Please give us more flexibility.

[sono 4]

Hello,

 

as much as i enjoy working with your quite robust machine - two mysterious nozzle clogs aside -, as i am sure you are aware there are always issues that require manual fiddling with FDM printers.

 

Especially with the SSH bug i am experiencing making it impossible to direct control via G-Code, the quite ridig workflow with the machine's menu is testing my patience more often than not.

 

Please please please allow us to:

- First and foremost: Make the "Skip cooldown" option actually skip the bed cooldown cycle! If I have removed a failed print from a 110°C bed I would like to start over without waiting for a full cycle. (i started using a 12V fan because it takes ages otherwise....!)

- Allow manual extrusion at a set temperature. When "Move" ing material, the temperature is reset to an arbitrary value. This is a requirement to clear nozzles when changing materials! Currently, i am heating the extruder up then quickly switching to "Move" while it cools down. This is unsatisfactory.

 

These two things would be a major improvement. There is plenty more room for increased flexibility, e.g. manual extrude at a specified rate, etc.

 

Also, during levelling the printer shows some questionable behaviour, which already destroyed one my buildtaks: It heats the bed and the extruders to the print configuration value, then starts levelling while the extruders (and bed?) cool down. This made a few holes in the surface of the buildtak, and it somewhat questionable. Heat the bed to adjust for thermal expansion, but not higher than, e.g. 80 °C and either leave the extruders cold or heat them up to no more than 200°C. When the machine destroyed the buildtak, it was configured for Tribofilament at 280°C/120°C.

 

Also please make an attempt to reduce apparently useless waiting sequences during print preparation.

 

Disregarding all of these additional things, if you could make everyday workflow less painful with the two main suggestions given above, that would be highly regarded.

 

 

 

 

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @sono, thank you for your feedback. It's very helpful to hear back directly from our users. @territerriterri, for your information. Please feel free to take this any further if necessary with follow-up questions. 

[robinmdh 100]

5 hours ago, sono said:

- First and foremost: Make the "Skip cooldown" option actually skip the bed cooldown cycle! If I have removed a failed print from a 110°C bed I would like to start over without waiting for a full cycle. (i started using a 12V fan because it takes ages otherwise....!)

we were actually talking about removing this recently, it skips waiting for the deprime(and purge if you have a material station) which is the intended behavior, and is meant to get you ready for the next print ASAP. it would work quit well in the 5.5.x version but is broken in 5.4.x we are aware but people keep telling me nobody uses it.... so the option to remove it is a serious possibility.

I use it quite a bit so I'll use this to argue to keep it, if you don't mind.  We may need to rename it though...

 

5 hours ago, sono said:

Also, during levelling the printer shows some questionable behaviour, which already destroyed one my buildtaks: It heats the bed and the extruders to the print configuration value, then starts levelling while the extruders (and bed?) cool down. This made a few holes in the surface of the buildtak, and it somewhat questionable. Heat the bed to adjust for thermal expansion, but not higher than, e.g. 80 °C and either leave the extruders cold or heat them up to no more than 200°C. When the machine destroyed the buildtak, it was configured for Tribofilament at 280°C/120°C.

Look, the machine wasn't build with buildtak in mind, sorry, sad to hear it's a problem.

The" build temperature initial layer" setting in cura might help but for the rest, it is just not designed for that and buildtak may cause the bed leveling to be off as well., the leveling method requires a lot of assumptions about the surface of the buildplate, change those and it is unlikely to work as well as you might otherwise expect.

 

I use dissolved old PVA for adhesion, 3d lack/hairspray also works great or use a glue-stick, but add anything 3rd party to the mix and you are likely outside of designed for specs... 

 

5 hours ago, sono said:

Also please make an attempt to reduce apparently useless waiting sequences during print preparation.

Higher reliability vs ease of use is a very difficult decision to make,  what appears unnecessary may actually serve a purpose, which  just isn't obvious (like resetting the nozzle lift switch) or why the heaters appear off during leveling (interference with the sensor) etc. but we do have some stories planned for this, if you could be more specific that might help. but then I'd suggest a video where you indicate the slow/useless bits and precise version numbers and any preconditions like you did a print before that you aborted, etc.

[sono 4]

Glad to hear you take this so seriously, I am sure i will post more a detailed follow-up come the new year.

