Firmware 5.8.1 for S-line printers is now available

[Szahari 30]

Hi all,

We've released a new patch upgrade to firmware 5.8.0 today. All Ultimaker S5 and Ultimaker S3's will be able to upgrade, but the main added value is for the S5-Pro Bundle. You can read the full release notes here.

 

Notably though, I would like to highlight the following:

 

Unload button on screen. With firmware 5.8.0, a new feature was introduced whereby after a print filament was parked above the printhead, before subsequently retracting to the Material Station. This occurred on a timer. We have now added an unload material functionality on the display of the Pro Bundle, so that users can manually trigger this action when the material is parked above the printhead and after clicking on the Confirm Removal button on screen. Please note that there can be a delay when clicking on the Unload button, before the material starts to unload.

 

Regarding the delay, this can be pronounced after certain machine actions, e.g after a total system reboot.

 

Furthermore, certain operations such as aborting a print job after it has just been sent to the printer can lead to a double retraction of the material, which would be evident by a material retracting further and further into the Bowden tube. Though this may look unnatural, the system compensates for this and will begin the next printjob taking into account the filament position.

 

Lastly, I would like to mention a bit about the 5.8 firmware. Theres a bit more work to be done on this branch of the firmware, but I would like to share that the next big version will be 6.0. The 6.0 firmware version will be significant firmware upgrade because it will update the printers internal Debian system. What this means is when updating to firmware 6.0, there will be not be a possibility to revert to 5.8, or older firmware. More details on this will follow as we get closer to release.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Szahari
formatting

[Smithy 1,146]

Thanks!

I already updated the S3 and the S5 without any problems.

[Elfonerio 5]

Thank you for fixing these issues!

[ardynamics 1]

Thank you for the fix, big help to 'unstuck' the machine.

 

Unfortunately there seems to be one more issue with the 'parked' filament:

 

1) Start a print

2) abort the print

3) confirm removal

4) hit 'no' for retry

 

=> filament gets 'parked' above the printhead, see photo

=> Printer thinks the filament is still present in the printhead, see photo

=> Next print will fail, because it will print without filament

 

Manual resolution: unload the filament(s) using the unload button.

 

Edited October 1, 2020 by ardynamics

[ccr90 2]

16 hours ago, ardynamics said:

Thank you for the fix, big help to 'unstuck' the machine.

 

Unfortunately there seems to be one more issue with the 'parked' filament:

 

1) Start a print

2) abort the print

3) confirm removal

4) hit 'no' for retry

 

=> filament gets 'parked' above the printhead, see photo

=> Printer thinks the filament is still present in the printhead, see photo

=> Next print will fail, because it will print without filament

 

Manual resolution: unload the filament(s) using the unload button.

 

 

At the moment there are no changes in the display to differentiate between a material loaded "all the way" into the print core or "parked" above the print head. The only situation where the filament tip is visible above the printcore (and not unloading back to the material station) while connected through blue lines in the display is when the material is parked.

 

Have you tried printing with the materials in that position or did you pre-emptively unloaded them  prevent that potential problem?

As mentioned in the header of this thread, there may be some circumstances where visually the materials seem not to be in the same position (height) but follow-up prints did not show effects of delayed extrusion. The material will be correctly returned to the printcore before the print begins. Using brim lines can be an option to reduce your concern of delayed extrusion.

If you identify a situation where the material consistently go to the wrong park position, resulting in a delayed extrusion we would be interested in the feedback and potentially the collected logs for internal investigation.

[fsaraji 0]

On 9/29/2020 at 1:27 PM, Szahari said:

Hi all,

We've released a new patch upgrade to firmware 5.8.0 today. All Ultimaker S5 and Ultimaker S3's will be able to upgrade, but the main added value is for the S5-Pro Bundle. You can read the full release notes here.

 

Notably though, I would like to highlight the following:

 

Unload button on screen. With firmware 5.8.0, a new feature was introduced whereby after a print filament was parked above the printhead, before subsequently retracting to the Material Station. This occurred on a timer. We have now added an unload material functionality on the display of the Pro Bundle, so that users can manually trigger this action when the material is parked above the printhead and after clicking on the Confirm Removal button on screen. Please note that there can be a delay when clicking on the Unload button, before the material starts to unload.

