gr5

Um, no. You can't just rename a json file to ini and have the old cura suddenly know how to read json files. The difference between cura 15.* and 2.* was a MAJOR rewrite. There's not much code in common in these profile/config/setting files.

wow! We have a didierk and now a deiderik both from Belgium. Actually didierk is now didierKlein. Anyway I like my brim that thin. It means the part will stick VERY WELL! But you can just turn the rear screw 1/4 turn clockwise to pull the rear of the bed down a little bit. I often adjust the 3 screws while the brim or skirt is printing on the bottom layer. I don't like the auto level for many reasons. So I recommend disabling that. Also you should be aware that the glass probably isn't flat but the autolevel assumes it is and does a best fit plane. Hopefully a future version of the firmware will do a more complicated transformation to compensate for a more complicated glass surface. Anyway it may be that the best fit involves the rear center being a bit high as in your photo but the rear corners being a bit low (which is very common as typically the glass is thicker in the very center).

I moved from sketchup to DSM and don't regret it. Definitely watch a video on all the ways to use the pull tool. I can now design stuff much faster in DSM than in sketchup but it took me a year to get there. Basically I draw something in one plane then switch to 3d mode and extrude it with pull tool. Then pick a face and go back to 2D mode (X key) then draw on that and then back to 3D and push/pull holes, edges, bevels, posts, etc. I'm constantly clicking a face in my model, then XKV (type that) then drawing stuff with mouse then D key to go back to 3D, then S to select or P to push/pull. The push pull tool has about 30 modes - learn them all before you try to design much. If you don't master push/pull you won't know what to draw in 2D mode. or you can just stay within sketchup and get more advanced. Here is a great sketchup guide to help you design manifold parts: https://i.materialise.com/blog/3d-printing-with-sketchup/ There are plugins to help you.

Ah. @yellowshark's advice is clearly for Cura 2.* or 3.*. @Sramotylf clearly has cura 15.*.

They are most likely too skinny to print. Generally the have to be 2X the line width setting in cura although I think there is a "thin wall" option where they can be only 1X the line width setting maybe. To prove it set the line width to 0.1mm just as a test to see if it decides to then print the supports. Alternatively it could be a bad model - look at it in cura in xray mode. If you see any red or brown then the model is bad.

This looks more like what happens if the Z stepper *driver* overheats. What happens is the driver shuts off power to the stepper briefly (less than a second) but long enough for the bed to fall a bit. If you put a brick on there the gaps will be much bigger and you will know that is the problem. The fix is to lower the current to the Z stepper which was a standard firmware update over a year ago. But you could be right - it could be underextrusion. If it used to work fine and you didn't change any slicing settings then it's most likely the teflon part. It is considered a consumable so it fortunately is priced pretty low. Also could it possibly have been a filament tangle? Did you check to see if the filament is moving nicely? If you are certain these two guesses aren't your issue I have a list of about 20 other things that can cause underextrusion. Another quick test of the Z driver issue is to remove the cover and tilt the printer while it's printing and have a desk fan or window fan blow gently under the printer. If this fixes it then let us know and I'll post more info.

Well make sure the "retract on layer change" feature is off. That will cause exactly what you describe. I believe this is called the "z seam" and I believe you can randomize this location - I think it's a feature somewhere in cura. Although the "z seam" is more often created by moving from shell to infill (not one layer to the next which in most versions of Cura I belive happens interior to the part so it's not visible).

Look into the "neosanding" feature (I think that's what it is called in cura or maybe it's called smooth top surface?) Ideally you want to do a second pass on the same layer as you just finished but just going in the alternate direction (90 degress from infill below and also you want it to reach into the shell a bit and Neotko himself also recommends a tiny tiny bit of extrusion while neosanding - something like 10% extrusion I think. Neotko does this with S3D which gives you slightly more control (like the ability to extrude during sanding a tiny amount).

UM2? If so then you can build your own firmware or ask @tinkergnome if he might help you. There might be a version already but I don't think so: https://github.com/TinkerGnome/Ultimaker2Marlin

It's not clear that your problem with this ball/socket joint is because the ball and socket are being printed too close together or if there is stringing. With stringing I would lower temp. But more likely it's ball touching. Maybe you should have taken a photo when it was printing the ball and socket to show how closer they were or if there was excessive stringing in the joint. Anyway there is a parameter called "horizontal expansion". If you set that to -0.05mm you can increase the gap between ball and socket by 0.1mm.

Pushing by hand is an okay comparison but make sure you put tension at both ends - in other words fight the filament at one end and push it at the other because if there is no resistance in the print head then you shouldn't need any oil. But add a little back pressure from the print head and now the oil makes a difference. One drop every meter is plenty. yes the oil of course gets into the head eventually but it doesn't seem to affect the print in any way. It's quite benign.

That's always happened to me on all my printers. If you can't change the model then in Cura 3.X you can set horizontal expansion to -0.2 and it will increase hole diameters by 0.4mm. It's a very handy feature. But it will also make the exterior of the part another 0.2mm smaller all around in X and Y (0.4mm across).

M502 works, sure. That's the same as selecting "reset to factory settings" in the menus. That should pull your #define settings in such that they take affect (if they didn't already). So I'm still not sure if you have a firmware issue or a cura issue. If you print something really tiny in cura are the coordinates centered around 135 in Y axis? (the center of your print range)

And don't worry about the noise it makes.

Oh. Well those marlin builders I posted about are for Ultimaker only. There are gcodes to set the steps/mm - google "gcodes marlin". If you get it working you have to do an M500 to save the steps/mm or any value you set will get lost on power cycle. I would hook up printrun first though and have printrun tell you the current steps/mm for all the axes before changing the steps/mm to double or half the current value.