 

As noted it's mostly about the forced bed cooldown cycle where the fw forces one to wait for the bed to go below 60°C before it starts the next print cycle (for safety reasons?) which i have taken physical measures to speed up, using the fan from a nearby soldering station, which is a little ludicrous. It would be good if there was a user friendly manual override or a configurable cooldown end temperature.

When I have safely and cleanly removed a print I would want to start the next cycle, having to wait instead for the machine to cool down further is quite annoying as it can take several minutes for the bed to cool down even with fanning. Consider that all of this is done with the knowledge that the next thing the machine will do is heat the bed back up. Annoying!

 

Second, the awkward manual nozzle purging procedure after a filament change from a higher to a lower temperature filament could be made easier if the "Move" command did not reset the manually set head temperature. The head temperature could still revert to idle after an inactivity timeout or similiar, as long as the nozzle stays at the manually set temperature during filament operation. We do not have a material station so i can't speak for that.

 

I don't mind the destroyed buildtak, it was lessons learned. You may be glad to hear that the levelling worked perfectly with the third party surfaces (still using a PEI buildtak for PLA which is not taking noticeable damage at those temps), until the 270°C hot nozzle dug into the 120°C surface which I only tried based on user reviews of the buildtak. Now I know. Which is fine!

 

I am questioning the sanity of heating up the nozzles before levelling and then letting them cool down during the levelling process just to heat them back up. It seems to me that thermal expansion of such a small volume of metal can't be the driving factor to have them heat up in the first place. I realize (now) that you don't support the use of aftermarket surfaces, and there are a lot of factors that i was and am still unaware of (e.g. the mentioned EMF with the capacitve sensor etc.) and by no means do i wish to sound overly critical.

 

It just *appeared* to me that there was not much focus on speedy print cycle turnover and flexibility vs. achieving a robust and steady workflow so i wanted to make that voice heard.

 

Either way happy holidays and a great new year to all of you, great product , don't work too hard until january 🙂

 

[jkcz 12]

On 12/20/2019 at 11:38 AM, sono said:

Glad to hear you take this so seriously, I am sure i will post more a detailed follow-up come the new year.

 

As noted it's mostly about the forced bed cooldown cycle where the fw forces one to wait for the bed to go below 60°C before it starts the next print cycle (for safety reasons?) which i have taken physical measures to speed up, using the fan from a nearby soldering station, which is a little ludicrous. It would be good if there was a user friendly manual override or a configurable cooldown end temperature.

When I have safely and cleanly removed a print I would want to start the next cycle, having to wait instead for the machine to cool down further is quite annoying as it can take several minutes for the bed to cool down even with fanning. Consider that all of this is done with the knowledge that the next thing the machine will do is heat the bed back up. Annoying!

 

Second, the awkward manual nozzle purging procedure after a filament change from a higher to a lower temperature filament could be made easier if the "Move" command did not reset the manually set head temperature. The head temperature could still revert to idle after an inactivity timeout or similiar, as long as the nozzle stays at the manually set temperature during filament operation. We do not have a material station so i can't speak for that.

 

I don't mind the destroyed buildtak, it was lessons learned. You may be glad to hear that the levelling worked perfectly with the third party surfaces (still using a PEI buildtak for PLA which is not taking noticeable damage at those temps), until the 270°C hot nozzle dug into the 120°C surface which I only tried based on user reviews of the buildtak. Now I know. Which is fine!

 

I am questioning the sanity of heating up the nozzles before levelling and then letting them cool down during the levelling process just to heat them back up. It seems to me that thermal expansion of such a small volume of metal can't be the driving factor to have them heat up in the first place. I realize (now) that you don't support the use of aftermarket surfaces, and there are a lot of factors that i was and am still unaware of (e.g. the mentioned EMF with the capacitve sensor etc.) and by no means do i wish to sound overly critical.

 

It just *appeared* to me that there was not much focus on speedy print cycle turnover and flexibility vs. achieving a robust and steady workflow so i wanted to make that voice heard.

 

Either way happy holidays and a great new year to all of you, great product , don't work too hard until january 🙂

 

I have the same complaints since the last update I performed, seems like a waste of time since we print a lot of CPE and PC and it takes a while to heat up the build plate. Regarding the Buildtak, we use the Ultimaker Adhesion Stickers and the same thing happens with those; the nozzle melts holes in them and like you said it seems unnecessary to preheat everything so hot. @SandervG I think it would be simple to change the logic to use the buildplate/nozzle temps from the upcoming print but max out at 70 or 80C on the bed and 230C on the nozzles.

