Challenging Ultimaker 2 Prints

[illuminarti 18]

If anyone's interested, I wrote up a blog post about the three fairly challenging prints I did recently on the UM2. There's a bit more info on the settings, and some extra/larger photos.

 

The blog post can be found at:

 

http://www.extrudable.me/2013/12/17/highqualityultimaker2/

 

[Daid 306]

I think you left out an important setting, I do not see a mention of print temperature, which could be quite critical with these prints.

And I think you might be able to reduce the "wavy pattern" on the sides by reducing the acceleration on the machine from 5000 to 3000.

 

[illuminarti 18]

I did mention it briefly, but actually, temp wasn't that much of a factor for me on these - or at least it didn't require any experimentation. I printed them all at 225°, on a 60° heated bed.

In general, I'm finding that the UM2 seems to give better results with higher rather than lower temps for most things, although at speeds as low as 30mm/s and 0.1mm layers it's probably more forgiving.

One thing that I think did make quite a difference was putting the filament on the floor behind the printer, with plenty of loose coils between the two, so that the load on the extruder was minimized. When I use the reel mount on the printer, I tend to get feed problems and under-extruded layers due to temporary tangles. There weren't any of those in these prints.

[illuminarti 18]

Also, good point about the acceleration settings, although any wavy patterns really aren't very visible to the naked eye - I think the camera lighting shows it up more, maybe. I'll definitely try reducing the acceleration and see if it makes a noticeable difference though.

I think in general, my takeaway from these tests was that it really doesn't take a lot of voodoo to get really nice prints on the UM2. Mostly I just got out of the way, and let the printer do its thing. Kudos to y'all at Ultimaker. :-)

[gr5 2,189]

The Ultimaker makes a nice photographic light box don't you think? I noticed you also used a black background for some shots - you take great photos.

 

[aroth 1]

Twelfth time's the charm, apparently:

Not as nice as the green one, but printed slightly faster at 50mm/sec.

 

[SandervG 1,521]

Very impressive.

Nice print

Do you know what the difference was the 12th time that made it a successful print?

 

[aroth 1]

Do you know what the difference was the 12th time that made it a successful print?

 

My money would be on the filament. That was the 12th attempt overall, but the first attempt using the black filament. The other attempts were made using a dark blue filament.

I kept trying the dark blue originally because it was the best filament I had in terms of consistent extrusion and buildplate adhesion at the start of the print. But the dark blue seems like it's also more prone to deform when there's lots of retraction. That one never made it past the 15% mark. The black filament did better.

 

[tinydancer 0]

The Ultimaker makes a nice photographic light box don't you think? I noticed you also used a black background for some shots - you take great photos.

 

I posted a few of my creations on facebook and had people make that exact remark. I love the aesthetics of the UM2.

Nice work Illuminati!

 

[tinydancer 0]

Anyone make one of these?

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:51806

Just wondering as it mentions using a raft and supports, specifically 30 degree horizontal, whatever that means.

 

[kvones 5]

Thank you so much for sharing these settings with us Illuminarti! I make cell-like shapes for my research and could just not get them to print perfectly - thanks to your settings I am finally getting the great results I knew the ultimaker to be capable of! Will post an image when I've figured out how... :-P

 

[illuminarti 18]

Thanks :-)

For uploading images, see:

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4525-how-to-upload-an-image-to-the-forum/

 

[zumfab 3]

That lamp plant is a bit too big for my taste. Is it any use trying to print that in a smaller size, or does that make it any harder?

 

[tsagos 8]

For me the most challenging print was the pole of this turbine. I print it at 0.8 scale to fit UM2.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5174

I printed it but reeeeeeally bad qualitiy!

 

[kvones 5]

Finally figured out how to post images...

These are the Cocoon-like structures I print for my jewellery research project, and now in much better quality thanks to Illuminarty