Newbie can use help with print quality

[entomophile 9]

Just got my Ultimaker 2, my first 3D printer. Immediately after setup, I printed the Ultimaker robot from the SD card with the included PLA filament and got a pretty good print. The flaw in the base I think was the transition from the remaining test filament in the machine, to the new filament. I think the print is pretty good for a first print except for the small holes and gaps in the surface.

Two days later I tried printing the same thing again. Only difference, I moved the printer to a new location and opened the file in Cura and saved it to SD card again. I left all of the default settings and printed on normal quality. You can see the print quality went way down with the holes and gaps being much larger this time.

What error(s) am I looking at here? Underextrusion maybe? What steps should I take to troubleshoot?

Thanks for any advice,

Greg

 

[ultiarjan 1,223]

you have serious underextrusion, nothing to worry about, you need to learn how to fix it anyhow someday .... Start by reading these ... if you still have questions after that feel free to ask again ....

 

 

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/6574-a-visual-ultimaker-troubleshooting-guide/

 

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/7467-a-few-tips-for-getting-better-prints/

 

 

and probably someday you want to print yourself a better feeder, read all about it here;

 

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/4393-ultimaker2-feeder-system-improvements-and-ideas/

 

 

and... welcome to the forum ...

 

[entomophile 9]

Funny, I read those posts before but I missed the importance of temperature. What a difference 5 degrees makes. Reprinted at 215 and got a much better print with just a hint of under extrusion. I'll try again at 220.

 

[gr5 2,196]

The robot is not an easy print - it has overhangs and the antennas are very difficult. If you want to just print parts then keep going at the settings you have now. If you want higher quality print slower. So 25mm/sec, 200C, .1mm layer will give you much better quality for the robot than the one in this picture. And make sure the fan is cranked to 100 before you get to the hand supports. But I rarely care so much about quality and I'm not that patient to wait a few hours for a silly robot. So decide what you want and go that route.

 

[entomophile 9]

Thanks for the advice. I realize the robot is not an easy print, that's why I chose it. I figure if I can get that to print nice and pretty, other prints should be a breeze. Really, I'm just trying to learn the in's and out's of tuning the machine and see how the settings affect the prints.

BTW, the test print included with the UM2...Do you know what quality/settings that was printed at? I would like to see if I can match that print.

 

[gr5 2,196]

BTW, the test print included with the UM2...

 

If you are lucky the test print is still on the SD card. In cura choose "load settings from gcode..." and select that gcode file. This will load all the settings used for that print into Cura.

Test prints change from month to month. I don't know what the latest test print looks like. I got my UM2 almost a year ago.

 

[entomophile 9]

The test print is still there. I failed to realize that the print quality settings are already in the gcode. I thought I needed to choose the quality settings in Cura first. Slowly getting the hang of this thing.