1st Print on Ultimaker2 looks bad.

[printedman 1]

I assume you mean 30mm/s print speed, not travel speed. Travel speed is the speed your UM2 uses when moving between printing. Travel speed should be 150mm/s or even higher.

Actually 210°C is ok for PLA, however you might even lower it a bit, maybe to 200°C if you're really printing @ 30mm/s. Or you could increase the print speed while staying @ 210°C to something like 50mm/s.

Lowering the temperature is also what you should do for improving the antennae. I suggest you use the TweakAtZ plugin which is part of Cura 14.03 and change the temperature to 190°C at the height where the antennae begin.

 

I got the speed from Cura. At the Basic setting tab," Print Speed (mm/s) 30" . Advanced Tab, Travel speed (mm/s). So which is the one am I suppose to ensure correct? Please advice, thanks.

 

[printedman 1]

You will have to activate "full settings" (Expert -> Switch to full settings...). Then go into the expert settings (Expert -> Open expert settings... CTRL+E).

There you will find the "cool head lift" feature in the "Cool" settings.

 

I have change to Expert setting and in Expert config tick the Cool head lift. default setting is:

Fan full on at height (mm) 1

Fan speed min (%) 100

Fan speed max (%) 100

Minimum speed (mm/s) 10

So do I need to change any setting? Please advice, thanks.

 

[printedman 1]

Cool head lift will *only* improve the 2 antennas. You can get even better antenna improvement by printing 2 robots side by side. The problem is they are so small they don't have time to cool as the nozzle is making physical constant contact and keeps them above melting temp. With "cool head lift" or by printing 2 robots the nozzle moves away long enough for it to cool. These are tiny improvements as they only affect the antenna.

You didn't answer the question about travel speed. What was your print speed and what was your travel speed?

 

I got the speed from Cura. At the Basic setting tab," Print Speed (mm/s) 30" . Advanced Tab, Travel speed (mm/s). So which is the one am I suppose to ensure correct? Please advice, thanks.

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

I got the speed from Cura. At the Basic setting tab," Print Speed (mm/s) 30" . Advanced Tab, Travel speed (mm/s). So which is the one am I suppose to ensure correct? Please advice, thanks.

 

Mainly the travel speed in the advanced section. Set it to 150mm/s.

[printedman 1]

Mainly the travel speed in the advanced section. Set it to 150mm/s.

 

So what is the different between travel speed and print speed ? Thanks.

 

[jonnybischof 60]

"travel" is when the printhead has to quickly "travel" from a point to another, without putting out any plastic. The easiest way to see what it means is, if you imagine two columns next to each other. The printhead will need to "travel" between the two columns in order to print both of them.

If you set your travel speed too low, then you will get a lot of stringing, because the difference between "print" and "travel" is mostly a difference in speed.

The slower you print, and the faster you travel, the less stringing you get. But you shouldn't go higher than 150mm/s for travel unless you know that the machine can handle it (needs to be well calibrated and running super-smoothly).

As for the "cool" settings: No need to change anything there imho. For ABS, you would need to change a lot, but for PLA this is usually the best way to go.

 

[printedman 1]

Just did a print with 2 Robot, all went well but this happen. Please take a look at the video clip. Whats happing?

 

[mnis 11]

Maybe works "Cool Head Lift" not right. Do it for the next experiment OFF.

It also looks as if "retraction" does not work correctly.

25 - 35mm / s /// 4.5 - 5.5mm.

- Travel speed should be selected from 150-175mm/s, some like it even faster.

Place the robots further apart.

Remember also:

- It can be changed directly on the machine parameters.

- It can be changed in Cura machine parameters.

- No idea what exactly has priority. I understand the relationships are not yet fully ...

Markus

[printedman 1]

Maybe works "Cool Head Lift" not right. Do it for the next experiment OFF.

It also looks as if "retraction" does not work correctly.

25 - 35mm / s /// 4.5 - 5.5mm.

Place the robot further apart.

Remember also:

- It can be changed directly on the machine parameters.

- It can be changed in Cura machine parameters.

- No idea what exactly has priority ...

Markus

 

You read my mind. :mrgreen: And the Basic and Advance setting also confuse me too. You set "Print speed (mm/s)" on Basic and on Advanced only " Travel speed (mm/s)" . If its an Advanced setting, we should be able to set both there. :mrgreen:

 

[mnis 11]

It should be based on the default settings:

- Only one parameter at the time be changed.

- Then look first if and what causes it.

