Best Printing Practices on an Ultimaker

[gabriela3d]

Every other day we get requests for printer settings, hacks and tweaks that improve the performance of our Hubs’ 3D Printers. Since Makerbot, Ultimaker and RepRap based printers make up more than half of the machines on our platform we decided to dedicate a blog post to each in which we try to demystify some best practices and tips & tricks to run your machine like a Boss. Thanks for all the help from Ultimaker and the excellent resources provided by Tom Howard in his slides.

Of course there are many ways to get to a great quality print. These tips may work better for some than for others as they are dependant on the calibration, machine version and the print.

We’ll cover these topics:

• Hacks & Upgrades
• Print Settings per Material
• Speed vs Quality settings
• Support types and use cases
• Hacks & Upgrades

The most popular hack for an Ultimaker Original is a printable Z stage calibration tool that helps you level your bed very easy.

For the Ultimaker 2 a very popular add on is this Cable Chain.

Print Setting per Material

There is a wide range of materials you can print on your Ultimaker, and it’s expanding fast. We’ll list some of the basic settings here for popular materials on the Ultimaker, feel free so share more settings with us.

• PLA Print temp: 210°C notes: print with fans on
• ABS Print temp 250°C notes: print with fans off, heated bed at 110°C, don’t print too fast
• Wood Print temp: 225°C notes: use little or no retraction as the material might break, speed around 50mm/s, you can vary the temperature to get color variations
• FlexPLA Print temp 230°C: notes: add some oil in the tube, print slow at around 10mm/s - 25mm/s, heated bed at 60°C
• BendLay Print temp 210-240°C notes: great for printing light emitting objects.
• LayBrick Print temp 175-210°C notes: higher temps gives a smoother finish
• Nylon (Taulman 618/645) Print temp 260-265°C notes: very strong and flexible great for jewelry or high durability prints

Speed vs. Quality setting
The things you print may have different use cases, sometimes you find yourself making iteration after iteration of a product as fast as you can while at other times you want to print at maximum quality.

Quality
If you want to print with high quality with PLA these are some guidelines you may want to keep in mind. Print at 60 micron for a high quality surface, at 210°C and 50mm/s. 15% infill and retraction enabled, and your fan or both fans turned on.

Note: your build platform needs to be properly leveled to get a successful first layer and your short belts should all be very tight.

Speed
For fast printing on an Ultimaker you want to print at a lower resolution like 200 micron. You can print up to about 100mm/s at 230°C. However be aware that there is a maximum of filament your nozzle can push out and if you set the resolution or the speed too high you can create a plug because an upwards flow will occur. Ultimakers slicing tool Cura will give you a warning when you are pushing the limit.

Support types and use cases
There are different types of support you can use for your prints, we’ll explain you the basics and main use cases here.

Skirt
Before your print starts there is a prime to make sure your nozzle is filled and there is sufficient pressure. A skirt is meant to prevent that small thread of filament to interrupt with your print.

It will draw an outline surrounding your print. This is a standard setting and should left enabled for most cases, however it can be tweaked to your liking from the Expert Settings.

Brim
A brim basically is multiple skirts, all the way until they line up with your footprint. This enhances adhesion without leaving any marks on the print. This is a great weapon of choice to counter warping without leaving much scar on your print. Most objects will stay put with this big layer around the print, it’s also great to keep objects with a small footprint from tipping over. Again Brim can be tweaked from the Expert Settings, standard is 20 layers.

Raft
A raft does the same thing as a brim, instead of stopping at the perimeter it goes on underneath the print. The print is being build on top of this raft. This can help when you want to fight warping. However it does leave a mark on your print. You can play with the settings of your raft to fine tune it to your liking from the Expert Settings.

Support touching buildplate
If you have objects with extreme overhang you should use Support structure, these are easy to break away structures printed in the same material as you model. There are two types you can choose from Cura, most used is the Support touching buildplate, which supports any geometry from the buildplate up.

