Added material station and S5 lost its mind

[uncle_bob 21]

Hi

 

Ok, here's what happened (as best I can recall .... it *was* 2AM in the morning):

 

1) Came down and spool A had finished. I had the same material in B,C,D and E. I had a different material in F. Only F was on extruder 2, the rest were on extruder 1. 

 

2) Message on the screen was Error 58(?)  see Ultimaker.com .... off I go and learn that a reboot is the only solution. This does not make me happy 😞. The print has been running for quite a while.  The message is talking about position A

 

3) I check all the things indicated on the web page and reboot the printer by unplugging everything and powering everything down. I then plug it all back together. 

 

4) That clears the issue on A. It then tries to load from B and errors out with one of several errors. Again the only option is to reboot. I do so and the same error pops up on B. I then unload B and it stops complaining about B. It then tries to load C. Up pops another 5x series error. Reboot again and the error is still there. Unload C and it goes away. Step and repeat for every single position. 

 

The biggest surprise was that the feeder that was *not* on extruder 1 also errors out. It was only after I unloaded it as well that I could get to any sort of screen to control the printer. Keep in mind that *everything* above was under firmware control on the printer. I did not start another print. I did not have any input to the printer in any way. 

 

My guess is that it was lonely and wanted to play at 2AM .... 🙂

 

Once all was unloaded and there were no more error messages, I called it a night. I reloaded in the morning and the print eventually completed. Since then this particular issue has not repeated its self.  Indeed position A now has failed, but that likely is something else entirely. 

 

Is there something I have not included? Of course there is !!!! 

 

There was more filament down in the feeder on portion E than there should have been. I must have manually feed a bit when loading that spool. How much? apparently enough to muck things up (3 or 4" maybe). Why it couldn't tell me to re-do E and be done with things ... no idea. Why this had an impact on F .. no idea. 

 

Another guess is that all the unplug / power up / power down cycles got it a bit confused. I probably cycled it 10 times total. 

 

Bob

[nickp100 1]

I wish the one that I mentioned earlier was the only problem with this printer,( as I was able to  print anyways). The Air Manager is a complete and utter brick. Even though it shows installed under maintenance the actual fan never kicks in. As a result, with the hood closed it clogged a brand new print core with filament. Even after we decided to print from then on with the hood open, we have had a myriad of issues with the material station. About 60% of the time the filament never makes into the print cores, and has to be fished out. In our current situation filament is stuck between the lower  decoupler (which is now stuck and cannot be removed) and the material station.

We  in the process of filing all those issues

All that seems like this machine was never meant to be released at this point and we all are beta testing for free!

Extremely dissappointed with this "pro" bundle

Edited January 27, 2020 by nickp100

[uncle_bob 21]

Hi

 

So far here, there have been zero issues with the air handler. It fires up when it should and goes off when things are done. The issue mentioned above on the material station was a one off and has never come back. There *is* now an issue with slot A on the material station ( = it no longer recognizes inserted filament). I have an email into the dealer that hopefully they will respond to "real soon now" about that.  I have over a hundred printing hours in on the material station at this point. Only two failures so far.  

 

One good story about the material station:

 

Last night I had a spool get tangled on position C. Normally this gets to a "grind it down" situation on an UM3. It should give you a filament error on the bare S5. The material station "happily" unloaded that spool and went on to the next one. Not a big deal, it's *supposed* to work that way. It's just nice to see it doing what it's supposed to do. 

 

Bob

Edited January 27, 2020 by uncle_bob

[greatg 0]

1 hour ago, nickp100 said:

I wish the one that I mentioned earlier was the only problem with this printer,( as I was able to  print anyways). The Air Manager is a complete and utter brick. Even though it shows installed under maintenance the actual fan never kicks in. As a result, with the hood closed it clogged a brand new print core with filament. Even after we decided to print from then on with the hood open, we have had a myriad of issues with the material station. About 60% of the time the filament never makes into the print cores, and has to be fished out. In our current situation filament is stuck between the lower  decoupler (which is now stuck and cannot be removed) and the material station.

We  in the process of filing all those issues

All that seems like this machine was never meant to be released at this point and we all are beta testing for free!

Extremely dissappointed with this "pro" bundle

 

I had a similar issue with the  air handler. Had Ultimaker tech support help out. The only solution was to replace it under warranty. A defective unit was the tech support conclusion.

[galaxy_xxxx 2]

On 1/14/2020 at 8:01 PM, D95 said:

 

 

 

 

Hello All,

 

got the same problem. The resolution was to powercycle the Material Station / S5 and after that I was able to unload the spool, take it out and take it in again.

 

Besides this, I use original PLA from UM witht he NFC chip. If two spools are to narrow to each other, one is not properly detected. If the spool is kind of exact in the middle position it is OK.

