S5 Pro Bundle - Material NOT unloading from PrintCore after 5.7.2 firmware update

[CTotten 18]

UPDATE:  I have now tried 2 prints since I updated to 5.7.2, and both have failed in the same way.  At the end of a spool, the material is "stuck" in printcore, so it cannot change spools.  The wizard does appear, but even after freeing the stuck material from the printcore, it does not fully unload, causing an ER61 error, and a lost print.  I installed 5.7.2 because I thought "Great, I will save a few cents per print since it doesn't prime as much material, especially when printing with the same color material over and over".  Well, at this point, I have lost about $125 worth of material in the two failed prints!!!  This is a job that I have printed dozens of times over the last few months with no issues.  In the two weeks prior to this, I have had atleast 5 material changeovers in the Material Station with no issues.  At this point, I want to roll the firmware back to the previous version because I don't trust this machine now, and I have work to finish.

____

 

I installed the latest firmware (5.7.2) yesterday.  I started a print, and all seemed well.  When I get to work this morning, the print was paused saying the current spool did not unload due to being stuck in the printhead.  It took me into the Wizard, and walked me through a couple of steps to free the material.  The procedure says to release the bowden tube at the top of the printcore, and then cut the material.  As I was trying to free pull the end of the bowden tube, the material pulled free from the printcore, so I didn't cut it.   With the material now released, I continued but it stopped unloading when the free end got the feeder, and gave me an ER61 error.  So the Wizard worked (sort of), but didn't save the print.

 

Also, on the ER61 page, it seems to give you two options if the material did not fully unload.  One is if the material is visible outside of the Material Station, and the other is if it isn't visible.  In the case of it being outside the Material Station, it seems to imply I should be pulling the material out through the small tube before the Decoupler.  In my case, there was about 15 inches of material past the Decoupler.  It seemed to work fine to pull the material "forward" through the Decoupler (I removed the input line to the Feeder).  Perhaps you should update that troubleshooting page to indicate options that include the material being stuck in the Feeder.

Edited June 23, 2020 by CTotten
Updated for second failure from same condition

[CTotten 18]

On 6/18/2020 at 8:47 AM, CTotten said:

I installed the latest firmware (5.7.2) yesterday.  I started a print, and all seemed well.  When I get to work this morning, the print was paused saying the current spool did not unload due to being stuck in the printhead.  It took me into the Wizard, and walked me through a couple of steps to free the material.  That released the material from the printhead, but it stopped unloading when the end got the feeder, and through an ER61.  So the Wizard worked, but didn't save the print.

 

Also, on the ER61 page, it seems to give you two options if the material did not fully unload.  One is if the material is visible outside of the Material Station, and the other is if it isn't visible.  In the case of it being outside the Material Station, it seems to imply I should be pulling the material out through the small tube before the Decoupler.  In my case, there was about 15 inches of material past the Decoupler.  It seemed to work fine to pull the material "forward" through the Decoupler (I removed the input line to the Feeder).  Perhaps you should update that troubleshooting page to indicate options that include the material being stuck in the Feeder.

One thing that I did notice after the fact.

The machine should have been doing a material change.  There was absolutely NO filament pieces on the bottom of the printer, meaning it did

[CTotten 18]

[CTotten 18]

I may have it working now.  Very frustrating, but I removed both print cores to check them, swapped their positions, and re-did the X/Y calibration.  Both sides loaded and unloaded properly.  I re-started the previous print job that the failures occurred on, and started with about 2 feet of filament left inside the material station after loading, to force early material changes.  Material 1 just went through its material change just fine.  Material 2 will be changing over fairly soon, so I will update after that.

 

While I had not touched the PrintCores in months, I did have failure last week where the BreakAway did not bond to the printbed well, and a big chunk of it came loose during the print and caused all kinds of problems (including several large axis shifts during the print, presumably from collisions between the Print Head and the loose BreakAway section).  I am now wonder if that jarred the PrintCore enough that was not positioned correctly in the PrintHead, and that a misalignment was the cause of the material sticking in the PrintCore (but not enough to cause loading problems)?  I guess we will see.

