Received Ultimaker 2 in 5 weeks (US)

[mechamecha 61]

I'm very happy to post that I received my Ultimaker 2 in the U.S. just five weeks after I ordered it (ordered Friday May 10, received Monday June 16). When I placed the order, the lead time was listed as 8-10 weeks. Needless to say, receiving it a month earlier than expected was a really nice surprise!

In the box was a note that my Ultimaker 2 was assembled in the USA by fbrc8, "Ultimaker's official manufacturing & support partner in the USA." It's great to see Ultimaker expanding to meet the needs of its customers.

When I first set it up, I couldn't get the filament to feed into the extruder no matter how hard I pushed, so I had to loosen the tension a bit. I'm quite impressed with the prints I've been getting so far, but I've had to be mindful of keeping the filament relatively friction-free as it enters the extruder as documented in this thread. I was experiencing some under-extrusion problems with retraction enabled and combing turned off. The filament squeaked as it rubbed against the side of the opening on the bottom of the extruder and resulted in printing gaps. Turning combing back on (resulting in fewer retractions) and being mindful of the angle of the filament as it enters the extruder seemed to fix the problem nicely.

 

[illuminarti 16]

It's good to hear that you are getting good results from your new printer. You do have to push pretty hard to get the filament in sometimes.

It seems that sometimes there can be some sticking of the extruder tension arm/roller that makes it harder to move than it should be. Loosening the four bolts that hold on the extruder, and then retightening until you just feel resistance can sometimes help with that, as can putting a lever (like the allen key) into the hole in the middle of the grey tension wheel, and levering it against the adjacent plastic ring to push the tension wheel a little to the left. Before your printer shipped it would have been fully tested, and the plastic went in ok for that, so maybe something settled slightly in shipping.

Your trick will be to find the right level of tension, so that you can get the plastic in and out without a problem, but still get sufficient pressure that it doesn't grind the filament during printing. If you have retraction-related under-extrusion that is caused by the filament tending to grind away, rather than the motor clicking because it can't push the filament any harder, then you might get better results by slightly increasing the tension. In theory, with the current extruder design, and the right amount of tension, you should get very little grinding of the filament.

I guess the rumors that I've been hearing and mentioning for a while about Ultimaker expanding their presence in the USA are true after all... :wink:

 

[mechamecha 61]

Thanks, illuminarti! Thanks to you and many others who provide the excellent support I've witnessed in these forums, I became convinced that the Ultimaker 2 was the way to go for me… A very nice machine and a great community!

 

[skint 61]

Welcome aboard mecha!