First impressions with new UM2

[aaronalai 2]

Hey guys I've been wanting to post this for a couple of days but with work and the addictive nature of 3D printing...you know. Anyway I received my UM2 on Monday of this week and wanted to post my impressions of the UM2 thus far. There are some great things and some not so great things I noticed upon initial inspection. I had spent a good deal of time in the forums already before receiving the machine so I knew what to look out for as far as defects. Overall my experience with the machine has been stupendous, although without this additional forum knowledge I can see how someone new to the machine would not have such luck. So let's begin. Alright I had to edit the post before I could even post it, apparently there is a limit to the number of images I can post in a single post so I am providing links instead of pictures for the more non-interesting images.

First the box came without many external dings or holes, there were large black marks smeared on the outside like it had been scooted around a lot, which is better than being dropped I suppose. The box came with a cardboard shield on the bottom to protect the electronics case, something Nicolinux pointed out he didn't have in his shipment. I got some more clarification on that, and Nicolinux did have a cardboard shield on the bottom of his printer, it's just that the hulk smashed the bottom of his box or something.

http://i.imgur.com/1WHFgN4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Std283N.jpg

I ordered three additional spools of plastic, and my on the house spool was red and not the Ultimaker blue; not complaining just pointing it out, iv'e see other get silver and such.

http://i.imgur.com/cveXLql.jpg

This how the machine was packaged on the inside:

http://i.imgur.com/n7gW6U9.jpg

Take note of the cardboard covering the x and y axes, I will refer to this in the future; I suspect it is the reason for one of my initial issues. I recall in all of the previous unboxing videos that there were zip-ties holding the axes in place, these cardboard pieces seem to have taken the place of those zip-ties; as there were none to remove.

I checked the fan and sensor cables on the extruder head and everything was looking good.

http://i.imgur.com/SaHyWCz.jpg

I checked to see if any of the rods were sticking out of the sides of the unit, everything checked out okay there as well.

http://i.imgur.com/9Vp6ezj.jpg

These are all of the accessories I received with the (I like the stickers!!):

 

http://i.imgur.com/BL9UImS.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/Lt26uv4.jpg

Then I started to focus my attention to the bowden tube and noticed it was pretty loose inside on the printing head end. I'm not sure how much force the retaining clip is suppose to exert on the white piece the bowden tube slips through, but initially it didn't seem to be doing very much. Upon closer inspection though the clip looks like it has two very small protrusions that fit under the outer ring of the white piece. So disregard my jabbering in the videos.

 

I followed illuminarti's instructions here:

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4586-can-your-um2-printer-achieve-10mm3s-test-it-here/?p=40399

and everything was looking good, the bowden tube was securely affixed to the printing head:

 

I tried printing the step piece for the a replacement clip but it didn't fit because of where the four long bolts are located, and now I don't think I need it; but here is the link anyway.

https://www.youmagine.com/designs/ultimaker-extruder-mutli-clip

To remove the glass from underneath the build plate I grabbed the back of the build plate with both hands (in the photo you only see one hand, the other was holding the camera) and gently lifted up without any issue.

Alright where was I; o'yeah time to take the electronics panel off. So I know Cohen did a really good job testing the main electronics board under high temperature conditions, but for now I want to play it safe with my new baby and wanted to put a fan underneath the unit to cool off the board. Here is a link to his test:

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4542-comedoone-for-ultimaker2/?p=40087

I still want to do some testing of my own before I'm completely convinced of the heat tolerance of the board though. No offence Cohen, I'm trying to validate your results, and I definitely appreciate the effort you went through to test the whole board under very high temperatures.

Alright so now that I had the cover taken off I needed a way to slip my cross flow fan under there. So I initially rested it on some books. Ignore the cylinders in the background, I still haven't even plugged in the power adapter into the printer by this point.

A picture of the fan under the unit:

I just used the existing screw holes from removing the electronics cover and dremeled out a hole in the appropriate places on the fan housing unit and bolted the fan to the underside of the machine.

But before turned on the machine I wanted to check out the tightness of the four long bolts holding the extrusion head together. They were tight! I think too tight, I wouldn't have been able to tighten them that much unless I really tried, so I loosened them so they fit snugly but not too tightly.

Alright now that I have my electronics panel off and my fan installed let's turn on the machine!! Uh-Oh I can't level the build plate because there is a big clump of plastic stuck to the nozzle.

That's alright, I'll just skip through all the leveling steps and heat up the nozzle to clean it off. I inserted my Ultimaker Red PLA during the final steps. Before I went to re-level the bed again I saw the home head option and decided to click it. BZZZ the machine started to rattle itself like crazy, I noticed the homing contact switch for the left and right movement was hanging down at an angle and not sticking out perpendicular to the back face of the machine. The metal was straight, but was just dangling out of the contact switch housing unit. I think the installation of the cardboard for shipping damaged the thin metal piece, loosening it so the bearing block wouldn't hit it.

