gr5

This is beyond my knowledge but maybe @burtoogle or @ctbeke or @ahoeben can help or at least know who can.

Mesh leveling is a feature where it takes many measurements of your build plate by pushing the head down onto the bed many times. Typically at least a grid of 4X4 or 16 measurements. This data is called a "mesh" as it resembles a 3d graphics concept - like a map of mountains/hills. Anyway the M420 command enables the mesh leveling. I know nothing about your printer but is it possible that you never did a multi point leveling? Maybe you should just get rid of that M420 command to see what happens. Or maybe you need to run the multipoint leveling once before you start your print? I would try to find a creality forum somewhere and those people should know immediately what your issue is.

They way Ultimaker creates profiles - well there are a LOT! There could be easily 2000 profiles. Each of which needs to be tested: 7 types (accurate, fine, rough, etc) (roughly 7 types) 4 nozzle types (e.g. .25, .4, .8, .6 ruby) 4 printers (or many more?) (UM2, UM3, S3, S5) 20 material types (roughly) 7*4*4*20 = 2240! Can you imagine testing 2240 profiles? That's how these profiles work. One text file for each profile. It's bad enough to have to create all these profiles but testing can get out of hand. how many prints should UM test with each combination? 1? Is 1 print enough? I think not. I think this is unfortunate. They shouldn't have to test every combination and they shouldn't even have to create that many profiles. There should be a programmatic way that creates some of these profiles instead of a separate file for each one. But this gives you an idea why it's a big deal to add more profiles and why it took so long to come out with this wonderful new feature and why (for now) the new ones only work with the newer printers.

It looks fine to me. I don't understand the M420 command. I'm not familiar with that - it's not a UM (ultimaker) standard. According to this: https://reprap.org/wiki/G-code#M420:_Leveling_On.2FOff.2FFade_.28Marlin.29 The "Z2" means mesh compensation ends at Z=2mm (so it compensates from Z=0 until Z=2). Could it be that your mesh compensation values are off? I'm adding "cr20" to your topic title so that people who own a creality will notice your topic. This is an Ultimaker forum so most people own Ultimakers or have cura questions. Your question is cura related but is more of a creality specific question.

For alignment purposes you don't need to alter this however some printers don't have that set screw tight enough. The symptom is that the part shifts occasionally in X or Y. But this is rare on UM2 and newer printers. However also note that I am able to get at those pulleys with the green hex driver supplied with UM2 printers but I don't think supplied with newer printers. Also note that you need to tighten the hell out of all these screws. Enough that the steel shaft of the driver is twisting a bit. Enough that if you used the short end of a crappy L shaped allen wrench your fingers will hurt after. The set screws on the long belts are not as critical as they are doubled up and push with half the force as the one on the stepper motor.

Send a direct message to @SandervG with your email and he should be able to reset your account hopefully. But he is on a tight deadline right now and you might do better to wait a few weeks.

.obj isn't the issue. It sounds like having a solid (aka manifold) part is the issue. And most CAD programs don't really let you create non-solids. But sketchup does and one or two other do. Most don't. And sketchup is very popular. So if the customer is using sketchup he should read how to make solid parts in sketchup - very good article. I strongly recommend it if you use sketchup. You can skim the whole article in about a minute.

If the gear in the photo is a problem getting to the set-screw then tighten that one in any position and instead loosen the other gear on the same belt. Hopefully that set screw will be positioned better. You should only need to align 2 of the 4 pulleys as fbrc8-erin is hinting at. It can be 2 diagonal ones, or two across from each other.

Find out what CAD the customer is using. If it's sketchup then have them read this - it's very easy reading - it looks like a lot but it's really quite simple: https://i.materialise.com/blog/3d-printing-with-sketchup/

Oh also - you can zoom in with scroll wheel or if you don't have one there is a keyboard method (I forget, it's been a while) and you can hold down I think both left and right mouse buttons and drag to scroll. Right click drag orbits around. Shift+right click pans. Doing that lets you see clearly that your cube has a top and with the slider you can see it has a bottom as well.

By the way - you really really need to learn about the vertical slider I mentioned in an earlier post. If you had spotted that then this entire topic would have been moot.

Oh! So maybe you are misinterpreting the colors! So red, yellow, green in cura indicate areas of the toolpath that will be printed. Those are "extruding moves". The blue lines are non-extruding moves. So I think your cube will print just fine as is. Cura 14.X and 15.X are excellent and I think you will find they do a good job. I do recommend that absolute latest as posted above but that's not critical. I also recommend not uninstalling any existing versions as with 14.X and 15.X you can install as many as you want side-by-side and they don't interfere with each other. More about the coloring: To understand the coloring and to understand some of the features of cura, it's important to understand that cura slices your model into many slices (yes you know that) and then it looks at each slice *by itself* ignoring what's above and below (mostly - there's some flags added to a slice telling it if there is something above or below the current slice and other things). Then it thinks of the slice as printing a bunch of islands. Your cube has only one island: a square. The outer most path is very important as it's visible. Some people want to print that first or last. That's one color. The next few paths inward are also important - those get a second color. Infill gets yellow. Then if a layer is a "top" or "bottom" layer (there can be more than one "top" layer if you specify the top is such and such layers thick) also gets yellow. You haven't gotten to support layers yet. That's another color I believe. Non extruding moves get blue and if it includes a retraction at the start it shows a short vertical line at the start of the move to indicate where it retracts - this will be important to you as you are debugging stringing some day.

