Ultimaker 3 Profile PLA & PVA additional Tips

[DarthRevan]

This past weekend I opened my software to find that a new printer had been added to my configuration assistant, Ultimaker3! As I've had this machine for several months now, it is great to finally see a profile from Simplify3D. I hoped the long wait for an official profile meant that things would be fairly turn-key. I couldn't be happier. That said, here are a few things I've noticed that you may want to make note of before printing anything and everything.

1. If you do a lot of printing with PVA, you might want to take a look at dense supports in S3D. I will link to a video below that explains how to do it. It made a big difference with some of my prints and improved the surface quality above the support structures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koCVOsRA6Bc

Personally, I've gotten good results using the same settings described in that video (5 dense support layers, 0.1mm horizontal offset, 0 upper and lower separation layers).

2. This isn't something that I personally use, but if you want to have the idle extruder cooldown between every layer when it isn't being used (I think cura does this by default), you can enable that in the Simplify3D tool change script. Just remove the semicolon before the last four M104 lines in the tool change script. If you want the print to completely pause until your set temperature is reached, change the 2nd and 4th M104's to M109's so that the machine waits to heat back up from the idle temperature. The default temperature set for idling is 170ºC, so if that's not what you want to use, you can just edit the M104's to use whatever temperature you want.

Again, I don't use this personally, since I have never noticed a significant quality difference and it makes the prints take a lot longer, but at least it's easy to enable if you want to try it out.

3. Finally, if you're someone that likes to tinker with your acceleration settings, you might also want to use different acceleration values for different materials. For example, you might want to reduce your acceleration and jerk settings for PVA and let the PLA extruder move a bit faster. You can do this pretty easily by putting the following code at the top of the tool change script (assuming your PVA extruder is toolhead 0).

Code: Select all

{IF NEWTOOL=1}M204 S1500
{IF NEWTOOL=1}M205 X15
{IF NEWTOOL=0}M204 S400
{IF NEWTOOL=0}M205 X5

There's a lot of neat things you can do with the scripts in Simplify3D, so if you want more reference info about some of these commands, I found most of what I needed here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1959

[davidsuter]

Hello DarthRevan,

I would really be thankfull, if you could me explain this bellow more detailed, what I have to do to get the temperature from the idle extruder down.
I tried it with your description, but it did not work. If possible send me some screenshots what I have to change. I use the Ultimaker 3 and have not really experience with 3 Printer. In the cura porgramm it is easy to do it, but with cura I cannot use the full size from the printer.

2. This isn't something that I personally use, but if you want to have the idle extruder cooldown between every layer when it isn't being used (I think cura does this by default), you can enable that in the Simplify3D tool change script. Just remove the semicolon before the last four M104 lines in the tool change script. If you want the print to completely pause until your set temperature is reached, change the 2nd and 4th M104's to M109's so that the machine waits to heat back up from the idle temperature. The default temperature set for idling is 170ºC, so if that's not what you want to use, you can just edit the M104's to use whatever temperature you want.

Thanks in advance
Best regards
David

[DarthRevan]

This is what it should look like if you're not going to use M109 commands to wait for the temperature to heat back up.

This is what it should look like if you change the heating back up lines to M109(s).

This is where you would change the idling temperature. In this screenshot I changed the default of 170 to 185.

[Tiger91]

This past weekend I opened my software to find that a new printer had been added to my configuration assistant, Ultimaker3! As I've had this machine for several months now, it is great to finally see a profile from Simplify3D. I hoped the long wait for an official profile meant that things would be fairly turn-key. I couldn't be happier. That said, here are a few things I've noticed that you may want to make note of before printing anything and everything.

1. If you do a lot of printing with PVA, you might want to take a look at dense supports in S3D. I will link to a video below that explains how to do it. It made a big difference with some of my prints and improved the surface quality above the support structures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koCVOsRA6Bc

Personally, I've gotten good results using the same settings described in that video (5 dense support layers, 0.1mm horizontal offset, 0 upper and lower separation layers).

2. This isn't something that I personally use, but if you want to have the idle extruder cooldown between every layer when it isn't being used (I think cura does this by default), you can enable that in the Simplify3D tool change script. Just remove the semicolon before the last four M104 lines in the tool change script. If you want the print to completely pause until your set temperature is reached, change the 2nd and 4th M104's to M109's so that the machine waits to heat back up from the idle temperature. The default temperature set for idling is 170ºC, so if that's not what you want to use, you can just edit the M104's to use whatever temperature you want.

Again, I don't use this personally, since I have never noticed a significant quality difference and it makes the prints take a lot longer, but at least it's easy to enable if you want to try it out.

