S5 Mods/Upgrades/Improvements

[Gero 54]

I am using the Ultimaker Nylon for almost 90% of my prints in the S3.
As I sell those printed parts to costumers, I needed a good quality and reliable bed adhesion. 
So I am using the Filafarm flex solution. 

But the key for the right adhesion without warping and super easy removal is the bed temperature for me.  40°C is the sweet spot there. For small parts I add some Magigoo PA, but for most prints a clean bed is already enough. 
With the bed temperature cura suggest for the material profile, I often get warping parts...

[mkaj2019 41]

On 11/23/2020 at 7:09 PM, Gero said:

I am using the Ultimaker Nylon for almost 90% of my prints in the S3.
As I sell those printed parts to costumers, I needed a good quality and reliable bed adhesion. 
So I am using the Filafarm flex solution. 

But the key for the right adhesion without warping and super easy removal is the bed temperature for me.  40°C is the sweet spot there. For small parts I add some Magigoo PA, but for most prints a clean bed is already enough. 
With the bed temperature cura suggest for the material profile, I often get warping parts...

 

I can confirm that. Higher bed temps then 60°C lead to a lot of warping

Edited July 20, 2021 by mkaj2019

[mkaj2019 41]

I have made some new modifications/updates to our S5:

 

 

1. We bought a top enclosure made by Accante. The quality is very poor and the edges of the PMMA plates have a lot of cracks from the laser cutting process. But it is still half the price of the Ultimaker air manager.

 

2. I removed the internal USB camera and replaced it with a ELP usb camera looking down from the top. I tried a few different ELP cameras. I think it depends on the 30FPS resolution of YUY2 encoding of the camera how high the resolution in cura is.

It does not matter if you buy a FullHD MPEG camera if the YUV2 resolution is only 640x480, you will get only 640x480 in cura. With a 170° Fisheye lens  the view area is already very large and the whole build plate is always visible.

 

3. I have purchased a cheap air quality sensor on aliexpress to check some of the 3D printer emissions. 

4. I have build a scraper using a hobby knife chisel blade to remove material blobs from the 2nd nozzle.

This was necessary especially with constantly oozing breakaway filament. The oozing is causing issues with the leveling heigth of the 2nd extruder at the beginning of a print. The algorithm for the autobed leveling is total garbage. It first heats up both nozzles. And while the first nozzle is mesh leveling the second nozzle is cooling down again. Then when it swaps to the 2nd nozzle for the quick 3 point leveling the 2nd nozzle is cold and a oozed material blob under the nozzle causes the algorithm to think that the nozzle is 1mm lower than it actually is. When the print is starting the breakaway nozzle is suddenly 1mm to high and the first layer for the support material fails.

 

The real fix for this issue would be to fix the algorithm and to leave the nozzles always cool while leveling. It is no problem to clean the nozzle before starting a print but it cannot be cleaned when the print head is moving. 

 

 

More pictures:

 

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by mkaj2019

[Carbon 28]

The thermometer inside the printer, how much difference is there compared to the Digital Factory readings?

 

I'm curious....

 

Edited July 20, 2021 by Carbon

[Smithy 1,144]

This kind of thermometer is still my favorite 🙂 

[mkaj2019 41]

 

On 7/20/2021 at 4:22 PM, Carbon said:

The thermometer inside the printer, how much difference is there compared to the Digital Factory readings?

 

I'm curious....

 

 

I cannot really say, i am still running my S5 with an old firmware 5.8.1 without these features. Because the printer is running everyday I cannot risk any downtime. Thats why I have not upgraded the printer for a long time (except for the bed leveling improvment firmware, which unfortunatly did not help at all). 

Edited July 21, 2021 by mkaj2019

[Gero 54]

On 7/20/2021 at 3:55 PM, mkaj2019 said:

 

 

This looks quite nice.

I was already thinking about something similar. My thought was about a nozzle wipe with every extruder switch rather than at the beginning because I have some oozing problems with 2 material prints...

 

Would you share this design of yours? I would like to make one with some sort of brass brush to clean the nozzles. This part would be great to start with since it seems to fit nicely next to the build platform.

[LePaul 321]

My work lab I manage now has 6 Ultimaker S5's.  We have them inside instrumented 3D Print Clean 870 Pro enclosures (https://www.3dprintclean.com/product-page/model-870-safety-enclosure)  We use the lower stand/cabinet area for the switch, UPS, rack server and hub for all the data we collect from prints (humidity, temps, multiple thermal and 4k footage we capture for the researchers).

 

It's been quite an adventure seeing my hobby turn into a full time job!

 

[mkaj2019 41]

12 hours ago, Gero said:

 

This looks quite nice.

I was already thinking about something similar. My thought was about a nozzle wipe with every extruder switch rather than at the beginning because I have some oozing problems with 2 material prints...

 

Would you share this design of yours? I would like to make one with some sort of brass brush to clean the nozzles. This part would be great to start with since it seems to fit nicely next to the build platform.

 

I really would like to share it, but I cannot find it anymore 😅. 

 

[CarloK 203]

Another of my favourite improvements for the Ultimaker printers is to extend the camera angle by adding a mirror to the opposite wall. The cheap IKEA mirror works great.

 

[mkaj2019 41]

14 hours ago, CarloK said:

Another of my favourite improvements for the Ultimaker printers is to extend the camera angle by adding a mirror to the opposite wall. The cheap IKEA mirror works great.

 

Really clever soultion!

Edited September 2, 2021 by mkaj2019