-> The head is about 35 mm behind the center and 15 mm on the right. Oh! I thought you meant something else. So on the Ultimaker the nozzle is not centered in the print head - it is to the left quite a bit. People often complain that on the glass when you use the full build area the right edge of the glass can't be reached - I mean the border on the right side is much larger than the border on the left side. At that point I have to point out that the print head isn't symmetrical. For some reason I thought you meant that. So when you say "the head is about 35mm behind center", do you mean: 1) When "centering" and printing a dot with filament - that dot is 35mm towards the rear? 2) The head itself is centered 35mm behind? (is this the same as #1? Is the nozzle centered in the head in Y direction?) 3) When you say "center" is that determinded by moving the bed to Y=0 and Y=270 and those hit the extremes and then move bed to Y=135 and it's not the center of the bed? But *is* the center of the printing area? I'm just confused about different definitions of "center". I'd like to stick to just one axis (Y axis for example) initially. Is "center" in reference to the limits the bed moves, or the print bed itself. Because typically the print area is not centered on the bed. Not sure about the i3.

Okay so I obviously need to explain about the "reset to factory settings" thing. There are hundreds of settings in Marlin. Some can be set easily in the menus. Some can be changed by gcodes. Some can only be changed in eeprom. All can be set in the firmware with #define statements. A small subset of these settings (like steps/mm, z calibration) are stored in a different eeprom than where the firmware is stored. These settings are A SPECIAL CASE. These settings can be modified sometimes through the menu but all of them can be modified with gcodes (like steps/mm and possibly bed size). When you power cycle you lose those settings unless you do a M500 gcode which saves them to eeprom. When you install a new firmware and then boot up for the first time, the firmware knows that it just booted for the first time ever. It checks this special eeprom area and inside that there is a data version code - different from the firmware version. If the data version code didn't change then it IGNORES THE SETTINGS IN THE #define statements and instead uses the eeprom values. If instead the data version changed it looks to see if it knows that version - it usually does - and it tries to move the values around in the eeprom to where they are stored in the latest firmware. Sometimes this causes problems - especially if you downgrade firmware. However if you do RESET TO FACTORY SETTINGS, then Marlin erases everything in the eeprom (except a few things like total hours odometer) and sets them up to the values in the #define statement. If you do not do reset to factory settings then some of the #define statements are ignored. Does that explanation help? Short version: anything you change in a #define statement may be ignored (will be ignored) if it is one of the few values that are also stored in the eeprom.

Your photos show the heater block. The problem is very unlikely there. But at the other end of the temp sensor wires. On top of the head. There should be a little circuit board there. That circuit board should have a connector with a wire in it that goes back along the bowden. That cable is supposed to go through a black plastic E shaped thing that provides strain relief - @calinb was talking about that a lot. The problem often occurs there. I was talking about the other connector on the circuit board on the print head - it has 2 little screws that clamp down on two wires that go off to the heater block. Those 2 screws can get loose. So my guess is those 2 screws. Calinb's guess is the connector or the first 3cm of wire nearest the print head as the wire goes along the bowden.

And you didn't answer my question about how far from center you are. Is it just a little like 10mm? The information above is either incomplete or unclear. I think incomplete.

My point is that when you "upload the firmware" to the Prusa you *also* need to do "reset to factory settings" or some of those settings will be ignored.

reset to factory settings: No. That code you showed above - what is that from? Is that part of Marlin? Or part of cura? What is that? Those #define look like c code from Marlin. Marlin is inside the printer - inside the prusa. If Prusa uses Marlin (I assume it does) then there should be a "reset to factory settings" option somewhere in the prusa menus.

How far off are you talking about? Is it off by say 5mm? 10mm? Is the bed centered under the max travel positions? Your notes are not all clear. It looks like you are editing Marlin, right? Is that accurate? You keep rebuilding Marlin? Know that when you upgrade Marlin it takes some of the values from your older installation and to get the new values you have to do "reset to factory settings". I think that steps/mm are among those but not sure about Y_MAX_POS for example.

0.4mm

Need more info. Is this a UMO? Does your printer have Marlin? 1/32 = 1/32 so I think you have a typo on one of those "32"s in your post. Know this: if you increase current too much you can blow out the driver in about 1/4 of a second. Having too much current looks similar to having too little current (the stepper has very little power, may step the wrong way or shake back and forth). If everything is fine but one axis is moving exactly half as far as you command (ask it to move 100mm and if it moves 50mm...), then this is very easy to fix in the firmware. You would want to double your steps/mm. If you have a UMO you can edit this probably most easily here: FOR UMO these builders are great: https://bultimaker.bulles.eu/ http://marlinbuilder.robotfuzz.com/ I also recommend you get pronterface which allows you to explore things like steps/mm and I think you can change the steps/mm without building a new Marlin. Pronterface runs on windows only I think and you can get it here: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/

Not even slight improvement? Well I see underextrusion on the top layer before it prints the name. I would try to fix that by printing a bit slower and maybe a bit hotter. Try 10C hotter and at 70% speed. Actually I would make some smaller test piece that does this - maybe print just the R. And play with stuff in the TUNE menu. Actually it looks like you have some pillowing which is fixed by more fan (you want 100% fan for PLA) and more "top layers". At least 1mm top/bottom thickness. It takes quite a few layers for things to recover over infill. More on pillowing here: http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/23-a-visual-ultimaker-troubleshooting-guide