[robinmdh 100]

happy holidays, After the vacation I'll be sure to discuss this between the 3 printer firmware teams. Though I don't think it will be all that easy, putting a max on the probing temperature is not difficult but between all the different materials and wanting to be able to push trough blobs left on the nozzle from the current or a previous material without destroying any adhesion aids might be tricky.

I do agree that it's a shame we can't keep the hotends heated during all of the probing. Though if the cool-down of the metal from the hotend influences the leveling position significantly we could also compensate by calculating the lost expansion due to the temperature difference.

 

[Gero 54]

Just had the first test run with a buildtak print surface. 
I had the exact same problem, so I searched for a solution here in the forum. 

The nozzle making holes into the buildtak additional surface is not really ideal. what I would love to see is an option within the menu (using an ultimaker s3) to choose between different print-surfaces.  this way you could choose maybe a glass (standard), buildtak, others... after that the printer knows on which surface he prints on, so that the starting routine could be the right one depending on the surface material. 

[Jonas98 19]

On 12/19/2019 at 3:49 PM, sono said:

 

Please please please allow us to:

- First and foremost: Make the "Skip cooldown" option actually skip the bed cooldown cycle! If I have removed a failed print from a 110°C bed I would like to start over without waiting for a full cycle. (i started using a 12V fan because it takes ages otherwise....!)

 

👍 Exactly what I need too

[Link 34]

@robinmdh i know this has been mentioned before but please can we have a someway to see more information on the display, like layer number, be able to adjust retraction on the fly etc, i understand you don't want this available by default but an 'engineering mode' so people who want to see it can would be really really good !. Having this basic print info missing on the display is really lacking compared to even a £200 Chinese printer. It just makes debugging print issues so much harder !

 

Also, is there a way to stop a a disabled print core heating up during the bed level process, i have my second core disabled (but still in the print head) for single extrusion prints, but during the bed level process this core still has to heat up to over 200deg just to do a single probe at the start of the sequence, why does this need to happen and also if that core is disabled in cura when does it prob at all ?, i would rather that core wasn't heat cycles for no reason, that will def add to its potential lifespan.

 

many thanks

 

 

[Jonas98 19]

2 hours ago, Link said:

@robinmdh i know this has been mentioned before but please can we have a someway to see more information on the display, like layer number, be able to adjust retraction on the fly etc, i understand you don't want this available by default but an 'engineering mode' so people who want to see it can would be really really good !. Having this basic print info missing on the display is really lacking compared to even a £200 Chinese printer. It just makes debugging print issues so much harder !

 

Also, is there a way to stop a a disabled print core heating up during the bed level process, i have my second core disabled (but still in the print head) for single extrusion prints, but during the bed level process this core still has to heat up to over 200deg just to do a single probe at the start of the sequence, why does this need to happen and also if that core is disabled in cura when does it prob at all ?, i would rather that core wasn't heat cycles for no reason, that will def add to its potential lifespan.

 

many thanks

 

 

 

first:

I agree

 

second:

I also asked this and its to melt Material that maybe stick on the noozle and would "crash" into the bed while the auto bed niveling.

 

 

[robinmdh 100]

We've been discussing adding an experimental features  tab in the settings where you can turn on stuff like this by choice, that might allow us to do things like this but it does mean that the amount of corner cases we have to test rises exponentially... , in the mean time you could try this patch for layer height:

The post above was also meant to show you the printer sw is still fairly easy to modify.
The patch was not perfect though, now the layers are still shown when the print has finished successfully, etc.

 

[robinmdh 100]

On 1/24/2020 at 8:27 AM, Link said:

Also, is there a way to stop a a disabled print core heating up during the bed level process, i have my second core disabled (but still in the print head) for single extrusion prints, but during the bed level process this core still has to heat up to over 200deg just to do a single probe at the start of the sequence, why does this need to happen and also if that core is disabled in cura when does it prob at all ?, i would rather that core wasn't heat cycles for no reason, that will def add to its potential lifespan.

I don't think heating up the nozzle has any significant impact to it's lifespan, our stress tests show very little wear/tear from continuously extruding (non abrasive materials, so no copper fill or carbon fill) material and being hot, though I don't think we've specifically done heat up/cool-down cycle testing. The material inside the nozzle will degrade by being heated up though and repeated heat ups without use can cause clogs, this seems very rare. The new purge behavior helps a lot in this regard.