Support everywhere
The second type of support create support everywhere where there is overhang, so if we look at Marvin we see the eyes, and keychain ring are getting support as well. Choose this type of support if the your critical geometry is not overhanging the buildplate but rather the model itself.

We’re curious what your experiences and best practices are with the Ultimaker 1 and 2. Please share your tips in the comments and we’ll combine them in our next Best Printing Practices post. If you want to dive in deeper you can also check out Calibration section on the Ultimaker Wiki.

This post was initially published on our blog on February 10, 2014

[Alex3DHubs]

Awesome. Now I know how to get the tricky end part of Marvin printed perfectly.

[swordriff]

The axis in your printer need lubricating, the recommended substance is “sewing machine oil”.

Now, where to get that, and is it really the right oil?

The idea is that the oil must not attack any of the materials in your printer,

and STAY FLUID for a long time.

These requirements are met by Ballistol. It is a multipurpose lubricant which in Norway

is sold in weapons shops. The gun geeks use it to preserve the action. One guy told me he had oiled his gun and put it away in his safe for 15 years. After taking it out, it was like yesterday’s oil!
It is easy to find in Europe, you can also look it up on the web.

I use it personally when restoring sliders in old synthesizers, which have been treated with absolutely

the wrong material in Japan and USA long ago. The wrong oil has turned into vax… or cheese.

USE VERY SPARINGLY:

Do not spray into your printer. You do not want it on the belts (they wont break, on the contrary, but they will get slippery, and you really do not want that), you only want oil on the axis.

Spray 1 sec into a piece of kleenex or similar. Wipe onto all the axis.

After next prints there will be forming a little ring of dust and excess oil at the axis endpoints, wipe it with paper or cotton.

You will have perfectly lubricated axis!

Repeat after 3-6 months.

[3Dpinal]

Hello,

For Flex PLA the limit temperature written on the reel is 220°, here you say 230°. Which is right ? I sort of have problems with Flex PLA…

[Tommyph1208]

There is a cable chain for the UMO too:

Ultimaker Cable Chain by drayson

[swordriff]

These are general guidelines! The optimal temp varies 5-10C even

within same make, just by change of color!

[swordriff]

This one is extremely popular, a new extruder re-using the old parts, just needs

one new bolt, i think:

YouMagine – on YouMagine

[atumedida]

Using the brim is almost mandatory for large prints, specially during winter. However, it should be noted that brim can affect prints with holes in the bottom (see attached files). It can be easily removed with a sharp knife or cutter, but it might leave marks in the print. Sanding it with 320+ grain sandpaper and a drop or two of oil is an excellent way to remove it.

Additionally, replacing ultimaker 2’s feeder with this alternative version is a great idea. This feeder allows you to quickly change filaments in mid-print (for multicolored prints), is easy to clean and see what’s wrong with filament jams.

[HiQuality_Hub]

If there’s one thing that I’d recommend it’s not to treat Cura as if it’s a “Drive Through McDonalds” experience where it’s just a quick place to pass your model through before printing. It’s actually more like a high class a la carte restaurant where you need to sit and spend time studying the menu properly to get the best printing experience. I would recommend going into the layer view and reviewing the layer stack before you print, that way you can often spot potential printing problems before you even switch on the printer. It’s far better to spot the problems before you start, rather than 6 hours into an 8 hour print.

A little time spent looking through all the options in Cura can sometimes save you hours in the long run.

Also I would recommend thinking about whether the model actually needs any infill at all, don’t automatically default to always printing with infill. I have made many models without infill because I’ve looked at the layer stack and seen that they don’t need that internal support. If that’s the case but strength is the reason why you’ve selected infill then it is usually more efficient in printing time to double the shell thickness from 0.4 to 0.8mm instead to make sure the model is strong enough.

