Ultimaker 2 - material feeder issue : Very disappointed at the level of support (which has been zero) from Ultimaker

[only-me 0]

Hi all,

I've had the Ultimaker 2 since mid July, printed only a few times. Was doing a print at the beginning of last week when the Ultimaker began to fail to extrude material and made weird clicking noises. Have tried raising the temperature to 260C to burn off potential blockages but has been to no avail. Have sent Ultimaker so called "support" emails to seek advice and received nothing, zero reply other than the automated response. Shockingly bad support for a product that is so expensive! I could have (and now with hindsight, should have) purchased the same printer via Amazon for a slightly cheaper price as well but decided to go direct as I wanted to support them and cut out the middle man and expected a better level of support. How wrong was I should have purchased via Amazon and have their extra support in dealing with problems.

I don't really want to go around poking about with unscrewing and taking the printer apart as it would likely give Ultimaker an excuse to void any warranty. As I have not received any support from Ultimaker, I was wondering whether any kind Samaritans on this forum would be able to kindly offer any advice and suggestions for things that I can try to resolve this problem without unscrewing and taking the printer apart?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[gr5 962]

Support is a week or two behind. They will eventually get back to you although the phone is much more succesful. You can poke around all you want and won't void the warranty just from removing screws and stuff. I think there is a sticker on the heated bed with a warranty warning so don't mess with that without talking to them first.

260C is hot enough to turn PLA and ABS into a gunk that will clog your nozzle. I recommend the "atomic method" to clean it out - that's the easiest thing to do:

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4118-blocked-nozzle/?p=33691

What material were you printing? PLA?

If that doesn't work then you can try sticking a hypodermic or acupuncture needle up the nozzle and do atomic method at same time. If *that* doesn't work I'd take it all apart and remove the nozzle/heater assembly and cook all the plastic out with a gas flame. Google the procedure. People have made videos too. read/watch how other people took it all apart before taking the thermocouple out yourself.

 

[gr5 962]

Oh - and the clicking sound is on purpose - it's the extruder stepper motor skipping backwards because there's too much pressure on the filament. It can get up to about 5kg of force (that's a lot - like 100psi inside the nozzle) before skipping backwards. Much more force and you grind away the filament so this "skipping back" is actually a feature.

 

[DidierKlein 646]

Something that i find even more shocking than "bad support" as you say, is people doing stuff on an expensive machine without knowing what they do... Just take a little time on the forum and you'll find easily all the good things to do to work with the printer, and most important what to avoid

 

[nudelmannrichter 11]

R 8 u r, Didier :cool:

 

[nallath 565]

So basicly, you've been eating yourself up about the lack of support, when there has been the greatest place for support (eg; 1 detailed answer within 2,5 hours and several more within a day) all along. This is why the UM forums are so amazing.

I would love to have more technical stuff to add, but gr5 beat me to it

 

[ultiarjan 1,082]

Sure the forum is fantastic and a great source of knowledge... but "support is a week or two behind" should not be acceptable... um should deal with it.. at least give a response. . maybe even with a link to the forum.. but better hire temps. do overtime and get rid of the backlog!

[Dim3nsioneer 377]

Sure the forum is fantastic and a great source of knowledge... but "support is a week or two behind" should not be acceptable... um should deal with it.. at least give a response. . maybe even with a link to the forum.. but better hire temps. do overtime and get rid of the backlog!

 

That's actually what they do. I got quite some answers on Sundays for my tickets. But I think the ticket system itself has a flaw. IMHO it makes not much sense to have a system which lets the customer select the priority of the ticket and which increases the priority from day to day. This leads to the situation that you have only tickets with the highest priority just after a few days and you can't say anymore which one was really urgent and which ones could wait a bit longer. I would switch off the automatic priority increase and let the customer decide how urgent it is.

 

[nallath 565]

It isn't acceptable, I'm merely pointing out that no (paid) support will give you as much information about anything (especially not in that timeframe) as our forum does. Thats why the community rocks.