 

 

[Link 34]

On 1/30/2020 at 12:46 PM, robinmdh said:

I don't think heating up the nozzle has any significant impact to it's lifespan, our stress tests show very little wear/tear from continuously extruding (non abrasive materials, so no copper fill or carbon fill) material and being hot, though I don't think we've specifically done heat up/cool-down cycle testing. The material inside the nozzle will degrade by being heated up though and repeated heat ups without use can cause clogs, this seems very rare. The new purge behavior helps a lot in this regard.

 

 

 

 

 

when you say new purge behaviour what are you referring to ?

 

thanks

 

[robinmdh 100]

On 2/1/2020 at 8:36 AM, Link said:

when you say new purge behaviour what are you referring to ?

I mean  the new purge material next to the buildplate behavior we build for the material station. This is currently not being used on a standalone S5/UM/S3 etc.

 

This is done to create a more consistent tip on the filament when it is being unloaded and makes sure you start with the material you intended to when loading. But it also helps because when you purge between the same material we at least get rid of the degraded material in the tip of the nozzle. This reduces clogs because without the added pressure of extruding close to the buildplate it is easier to get rid of hardened/carbonized plastic.

Edited February 3, 2020 by robinmdh

[Link 34]

59 minutes ago, robinmdh said:

I mean  the new purge material next to the buildplate behavior we build for the material station. This is currently not being used on a standalone S5/UM/S3 etc.

 

This is done to create a more consistent tip on the filament when it is being unloaded and makes sure you start with the material you intended to when loading. But it also helps because when you purge between the same material we at least get rid of the degraded material in the tip of the nozzle. This reduces clogs because without the added pressure of extruding close to the buildplate it is easier to get rid of hardened/carbonized plastic.

 

Ok, thanks. This purge function sounds useful. Will it be added to a standalone S5 ?

[AndrejV 1]

I’m would also like more freedom. Moving from UM2+ to S3 feels like getting a slower less flexible printer regarding basic operation handling.

 

1.) It would be great to let users change the filament or print core without the need to wait for the print bed cooldown. This is total unnecessary and takes up precious time when print bead is at >100°C with technical materials. Probably the best option would be to let us abort the cool down wait if we want to. 

 

2.) I mostly use technical materials like ABS, ASA… with the old UM2+ you could store the custom material parameters and names in the printer, I was unable to do this in S3. I have to use ABS now as a base and tweak the settings to get the printer to work. I was certain when purchasing the S3 the material library in Cura can be downloaded to the printer. If this is not an option please let us create our own materials on the printer, while your materials are nice, you don’t have quite some high-tech materials in your offering.

 

3.) I get it you supply the printer with a glass print surface, but while this is ok for PLA it cannot be used for large ABS, ASA and similar prints. It is impossible to get the right adhesion to get the print to stick on the whole build plate and if you manage to get it to stick with hair spray or using your adhesion sheet and the print is big it’s impossible to get it off afterwards. So, we must use third party magnetic build plates that can be removed and then bend to get the print off. We mostly print large items in our company with large footprint at build plate level. So, it would be nice to have an option to select custom build plates, and store height calibration for each separate and NOT perform the height calibration on every single print, this is fully un-necessary and again takes time.

 

Overall, it’s a nice printer, but I hope there will be some firmware options added soon.

[gr5 2,229]

On the UM3 and S5 you can do #1.  I'm 90% sure it's the same on the S3.  

 

There is a lever on the feeder.  Just lift it all the way up and then you can slide out one filament and slide in another.  Then you should be able to go to the menu where you can see the materials and select the left or right material then the "..." button in upper right corner and tell the printer what the new material is (if you changed for example from pla to nylon).  Then I usually, in that same "..." menu choose "move material" which heats the nozzle back up and lets you spin the knob to extrude material to clear out all the old material.

 

If the replaced material is higher temp then I do the "move material" first to clear it all out at the higher temperature before telling the printer that it now has the new material.

 

[gr5 2,229]

By the way, after a print is done it lets the head cool an exact amount and then retracts the filament.  This is to get to the right temperature so that the filament is both not-stuck in the head in case you want to change cores, but also cool enough so you don't get annoying strings in the bowden which can cause problems.  But this cooldown is short - maybe 30 seconds.  Not so bad.

[nallath 1,124]

18 hours ago, AndrejV said:

2.) I mostly use technical materials like ABS, ASA… with the old UM2+ you could store the custom material parameters and names in the printer, I was unable to do this in S3. I have to use ABS now as a base and tweak the settings to get the printer to work. I was certain when purchasing the S3 the material library in Cura can be downloaded to the printer. If this is not an option please let us create our own materials on the printer, while your materials are nice, you don’t have quite some high-tech materials in your offering.