 

Regarding the delay, this can be pronounced after certain machine actions, e.g after a total system reboot.

 

Furthermore, certain operations such as aborting a print job after it has just been sent to the printer can lead to a double retraction of the material, which would be evident by a material retracting further and further into the Bowden tube. Though this may look unnatural, the system compensates for this and will begin the next printjob taking into account the filament position.

 

Lastly, I would like to mention a bit about the 5.8 firmware. Theres a bit more work to be done on this branch of the firmware, but I would like to share that the next big version will be 6.0. The 6.0 firmware version will be significant firmware upgrade because it will update the printers internal Debian system. What this means is when updating to firmware 6.0, there will be not be a possibility to revert to 5.8, or older firmware. More details on this will follow as we get closer to release.

 

Dear Ultimaker Team,

 

we have been waiting for such a long time, not being able to use our machines due to essential problems with filament change and now the new version 5.8.1 is released and I must say, it is a disappointment again.

There is no improvement and the issues remain. You may have been working on it and tried to fix issues, but what I can say is, it has failed.

The filament is still shown as "in use" and there is no way of unloading it, except with pure manual violence.

The unload button is still grayed out and there are still huge problems with filament recognition and especially with "filament left amount" recognition.

So, please consider, we all are professionals, who do not want to be busy with the printer itself, but just with the jobs we have to finish and having such issues with a "pro" equipment is an absolute NOGO!!!

I hope this is the last time I have to complain about Quality of Ultimaker's "Pro" equipment.

 

Please fix it immediately, because I need the printer to work properly.

 

Thanks

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @fsaraji, thank you for your message. I've shared it with our product experts and we'll get back with you shortly! 

[Szahari 30]

Hi @fsaraji,

 

Terribly sad to hear the pro bundle still doesnt meet your expectations. Could you please elaborate a little more on your usage of the Pro Bundle, and where exactly our shortcomings are?

 

You claim that manual violence is needed to manually unload the filament, but this is simply, not true. The Pro Bundle will display the material as engaged as long as the material is forwarded into the printer - so this could be either in the printhead, or whilst its parked above it. After a print job, once the confirm print removal button has appeared - and it therefore is safe to remove the printed part, the unload button becomes active and you can initiate the material unload.

 

What is also useful for us is if you could give a bit more detail about how you got to your state with the unload button not functioning. Did you encounter this after a print job, or perhaps you rebooted the entire machine? Photos of the printhead with the filament position are also very useful.

 

Thank you in advance.

[fsaraji 0]

11 minutes ago, Szahari said:

Hi @fsaraji,

 

Terribly sad to hear the pro bundle still doesnt meet your expectations. Could you please elaborate a little more on your usage of the Pro Bundle, and where exactly our shortcomings are?

 

You claim that manual violence is needed to manually unload the filament, but this is simply, not true. The Pro Bundle will display the material as engaged as long as the material is forwarded into the printer - so this could be either in the printhead, or whilst its parked above it. After a print job, once the confirm print removal button has appeared - and it therefore is safe to remove the printed part, the unload button becomes active and you can initiate the material unload.

 

What is also useful for us is if you could give a bit more detail about how you got to your state with the unload button not functioning. Did you encounter this after a print job, or perhaps you rebooted the entire machine? Photos of the printhead with the filament position are also very useful.

 

Thank you in advance.

Hi,

Thanks for your message.

1) "Manual Violence is needed" means, that I have to turn off the system and pull out the filament manually. Neither the eject button in the material station nor the menu on S5 help.

 

2) The machine was in this situation (having PVA loaded to Core 2 and not being able to unload it) since last firmware update, almost 3 weeks ago. The unload button has been grayed out all the time.

After upgrading to 5.8.1 I expected it to allow me to unload the filament. Unfortunately it doesn't.

even rebooting, restarting or ecen turning off the entire pro bundle doesn't help.

Not even a re-installation of the firmware did help.

