After months my first real print, and I'm happy!!!

[motogpfan82 0]

Hi all, so I got my Ultimaker last summer, had it assembled within a month by September, tried to do the first run wizard with awful results. The bed would never level, the z endstop would never stop the bed, the nozzle head would dig into the print bed, only a very thin line of plastic would come out or it would just ooze and get everywhere. I tried to fiddle with it for a bit but I think it jammed with plastic, cause then it just stopped extruding all together. Around this time I switched to a new stressful job so I didn't have time to mess with it till the holiday season when I had some time off. Well thanks to an incredibly long weekend last week due to snow, I finally got it to print with acceptable results!!! It's not perfect by any means, but from when this printer first started it was a mess just spewing hot plastic, if it did work at all, but now some cool results. Fiddling with it till the early hours of the morning, I finally got the bed leveling wizard to level it repeatedly without digging into the bed, and actually stopping at the z endstop after that I had to spend a few hours cleaning plastic out of the nozzle so it could extrude. Finally the moment of truth I printed the little robot guy and wow, it actually started to work!!!

The kind of drunk looking crooked one is the first one I printed, then I printed a second just to make sure it wasn't a dream, lol. Anyways I have some optical endstops I want to install but need to print the bracket to hook them up now I can, yessss!!! Any tips on how to get better accuracy and detail? I noticed the ears and chest area with those markings didn't really come out well. But for my first real print this is awesome!!! I can't wait to fine tune it!! Thanks for any advice guys and gals!!!

 

[ian 32]

good morning :-)

first of all congaradulations on your first good print !

Next thing is... with an ultimaker1 you need to build it carefully and tight and then its all put together properly... oil the bars and slide the hotend so it slides around smoothly... So you have the hard stuff done.

Now that your ultimaker is all together..... if you havent... add some fine maschine oil to all the axis.. a little will do.

add good printed belt tighteners to your long belts... that will help.

then start printing and look down carefully at the moment of the belts.. if you see the rubber moving around a little on the pully. then your allignment is not perfect. loosen the grub screws and reallign.

Then in Cura with your first model... add Brim. this will allow you to get the plastic bumping before printing.

Then print hote to start 240... that normally gets the old gunk from the last project out of the nozzle.

then start printing slow for the first layers.... 50 would be ok.

Then after the first layers are good.. slowly drop up the speed to 70 and you can bring down the temp to 220.

fans turned on.. that will help stop bubbles in the plastic surface...

Then print and get better and better and better.... :-)

Ian :-)

 

[jonnybischof 60]

...

if you havent... add some fine maschine oil to all the axis.. a little will do.

...

 

Just one little note on that:

Don't put oil on the leadscrew (the large center screw that makes the z-stage move up and down)!

The leadscrew comes with its own little pack of green grease which must be applied to it (and nowhere else).

Should be clear, but you never know who might google up this topic and read nothing else...

 

[motogpfan82 0]

Thanks for the advice; I'm definitely going to print some belt tighteners, as well as some other upgrades. I put the oil that came with it on the leadscrew, thought I read somewhere in the instructions not to oil the axis’s. It makes sense to do it to reduce any friction. I tried my first large print last night with mixed results. I printed the bottom part of a box for the ulticontroller. I noticed I have plastic leaking out between the heater block and the brass pipe after long periods of use. I screwed it in just like the instructions said, any one else have this problem? The top of the piece I printed is ok, some bubbling but you can see where some plastic from the heater block dripped onto it. The bottom on the other hand is awful. You can really see layers, it’s very rough.

 

[gr5 2,177]

Yikes - you have a bunch of issues to deal with!

1) First and foremost I think you need to fix that lean/tilt/slant of your robot. Unless the picture is confusing me - those robots are leaning. I've seen this a lot. I suppose it must be the X axis that is losing steps. This type of gradual slippage is always due to rubbing short belt. I don't know why but 10 times out of 10 when it leans like this the short belt on the X motor is touching the wood (or the Y motor if it's leaning forwards/backwards).

So look at that short belt on the X motor carefully. You may need to add 1 washer under each of the 4 plastic spacers holding the X stepper. Or maybe you just need to slide the motor pulley slightly closer to the motor but don't let it touch the motor.

2) Leaking nozzle - this is second most serious issue. DO NOT tighten anything on the head without heating it to 180C first. 250C is too hot - 180C is plenty. It's easy to break those brass threads if you don't - the solid PLA acts like strong glue and brass is soft compared to steel so be firm but careful. One solution is to add teflon plumbers tape. It costs almost nothing at a hardware store and you can wrap the threads. If you do this be extremely careful not to get any of the teflon in the way that would block the pla or rip off and get clogged in the nozzle. teflon will stay solid below 300C. I did not use any teflon. I just had everything screwed together slightly better. Nothing is more than finger tight but I got lucky I guess.

Another common fix for this is to run ABS filament through the nozzle - this kind of plugs up all the leaks. Another solution is to not worry about it and eventually the PLA will turn to black gunk and seal itself. Maybe.

3) bubbling - you just need more layers - it takes quite a few layers to seal a bridged space like that

4) broken strings/ ugliness underneath. Flip the damn cover over! It's meant to be printed the other way. Click on the part in Cura and click rotate icon and rotate it 180 degrees. Flipping over will solve those bubbles also.

You will have more problems in the future - curling corners due to warping. Part's not sticking well. Post when you do or google this forum for solutions as these are trivial to fix.

 

[illuminarti 18]

Yeah, the green grease goes on the z-screw. You don't want to put that anywhere else. But you should put light machine oil (like sewing machine oil) on the x and y axis rods, and the cross bars.

Why did you print this part this way up? It looks like it would work better the other way up... with your 'top' flat on the bed. You're never going to get a very good finish on the underside of that big flat part, because you're printing into thin air, with nothing to hold the plastic up.