 

Cura synchronises materials with your printer. Even custom made ones.

[AndrejV 1]

Thanks for your answers,

 

Regarding material synchronization my problems was I was using Cura 4.4. Updating to Cura 4.5 fixed the problem regarding material synchronization. So, this is something to keep in mind Version 4.5 is a must for S4 and S5 as I found out... I now even could download the Fillamentum ASA material directly from your internet materials database which is nice.

 

As for the cooling time: Nozzle cool down is not the problem and as “gr5” mentioned is fast. The problem is the printer waiting for the build plate cooldown. This takes ages from 110 or 120°C, and what would be nice users could skip. First It takes a lot of time when you cannot do anything over the printer UI. Second when you remove the part and want to start another you must again wait for the build plate to heat up. I’m using 5.3.10 Firmware.

 

I also encountered a bug regarding build plate start position. When manually driving the build plate to the up position, and forgetting it there when you start a new print job the printer would forcefully ram the build plate into the head and abort the print, stating calibration could not be performed. But I’m scared to repeat this not to damage the printer.

[DC852 0]

6 hours ago, nallath said:

Cura synchronises materials with your printer. Even custom made ones.

Is it possible to set the customize material on different colors as well.

I do a lot of due color print in my S5 pro bundle, (99% I use PLA but different color combination)

If there is any button to choose when I install the filament in the material station, this would be nice.

 

[ma10im 1]

On 12/19/2019 at 3:49 PM, sono said:

Please please please allow us to:

- First and foremost: Make the "Skip cooldown" option actually skip the bed cooldown cycle! If I have removed a failed print from a 110°C bed I would like to start over without waiting for a full cycle. (i started using a 12V fan because it takes ages otherwise....!)

 

Same here! Would save a lot of precious time!

[sono 4]

Alright, it's been a while.

 

Thinking about it, i understand that we are not being offered this option as it would put some liability on UM and potentially cause issues with machine safety guidlines. At least that is my interpretation of the silence.

 

I have taken it upon myself to patch the "safe cooldown" value from 60 to 100. If you want to do that, knowing that it's in the Qt UI (Okuda) not in the printer controller (griffin) might safe you some time (certainly took me longer than it should have digging through griffin to figure out that it's not there.)

 

Doing so is entirely at your own risk, may cause injuries or fire, violate confirmity, void warranty, or cause nuclear war.

 

However, it is quite trivial to accomplish. So if you feel lucky, go head. It's just one value. It's easy to find. No side effects.

 

[sj3fk3 22]

19 hours ago, sono said:

I have taken it upon myself to patch the "safe cooldown" value from 60 to 100. If you want to do that, knowing that it's in the Qt UI (Okuda) not in the printer controller (griffin) might safe you some time (certainly took me longer than it should have digging through griffin to figure out that it's not there.)

 

I could look into making it a variable within some kind of advanced user-setting menu. 

 

[glohr 0]

The S3 is a really gorgeous printer. I love its elegant design, which would rather fit into a showcase than a workshop. But what really impresses me is its robustness, reliability, flexibilty and speed. With an S3 you may forget that 3D printing previously was a tedious process of trial and error. Now it is more like laser printing of some text on a piece of paper. Send your print job and after some time get the work object from your printer.

The only thing, which really bothers us are the forced breaks, mainly for cooling down - as already mentioned above. We all have lost so much time waiting in the process between prints, for exchange of filament and exchange of print cores.

In view of this my suggestions are:

1. You may make an expert mode without such (or at least with reduced) breaks - this mode may only be enabled by an administrator. If necessary, I would sign any document that Ultimaker is not liable for burnt fingers and other damages. 
2. You may allow for more remote control (via Cura or via browser), e.g. remote confirm removal of printed object. Normally, we remove a printed object and insert a new glass plate. Then the printer is ready for a new job. Actually, we have to wait for a couple of minutes afterwards, until we can confirm on the display that the object was removed. It would be a great help to do this remote. I believe there is no risk as you can see at least a part of the build plate by the camera.
3. It would be great to have some improvements in printing queue management. First, I would like to have priorities. A scale from 1 to 9 may be perfect, but high and low would also be an improvement. Sorting the queue by setting individual jobs on top is complex if you have a long queue as we normally have. 

These improvements would make a perfect printer from an already excellent printer.