 

And I seem to have bad timing (or luck) with Firmware changes.  This is the second time I have had "new" issues right after installing new firmware, but the firmware was not really the cause...

[tabiznet 3]

I have had the same problem. The wizard never comes up and I have to power the machine down and slowly pull the filament out of the material station. It's happened twice now.

[CTotten 18]

On the third attempt, after swapping PrintCores, both extruder 1 and 2 went through the normal material change (end of spool) process without any interaction from me.  However, when extruder 1 went through the end of spool process a second time, I got the wizard again. 

 

This time I followed the directions precisely (including leaving 5mm of material out of the Bowden tube when I cut it off), and it seems to have saved the print.  The material unloaded, the next spool loaded, and the print resumed.  The first time through the wizard, I do not think I cut off the end of the filament that came out of the PrintCore, plausibly being the reason it stuck in the feeder.  The second time through the wizard I don't remember what I did, but it didn't work.

 

So I am still left with this:

In 18 months with the S5 (4 months with the Pro Bundle), I have NEVER had material stick in the PrintCore during unloading (end of spool, end of print, or changing material).  Since installing firmware 5.7.2, this have happened 3 out of 5 times on CPE material in PrintCore 1 (3 out of 4 times on end of spool, and 0 out of 1 on an end of print - X/Y calibration); 0 out of 2 times on BreakAway material on PrintCore 2.  I understand that 5.7.2 did make some changes to the material priming/depriming process.  Can you please look into this?  Is it not heating the PrintCore as much?  Is it not pulling as hard as it used to?  If the Pro Bundle can no longer reliably change over spools when it runs out, then it lost it's "value added" to me and my company.  We purchased the Pro Bundle to maximize printer up-time.  If I have to baby-sit material change overs, including pulling the Bowden tube out of the PrintHead, then I might as well just remove the Material Station from the system.

 

Also, I am "eager" to see if the process of freeing the stuck material has caused a layer (X/Y axis) shift in the print.  Since the PrintHead does not re-home after this process, there is a high likelihood that the actions the Wizard had me take to free the material inadvertently moved the PrintHead, inserting a bias in the coordinate system.  This would potentially cause another failed print, since it will not meet the customer's quality inspection.  I am holding my breath on this one....

Edited June 23, 2020 by CTotten

[CTotten 18]

20 hours ago, tabiznet said:

I have had the same problem. The wizard never comes up and I have to power the machine down and slowly pull the filament out of the material station. It's happened twice now.

The Wizard is new for firmware 5.7.2, so if you didn't update recently, you likely don't have it.  For me, this issue only started happening after updating to firmware 5.7.2.

[tabiznet 3]

2 hours ago, CTotten said:

The Wizard is new for firmware 5.7.2, so if you didn't update recently, you likely don't have it.  For me, this issue only started happening after updating to firmware 5.7.2.

I'm on 5.7.2. Thats when it started for me as well

[CTotten 18]

3 hours ago, CTotten said:

Also, I am "eager" to see if the process of freeing the stuck material has caused a layer (X/Y axis) shift in the print.  Since the PrintHead does not re-home after this process, there is a high likelihood that the actions the Wizard had me take to free the material inadvertently moved the PrintHead, inserting a bias in the coordinate system.  This would potentially cause another failed print, since it will not meet the customer's quality inspection.  I am holding my breath on this one....

I got lucky.  I do not see a noticable layer shift.  Finally something is going my way...

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @CTotten thank you for your detailed descriptions, very helpful! I will share your findings with our products experts and get back with you. 

[CTotten 18]

1 hour ago, SandervG said:

Hi @CTotten thank you for your detailed descriptions, very helpful! I will share your findings with our products experts and get back with you. 