1) Please check your model in xray view. cura 14.X should have had an xray view. Make sure there are no read areas - only blue/white. 2) There is a vertical slider somewhere in the layer view photos you posted. You can use ctrl+up arrow (and down arrow) to scroll through them or use the mouse. If you scroll do the bottom layer it would show us a lot more. If you have to use a cell phone to image your computer screen, at least get closer - it's really hard to see what's going on. Better to use a screen shot tool. what operating system do you have? There should be built in screen shot utilities in your operating system. Anyway I suspect there is a problem with your model. Did you design this cube? Did you design it hollow on purpose (in other words if you add up all the square surfaces, is it exactly 6 (a solid cube) or is it exactly 12 (a cube inside a cube )? If you designed the cube hollow on purpose - it's easier to design it solid and make it hollow using settings in cura. And you will get more accurate and perfect results this second way.

The views are 2D but I need to see what's going on in 3D (or at least another angle): 1) tinker cad model 2) preview mode 3) final printed part Without being able to see all 3 of those from an oblique angle it's really hard to see what you are talking about. Sorry. Also knowing which photos are from above and which from below the part (it's somewhat symmetrical so it's hard to tell which photos are which).

Don't look at the sides (embarassed), lol. I have printed hundreds of these but the filament was tangling on this print which gives it some underextruded layers so I gave the good prints to customers and kept this bad one for myself. It's a tool I use quite often.

Well let me provide a photo if you can't. This is a print with a typical bottom. Looking at it I realize that most of the visible imperfections are caused by the glue on my glass bed. I can get it much better if I clean the glass, then I heat the bed and with a paint brush I apply a coat of 10 parts water mixed with 1 part wood glue (or 20 parts water - it doesn't have to be exact - the water all evaporates anyway). Typically when the glass hits 60C the last of the water evaporates. This gives you a very clean, very flat layer of glue between glass and print and makes for a nice smooth bottom. The bottoms of my parts are usually the best side. I can get the bottoms much better than the tops.

Maybe you could show a less vertical view of the failed part? In the photo it looks like the white parts starts at the print bed. Is it lifted up a bit? Or all the way down?

It could be that one feeder is fine and the other one has a problem and hence underextrudes.

Okay so if it looks perfect in the camera, how bad can it be? 🙂 Try using white filament and/or matte filament (usually achieved with a wood fill or other non abrasive fill) and it should look even better. 🙂

I tried what Arturas tried and could not get it to work. The filament gets between the inner tube and the outer tube at the base of the inner tube and then causes a clog there. But the 3dsolex solution works fine. (I sell this option at thegr5store.com and 3dsolex.com sells this also). I have a few customers that use this mod and it works fine for them. One even got it working on the right slot by adding a spring with the same od and id as the smaller bowden.

Okay - so I just looked at the model in tinkercad and one problem is that the white part in the image above is supposed to be above the round part. I suspect tinkercad is exporting it where it touches z=0 which is bad - you want the second part to be up in the air. You could move it up manually (menu item: preferences -> configure cura. Then uncheck "ensure models are kept apart" and uncheck "automatically drop models to build plate". And NEVER PRINT anything without checking PREVIEW mode first. That would have shown you that it wasn't going to print right.

There are 2 obvious possibliities: 1) Something wrong with model. 2) Something wrong with printer (underextruded). Because this is a dual color print I suspect #1. What does your part look like in PREVIEW mode?

Note that non-glossy filaments (which are uncommon) hide layers and such better than glossy. The absolute worst is going to be shiny black filament which highlights the tiniest changes in angle.

I don't think you can get it so the lines are invisible. You can get it so smooth you can't feel the lines but because a tiny variation in angle can be a large change in reflectivity, our eyes can see amazingly subtle things. Please provide a photo. Maybe we are talking about 2 different things. You can certainly get the bottom better than the top if you print on glass. Shiny, glossy smooth. But you will see very thin lines.

Okay so it sounds like you found a good setting for the 3 screws. It's unclear to me if you turned off autoleveling. Autoleveling doesn't help much on the UM3E like it does on the S5. On the S5 it is multipoint leveling (around 30 points) and your glass can have many bumps and those are all compensated for. On the UM3E it only affects height and tilt. Which you can adjust more accurately with manual leveling. I find one manual adjust lasts for over a year whereas autolevel can occasionally mess up. Maybe show a quick video of your manual level procedure where you show just the adjustment at the rear for both nozzles using calibration card (and just skip through the front corners as your problem isn't so much leveling as height calibration). Did you mess with (upgrade) your firmware recently? There's a very small chance that doing a factory reset will fix your issue but I would avoid that as then you have to calibrate things like the lift switch and all your XY calibrations have to be done over again and so on.