Ultimakor 2 Maintenance

[ifti 0]

Im completely new to the world of 3D printing, and have yet to purchase my Ultimakor 2. However, whats involved in terms of maintenance??

1. Is a lot of maintenance required??

2. How often is it needed??

3. If I change the colour of the plastic, do I need to clean out the nozzle or just let it push through the new colour?

4. What other maintenance is needed??

5. Im not too good with DIY tools, and Ive read concerns on the nozzle 'breaking' and needing filing etc on the original Ultimakor. Is this a widespread issue on Ultimakors or is the 2nd generation nozzle more robust??

6. Are there any extra parts I should also be purchasing ie. sewing machine oil etc???

Sorry for so many questions!!

Many thanks in advance for your response.

 

[gr5 2,224]

Is a lot of maintenance required??

 

No but a lot of learning. However this forum will help you. As long as you post pictures of your failures and what settings you used we can tell you what to change.

Nozzles can get clogged. You have to be brave and take it apart. It's not hard - just scary and annoying. Dust can be a problem. All FDM 3D printers (printers with a nozzle) will have this problem sometimes.

I have only had 1 clog on my UM Original, and zero clogs on UM2 but others have had clogs.

 

If I change the colour of the plastic, do I need to clean out the nozzle or just let it push through the new colour?

 

Push it through.

 

[gadgetfreak 7]

If you stick to one type of plastic (PLA for example) I think you will have minimal risk of clogging. So you can use different colors as long as it's of the same type. (Don't switch back and forth between PLA and ABS for example).

We've had clogging which occured after a failed printing with a type of PET plastic. We cleaned it manually for a couple of hours (the entire fan shroud had been filled with molten plastic...).

Since then the printer has worked but not as well as before the clog.

I now strongly believe that it's very difficult to get *all* plastic of a certain type of of the print head when cleaning it.

We recently changed the nozzle part in our UM2 and now it prints really really nice again. Before that (after the big clog) we've had ok prints, but every once in a while it would underextrude for an odd layer or so.

So, to minimize maintenance, use only one type of plastic!

Regardless, for the future I think it would be good if Ultimaker (and all other brands) needs to focus on ease of maintenenace; for example replacing the nozzle should not have to take more than a few minutes. For example, the Kraken design where the nozzle inserts are not threaded would help a lot.

In the future when we have multiple extruders, it might be wise to use different material types in each extruder.

 

[ifti 0]

So if I stuck with PLA for example, it would minimise the risks of clogging??

Good idea with the dual extruder using one type of plastic in each though - never thought of that!!