When I ventured first steps with my machine, I have changed many settings out of curiosity, and it had virtually no use to me. I just did not know what exactly cause various parameters.

Begin a new way, with "Default Settings" in Cura and also on the machine, if you believe it does not continue.

Markus

[illuminarti 18]

The video looks a bit odd to me - or rather, it sounds odd. It sounds like the the printer is retracting and de-retracting immediately, and then moving on to the next antenna? Does anyone else hear that? Maybe the audio and pictures are slightly out of step?

As you can see, while the head moves off to pause, it is oozing because of pent up pressure, so that when it moves back it leaves a bunch of plastic on the outside of the print. It should be pretty easy to remove afterwards, but I'm surprised it's oozing as much as it is. You might try lowering the temp a bit further, and maybe reducing the print speed or layer height further, to reduce the volume of plastic per second, and hence the head pressure.

Travel speed is set in the advanced settings, because it is typically something that only gets set once. It isn't print specific, usually. On a UM2 set it to at least 250mm/s.

Print speed is a fundamental setting that needs to be tailored to every print. During the printing, you can use the printer's control interface to tweak the speeds in percentage terms, if you find that the speeds coded into the gcode need to be varied.

 

[mnis 11]

Hm, that makes sense.

Sorry, I always listen to music at a low volume when I read in the forum. Nevertheless, I have noticed an unusual noise when I saw the video. I forgot to note. But that can analyze rather someone with more experience.

Markus

[printedman 1]

The video looks a bit odd to me - or rather, it sounds odd. It sounds like the the printer is retracting and de-retracting immediately, and then moving on to the next antenna? Does anyone else hear that? Maybe the audio and pictures are slightly out of step?

 

The sound is in sync. I just play a few time from the youtube link. But sometime it does get out of sync too. :mrgreen:

 

[printedman 1]

Hm, that makes sense.

Sorry, I always listen to music at a low volume when I read in the forum. Nevertheless, I have noticed an unusual noise when I saw the video. I forgot to note. But that can analyze rather someone with more experience.

Markus

 

The sound of the print head moving sound correct to me but the rest of the sound, I have no idea :geek: :mrgreen:

 

[illuminarti 18]

Can you send me the gcode for that print that's in the video? Email it to gcode@fbrc8.com

 

[printedman 1]

Can you send me the gcode for that print that's in the video? Email it to gcode@fbrc8.com

 

Send

 

[illuminarti 18]

The gcode looks fine - the sequencing of retractions and movements seems correct.

 

[printedman 1]

:???: whats causing all this? :???: :roll:

 

[gr5 2,167]

I don't know why it is leaking so much with "cool head lift". This is a feature that I try to avoid and is only used typically on the top few layers of very small things like robot antenna.

Fortunately it is easy to remove excess strings with a razor.

I have gotten perfect antennas on the robot without cool head lift - I just print 2 robots like you did. So in other words it's probably best to use one technique or the other but you don't need both. If you go back to my post #24 - I didn't use cool head lift that time. But on other prints I *do* use it (when I don't want to print 2 or there isn't room on the platform to print 2). cool head lift has always left strings for me - but not this badly!

The last time I used cool head lift - about 2 weeks ago, I had all the same settings as you but it came out much better. My retraction was max speed and 4.5mm (on the panel).

 

[gr5 2,167]

I compared my print with yours (I never delete anything) and I had the same settings for:

layer height

cool head lift

cool minimum speed

minimum layer time

 

[gr5 2,167]

What was your print head temperature?

 

[printedman 1]

Could if be Cura ? I use the 14.03 Test 1. :roll:

 

[printedman 1]

What was your print head temperature?

 

bed is 60, head is 210

 

[gr5 2,167]

Almost same thing for me. 220/65. Also I used Ultimaker light blue filament - same as you I think.

Maybe mine *did* leak as bad as yours and I just forgot. I wasn't there when it finished - I definitely remember I had to cut some strings off the very top - it was a print of a building with a clock tower in the middle and the tower had a wall that stuck up higher than the other 3 walls. I look at it now and it looks perfect. Unlike this print, the robot prints I posted earlier didn't have huge strings like this. I don't think they had much of any strings. But of course I didn't use "cool head lift" either.

 

[gr5 2,167]

When I was printing robots, I had the most trouble with the antenna. I printed only the top half of the robot head and tried everything. Only when I printed 2 did it work out. You could save time and do what I did - just print the top half of the head. The feature for that is under "advanced" "quality" "cut off object bottom".