Nozzle Offset Probe Failed Error

[joely 0]

Hi Everyone,

 

My boss a few months ago bought a Ultimaker 3 Extended for our company to be able to 3D Print prototypes and its our first real experience with 3D Printing.

 

I have been assigned to setup and run the machine which I have self tough myself through reading manuals, these forums & printing a lot of "test" models to gain some knowledge into the world of 3D Printing.

 

Attached below is a photo of an error that pops up every time we hit print leaving us with a printer that does not want to print at all. I have checked, cleaned & re calibrated the nozzles and bed along with trying different size nozzles and restarted the machine from scratch with a fresh update with no fix to our problem.

 

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

Regards Joel

[gr5 2,172]

Well I haven't used auto leveling for a few years.  I don't recommend it.  So that's one solution - just do manual leveling.  It's more accurate and more dependable and it won't make the bottom of your part tilted if you do manual leveling.

 

Other things to try - the leveling screws may be too loose or too tight.  Usually too tight.

 

It's important that the springiness of the bed is less than the spring force in both cores.  You need the bed to move before the core does or it will misread the contact.  You can also see this happening when it's leveling - the head should stop moving down right when it hits the glass.  If it keeps going for 2 more seconds then that's a serious problem.

 

Also open the front door on the head and look for 2 wires in the bottom of the door that is now swung open.  Usually a red one and a white wire.  Give them a very gentle tug.  If either wire broke then that's the problem.

 

Also leveling is very sensitive to EMI so don't touch the printer during autolevel and keep any computers/electronics a foot or more away from the printer curing autolevel.

 

[joely 0]

Hi gr5,

 

Regarding the manual leveling for the bed. Thanks for this advice as I had to make some adjustments to the bed during manual leveling to calibrate it correctly.

 

Regarding the leveling screws. I backed off all the screws a little bit as they were a bit tight.

 

Regarding the springiness of the bed. During leveling I watched closely at the nozzle head as it approached the bed and it seemed to stop immediately when it made contact with the glass.

 

Regarding the 2 wires (red one & white one) in the bottom of the front door for the head. I opened the front door on the head and did check the red one and white one with a gently tug on each and noticed no movement.

 

Regarding electromagnetic interference. It was noted that during the leveling and calibration process that nothing on the printer was physically touched and that the printer was clear of any wireless devices.

 

It was noted that the silicone nozzle cover does have signs of wear. I have ordered some replacements in case this could be affecting the issue?

 

After completing these recommendations we still have not fixed our problem. Is there any other recommendations or parts that may need replacing?

 

Regards Joel

[tyler_brown95 0]

Hello, I had the same issue and the white wire was indeed disconnected (the one that is labeled "shield"). Do I need to replace the whole print head?

[dexx-hdl 0]

@gr5 -- thanks! the leveling screws were the issue.

[MadHatter 2]

This error I found was difficult to get good guidance about. KB about this error had me calibrating the lift switch, looking for a bad connection on the pcb behind the print cores, and the printer itself said, vaguely, check your bed and print cores. Other posts about this error suggested the most obvious things like "is there chunks of material on you build plate". I did not find any of this to be helpful. I called Ultimaker support and the agent suggested that I re-calibrate the axes alignment. I was going to do this but had not printed guides to test the squareness of the rods. I slept on this and realized this had nothing to do with the probe sensor in question as the probe is testing z axes movement. I continued to look for other posts about the nozzle probe and how it works and this led me to this vid about "Ultimaker 3 Error: Difference between detected height of both PrintCores exceeds realistic values". This seemed to make some sense to me that over time the adjustment of the build plate could end with running out of z axes headroom so the print core probe bottoms out. This worked for me, and I have had the error before and it just went away before by me taking everything apart and putting it back together. I suggest trying this step if you have this error because it is an easy to do. 

[Enigma_M4 119]

Hi,

 

like @MadHatter mentioned, checking the 14mm-gap is the first thing that should be done at the "offset error" - if the diagnosis of the capacitive sensor is positive.

The two most helpful things for this are in my oppinion:

 

1. this youtube-video, provided by @fbrc8-erin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2VFp6AqoMg

 

2. this small tool, provided by @IRobertI:

https://www.youmagine.com/designs/um3-buildplate-distance-tool

(unfortunately, only works with UM3, not with S5 or S3)

 

Regards

 

 

 

[MadHatter 2]

@Enigma_M4 Thanks for this response! I wanted to say that this solution, in regards to the my error message, was hard to find.

I am going to print this nice tool.

 

[vancouvertool 0]

Ok I've followed this stream of advice but the S5 that was printing perfectly happily this a.m. has been displaying this error message ever since. I can't seem to get rid of it and spending 5 hours on maintenance of a new machine (6 weeks old!) is not what I expected. I've made sure that it has the latest software and of course switched it off and on. The only oddity was the fact that the bed was screwed down fully i.e. no play in it originally so i have released it and re levelled. All to no avail. Any other advice? 

[gr5 2,172]

contact your reseller asap.  If you use shop3d.ca know that they are smart and really good at customer support (I assume you are in Canada from your name but it would be nice if you included your country in your profile).

 

First open the print head and look at the base of the print head - that circuit board is for levelling.  There are 2 wires that connect to that.  One my S5 the are red and white.  Some S5's have black and white and maybe other colors.  tug very gently on those to make sure neither wire is loose.  That was my problem on my S5.  I reattached and levelling works fine.

 

Maybe show a video of the leveling?  One might choose to divide the errors into several types:

 

Watch it level.  Or even better take a short video.

When the bed touches the nozzle it should stop moving right away.  If it stops before reaching the bed then there is likely noise interference.  Move electronics away.  If it hits the bed and keeps going for at least another second then it's most likely the springs are still too tight on the bed or too loose on the cores.

 

There is also an error if "height difference" of the two cores are too large.  You don't mention this but you don't really tell us what the error is exactly.  That might help.

 

There is also, in the menus, a test to see if the leveling sensor is working.  Try that as well.