Thanks.  One more update.  The print finally finished, and the material in both PrintCores (#1 - UM CPE; #2 - UM BreakAway) successfully unloaded.

[SandervG 1,521]

Thank you for the update. I've passed on your feedback regarding the wizard and we'll take it into account. Regarding the ER61 messages you are getting; while optimizing the procedures for faster prime-deprime between material changes we are reducing margins for the benefit of time. Within an acceptable range of course. But these Ultimaker profiles is not where we predicted any increased risk and should still be as stable as before. 

 

If you have encountered another ER61 error message, would you be willing to share the log files with us via this link?  Our product experts would be able to take a look. But let's hope it was just an unfortunate sequence of incidents. 

[CTotten 18]

I just went through another End of Spool material change, and it worked (PrintCore1 with CPE).  So I guess I am 2 for 5, in terms of successful spool changes (no interaction from me) since updating to 5.7.2.  But I was watching the temperature graphs.  I was a bit surprised when I noticed that the S5 didn't start pulling the material until the PrintCore temp got down to like 75 or 80 C.  I am not sure if this is "expected" behavior, but that seems to be doing a "cold pull".  While I understand you are basically doing that at the end of a print to keep the tip of the material formed from the next job, I am wondering if this is required at the end of a spool of material?  The machine can't use the remaining filament, so the shape of the tip is immaterial.  And it sits idle for 2 to 3 minutes while it cools down to that temp.  For the case of a mid-print material change (if you are concerned with how long it takes), why don't you pull the material from a warmer print core.  This will speed up the process, put less stress on the machine (compared to a cold pull), and minimize any risk of the material getting stuck in the print core.

 

The screen shot was taken a few seconds after the S5 began retracting the material for the material change.

Edited June 29, 2020 by CTotten

[Carla_Birch 116]

The problem with unloading even if its the end of the spool is if it's not done right you stand the risk of the tip being more of the filament then a real thin part then a small chunk of filament what can break off and get stuck in the feeder or in another part. What then stops you being able to load new filament and means you need to strip things down to remove the little part of filament.

[SandervG 1,521]

I believe there are 3 reasons why it happens like that. For one, the reason @Carla_Birch mentions, that a hot pull will create a string which can get stuck in the feeder or in the bowden tube and generate additional, unwanted friction. The second reason is, besides avoiding any thin strings stuck in the bowden tube or feeder, you also want a clean tip so it passes the feeder and decoupler. And third, a cold pull also contributes to cleaning the nozzle and reducing the amount of filament that is left in there for your next print job, with a possible different filament. 

 

Hope this helps! 

[CTotten 18]

One more update.  The last print did another end of spool change, which worked.  But, at the end of the print, I got the wizard again saying the material is stuck in the printcore and unable to unload.  The wizard worked, but....

 

I am still planning to roll back to the previous firmware version.  Since updating to 5.7.2, I am about 50% on the material unloading from the printcore.  This never happened before the firmware update.  I understand the changes made in 5.7.2 were to reduce wasted filament and time during material changes; however, I have wasted 10X more material and time with the issues caused then from the previous firmware's excessive priming and de-priming cycle.  And lets me honest, we are talking about several minutes of time and a few cents worth of material that were "wasted" in the previous version...

[SandervG 1,521]

Ok, in the end you have to chose what works best for you. If that is the previous version, then you should roll back to that one. We're keeping an eye out for more feedback so we can investigate if this became an issue for more users, where it wasn't before. 

 

On 7/2/2020 at 6:15 PM, CTotten said:

And lets me honest, we are talking about several minutes of time and a few cents worth of material that were "wasted" in the previous version...

 

I agree, but regardless it was pretty consistent feedback that we've received. 

[CTotten 18]

On 7/8/2020 at 4:40 AM, SandervG said:

I agree, but regardless it was pretty consistent feedback that we've received. 

Thanks for keeping an eye on this one.

