U.S. assembled UM2 first experience

[henri 3]

I am probably one of the earliest adopters of the American made, or at least American assembled ultimaker 2. I had an early solidoodle at the time and was waiting to upgrade. The solidoodle is a much inferior machine, which is not surprising since it costs about quarter of the price of my ultimaker. However I was under a slight amount of stress every time I printed,and was not always satisfied with the results. I feel okay about the Solidoodle people because I bought the cheapest available fully assembled machine at the time specifically to start my education in this subject, and to sell it at that price they obviously had to make a lot of compromises.

A friend in the same town had already bought an ultimaker2 , and I was very impressed but he had difficulties at that time with customs and some delays and so I put off upgrading.

When the announcement was made of the American assembled machine, with a slight reduction in price, free delivery, and they threw in a couple of extra reels of filament this broke through my dedicated cheapskate attitude. I bought it from dynamism.com and found the experience quite satisfactory. They answered questions by phone, intelligent and friendly, and it arrived promptly and in undamaged condition.

The first thing I made was a test piece to see how much I needed to shrink interlocking parts. The solidoodle needed up to half a mm, although it could probably have been improved if I were more adventurous about calibration. The surprising answer for the ultimaker was zero, my first parts just fitted. There was no blobbing or stringing at all. The only time i have seen any blobbing was when I was trying to work out why anyone needs 20 micron layers, so I made a 20mm tall Yoda, He had the great pox.

I have mixed feelings about 3mm filament. There is less competition, and I am paying at least twice as much for plastic. It is very stiff, which causes problems when the reel is almost empty. However,retraction through a Bowden tube may be much better controlled.

After 250 Mtrs or so I had a problem. The bed stopped heating. I had an error message which I thought said sensor error, but unfortunately did not write it down or take a picture. It may have said temperature error.

It turns out that support is from the U.S. Assembler, fbrc8. I got prompt response (with an apology for being over 24 hours!)with lots of helpful tips on diagnosing the problem. I also looked at the assembly manual,which is so good I almost wished that I had bought a kit.

The problem turned out to be a loose wire at the board connection. Easy enough to fix. When reassembling I noticed that the cable tie down clip did not adequately immobilize the bundle, possibly contributing to the problem . I just wrapped some black tape around it. I would encourage people to check on this, in case there are more examples around.

Subsequently I had a different problem, failure of the pt100 board temperature sensor. Fabrc8 sent me a replacement board and wire, very fast turnaround. Probably because they do not have many thousands of machines out there yet, I judge service at the American supplier to be outstanding.

I have now run 400 Mtrs through. I regard my experience as just about 100% positive.

[skint 61]

Henri,

Congrats on your upgrade purchase and welcome to the forum. So lovely to hear you positive review. I am sure you will have many more positive experiences with the UM2 like we all have

You are in the safest of hands with fbrc8 !

 

[chrisr 18]

What he said :-)

 

[ronniiraygun 0]

I'm a mechanical engineer and have an UM2 and Robo3D (door stop or desk holder upper I can't decide which it is). We bought the UM2 last summer and it's been my little buddy so I'm thinking of getting another one for home. My one quandary is why the price isn't dropping when the Euro is in free fall the last couple of months.

Am I better off ordering one from Ultimaker in Europe in Euro's which today was $2171 or from Dynamism here in the US? I've been watching the exchange rate but the US prices have not been matching the drop.

 

[henri 3]

The advantage of the US model is that support is here, and there is no hassle and delay from customs, or charge for duty.

Maybe you are entitled to US support anyway, but you will lose some of the savings with transport costs. I was willing to pay up, and have not regretted it.

 

[monika-twigg 0]

What you normally print?

 

The advantage of the US model is that support is here, and there is no hassle and delay from customs, or charge for duty.

Maybe you are entitled to US support anyway, but you will lose some of the savings with transport costs. I was willing to pay up, and have not regretted it.

 

[henri 3]

Monika.. My printer remains busy. My other hobby is clock design, and I am printing an ambitious plastic clock, using ideas from John(longitude) Harrison

My other enthusiasm ( of many) is the Chinese ceramic figures called Luohans, and there are good Stls on a site called scan the world, which they did for me.

I make pill boxes with initials deeply incised in the lids for gifts.

 

[henri 3]

I am buying Ultimaker filament from Fbrc8 to ensure reliable material.

They have the neat trick of giving free postage for orders over $75, which is just about two reels, plus they ship promptly, if not instantaneously