 

Cheers

 

DPX

Edited January 28, 2020 by galaxy_xxxx

[uncle_bob 21]

Hi

 

I have at least one NFC spool that simply will not "log in" on the Material Station. I keep meaning to run it down to the UM3 empire and see what they think about it. I've tried it in multiple slots multiple times and it simply does not get read. 

 

On a happier note: Another successful print yesterday and another chugging along today ....

 

Bob

[NK2W 2]

On 1/27/2020 at 2:55 PM, nickp100 said:

I wish the one that I mentioned earlier was the only problem with this printer,( as I was able to  print anyways). The Air Manager is a complete and utter brick. Even though it shows installed under maintenance the actual fan never kicks in. As a result, with the hood closed it clogged a brand new print core with filament. Even after we decided to print from then on with the hood open, we have had a myriad of issues with the material station. About 60% of the time the filament never makes into the print cores, and has to be fished out. In our current situation filament is stuck between the lower  decoupler (which is now stuck and cannot be removed) and the material station.

We  in the process of filing all those issues

All that seems like this machine was never meant to be released at this point and we all are beta testing for free!

Extremely dissappointed with this "pro" bundle

DITTO!

 

I installed an S5 Bundle several days ago and made ONE print using Cura 4.5, which printed beautifully. This morning I tried to print a second print of the same model and sadly got the dreaded ER52 error on the material station SUPPORT filament (No. 2) decoupler. Repeated reboots and attempts all failed.

 

Sure, I guess I COULD print by bypassing (disabling) the material station and printing as a stand-alone S5, but that's not what I paid nearly $10K for!

 

Given the myriad complaints about this problem I have to agree: this unit is NOT ready for prime time.

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @NK2W, thank you for your message. 

After you had the ER52 error message, did you only reboot or did you also follow the other instructions written here?

 

Did the other prints fail because you continued to get an ER52 or because of a different reason? 

With some more information I'm sure we'll be able to provide you with better tips to get back into 3D printing with the entire pro bundle. 

 

Thank you for your time, 

[NK2W 2]

1 hour ago, SandervG said:

Hi @NK2W, thank you for your message. 

After you had the ER52 error message, did you only reboot or did you also follow the other instructions written here?

 

Did the other prints fail because you continued to get an ER52 or because of a different reason? 

With some more information I'm sure we'll be able to provide you with better tips to get back into 3D printing with the entire pro bundle. 

 

Thank you for your time, 

YES, the ER52 message repeated but that was NOT actually the problem!

 

I finally found a broken piece of PVA filament NOT in the material station as the ER52 error indicated, but higher, in the Bowden tube -- between the decoupler and the Printer Feeder. I disconnected the Bowden tube directly beneath the #2 feeder and there it was. Pulled out the broken piece and was back in business.

 

That said, here's a message I received from Ultimaker support AFTER I located and corrected the problem: "...Ultimaker has identified some cases where PVA filament breaks when loaded in the Material Station. They are actively investigating the possibilities of reducing stress on the filament in the Ultimaker S5 Pro Bundle to decrease the chance of this issue happening. In the short term, they have stated that the issue can be circumvented by cutting off one meter of the PVA filament after each print job..."

 

So, it seems there is likely a serious hardware problem that needs to be rectified ASAP. This solution is obviously a workaround that under the right circumstances (repeated small part building for instance) can waste an unacceptable amount of expensive filament. Imagine discarding a meter of filament each build while the amount actually used in the project is far less. You could easily waste half the spool. Not cool. For now I'm NOT cutting away any PVA filament and if the error repeats, I'll just have to locate the break.

 

That said, I thank you for your suggestions and help, and wish to state that aside from this hopefully temporary problem, I LOVE the S5 Bundle when coupled with Cura. And now that I know the issue is a known problem, I can for a time, work around it.

 

It really is a great product overall.

[Andrew3DP 0]

Hi everyone.  This topic is actually what brought me to make and account and browse the forum today, so I thought I would just add my +1 to this as an end-user concern.

 

I have reached out to our reseller to ask about help with optimizing the start/end g-code to reduce the time and (in my opinion) excessive amount of filament being purged down the sides.  I snapped some video to share with the reseller.  It goes back and forth between 2 points and purges ~5-6 times at each location.

[SandervG 1,521]

Happy to hear you are satisfied with the product! I would like to distinguish a nuance between a hardware/product failure and a workflow where we've identified an element which can be improved/optimised. In any case the outcome is that it has our attention and our engineers are working on it. 

 

@Andrew3DP, I believe that in the next firmware release we have included a shorter priming sequence. Perhaps you can find some comfort in the knowledge that this is underway 🙂

 

Thank you, have a great day. 

[Starflashbully 5]

With the PVA, I have the same problem, that it breaks somewhere on the way to the hhotend. I don't want to cut a meter everytime I start a print, because the material isn't that cheap.

 

Best regards and stay healthy!

