I just got home from the Ultimaker showroom in my area. I was convinced enough by the demo that I saw that I came home with an S3. The showroom printer.... well, it just worked beautifully, and felt like how a 3D printer should be. Except for one glaring problem: getting the print off the damn bed. To see this elegant machine work its magic on a TINY demo print.... and then watch the salesman try fruitlessly prying off the print, then watch him stick the plate in the freezer for 10 minutes, then watch him try to pry it off after that.... he eventually got the print off by VIOLENTLY jabbing at it with a putty knife, and the print itself went flying across the room. Oh yes, he tells me... some Nylon prints get stuck so bad that one customer pulled a piece of glass off the plate with the print. This guy has been selling UM printers since 2016... he's not a novice. Granted, this was a tiny demo of PVA supports, and PVA sticks worse than PLA (or so the salesman told me). "Oh, we always use gluestick on the bed," he told me. Apparently it didn't help. Or if it did help, I can't imagine how much worse it could possibly be without gluestick. But the whole experience was ridiculous.... especially when shopping for a $4500 printer. I recently upgraded an ancient FlashForge Creator Pro with a Wham Bam flexible magnetic bed, and the thing now prints perfectly AND the prints come off gently and easily by just flexing the bed. No more frustration. No more violence needed. (Though it can't print PVA supports to save its life...) And YES, there are Wham Bam mods for the Ultimaker S3 (I told the UM salesman about them, and he was eager to learn about them). But the question: Why doesn't this $4500 printer COME with a magnetic, flex-bed in the box? There must be some reason Ultimaker is avoiding the obvious solution.... maybe it reduces the quality of bed leveling? Or... what? (Or maybe this salesman has his demo printer tuned wrong for the first layer... that very well could be...)

I had a zoom call with the S-series product manager at UltiMaker today. He said there's are two good reasons why they don't ship the S3 and S5 with a flex plate: 1. UltiMaker's bed leveling procedure involves "hot probing," to ensure that filament residue on the nozzle doesn't mess up the measurements. This hot tip, pressing into the PEX coating on the Wham Bam, can damage the coating (make a divot in it). I also heard from the CEO of Wham Bam today, and he's aware of this potential issue with hot probing. Obviously, there's no danger of a hot tip damaging a glass plate. 2. UltiMaker want 99.99% "press PRINT and it always works" reliability on the full spectrum of materials that they officially support. They've found that existing flex beds (like Wham Bam) don't work 100% perfectly with their full list of supported materials. For example, heavily warping materials sometimes "warp" the flex bed up with the material. Other materials have adhesion problems. Thus, they err on the side of "printing correctly every time" and sacrifice "easy removal" on the altar of reliable, versatile printing. Their market niche is reliability. And I must admit that tiny-base, tall parts often get "knocked' off the Wham Bam bed for me on the FlashForge. Thus, I'm in the habit of using a raft every time for smaller parts. I'm guessing that the glass bed on the UltiMaker S3 will be more reliable in this regard (small parts will stick so well than they won't need a raft). Their logic is sound to me, and I think they've made the right decision from a wide-spectrum reliability point of view. UltiMaker doesn't want to adopt a new technique if it's not up to their reliability and versatility standards, and I respect that. Making a flexible build plate that works perfectly is an open problem. I will keep an eye out for "hot probing" problems on my Wham Bam surface. I do plan to keep one glass plate as plain glass, so I can test both.

Is there a good reason the S3/S5 don't have magnetic, flexible build plates?

QUESTION

By jasonrohrer
December 13, 2022 in UltiMaker 3D printers

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Go to solution Solved by jasonrohrer, December 15, 2022

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Is there a good reason the S3/S5 don't have magnetic, flexible build plates?

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