 

3) The Filament (PVA) is park above the head (see pictures) and it doesn't allow to unload.

BDW: the machine is in tjis situation for days now and although it should unload the PVA after 24 hours, it didn't do that!!!

 

I hope that helps.

[Szahari 30]

Thanks fsaraji,

 

So what you encountering is all known behaviour - PVA will only retract after 60 hours of being parked above the filament. PVA is in particular vulnerable to brittle breakage.

 

I'm afraid that the reason you are encountering the unload button being grayed out is because of your tendency to manhandle the machine, as you describe in your first point. The machine is not designed with the intention of constant reboots. You should give it time until its processes are completed. So if in your eagerness to remove material you power down the machine, before you confirm removal of the printed part, then I believe after reboot the pro bundle may keep the unload button grayed out.

 

The best advice I can give you is please be patient with the machine, and let its procedures finish before deciding to reboot and manually remove the material.

 

Furthermore, it should not really be necessary to unload the material so often as you describe. Even if material is in the forwarded state, when you start a print job with other materials that are loaded in the MS, the pro bundle will automatically begin the switching procedure.

[fsaraji 0]

10 minutes ago, Szahari said:

Thanks fsaraji,

 

So what you encountering is all known behaviour - PVA will only retract after 60 hours of being parked above the filament. PVA is in particular vulnerable to brittle breakage.

 

I'm afraid that the reason you are encountering the unload button being grayed out is because of your tendency to manhandle the machine, as you describe in your first point. The machine is not designed with the intention of constant reboots. You should give it time until its processes are completed. So if in your eagerness to remove material you power down the machine, before you confirm removal of the printed part, then I believe after reboot the pro bundle may keep the unload button grayed out.

 

The best advice I can give you is please be patient with the machine, and let its procedures finish before deciding to reboot and manually remove the material.

 

Furthermore, it should not really be necessary to unload the material so often as you describe. Even if material is in the forwarded state, when you start a print job with other materials that are loaded in the MS, the pro bundle will automatically begin the switching procedure.

Hi

I afraid you are misunderstanding my case and did some assumption, which are simply wrong.

My machine is NOT constantly rebooted and also not tuned off or on. I also never tried to pull out the filament manually to avoid damages. However, what I said was, this WOULD be the only solution, which is a NOGO!

I also never mention to have done rebooting before confirming the removal. So, how do you come to idea to suppose that????

 

My machine was in Idle mode for the last 3 days (not usable due to filament change issue).

I first upgraded the firmware and as the was not fixed, I rebooted the machine. As this also didn't help, I un-powered the entire bundle (by shutting down the Linux first, since I am a Linux expert, I know, not to un-power machines before halting the system). The last step was to re-install the firmware. None of the steps above did help to fix the issue.

I, then, start a print hoping that after aborting that print and confirming the removal the system would allow me to unload the PVA.

The machine started to print without moving the PVA forward first, so the print failed with no PVA extruding at the beginning (PVA was in the park position as it started to print and it didn't consider the position).

 

I then aborted the print and the machine is now in the "Aborting...." mode for more than 30 min... doing NOTHING!!!

Even the Air manager has finished blowing and turned off as well as the cores and print bed have cooled down. But the machine remains "Aborting".

So, What do you suggest I should do now if not rebooting? This is NOT a pro machine! not any more!

 

I think the firmware is still buggy and I think your developers didn't consider all possible situations the machine could be in.

We really need a working firmware and I think all here agree with me, that we should no be Ultimaker's Lab to test and find out shortcomings. I hope you agree on that.

 

B.R.

[ardynamics 1]

5 hours ago, ccr90 said:

 

 

At the moment there are no changes in the display to differentiate between a material loaded "all the way" into the print core or "parked" above the print head. The only situation where the filament tip is visible above the printcore (and not unloading back to the material station) while connected through blue lines in the display is when the material is parked.

 

Have you tried printing with the materials in that position or did you pre-emptively unloaded them  prevent that potential problem?

