gr5

.4mm diameter is the best you can expect for outside corners as this is the diameter of the nozzle. You can go lower nozzle size if you need to do this a lot. Some people have reported good success with .25mm nozzles. You wouldn't want to print anything larger this way as you will need to lower your extrusion volume dramatically. If you only ever want to print square outlines like this you could in theory have a square nozzle tip. It would decrease accuracy on curves but increase accuracy on things like this particular print. However I don't have any idea how one would build a square hole that small. With a laser maybe? This is very good results with .1mm layer. You will get slightly better results with .2mm or .3mm bottom layer as the leveling doesn't have to be quite as precise. Higher temp makes the plastic flow more like honey. Lower temps more like toothpaste. For super high precision you want lower temps.

What happens if you pull the filament all the way out and put it back in again. 1) Is there a notch in the filament where the hobbed bolt ground it up? If so cut off one inch from the melted end of the filament before re-inserting. 2) If it doesn't come out liquid and hot at the end maybe it isn't even reaching the tip. In this case take off the bowden tube and look down into the print head (remove blue clip and push down before sliding out bowden. 3) Or maybe you have a block at the tip. I doubt it as you are getting smoke puffs. More likely a plug higher up or you ground up filament at the feeder.

You might want to also look at printrun and pronterface which make it easy to send gcodes to the printer. printrun is command line and pronterface is the GUI version of the same program. It's free.

STL file format not only contains triangles of the surface of the part but also the "normal" which tells you which side of the triangle faces "out". Depending on at least one of those checkboxes I think steamEngine can ignore these normals. For example in sketchup you want outward faces to be white and inward to be gray and you can swap these as an option if you right click a face. Cura should be able to make it so it doesn't matter in sketchup. If you have intersecting solids in your cad and it results in "internal" walls, cura has to be told if it should fill the "hole" or leave it empty. This is also controlled by the checkboxes.

I've used and needed to use all 4 fix horrible options and sometimes 2 of them at once but they don't seem to do what the hover (title) text seems to say they do. There are 16 possible combinations of checking those boxes and I've not tried all 16 yet I don't think but I've played with them a lot. Sometimes they just never do what I want no matter what I try. Usually they are very helpful. I suspect some of the 16 combinations are identical to others -- for example checking A and B at the same time may be no different from checking A only or B only but I can't find a pattern. I would love to understand better what they do. Only daid knows.

Is this the bottom most layer? The bottom most layer is the hardest to do. The thicker the easier so a .1 bottom layer would be very hard. So for example if the bottom layer is .3mm (default I think?) and the bed is .1mm high then you are squirting enough plastic for .3mm in a vertical gap of .2mm and much will leak out beyond the intended location. So if you want the bottom most layer with .2mm rounded corners then your levelling technique needs to be accurate within maybe 1/4 the height of the bottom layer thickness. Also I haven't looked into this thoroughly but if the layer height is set to .2 but the bottom layer is set to .3mm it seems like (I could be wrong) the z axis is set to .2mm instead of .3mm for the first printed layer. Perhaps a bug in the latest cura? I really haven't paid much attention. However, by the time you are printing the 4th layer or so I would expect it to agree to your expected XY tolerances of .2mm radius much better.

Hopefully Daid knows what this is but... do you have 23 files in this folder?: c:\python27\dlls\ If not then maybe reinstall cura? Or uninstall python27 and reinstall cura?

Something wasn't tight enough. I recommend you ignore it as long as it isn't dripping on your print. After a lot of useage the PLA eventually turns brown and then black after repeated heating and should plug it's own leak for you without you having to do anything. If it becomes a problem you can try to get your hand on a little bit (1 meter?) of ABS filament and print with that a bit which will seal up all the leaks. Or you could take it apart but be very careful - make sure it is very hot first and be gentle as it is easy to destroy brass - brass is a bit soft/weak.

The leveling wizard doesn't need to go all the way out to 200 or 205cm to test leveling. It could just go out to 195mm. Or it could look at the preferences setting and if the user checked dual extruders it could do 195 and whatever it does now if they *don't* check that in cura preferences. So there's two very simple possible changes to cura.