ToolChangeScript.png

3. Finally, if you're someone that likes to tinker with your acceleration settings, you might also want to use different acceleration values for different materials. For example, you might want to reduce your acceleration and jerk settings for PVA and let the PLA extruder move a bit faster. You can do this pretty easily by putting the following code at the top of the tool change script (assuming your PVA extruder is toolhead 0).

Code: Select all

{IF NEWTOOL=1}M204 S1500
{IF NEWTOOL=1}M205 X15
{IF NEWTOOL=0}M204 S400
{IF NEWTOOL=0}M205 X5

There's a lot of neat things you can do with the scripts in Simplify3D, so if you want more reference info about some of these commands, I found most of what I needed here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1959

Hi - I just got a new UM3 and am having a lot of trouble getting my PVA to stick for more than one layer when using S3D (Cura is much slower but does not have that problem).

If anyone could provide me with advice that would be appreciated.

[DarthRevan]

Tiger,

I've printed with the UM3 using the PLA and PVA profile quite a bit. Can you attach your factory file and maybe a picture of where you're running into adhesion issues? That should give everyone an opportunity to look at what could be going wrong on the PVA side and provide their input.

I look forward to giving any help I can.

[Tiger91]

Tiger,

I've printed with the UM3 using the PLA and PVA profile quite a bit. Can you attach your factory file and maybe a picture of where you're running into adhesion issues? That should give everyone an opportunity to look at what could be going wrong on the PVA side and provide their input.

I look forward to giving any help I can.

Thanks! I really appreciate any advice you could give - I've got a ton of questions about the UM3 but about getting PVA to stick...

I've tried a lot of different settings for the first layer width/height, speed, cooling, glue, etc. I've had little luck getting the first layer of PVA to stay attached to the build plate, and even if it does the second layer of PVA likely ruins the first!

I've attached an example file of the FFF I most recently used, along with the stl file. A couple of pics of the carnage are also attached.

I've cleaned the extruder/tube multiple times, used lots of glue or hairspray, tried brims and rafts. and varied a lot of parameters with no luck.

UM3 PVA support (test).fff

(27.47 KiB) Downloaded 463 times

[Tiger91]

Couldn't upload the pics in previous message due to size.

First layer stays down fairly well...

But second layer get screwed up often, even with a raft.

[DarthRevan]

I don't see an STL attached with your FFF file but I can import one that I've worked with in the past and look at what might be the issue.

The Support Underspeed setting in your profile is set to 70%. This is what would be causing your layer 2 and above PVA supports to not print so well. A quick look at a sample G-code slice with your profile nets you a first layer support print speed of 504mm/min and second layer support print speed of 2520 mm/min. I've had better luck printing PVA supports much slower than 70%. Probably closer to 40% of the default speed.

changing this setting to 40% changed the generated support print speed to 1st layer: 288mm/min 2nd layer: 1440mm/min. I find these much more friendly speeds for consistent PVA extrusion.

Give 40% a try. Let me know how it works out for you.

[Tiger91]

I don't see an STL attached with your FFF file but I can import one that I've worked with in the past and look at what might be the issue.

The Support Underspeed setting in your profile is set to 70%. This is what would be causing your layer 2 and above PVA supports to not print so well. A quick look at a sample G-code slice with your profile nets you a first layer support print speed of 504mm/min and second layer support print speed of 2520 mm/min. I've had better luck printing PVA supports much slower than 70%. Probably closer to 40% of the default speed.

changing this setting to 40% changed the generated support print speed to 1st layer: 288mm/min 2nd layer: 1440mm/min. I find these much more friendly speeds for consistent PVA extrusion.

Give 40% a try. Let me know how it works out for you.

I just tried it at 40, 35 and 30%, with the same issue. (used http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:378677)

I even took a video (if it ever uploads to google drives I'll share the link). What seems to be happening is that even if the first layer sticks, the second doesn't and tends to come apart. When the second layer fails to stick, it ruins both that layer and makes a stringy mess that makes it impossible to successfully lay down the second layer.

Do you have an fff and a stl file that you know works for sure?

[Tiger91]

I don't see an STL attached with your FFF file but I can import one that I've worked with in the past and look at what might be the issue.

The Support Underspeed setting in your profile is set to 70%. This is what would be causing your layer 2 and above PVA supports to not print so well. A quick look at a sample G-code slice with your profile nets you a first layer support print speed of 504mm/min and second layer support print speed of 2520 mm/min. I've had better luck printing PVA supports much slower than 70%. Probably closer to 40% of the default speed.

changing this setting to 40% changed the generated support print speed to 1st layer: 288mm/min 2nd layer: 1440mm/min. I find these much more friendly speeds for consistent PVA extrusion.

Give 40% a try. Let me know how it works out for you.

I now have a video of the print while it was failing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3BtcL ... sp=sharing
(sorry if the camera is sort of wonky)

I can retake the video from another angle if you think it would help diagnose the problem.