What is the MiniCalTest supposed to tell us?

[nighthowlers 2]

Hello,

 

I just bought a lightly used UM2 from a fellow community member (it has ~28 hours on it only, so like-new). I printed the MiniCalTest file that was on the factory card. I am not sure how I am supposed to interpret the test results? I see some stringing and for the wedge, I don't know what that's about.

 

Pictured below, please advise and is there any thing I can tune?

 

[SandervG 1,518]

Hi Nighthowler, thank you for your message and welcome to the community! 

Happy to hear you found an Ultimaker. 

 

The top minical test doesn't look too bad. You can see some stringing in between the pillars which could be something for you to look into to improve. This minical gives you an opportunity to see if your belts are tight enough (sharp corners), if your cooling is working (stringing, molten layers), and if your extrusion is on par. And it could show some other artefacts if something was not correct in your motion system. 

 

I am curious about the material. Did it come with your Ultimaker 2? If it did, it could be a rather old reel of PLA (a long time in the past we used to ship the Ultimaker 2 with a reel of Ultimaker blue PLA). If so, the age of the filament could have something to do with the stringing, and I would recommend to try a newer roll before you dive into the settings which might be dialed in correctly. 

 

Good luck! 

 

[nighthowlers 2]

7 hours ago, SandervG said:

I am curious about the material. Did it come with your Ultimaker 2? If it did, it could be a rather old reel of PL

 

@SandervG your guess is spot on. It did come with a roll of blue PLA and my guess is that it dates back to June 2014. 

 

I have ordered three rolls of Ultimaker materials and will test with that beforr tweaking anything.

 

I also printed the hollow tetrahedron (I think called line tetra) and it came out perfect with zero stringing. The retraction on it was perfect.

 

Thank you for sharing what the various fearures on the MiniCal meant!!