Yes! And there are a lot of them! For example, someone just broke his second nozzle on the leveling screws. It will probably be months before a solution for that is "idiot proof". And the guy wasn't an idiot - the point is Daid is probably hesitant to change the code that caused this problem as there are likely more serious features to add to cura right now. But maybe within another 3 to 6 months most of the bugs will be worked out. Another solution is to change the leveling screws to be inset into the bed. But this seems unlikely to happen soon. Another solution is to reduce the print volume to 195mm but being able to print to 205mm is a big part of the marketing for the UM. A lot of consumers care if it can print 195mm versus 205mm.

I could be completely wrong about the cause as the piece on the left doesn't seem to show the same problem. Being twice the width might help but I'm not sure why that would help. Certainly shrinkage causes all kinds of obscure problems but I'm not certain that is the problem here - it just seems very likely.

Lower temps won't help. The shrinking doesn't start pulling until PLA becomes a solid. I think around 80C or so. If you can keep the air around the print at 70C until the print is complete that should help. This is usually accomplished with a heated bed at 70C and enclosing sides and top and moving stepper motors outside the box (put them on end of rods and get rid of belt) so they don't get so hot. Normally this isn't needed for PLA as the shrinking is minor. But for ABS you really need this. I am told. Because ABS shrinks much more than PLA. I have a heated bed but don't use it very often.

It is supported. It's just not built into the versions of Marlin that come prebuilt for you with Cura. You can built your own Marlin which I recommend since you are familiar with software and embedded software. In fact maybe you can contribute some day: So download the source files here: https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin Then edit Configuration.h – that’s probably the only file you need to edit. Then build Marlin yourself. It’s not hard. If you google “build marlin” you should find a few good websites that explain it including this one which does it the command line way (I prefer the GUI way) but is still excellent set of instructions: http://www.extrudable.me/2013/05/03/building-marlin-from-scratch/ WHATEVER YOU DO, make sure you: Save the resulting Congifuration.h file and the resulting hex file in a permanent location that you never ever change and date it and explain why you built it so that when you need to build another Marlin a year from now you can do a diff of Configuration.h to see what you did differently from the "norm". And if your arduino dies and you need to reload marlin you will have the hex file ready to go. THERE IS ALSO a super easy marlin builder here which you should look at first and I recommend you use it to create a configuration.h file to start with if nothing else (when you build it creates both the hex file and the configuration file). http://marlinbuilder.robotfuzz.com/

You are getting good results! That print looks pretty good. Okay - I see the offset. I've seen this before - it's annoying and difficult to fix. The problem is that PLA shrinks when it cools. The longer the part, the stronger the forces and the more the walls are pulled inward. So on the lower half of the part, you have a length 3X as long so there is 3X as much force shrinking the part. Then when you print the upper half, the cube portion, you have 1/3 as long as the lower half so there is 1/3 the force trying to pull the walls in so it prints properly (larger). The problem is only noticable in one axis because you only shrunk one axis. I do not know any good solutions other than a heated chamber. A heated bed is not enough - you need to cover the entire 3 sides of the UM and hardest of all, the top (typically with a large cardboard box open on one side large enough to not touch the bowden tube). Another possible solution is to reduce infill. The sides and the infill are what are pulling. But the top of that lower half has a solid layer which probably does at least 60% of the pulling. Maybe reduce top/bottom thickness to .4? This will not help much at all. Putting holes through the part (top surface to bottom surface) would help as this would reduce the pulling stresses. You might be able to cut the pulling by 70% this way but it requires access to the original cad files and cad software. The best solution in my opinion is to modify the cad. Increase the lower part (that shrunk the most) by the amount it shrunk. In other words use calipers to measure the offset and increase the lower part by that amount. If you print in ABS you will have much worse shrinking issues.

