Dim3nsioneer

I used 100. But it was just a very rough setting as 1000 turned out to be not effective... I did'nt try any other numbers yet. For the previous and the following layers I used the default value...

OK, you know how it is... if something doesn't work as you think it should, you have to stick with it until you got the case solved... For me, this was the case today with bridging. After I found out that the nozzle was still ok (I will anyway organize some spares, you never know what's happening next...) and the curling of the extruded filament was due to insufficient adhesion of the bridge layer on the previous one, I found a way to produce nice bridging - even with the standard Ultimaker fan! The model is the well known one from Thingiverse (no. 12925) with 5mm instead of 10mm height (as I wanted to see my Ultimaker doing brigdes not struts... :wink:). gr5, you mentioned two ideas in your post. You were perfectly right with both of them (thxs). I reduced the x/y-acceleration by a factor of nearly two magnitudes for the bridge layer. And I gave the extruder an extra kick at the beginning of the bridge layer by adding a small amount of extruded material. I did it with Cura 13.11 by using an experimental TweakAtZ plugin as very special conditions are needed for the bridge layer. However, the sticking together of the various strings is indeed a problem and for my cooling fan setup unavoidable as the standard fan has to blow in lateral direction in order to cool the strings in both directions. It would require a different cooling setup (two fans and/or special fan duct). Thus, I lowered the print temperature to the pain level, i.e. 185°C, but only for the bridge layer as I got underextrusion for the rest when printing everything with that temperature. @rich: what cooling fan setup did you use for your tests?

You're certainly not talking about the Ultimaker store, are you? If you know such a source, I would really be interested...

@rich and gr5: When you did your bridging tests, did you ever have the problem that the first few lines of the bridge layer did not stick to the bridge head but curled along the nozzle? I'm just on the way to get really nice results with bridging and this is (hopefully) the last obstacle... it occurs after I cleaned the nozzle from old PLA...

Hast Du noch eine Empfehlung für die zugehörigen Zahnriemen? Bin gespannt auf die Vorher-Nachher-Fotos/Analyse Deiner Prints... :wink:

Maybe you try rotating the whole thing by 90° around the z-axis? If your standard fan runs at 100% it should blow enough to catch the object on which the Ultimaker is not currently printing....

Didn't know that. Very nice feature! :cool: Next step: merge the lithopane with another object/geometry...?

@gr5: May I ask at what speed you printed the figurines?

The flex coupling certainly doesn't stop the z axis from moving in x-direction for different z. But it reduces the tension which is induced by this x/y-movement onto the bearings, the whole z stage and the z rails. The results should be less wobbling in your print. The collision issue is caused by the positioning of the brass nut. I have the same issue but it just works. Therefore I think it's not a construction fault but something that requires some mechanical tuning...

I agree with amano... I think to make the z axis more flexibel is the better strategy... at least for the bearings inside the z motor... I just replaced the rigid coupling of my Ultimaker with a flexible one and I don't regret it...

Daid, what shall I say... I see, you know your code... :grin: I had the minimal-extrusion-between-retractions set to 0.5mm. Doing a cylinder with 2mm diameter was interestingly not enough for retraction (is there an additional factor?). When I set the m-e-b-r to 0 I got retraction on each layer... :cool: However, the result still looks awful... there are certainly anti-oozing-measures needed here as well... thanks anyway!

At some layers it actually retracts, but just maybe 5 times out of 50... I'm looking forward to your 'dual-extrusion stuff'... :wink:

This post is mainly directed to Daid but may be also of some general interest. I just tested the cool head lift of feature in Cura for the first time when printing some very small structure with very short layer time. First of all, I was positively surprised to see not only the z stage to move but also the print head moving away from the object and back after the delay. However, as the G4 command is used, the temperature of the hotend is kept stable while the filament still has some pressure inside the hotend. The result is terrible oozing. My question: Is there any reason not to do some retraction before the delay? I think it would significantly improve this otherwise clever feature!

Does anyone know when and where the new MAKE 3D printing guide will be available in Europe?

I wonder if someone else has made similar experiences: If I insert '0.3' in the expert settings for the new Cura feature 'Fan Full On At Height' then the fan runs with only the half PWM at this height. The full PWM is set one layer layer. I use 0.2mm for the first layer and then a layer height of 0.1mm. I actually want the fan to run fully at the second layer but not at all at the first layer. How can I achieve this? Daid, maybe you can write a few words about how this new fan feature works? Thank you!

It's a bit tricky indeed... click on the link to get the source code page from github. There right-click on 'raw' and save the file... To be honest, as I'm new to github, I don't know yet if there is a more direct way... EDIT: just found out and updated the link information above...

Sure: https://github.com/Dim3nsioneer/Cura-Plugins/blob/master/TweakAtZ.3.0.py Please let me know if more documentation is needed... EDIT: This is a direct link for saving the file: https://github.com/Dim3nsioneer/Cura-Plugins/raw/master/TweakAtZ.3.0.py EDIT by gr5 - THIS ONE IS BETTER: https://github.com/Dim3nsioneer/Cura-Plugins/raw/master/TweakAtZ.3.0.1.py

Actually, it should also work if it just passes the entered Z height, e.g. if TweakAtZ is set to 4.99, it should insert it at 5.0 (at any reasonable layer height). But there is another catch: TweakAtZ needs AT LEAST ONE LAYER below the Z height where it should do something. So if you e.g. set the height of the basic layer to 0.2mm, it will not work with 0, 0.1 and (!) 0.2. The first working height will be 0.3mm (assuming a layer height of 0.1mm). BTW: I did some further developments on this plug-in such as adding the flow for change, restoring the old settings when passing the magic-Z in reverse direction (very useful when printing multiple objects one after the other) or adding a switch to have it deactivated during Start-GCODE. Is there any version control for the plugins? (Daid, I hope I'm not poaching on your hunting grounds...)

TweakAtZ Version 2.0 should work with Cura 13.11. However, this version may have its problems if you have some z-changes in your Start-GCODE. If you want to tweak a parameter at low z, it might produce a 'jumpstart' due to the z-lift at the beginning...

Did you really then set all the line widths to 0.4mm? I tried that some time ago and got very bad results for the infills (single lines with gaps). I then reset these to 0 and got results quite similar to those with Cura.

feel free to watch it all night long... :wacko:

I did a quite large print yesterday for which I used a 10-lines-brim. This is just the brim and the outer shell: Some layers later: I think the brim looks quite ok but maybe some of you will call me a fool... :shock:

I fully agree with Nicolinux. This piece is amazing! And thanks for the information about the used material...

@gr5: yep, I do... btw: I really like your new profile foto... :cool:

I have the impression it got better already from 13.06.4 to 13.10. I have a test print that takes 9:29. Cura 13.10 says something like 8 minutes, Cura 13.06.4 had very optimistic 3 minutes... however this is on a Windows 8 machine...