Is Ultimaker II good quality? / Heated bed error

[aglmarine 0]

I have bought an ultimaker II which was delivered beginning april to me, and since then I had a problem with headbed after only three weeks. After several emails which were ignored at first, ultimaker sent me a new heatbed and ftted and worked fine until the same message was back to haunt me 4 weeks ago HEATBED ERROR contact ultimaker.

I sent several emails and got one replay asking me to check heatbed resistance value. After I emailed back with value no reply, called several times and they told me I need to buy a new heatbed as warranty of 3 months was up, so I need to pay €150.00.

When I bought machine I was told it came with a 6 months full warranty!

Now it became 3 months, but my big question is will it fail again ?

Looking back, my experience with Ultimaker wasn't great at all, first machine got delayed from 10 weeks to 14 weeks delivery, then ABS wasn't sent so couldn't print, when it arrived head bed 1 failed, now head bed 2 also failed.

Total time machine used not more than 4 weeks.

Was it a mistake buying an ultimaker II ? I'd say yes most definitely. Will i buy a new head bed from ultimaker ? NO.

I won't pay more money on a rubbish machine that should by law carry a 2 year international warranty.

Shame on you Ultimaker!!!!!! Very disappointing.

Shop around prior to buying an Ultimaker and wasting your money.. Looks nice but low quality machine.. Not worth the money..

 

[IRobertI 517]

I edited your ALL CAPS title and removed your other duplicate thread (but I added in part of the title of that thread on this one). The rest of the post was untouched.

Please don't use all caps.

 

[DidierKlein 729]

Hi,

Sorry to hear you have bad experience with your UM2... I can understand your frustration but claiming it's a bad machine and a bad company is not the truth. Okay you're having troubles with your UM2 but don't generalize it to the whole company.

For the warranty if you bought directly from Ultimaker it's indeed 3 months, it's specified on the website when you buy.

If you bought from another reseller it might be that it's extended to 6 months (i know makershop in france does it) so you really should contact the reseller if it's the case.

Are you sure all the wire connections are okay?

I'm sure Sanders will contact you when he sees your subject

 

[Daid 304]

(I want to stay away from the whole support is good/bad/crap/great/unhelpful/warranty discussion. I'm part of R&D. So see my post as from R&D. Not sales&support)

Some heated beds have soldering problems on the connector. This can be fixed at home but that does require some equipment that not everyone might have. You need a soldering iron and something to heat the bed with (we used a electric cooking plate) I can provide some instructions if you want.

While the defect rate of these beds have been a lot lower then in the early days of the UM2, there are still some beds that pass QA but fail later due to bad connections. We're working on changing this design to prevent this later on. But the proper solution is quite difficult to implement. (not to mention we want a longer test period to make sure we're not introducing worse problems)

 

[gr5 2,094]

I repaired the solder on my bed easily with only a soldering iron (a very good one) and it has worked for many months with no problems since then. It's really quite easy to fix. If you ask for help on this forum you will get it.

People have similar problems with all the other companies out there (like Makerbot) but those other companies (like Makerbot) will not let you post something like this on their forum ever. So you won't hear about those problems so much but I hear about them all the time at shows.

 

[aglmarine 0]

Replying to all your posts I never said the ultimaker was a terrible machine, but was annoyed at how long after sales support took to handle these matters, and after calling and persisting I got a new heat bed again, therefore this is the third fitted on my machine in just four months.

I questioned the reliability of the machine in general or perhaps the heat bed more specifically as I'm already on my third...

I also read some comments with too bad, easy to fix, and so on... True but none were in fact clear of what one should do exactly. One also had blown tracks on the element circuit which wasn't my problem. I also got a link from someone who changed ptc to another type and went through quite a lengthy and useless process, as all you need to do is change it with the correct part number.

In my first problem machine would stop during a print so thermistor had an intermittent problem, due to a faulty ptc.

I'm quite familiar with electronics, and after checking both heat beds the problem was in both cases a faulty ptc100 which is mounted on the bed. This is quite straight forward to desolder and replace and also available for $10.00 a piece true, but to remove bed, desolder and replace and refit and level glass is quote a job to be done on a regular basis.

I just hope this head bed doesn't fail again soon, and thanks to Ultimaker for helping me out once more.

I did shop around before buying and I also know other machines also have their own problems, and still wish to believe the ultimaker II is a very good 3d printer, just hope it's built to last. Time will tell...

[davesandbach 0]

I repaired the solder on my bed easily with only a soldering iron (a very good one) and it has worked for many months with no problems since then. It's really quite easy to fix. If you ask for help on this forum you will get it.

People have similar problems with all the other companies out there (like Makerbot) but those other companies (like Makerbot) will not let you post something like this on their forum ever. So you won't hear about those problems so much but I hear about them all the time at shows.

 

I have the same problem with heated bed sensor reading too high, so stopping the machine. Can you supply a bit more info on how to fix this with a soldering iron gr5?

I guess it's high temperature solder on the heated bed connections. Do we just remove the heater plate and re-heat the solder for all connections - plus I guess the temp sensor component?

Is it a standard thermistor by the way - if anyone knows the part number it would be relatively easy to swap out the thermistor...

thanks

 

[davesandbach 0]

I seem to have fixed mine, fingers crossed. After investigating pretty much everything, I re-soldered the solder joints on the heated plate - both at either end of the sensor and all 4 along the connector strip. Soldering iron set to 470degC, as it feels like high temp solder.

All the joints looked OK visually, but re-wetting them seemed to fix the problem - for now anyway.

I detached the wires to do this and of course re-attached into the terminal block, so it may have been a fault with a screw terminal I guess, but I'd checked that before without success.

 

[gr5 2,094]

I'm glad you fixed it. The temp sensor is a PT100 which is a standard part. Someone even has links to order one somewhere on this forum. All PT100's have the same temperature curve so you just need one of the right size. The print head on the UM2 also has a tiny PT100 inside it.