As mentioned in the header of this thread, there may be some circumstances where visually the materials seem not to be in the same position (height) but follow-up prints did not show effects of delayed extrusion. The material will be correctly returned to the printcore before the print begins. Using brim lines can be an option to reduce your concern of delayed extrusion.

If you identify a situation where the material consistently go to the wrong park position, resulting in a delayed extrusion we would be interested in the feedback and potentially the collected logs for internal investigation.

 

Hi, thanks for the response. I indeed started a new print and it wouldn't extrude, because it did not 'unpark' the filament. I always have the brim enabled, and it didn't extrude the entire length of the brim and even 15 seconds into the print, when I manually aborted again. I did notice the filament was parked higher in printhead 1 then printhead 2.

[ccr90 2]

1 minute ago, ardynamics said:

 

Hi, thanks for the response. I indeed started a new print and it wouldn't extrude, because it did not 'unpark' the filament. I always have the brim enabled, and it didn't extrude the entire length of the brim and even 15 seconds into the print, when I manually aborted again. I did notice the filament was parked higher in printhead 1 then printhead 2.

@ardynamics, I'm sorry to hear that.

Situations like the one you just described should not be common.
Once again, if you identify a situation that consistently lead you to this problem, can you elaborate on the steps to reproduce and share the logs with us?

It would be valuable for Ultimaker if you can create a Hardware Ticket on our Support Platform.

https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=36000051636

 

Could you also answer the following questions?

• Are you using Ultimaker or 3rd Party Materials?
• By "did not unpark" do you mean that the filament was not moved back into the printcore far enough or that it did not move at all?
• Is the part you tried to print a small one?

Internally some abort flows that would lead the filament in print core 2 to a higher position were identified, but even then the system would compensate the extra retraction before a print. 

 

 

 

[ardynamics 1]

11 minutes ago, ccr90 said:

@ardynamics, I'm sorry to hear that.

Situations like the one you just described should not be common.
Once again, if you identify a situation that consistently lead you to this problem, can you elaborate on the steps to reproduce and share the logs with us?

It would be valuable for Ultimaker if you can create a Hardware Ticket on our Support Platform.

https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=36000051636

 

Could you also answer the following questions?

• Are you using Ultimaker or 3rd Party Materials?
• By "did not unpark" do you mean that the filament was not moved back into the printcore far enough or that it did not move at all?
• Is the part you tried to print a small one?

Internally some abort flows that would lead the filament in print core 2 to a higher position were identified, but even then the system would compensate the extra retraction before a print. 

 

 

 

I will test it again this weekend and try to file a ticket with the logs and everything.

 

But to be clear: not that big of a deal to, I just remember to 'unload' whenever I have to abort a print (hopefully that happens not too often 😛 )

• I am mostly using 3rd party filaments, except for PVA.
• Indeed, the printhead was 'purging' before printing. I could hear it trying to purge material in a few short sessions. But as the filament was parked, it did not far enough into the printcore
• We mostly print small parts indeed

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @fsaraji , thank you for your response. Our apologies if any false assumptions were made. We're all just trying to work towards a solution here and help each other. 

 

In order to prevent any more false assumptions I would like to ask a few things;

 

1 hour ago, fsaraji said:

My machine was in Idle mode for the last 3 days (not usable due to filament change issue).

I first upgraded the firmware and as the was not fixed, I rebooted the machine.

Generally speaking, when your machine is idle there is no harm in rebooting your machine. I am wondering, when you upgraded the firmware, what did you conclude was not fixed before doing another print? If you only tried to unload material that was still in the printhead, which material was it and what was its position? 

 

1 hour ago, fsaraji said:

The machine started to print without moving the PVA forward first, so the print failed with no PVA extruding at the beginning (PVA was in the park position as it started to print and it didn't consider the position).

That doesn't sound like it is operating as it should. It should have compensated for the parked position. 

 

1 hour ago, fsaraji said:

mode for more than 30 min

That also doesn't sound like a normal time period for a print to abort. Was there any additional info on the screen? Perhaps there is something else we're overlooking that influences your experience. 

 

I would like to ask you to send a ticket via this link and we can look into your specific case together in close contact with you. 