1.25mm seems much to large? How about cleaning from the nozzle end with .4mm wire? Of course that seems too small. What *has* worked for many people and I find interesting is to: 1) heat up the nozzle 2) insert filament by hand only (don't clamp feeder onto filament). Let it melt for a few seconds. 3) turn off nozzle heater 4) When temp gets low - maybe 150C, maybe 80C (not sure) pull hard on the filament back out the bowden. It will pull out much of the debris and junk with the filament. Cut the end of the filament and throw away. 5) Repeat

Did you go to cura preferences and tell it you had 2 extruders? Did you restart Cura?

Something translated wrong here. January is a month. But maybe I understand you. You should know some things about Cura: 1) Right click drag to ROTATE 2) Double click drag to ZOOM 3) Shift right click to PAN 4) In layer view use up and down arrows to change one layer at a time Unfortunately most MACs come with a one-button mouse. I recommend you buy a 2 button mouse. Does anyone know how to do these things on a one button mouse?

Did you watch it print? Does it really take 5 seconds per layer as that is very important. There is a "minimum extrusion rate" or something like that (or there used to be) which should really be set to 0 as this can override the 5 second rule. Owen could be right as it looks similar to the cooling issue but I still think it's a slicing issue and if you look at the gcode carefully you should be able to see the problem. I think it's over extruding - putting too much infill in there somewhere. Cura has lots of minor bugs that show up in things like this - maybe there is still a "thin wall" bug.

The panels are laser cut and so should be very consistent. But if someone knocked a panel before it finished cutting or some similar accident I could see how one of the panels could have tabs or holes in the wrong place. It seems it would be easier to enlarge a few holes with a file than order a new one.

Something is weird in the slicing. I'm going to guess the upper and lower walls of the cylinder are a different width. Look at it carefully in Cura in slice view and also in your CAD. Some slicing bug. What is your: nozzle width shell thickness infill percent And about how thick is that wall in cad? How thick at the top and how thick at the bottom? You might want to do shell thickness=4mm and turn off infill. See if that looks better in Cura.

Well your situation may be different but the distance from my right rod to the screw was fine. It was the left rod to the screw. In your photo. There is a light colored wood board towards the bottom of your picture that connects the left and right arms of the bed. I had to shim on the left edge of that board with large shims at the top of your image and thinner and thinner shims as you approach the tip of that (beyond the bottom of the picture). Your situation may be different than mine.

Strange. Well tech support would say "reboot your computer" so I guess you can try that. Before trying that I would go to task manager, "processes" tab and halt anything called "steamEngine" (unlikely to be running) or pythonw. If it does the same thing again, I think there is a log file somewhere. Look in the installation folder and subfolders for a log file dated newer than all the other files in there (dated when you launched cura). Non english ascii characters have caused lots of problems in Cura so make sure the folder that Cura installed in has normal ascii characters.

Can't you cut and paste? The gcodes are very simple. You only have to learn about 10 of them. How hard can it be? Just look up the first few that the replicator used and the first few that the UM uses and look them up here: http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code I mean if you understand what "sets the temperature of the nozzle" means then I think you can figure it out. They are quite simple and well explained. The above link even explains the differences (if there are any) between gcodes used in Marlin and some other firmware versions.

I looked this up a while back. There are several different versions of pololu I believe. Anyway there is a test point (voltage) on or near the pot (it's one of the pins of the pot). You can measure that voltage and there is a formula to convert to current. The formula should be in the specification of the pololu that you bought. If you get the wrong test point it will probably measure at a rail voltage e.g. 0V or 5V or 19V. I think the formula might have been i=v meaning if you set it to 1.2V you get 1.2Amps. Anyway, google "pololu pot current test point" or something similar and there are tons of great documentation out there.

oh no! Don't do that. Too late I guess. Those spacers aren't long enough as it is. I had to add washers under them because the X stepper short belt was hitting the back of the UM. Please watch your printer while it is printing and look at the short belts. Especially the X belt. If it is hitting the wood it is really hard to tell. You can tell this is happening because the belt kind of twists - and it twists a different direction each time the X stepper changes direction. If this is happening you need to add more washers (and possibly longer screws?). You could potentially throw away the plastic spacers and use the wooden ones instead. The only downside is your UM will be much more noisy. My screws just barely reach the X motor. I didn't try longer ones.