[D95 3]

Reporting back after some more time with my Material station/S5.

We use PLA and PVA on almost every print, as this is why we purchased the S5.

My younger associate has given up on the S5 with Material Station, and gone back to using our 2+. Young have no patience for things that do not work as expected.

 

For the time being, I have found the following process to be the only workaround that keeps our S5 and Material station operational with PVA.

I must apply this process starting after the very first first print, and with absolutely brand new Ultimaker PVA rolls going directly into the Material station to start.

1)  At the end of every print, I eject the active roll of PVA from the Material station, and  inspect the end.  If it is melted, I am good for the next step, if it is instead cleanly sheared off, then I would have to go into the Material Station and Bowden tubing system to fish out a missing piece(s) of PVA. Since running this process, there have been zero missing pieces to fish out of my Material station.

2) I remove the PVA roll from the station, THEN, if the end cannot be straightened without shattering all over the place, I remove and discard enough PVA material until it can be straightened without shattering.  IF THE PVA IS TOO BRITTLE TO STRAIGHTEN, DO NOT PUT IT BACK INTO YOUR MATERIAL STATION. If you do so, you will probably fail on the next print or two when it shatters trying to make some of the tighter turns in the material station and Bowden tube path.

Yes this is wasteful and expensive ,but I suspect this can be a temporary workaround.

 

Ultimaker,

I suspect that the current PVA formulation was optimized to avoid moisture absorption in the original open S3/S5 filament system.  I never had a PVA moisture problem using Ultimaker PVA materials before I added the material station.

If you are not already doing it, please consider developing a special PVA formulation for exclusive use in the Material station, where humidity is always controlled, that will ultimately be less susceptible to getting brittle. You cannot make the existing tubing turns less tight inside the material stations that you have already shipped, so developing a PVA that remains flexible seems like a more optimal solution to this nightmare.

This seemed less complex than my other idea of using the moisture from the dehumidifier to soften the brittle PVA as it passes by. I found that if I exhale hot wet breath onto the brittle PVA for a bit, it softens and becomes flexible enough again to straighten.Maybe there is a way to rejuvenate brittle PVA in line.

 

With that all said, once the PVA issues are resolved using the above work-around process, my Material Station has been behaving in a predicable way, and meeting our other objectives, such as automatic material changes for PLA rolls.  It still can be a little bit challenged sorting out the codes on newly installed reels, but that is a minor annoyance compared to sitting though a long prime cycle only to have your print fail trying to get PVA into Nozzle 2.

 

I will admit, that my Air Handler for our bundle is still sitting on the table, next to the printer. We have only been printing PLA/PVA, so the air handler is really not warranted. We did not need any more problems.  We are about to print some ABS, so probably going to give the air handler a go, now that the the Material station is in a somewhat stable place.

 

Regards, and stay safe.

 

 

 

 

[Navin2020 5]

do you/ have you ever opened the material station, how do you do this?

[wdvogel 1]

FWIW, I have a brand new Pro Bundle with the latest firmware (5.8.2). I have had very similar problems to those mentioned above while trying to print with the supplied spool of PVA in feeder/extruder 2. Three hours resetting and resetting the printer and material station from multiple extruder errors. Have not been able to complete the S5 Test Print without getting a plugged BB / PVA extruder2.

 

I believed one of the two main purposes of the material station was to maintain hydroscopic materials with the appropriate moisture level for printing. It is very disturbing to find out that it is a known fault for the past year, and yet it still mis-handles the PVA support material.

[Xpect 0]

Just browsing through the forums to confirm my concers. Natural PVA cannot be handled by the material station. Every 10-15 minutes there is a feeding error and the printer pauses. We have quite some issues with the MS. Also won't load BASF GF or CK fillaments.

[mgalo 0]

We just got our s5 pro bundle and the first hick up was that the pva material would not load. Like everyone else it had me turn the printer off. The first time I did it I did not know I had to disconnect the material station as well. However, the first time I turned the printer off I was able to get the pva out of bay f, but it gave me another error on bay a where I place the tough pla that the printer came in with. Every time I turned just the printer off it gave me this error, then I seen somewhere that to reboot the material station I had to disconnected, I did that as well. Well, guess what it did the same thing it kept giving me that error on bay a and the material was already loaded all the way up to the nozzle and it had already primed it self it was getting ready to prime print head 2 when all this errors happened. So, what I did I pulled the material out by hand from bay a and I realized that every time I turned the printer off the material station on bay a kept on trying to load the material when the material was already in there. After I pulled it out and load it again it did not gave me that error, and guess why the pva was not loading? there was a piece of broken filament in the bowden tube and we just got this machine, I do not know why they did not check for broken filament before sending a machine to someone. Now, I am afraid of turning off the printer because I have the filament in there loaded and if I turn it off I think is going to try to load it again. Not sure if anyone has had this problem.