Nozzle dragging on bed once print starts, poor quality issues

[Cm_9669 0]

I received my Ultimaker S5 printer back in December of 2021, which the original ended up having to be sent back to the distributer due to shipping damage so the replacement printer came in January of 2022. It has fairly low print hours on it due to the fact that every time I try to print with it I experience various issues. These include the active leveling system improperly working (1. after the print starts the nozzle just drags on the glass causing nothing to extrude, 2. nozzle offset is too far apart), poor quality even when using a default Cura profiles.

I did not return this second printer due to it having some of these issues and thought I could work with them, but sadly have not been able to print consistently without one of the two happening.

So far I have gone through the following:

• Manual leveling process (several times with no better results)
• Updating to the most current stable firmware (this has actually helped reduce the failed nozzle offset issue somewhat)
• Factory resetting (this did not help at all)
• Adjusting the tension of the belts (this did not help at all)
• Ensuring the stepper motors are pushed all the way in their fixture (there is a guide for this which is where I got the idea to do this from, but this did not help at all)
• Adjusting the tensioners on the extruders (this made printing with Ultimaker filament worse, but helped with quality issues when using Inland PLA+)
• Flipping the bed to its other side (both sides seem to have issues with printing in the middle of the plate whenever the model is placed in the center)
• Moving the objects in the slicer to the corners of the beds (no issues with nozzle dragging in these locations)
• General maintenance listed on the printer (this did not help at all)
• Adjusting the bowden tubes more evenly along the power wire of the hotends
• Messing with various Cura slicer settings to get a clean printing profile (still get poor quality prints occasionally)

 

I have included a video of the leveling process, the first layer of the print, and the results of the first layer. In this case the left side hotend did not drag on the plate, but the right side did. Usually both will fail and drag on the glass. I have logs ready to upload as well if need be. The leveling sensor test noise levels came back as two different values, 3.16 for the first test and 4.09 for the second. I am on stable version 8.2.0 currently.

 

Dropbox link to video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/89gkr5jxsm3l2oiwg09rd/20230820_180904.mp4?rlkey=oxj0ucki5di26la5ytwr14v8t&dl=0

 

I would say I am a fairly experiences 3D printer user and have two modified Ender 3 Pros, and a Bamabu Labs X1 Carbon and have had more issues with the Ultimaker S5 than all of my other printers combined. This printer has been collecting dust for over a year now and I would really like to get this resolved. I have searched up and down the community pages to see if there is some kind of fix other than sending the entire printer back to the manufacturer to see what is happening. If anyone has any advice on how to work out these issues please leave a comment.

[SanneM 12]

From the video it looks like the printer is doing the bed measurement well, but clearly the print itself is not good, that is quite strange.

Is the issue always the same in the same location?

I am wondering if the glass-plate itself may not be flat enough to be compensated well by the compensation algorithm.

If the area which is printed too close to the bed isn't close to any of the bed measurement locations, then this would also hint at the glass plate being very un-flat.

[Carbon 28]

What might improve this print is to apply some adhesion to the glass plate. 

 

A small amount of glue, hair spray or tape.....

[Cm_9669 0]

7 hours ago, Carbon said:

What might improve this print is to apply some adhesion to the glass plate. 

 

A small amount of glue, hair spray or tape.....

The issue is that the nozzle is pressing up against the plate causing no filament to be extruded due to no space between the two, not the part sticking to the plate.

[Cm_9669 0]

8 hours ago, SanneM said:

From the video it looks like the printer is doing the bed measurement well, but clearly the print itself is not good, that is quite strange.

Is the issue always the same in the same location?

I am wondering if the glass-plate itself may not be flat enough to be compensated well by the compensation algorithm.

If the area which is printed too close to the bed isn't close to any of the bed measurement locations, then this would also hint at the glass plate being very un-flat.

I think you might be right. Taking the most flat scale I could find I did a comparison of visible light between a desk top and the printer bed. On the desk top, there is no visible light and the scale stays flush with the table when pressing down on either side. On the bed, the scale stays flush on the right hand side of the bed, but on the left a visible gap is present. When pressing down on the left hand side the right hand side of the scale then rises slightly. It is not much, and I wouldn't think that a small gap as such could really throw off the whole algorithm for leveling. Ill see what I can do on the support side of Ultimaker to possibly get a replacement.

 

Videos of each here:

Bed view: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1yqhuvzh8ckfwkodu29kg/Bed-view.mp4?rlkey=1ti5stg1zud6hmmoj2qpwgxgh&dl=0

 

Desk top view: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fu119fa2l2z3dsjcg9937/Desk-view.mp4?rlkey=7r1ucez8362hron5e2hbqygl1&dl=0

Back when I was first trying to solve these issues with the UM support team they did suggest that the bed could be a culprit. Again, I did not think that the bed being higher in one area by at most a millimeter would have this drastic of an effect on this kind of printer. Maybe I am mistaken. If anyone else has had a similar issue and has fixed it by replacing the print bed please leave a comment below.

[Carbon 28]

8 hours ago, Cm_9669 said:

The issue is that the nozzle is pressing up against the plate causing no filament to be extruded due to no space between the two, not the part sticking to the plate.

 

Yet the "White" material print looks ok.....strange....