[CTotten 18]

On 7/8/2020 at 4:40 AM, SandervG said:

Ok, in the end you have to chose what works best for you. If that is the previous version, then you should roll back to that one. We're keeping an eye out for more feedback so we can investigate if this became an issue for more users, where it wasn't before.

I saw there was a 5.7.3 firmware just released.  In the release notes, it mentions a fix to an "end of filament" bug.  Is that related to my issue?

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi, no it isn't. It is related to a few people where the end of filament was detected, but a new spool of the same material was not activated. But it is possible that it had an affect on your issue. The issues you experienced were not 'standard' for other users. Since you already rolled back, perhaps when you have a window to make some test prints or when you have some more flexibility you could give it a try. 

[jirodriguez72 18]

I have the exact same issue with material unloading and it is really annoying. I would 100% agree with CTotten that it destroys the value of the material station for our company. We have prints that run for 5 or 6 days and we are usually using CF Nylon ($85/500g) or GF Nylon ($65/500g), and Aquasys120 ($100/500g). One print will run through 2+ spools of the CF Nylon and about 3/4 of a spool of Aquasys120.

 

We try to take advantage of weekends and overnight times to let the printer run, but if the filament gets stuck trying to unload because it cooled down to much on a Friday evening we loose the entire weekend of run time. Or even worse is we lose the run time and then the wizard has issues and we lose the print which can be upwards of $200 worth of filament.

 

I get that you guys want to dummy proof this system but you should give users the option to adjust that temperature to ensure the filament unloads properly every time. We specifically bought the material station to be able to run multi-day prints with little to no user input and this "feature" makes it useless for that purpose.

[tomnagel 126]

The materials that you have problems with are third party materials.  Do they have a profile in the Market Place, and are these compatible with the material station?

If you experience unloading problems you should ask the supplier of the material for help. 
Ultimaker gives (software) tooling to suppliers of filament that helps them create optimal profiles. One of the things that has to be tuned is the deprime settings. 
When you have ER61 issues, it may be due to a non optimal material profile. 

[jirodriguez72 18]

On 4/29/2023 at 5:14 PM, tomnagel said:

The materials that you have problems with are third party materials.  Do they have a profile in the Market Place, and are these compatible with the material station?

If you experience unloading problems you should ask the supplier of the material for help. 
Ultimaker gives (software) tooling to suppliers of filament that helps them create optimal profiles. One of the things that has to be tuned is the deprime settings. 
When you have ER61 issues, it may be due to a non optimal material profile. 

The setting that is causing this issue is part of the printer firmware, meaning it can not be accessed or changed by the user. No matter what you set your profile to if you watch the temp on the hot end after a print it will cool it down to almost 100C before trying to pull the filament. This might work for non-composite materials okay but for the composite materials that print much hotter they get stuck in the hot end about 90% of the time. 

 

Seeing that we paid thousands of dollars for the material station it seems like at the very least we should have the option to adjust that setting to ensure that it's working for us. It's kind of like buying a sports car and finding out you can't drive faster than 50 mph.

[tomnagel 126]

2 hours ago, jirodriguez72 said:

The setting that is causing this issue is part of the printer firmware, meaning it can not be accessed or changed by the user. No matter what you set your profile to if you watch the temp on the hot end after a print it will cool it down to almost 100C before trying to pull the filament.

This is not true, it is a setting in the material profile. This should be tuned by the material supplier, they supply the profiles and we put them in the market place. 
The setting is not exposed in the front end of Cura. That is not to make your life hard, we make that choice because the deprime process is very hard to get right. We don’t think it is a good idea that customers start experimenting with these values themselves, that’s why we ask suppliers of the filament to do it. 

However, we still sell an open system, and if you want, you can. 

open your cura config folder (under help)

go to the materials folder

find your material profile and open it in a text editor

find the line with break temperature 

Change it, and increase the version number of the profile (around line 15)
Restart Cura, and sync the profile with the printer

beware that your version will now be out of sync with what the supplier is doing. 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2023 by tomnagel