The best guide to getting better prints I’ve found on the internet for Ultimaker printers can be found here :

http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/30-getting-better-prints

There’s also an associated troubleshooting guide on the same site which is invaluable in understanding why your print may have not turned out how you were expecting.

Hope all of the above helps.

[atumedida]

Excellent point! you’re absolutely right and it can’t be said enough. Infill makes sense for some prints (like glowfill prints, where a fully filled print will glow longer and stronger), but for most pieces (like 3Dhub’s marvin) an outer shell of 1.2 or 1.6 is more than enough for a sturdy print.

[Boutique_3D]

What about tips for avoiding nozzle clogs when you’re printing with ABS and PLA on a daily basis. . .

[atumedida]

Each printer is a different beast, and sometimes what works for one printer might not work for another. We print mostly in PLA and Co-Polyester, and we often switch colors constantly. We do a couple of thins to avoid clogging, which might work for you:

• Perform the atomic method before each print (The Atomic Method - 3DVerkstan Knowledge Base)
• Don’t leave your filament sitting too long while the nozzle is hot.
• Store your filaments in a dry place, in order to ensure they don’t absorb too much moisture.
• Use a dust filter (we use this one, it works fantastic https://www.youmagine.com/designs/dust-filter)
• Print faster and slightly hotter for long prints (we usually add 10mms/s and 5º C), to ensure the filament keeps flowing and doesn’t remain too long in the nozzle.

Hope this helps!

[benson_pauwels]

Don’t use ABS, just stick to PLA.

[atumedida]

ABS has a high temperature resistance, higher than most common thermoplastics for 3d printing, so it’s useful for parts that have to withstand high temperatures or a lot of friction. In these cases, you need to use ABS, at least until some other filament company comes up with another material which performs similarly.

[gr5org]

Switching from ABS back to PLA is very problematic and often causes nozzle clogs. The best deterrent is to do a “cold pull” every time you change filament. This means you pull out all the plastic when the plastic is just above the glass temp such that it ALL comes out - in the shape of the nozzle tip including the .4mm shaft.

Step 1 is to melt the plastic and shove the filament in hard such that a little extrudes (usually UMs retract at the end of a print - if you are there at the end you can cut power and shove the filament back in (both for UM and UM2). 180C is plenty hot enough for PLA - any temp that lets you see some plastic come out of the nozzle is fine.

Step 2 is to cool it to the perfect cold pull temperature. For PLA this is 90 to 95C. For ABS this is I believe 130C (haven’t done it in a while). On the UM2 make sure power is off at the feeder! Pull hard - 10 to 20 pounds force. If it comes out easy you weren’t cold enough. If it won’t come out raise the temp by 10C and try a few seconds later. Also on the UM2 once you pull it out of the nozzle let it sit in the bowden for at least 10 seconds to harden before pulling it through the feeder.

I now do a cold pull on every filament change. When I change colors I don’t have to wait for the mixing to end and the new color to appear.

[Boutique_3D]

Thank you so much. I had been disassembling the nozzle every weekend, leaving it in acetone and then cleaning it out.

[Boutique_3D]

What about humidity. Can humid filament be a cause of clogs?

[gr5org]

No. I print with Nylon occasionally which absorbs water very badly and it boils as it prints. You can hear it snap/crackle/pop/hiss as it comes out and you can see the plastic is foamier and whiter (less transparent) when it is humid. I’m pretty sure water content won’t cause clogs.

Simply leaving PLA or especially ABS in the nozzle for 5 minutes at 240C will caramelize it into a brown gunk. Doing a “cold pull” after every 10 hours of printing or on every filament change helps and printing PLA at say 220C rather than 240C helps quite a bit. And ABS I always print at 245C. In general printing too hot or too slow (stopped) can cause clogs. Printing too cold or too fast can cause problems feeding and underextrusion (feeder isn’t powerful enough).

[gr5org]

I just checked my notes - 140C is about right for cold pull for ABS.

[Boutique_3D]

What sort of speeds are too fast for printing with ABS?