Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

General discussion topics
cpme
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 21, 2020 4:49 am

Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by cpme » Tue May 26, 2020 5:35 pm

I have discussed much of this with MakerGear support, but I have been using the Ultra One for some time now at my office, and I wanted to provide some feedback regarding the Ultra One user workflow, and also see if there are any other Ultra One user's who echo this sentiment.
Makergear provides an interactive maintenance utility for bed leveling and z-height adjustment. It seems the intent is to make it easier for newer users to perform this process. However, there is some overhead associated with this. There are options for hot or cold z-height adjustment procedures. MakerGear provides 2 options for plastic, and no way to adjust the temperature. We have a problem with this because we don't want to swap in PLA every time we want to adjust the z-height. Also, the ABS option sets the hotend to 265 C, which is wayyy to hot for our ABS, which recommends 210-240C. What if I want to hot calibrate with Polycarbonate? I would prefer the simplicity of a temperature setting, rather than plastic selection. Also, I have tested this many times, the hot offset process does not actually seem to make any adjustment. Makergear provides an "advanced" option, which lets the user select .01, .02, or .04, so I know what results I should expect. If instead you choose to use the cold offset process it is much simpler. Unfortunately, if you select the cold offset process, the machine forces you to wait until the machine has cooled as a safety feature. It's a big heavy machine, so of course this takes a long time. Imagine you start a print, it fails, you go to z-height adjust, wait 20 minutes to cool, print again, it fails... this can wind up taking a very long time.
Now the mesh leveling. The mesh leveling process runs with every print (is it G28?). If you are troubleshooting the printer, or slicer, and you have to stop and start the printer a bunch of times, waiting for the machine to do mesh leveling every time can be very time consuming. I would prefer to have mesh leveling be a maintenance step, where periodically, a user runs mesh leveling alone, rather than run every print.
I'd like to know what MakerGear thinks about either of these suggestions. We've had a lot of employees get frustrated with the amount of time it takes to set up the printer, and I had to go through all of these processes myself in order to understand the major pain points.

airscapes
Posts: 594
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2018 11:36 pm

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by airscapes » Tue May 26, 2020 8:20 pm

Sounds worse than the old manual method of printing the appropriate 2 walled square, measure and make z offset change with M206 and M500.. Why in gods name would you need to run a mesh level with every print.. manually level the bed, run mesh and be done with it for the year.. My simple M2 does not need to be leveled but once a year.. why would a $10,000 machine not hold the level from yesterday?

User avatar
ednisley
Posts: 1188
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2014 5:34 pm
Location: Halfway up the Hudson
Contact:

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by ednisley » Wed May 27, 2020 11:20 am

airscapes wrote:
Tue May 26, 2020 8:20 pm
why would a $10,000 machine not hold the level from yesterday?
Opinion …

It does, but MG finds itself in the position of competing on bullet points: dirt-cheap printers perform auto-leveling, so why doesn't a printer costing ten large level itself?

The correct answer is surely "It doesn't need to" but the required answer is "It does".

cpme
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 21, 2020 4:49 am

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by cpme » Wed May 27, 2020 6:19 pm

I want to clarify that I am overall satisfied with Makergear's kind support staff and high quality hardware. I just wanted to point out that there are a couple details that make the ultra one a "good" machine, and not a "great" machine. We also have an AON M2 in which is a similar class of machine. It has a heated build volume and liquid cooled extruders, but the leveling procedure is again it's pitfall. My hope is the next generation of 3D printer in this class either close the loop with z-height adjustment (ie reference the nozzle tip to the build surface). I think it is really just another couple limit switches.

TSC
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 7:58 am

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by TSC » Fri Apr 30, 2021 5:18 am

Hello,

I am curious to know if you were able to make any progress with an easier Bed Leveling Procedure for your Ultra One. I have the exact same challenges you described back about a year ago. I would like to figure out a better method/option. I like the machine, there are just a few things that would make working with this printer a whole lot easier.