 

Obviously we don't intent for you to test our products and they should contribute to an efficient and valuable workflow. Luckily the first responses we're getting from 5.8.1. are pretty good, so that is another reason to look with you in person to determine what is different in your particular case.

Thank you for your time and patience,

[fsaraji 0]

Ok, I have opened a ticket as you proposed.

Waiting for the feedback on it.

[fsaraji 0]

BDW: My machine is not working any more.

Every time I try to change the print core (hoping for Material being also ejected) it goes into waiting mode and remains there forever.

I think I have to go back to 5.7.x

[CCLMakerSpace 2]

So, it seems as if 5.8.1 has kind of half broken network connectivity for us. Cura can print over the network about half the time, but the other half it either asks to print via cloud or USB.

 

Crucially, this has completely broken camera functionality. Cura won't even attempt to display the camera, and web management loads for a while then displays just a single a still image from the camera.

 

It may sound weird, but we really need the camera functionality!! We're a public library, and a big part of our marketing strategy for the printer involves streaming the prints live.

[Roli4711 11]

What does that mean if I have installed 5.8.1, the display at the material station says that I have Generic PLA in 1 and Ultimaker Breakaway in slot 2 and then such a message is displayed?

 

By the way: the print from a 4 day old print core with the original Ultimaker BreakAway is no longer cleaned. Every 2nd time spaghetti, it no longer adheres properly or it just indicates that it is "unknown" material.

 

Roland

 

[Turbo442 0]

Hello,

 

I have upgraded to 5.8.1.  After a few power cycles everything seems to be running smoothly. Thank you for the update!

[SandervG 1,521]

On 10/2/2020 at 4:14 PM, fsaraji said:

BDW: My machine is not working any more.

Every time I try to change the print core (hoping for Material being also ejected) it goes into waiting mode and remains there forever.

I think I have to go back to 5.7.x

 

Hi, thank you for your message. My colleague should respond to the ticket you have created in our support system shortly! 

[SandervG 1,521]

On 10/3/2020 at 4:25 PM, Roli4711 said:

What does that mean if I have installed 5.8.1, the display at the material station says that I have Generic PLA in 1 and Ultimaker Breakaway in slot 2 and then such a message is displayed?

 

By the way: the print from a 4 day old print core with the original Ultimaker BreakAway is no longer cleaned. Every 2nd time spaghetti, it no longer adheres properly or it just indicates that it is "unknown" material.

 

Roland

 

 

Hi @Roli4711

 

Based on the image on the right I have the impression you are printing a gcode and not a UFP. The difference being that a UFP contains a lot more extra information like a preview of the STL and some more details about the materials incorporated in the slicing. A UFP knows that a file is sliced for PLA for example. A gcode contains the tailored parameters for PLA, like temperature and flow, but it doesn't really contain the specific ID that it is for PLA. 

 

I suspect that is why you see that it is printing an unknown material, and why there is no preview. If you are trying to print a UFP, it may be corrupted or something else went wrong. Hope this helps! 

[Roli4711 11]

Hi @SandervG

 

No, it was created directly through CURA without any additional setting. After I've unloaded the material completly and load it again and REprint it through the Digital Factory it works and all was showing.

 

Roland

[SandervG 1,521]

31 minutes ago, Roli4711 said:

Hi @SandervG

 

No, it was created directly through CURA without any additional setting. After I've unloaded the material completly and load it again and REprint it through the Digital Factory it works and all was showing.

 

Roland

 

Just to clarify, you can still create gcodes via Cura without any additional settings. You just select gcode instead of UFP upon saving or exporting your sliced file. Strange that it didn't recognise the filaments at first for what they are, but I'm happy to hear that all information was showing after reloading the filament!

[Roli4711 11]

On 10/6/2020 at 10:57 AM, SandervG said:

Just to clarify, you can still create gcodes via Cura without any additional settings. You just select gcode instead of UFP upon saving or exporting your sliced file. Strange that it didn't recognise the filaments at first for what they are, but I'm happy to hear that all information was showing after reloading the filament!

 

Hi @SandervG

 

I print only directly to printer via network. No USB, nothing.