Using 1.75mm filament with UM5

[amitmonash 2]

Funny I did an oopsy, just bought a locally made shiny new 1.75mm filament in excitement and it came very quickly in post as well. As I was about to put the filament in my wonderful and highly engineered 3d printer S5 bundle pro material station, I realized that the printer is not designed to handle the filament!

 

I have tried googling it and checking the Ultimaker Community for this but seems like I have come across some old topics.

The attachments by the provider are not available anymore:

https://www.dynamism.com/mosaic/mosaic-palette-ultimakerconversionkit-ums3-s5.html

 

I want to use standard Ultimaker Tough Black PLA along with 1.75mm (different color) filament using dual extruder for my project.

Anyone has solved this problem? Or does it mean and end to a wide range of filaments that are only available in 1.75mm and I will have to buy a cheap china made 3d printer for it.

It's  shame such a high quality almost fully automated printer is beaten by just the width of filament.

 

PS: tried adding custom material with 1.75mm dia, but it throws a warning:

Does anyone know if there is a compatible extruder for this?

 

Edited February 10, 2022 by amitmonash

[danielalexander 0]

Also curious about this.

[gr5 2,167]

Send the filament back!

 

Seriously.  Don't open the box so you can get a refund.

 

So I have converted some printers (and undone the conversion) and I have customers who are happy with the conversion.  3dsolex has a solution that works.  At least for the left bowden.

 

The feeder itself is fine as is.  The UM3/S3/S5 feeders can all work with 1.75 filament just fine as far as I remember.  It's the hot end that can't deal.  The filament will just come backup up out of the core at the same time as out the nozzle and make a mess inside the print core.

 

However 3dsolex has a special 1.75mm print core and they have changable nozzles (nice) so you can get from 0.1mm nozzles up to around 2mm (maybe?  Maybe only 1.5mm?  I forget).

 

But the solution isn't fantastic.  You have to do some trickery with the bowden - it's a double bowden and the inner bowden goes down inside the print core so changing the print core involves removing the bowden (really only takes an extra 30 seconds but still).

 

More importantly the solution doesn't work so well on the right side so you have to do hack solutions to get it to work with 1.75 on the left and 3mm on the right core.

 

I know a guy who got it working on the right core using a special spring so that the right core can go up and down and the inner bowden can go up and down with the core but I'm not sure exactly where to get the right spring (you want 4mm O.D. spring with 2mm I.D. so the 1.75mm filament can pass throught the spring).  And despite all this you have to do weird things with cura like shown above.  Or you have to set the flow in cura to (2.85mm/1.75mm)^2 which is 265%.  So you have to set the flow to 265% if you can't figure out how to get cura to realize the left core is using 1.75mm filament.  Setting the flow to 265% has other repurcussions - the initial purge might under purge.  Retractions might use the flow feature (although I think not).  Minor things that aren't a show stopper but there are repurcussions.

 

And if instead you modify the S5 machine profile to accept 1.75mm filament and you upgrade Cura you will probably have to do all the modifications again.

 

SO MUCH EASIER to just use "3mm" or "2.85mm" filament.  Sometimes people complain "I can't get than in 3mm".  Well I always prove them wrong.  Unless it's some obscure color, every material out there on the planet is available (usually from the same manufacturer) in both sizes.  Every obscure material.  One exception I suppose is prusament which is for prusa printers which is only 1.75mm.

 

BUT YOU CAN DO IT!  Contact 3dsolex by email: sales@3dsolex.com.  They will sell you a 1.75 printcore at no extra cost.  The ONLY customer I know who did this permanently and for good reason did it because he makes his own filament and the 3mm filament was too brittle and cracks in the bowden but the 1.75mm filament works great.  This is a very obscure filament made from Boron or something similar - I forget the details.  It's a very very niche usage.

 

[h2befjon 1]

BUMP. I know this is an old thread but I'm curious to know if there's been any movement on getting the s5 to print using 1.75 filaments. It seems to me that a lot of filament manufacturers are moving away from the 2.85/3mm, especially those that create specialty filaments.  Is this something UM would consider selling a conversion kit considering their other series prints with 1.75mm, or should I look into selling it and getting something else? I really love the Ultimaker brand but I also feel like the last couple of years it's been lacking in innovation.

[mrender 25]

It is becoming difficult to get hold of 2.85mm filaments in a lot of cases now. Surprising that there isn't a conversion kit available from Ultimaker by now.

[gr5 2,167]

Yes!  There is a solution, but first:

 

I haven't had any trouble getting all manner of filaments and colors. I have heard the most complaints about colors. For example in carbon and glass filled filaments there are probably over 100 to choose from.

 

I do have one spool of very old 1.75 and I was able to print some recently using a new trick so I'll share that.  It was quite simple.  This works on S3/S5 but not on UM3 because the UM3 feeder just won't grip the 1.75mm filament. It was a shade of brown that I didn't have in stock and I didn't want to buy more filament when I had a spool already.

 

I got some PFA tubing that was "4X2" meaning 4mm O.D. and 2mm I.D.  I stuck it down into the printcore and marked where it stuck out the top.  Then I cut the tubing there.

 

I reduced retraction by about 2mm but the 4X2 bowden seems to stay pretty well inside the printcore (I was afraid it would slide up).  It worked quite well.

 

I also changed all the "flow" values in cura to 265% (which is 2.85^2/1.75^2).

 

I also had to hand-insert the filament.  Which I always do anyway so no change there. You might have to remove the normal bowden at the head to get the filament started into the smaller tube.  I forget if I had to do that or not - I definitely removed the bowden at least one time.

 

Other than that it worked pretty well.  I printed 2 boxes that were each about 2 hours.