After a few minuets looking at the piece I decided I could support it with a zip-tie to make the metal piece stick out perpendicular to the back of the machine face.

Alright everything is now good to go, time to do my first print. I wanted to print the cylinder test but decided to print the earring that was on the SD card because it looked like it was the fastest thing to print and I really just wanted to just see if I had done everything correctly up to that point.

During the earring print I noticed a lot of black stuff coming out with my red filament. I investigated further; I removed the bowden tube from the printing head side, put a piece of filament I had cut earlier inside the nozzle while it was heating up, then let the nozzle cool down to 90C and pulled the filament out, and this is what I saw.

I had to do this several times and it still wasn't completely clean, so I decided to print the cylinder test anyway, it turned out fine but there was still a lot of black gunk in the print.

The black gunk persisted for several additional prints until it finally stopped coming out. Speaking of additional prints, while the earring was printing I designed some feet for the UM2 in SolidWorks.

Here is a video of them being printed out, I wanted to see how fast I could print them because I didn't need them to look very good, they looked great still; but it was a simple geometry I suppose.

 

Here is the machine with its new legs and in its new happy corner!!

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2146-post-your-ultimaker-happy-corner-photos/?p=41637

Some more pictures in the thread below because I keep reaching the photo limit.

Edit:

One final thing I forgot to mention that I checked were the pulleys, I tried to move them along the rods before turning on the machine and the seemed very secure.

I also checked all the connectors to the main electronics board, they were also very secure.

 

[aaronalai 2]

I printed out my glasses as well and they also turned out great!! The print speed was a bit high though. I just wanted to see if my lenses fit the way I wanted them to, I need to make a couple of tweaks but it's pretty close for a first try.

I've also been playing with the settings to get better prints for the hinges.

Here is my first attempt.

 

 

Here is my second attempt, I truncated the stem so I could focus on how to print the hinge part.

 

 

Soon I'll be well on my way to making the LED version !

 

[illuminarti 18]

Great write up, Aaron!

 

[aaronalai 2]

Thanks, BTW I have used the glue stick for every print and made sure to smudge the glue with water while the bed is heating up and have had everything stick like mad. Even that little truncated hinge piece had no brim, I had to wait for the bed to cool because I had to exert too much force to remove it and I didn't want to risk bending or breaking it.

 

[skint 61]

Awesome Aaron, so cool that you are printing away !! I cant wait to see a Geeky image of you wearing your printed glasses haha.

I really need to set myself a nice big design project, so I can put the UM2 through its paces!

 

[IRobertI 520]

Looks like your countless hours on the forum really paid off huh? I gotta say I wasn't quite so patient, power on and start a print GO GO GO was my approach after unboxing. Then again I did have a fair bit of experience with the original so I was confident I could fix any issues.

Looking forward to seeing those glasses completed, I think they will look pretty slick with the LEDs.

(btw, your vids are set to private, not sure if that was intentional or not)

 

[aaronalai 2]

Hey guys thanks!

Yeah, I'm really excited to finish those glasses, I too am looking forward to posting an image of me wearing them . I've been putting different things in the machine to get a better feel for the print settings vs output and am looking forward to feeding it some of my larger projects as well to really see what this thing can do!

Yeah, the hours in the forum definitely paid off and they continue to pay off as I post more questions. I'm trying to provide the correct information to get solutions, something I learned by watching the success of other posts. Trust me I wanted to GO GO GO, in fact there were a couple of things I didn't do before printing my first print because I was just too excited!! My hands were shaking when I was working on it because I just wanted to print something but had to restrain myself. I'm totally excited for the LED version of the glasses, some people at work don't see the practicality of them, but then again they are all a bunch of engineers and I think they are simply jealous of my new fancy awesome printer :mrgreen:!

Yeah, I set the videos to private because I just wanted to share them with the UM community. Also, some of the videos are for diagnostics issues and without context wouldn't make much sense if one were to stumble upon them via some YouTube exploring.

 

[IRobertI 520]

The thing is though that we can't see the videos (at least I can't). I think what you want is "Unlisted".

 

[aaronalai 2]

Awww shoot! I'll make them unlisted, thanks!

 

[Nicolinux 288]

Hey Aaron, a lil' correction. My packaged did include the bottm cardboard piece and the electronics cover was still bent out of shape. I don't even want to know what hit that thing...

Oh and btw. Where's the traditional hello world print?

 

[aaronalai 2]

Thanks for the clarification, I'll make the appropriate changes to my post. Lol, yeah I still need to print out the Ultimaker robot :lol:. Will do soon :-P.

 

[DidierKlein 729]

Thanks for the feedback Aaron, i've also been feeding myself with all the great stuff on the forum while waiting for my UM2 that should hopefully be there this week. I've printed out your message and I'll be reading it along with the UM2 manual when I'll be setting up the beast It will be hard to wait a bit more for my first print but i think it's worth it.

Have you done anything on the feeder part?