Thank you

User avatar
zemlin
Posts: 467
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:32 pm
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by zemlin » Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:20 pm

I am considering an Ultra One printer as an upgraded to my Raise3D N2. My understanding is that the Ultra One uses a Duet3D control board. I replaced the factory controllers on my Raise printers with Duet2 Wifi boards. I also added a BLTouch probe for bed leveling/mapping.

I know the Ultra One has the touch screen interface and octoprint, which I don't quite understand as the Duet boards have their own web interface.

On my Raise machines, have a 4-point probe on the corners to level the bed (which is manual) - when I get the 4 corners pretty close I will perform a probe of the whole bed surface to create the map and the machine compensates for the bed variation (or a sagging gantry, in the case of the Raise machines). I also set the Z offset manually - which I do at close to the running temperature with a feeler gauge. M206 is the command I use to set the Z offset followed by M500 to save the Z offset value to the firmware.

Is access to the Duet web interface, config files and macros blocked on the Ultra One, or are owners able to dig in and tweak the settings to their own preferences?

CCRN
Posts: 181
Joined: Wed Jun 01, 2016 6:15 pm

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by CCRN » Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:03 am

@Zemlin, did you get an answer to your question?

User avatar
zemlin
Posts: 467
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:32 pm
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by zemlin » Sat Jun 26, 2021 12:26 pm

CCRN wrote:
Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:03 am
@Zemlin, did you get an answer to your question?
Nope. Haven't asked the folks at Makergear directly.

Bioluminous
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:03 pm

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by Bioluminous » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:57 am

I don’t have an Ultra One, but I do have an M3-ID rev 1. I also have a number of other printers and many have 3rd-party controller boards. I have reached the limit of what I can do with the rambo board in the M3-ID. So I’m experimenting with two other boards right now, a Fysetc Spider and a BTT Octopus, both with 8 stepper drivers. And I plan to run Klipper on them because it’s getting easier for me to program the boards with it.

I say this because I know the hardware is fine. There really is no other IDEX with direct drives that I know of. But the software is really lacking, both in terms of board firmware and slicers. MGs version of Octoprint is excellent, and there’s lots you can do. But there’s lots you can’t do that you would be able to with a different firmware and slicer.

I haven’t dived into the specifics of the gcode yet, still trying to find the time, but when I print in duplication mode the printer skips the mesh bed leveling. Whether that command is in the firmware or gcode I don’t know yet. With the M3-size build plate, I don’t ever see any issues without mesh bed leveling even on full plates of parts. With the Ultra One, I don’t know. That’s a large plate but it is thicker so maybe you also don’t need mesh bed leveling every single print. I have a Voron printer with a similar 14-inch square mic6 plate that never seems to need mesh leveling.

So whether you would feel comfortable switching boards or even trying a different slicer, you may find the printer to be much more efficient with a little experimentation.

TSC
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 7:58 am

Re: Ultra One Bed Leveling Procedure

Post by TSC » Sun Jan 23, 2022 1:28 am

@Zemlin, your question was posted a long time ago, but maybe someone else will look at your post in the future. Like you, I do not quite understand why they did not just use the Duet web interface. My guess is that they were trying to keep it consistent with what they had been doing on the M2 and M3. It seems like it would have been a good spot to make a switch on the Ultra One, because it is a significantly different machine. I expect users who might own both would not have much trouble adapting.

The answer is yes, the owner can get access to the Duet web interface. However, at least for me, it required a procedure making some modifications to the Raspberry Pi from how it came from the factory. The reason for the edits is the Octoprint interface. Things may have changed with the latest Ultra One printers I am not sure. My Ultra One is a first-generation machine from the middle of 2019. If you want to continue to use the MakerGear touchscreen with Octoprint you will have limitations utilizing all the features and functionality of the Duet.

Post Reply