last year (100,4 × 100,3 × 50,2 mm, REC PLA). Up to 0,5 mm deviation is not so great for a printer in this price range.

     

    More precision is indispensably required for technical objects, so calibration will be a necessity. The question would be if the X/Y/Z axis of the S5 can be calibrated independently. The UM3 could not. We had to use an nasty workaround and guess a (global) compensation with "Shell: Horizontal Expansion" in Cura. Since the deviation is different on every axis, a global compensation does not work well. The printed objects do not fit well and the imprecision caused a lot of trouble.

     

    Does anyone have suggestions how to calibrate X, Y and Z axis in Ultimaker S5? In earlier (pre UM3) printers you had to hack the Marlin firmware and  calibrate with the STEPS value. If I remember correctly, this sisn't possible anymore since UM3.

     

    Other observations:

     

    Automatic bed leveling takes long(er), but works similarily good as in UM3. Platform adhesion with Tough PLA is similarily good as with REC PLA in UM3, much better than in UM2.

     

    Compared with the UM2, almost everything is better in the S5. Compared with the UM3, the only 'big' changes I have noticed so far are: more build space than UM 3 Extended, fancy display, much higher power consumption. As far as I can tell, the weaknesses of the UM3 have not been fixed. Can not tell if the aluminum bed will have benefits as the printer is shipped without it (which is quite odd - how hard can it be to produce an aluminum plate for a product with announced availability four months ago)?.

     

    On the positive side: At the moment, Cura 3.3.1-PPA works perfectly on Ubuntu Mate 18.04 LTS. It's fast and does not crash. Very nice. So much better than the horrible Appimage.

     

    The S5 display has some nice eye candy. If you select a file for printing, the display shows a small preview of the 3D model. It's probably more a gimmick, but it could be useful not to print the wrong thing if you are working with crudely labels files in crowded folders.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    1 hour ago, asb said:

    More precision is indispensably required for technical objects, so calibration will be a necessity.

    Well if you don't care about ringing (which is quite visible but not measurable with calipers) then definitely uncheck "acceleration control" and uncheck "jerk control".  Unchecking these two things will give you a large increase in part accuracy but the parts won't look quite as nice.

     

    The next thing to try is to set all the printing speeds to the same value (e.g. 35mm/sec) and the non extruding speed to at least 150mm/sec or even 300mm/sec.

     

    These should increase the precision of the parts.  Printing slower and colder should make parts even more accurate and then it's time to try adjusting the x/y/z scaling and playing with things like "horizontal expansion" (can be negative values also).

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    could you check which firmware you are running? on my machines with 5.0.19 at least if i go to networking, it shows me the wired MAC. but if you enable networking and it auto disables, that is weird.. 

    also @asb where are you located?

     

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    6 hours ago, asb said:

    Does anyone have suggestions how to calibrate X, Y and Z axis in Ultimaker S5? In earlier (pre UM3) printers you had to hack the Marlin firmware and  calibrate with the STEPS value. If I remember correctly, this sisn't possible anymore since UM3. 

    you can set the steps per unit in the machine configuration file for both the UM3 and S5 located in /usr/share/griffin/griffin/machines/

    have a look at 9051.json and um3.json

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    9 hours ago, robinmdh said:

    you can set the steps per unit in the machine configuration file for both the UM3 and S5 located in /usr/share/griffin/griffin/machines/

    have a look at 9051.json and um3.json

    Thanks! Though/usr/share/griffin/griffin/machines/ does not exist on my system.

     

    I have a JSON file at /usr/share/cura/resources/definitions/ultimaker_s5.def.json, but it does not mention the string 'steps'.

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

     

    2 hours ago, asb said:

    Though/usr/share/griffin/griffin/machines/ does not exist on my system.

    I meant on the printer.

    use developer mode to ssh into the printer and edit the file there using the vi command or use winscp to edit the file with windows.

    This will save you from editing and compiling marlin at least.

     

    Please note that a microstep in the S5 is half the size as that of the UM3 so the printer should have a higher resolution, so if you're not getting that resolution, before doing anything I'd check the tension in the belts, that might be the problem instead.

     

     

    good luck!

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    6 hours ago, robinmdh said:

     

    6 hours ago, robinmdh said:

    use developer mode to ssh into the printer […]

     

    Now you got me confused… Use SSH without networking?

     

    Unless someone reveals where I could find the MAC addresses of the two network interfaces, the S5 does not have any IP connectivity. And maybe there is some hidden magic that prevents the Ethernet toggle to keep to switching back to 'disabled'. Then I could at least try to connect a laptop with a cross cable and see what I get.

     

    Seriously, guys. Working around loops in first time setup, Going into Debug mode to set up an IP address, hacking undocumented JSON files to get accurately measured prints , this is your idea of a "Simple setup"?

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    Posted (edited) · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    I've never had this problem with Ethernet, I would suggest doing the factory reset as it should be the default after that if you then skip the wifi setup.

     

    You can always make an impromptu mini lan with a router but indeed  you can also plug your laptop into the printers Ethernet port cross cable  (though most modern computers can use a normal cable) directly or use a hub/switch and the printer should come up with a link local ip address, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local_address these start with 169.254.x.x depending on your computer you might have to configure an ip in the same range but most systems do support the link local protocol, it just takes a bit more time.

     

    That way you can also find out the mac address. Though I thought the mac address was also in the networking menu (I just checked the code (as I don't have an S5 present) it shows the mac address of the active connection though so you need to set it on Ethernet first), so yeah that would be the simple path. I Had no problems with the first run wizard it is a bit restrictive(requesting specific materials) but you can do the steps you want and then skip everything else.

     

    If you really can't get networking to work you could also get a serial cable there are some instructions from the olimex folks that explain this.

    4 hours ago, asb said:

    Seriously, guys. Working around loops in first time setup, Going into Debug mode to set up an IP address, hacking undocumented JSON files to get accurately measured prints , this is your idea of a "Simple setup"?

    NO! What you seem to want is not a simple setup, changing the steps per unit by re-compileing marlin and putting that on the printer is more complicated, this is changing one file on the printer. I only mentioned this as an alternative to that.

    Edited by robinmdh
    checking th e display code for the mac address
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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    You mean this MAC address?

    MACAddress.thumb.jpg.949c59d27c6a06a84e45a52a9511d12e.jpg

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    @kmanstudios 'Gluteous-Printimus'! ??

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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions
    8 minutes ago, Brulti said:

    @kmanstudios 'Gluteous-Printimus'! ??

    Otherwise known as "Wide-Load" ?

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    Posted (edited) · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    I guess it will show up after establishing a connection, not before.

     

    IMG_20180713_163602.jpg

    Edited by asb
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    Posted · Ultimaker S5 | impressions & opinions

    I've gotta echo what's being said here about the MAC address. It is incredibly surprising that it's not on a sticker on the outside of the machine or at the very least, in an easy to access spot in the menu.

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