yellowshark

Colorfabb's Ngen is very similar and as easy to print as PLA and has a higher melt temperature - 15 degrees or so? I cannot remember; 245 temp is a good starting point, go much lower and layer adhesion may be a problem - of course all depends on other settings too.

Hi @SandervG this is a really good idea from @brianskyze ; I have to write down notes for every print I do (and even then there are certain lesser settings do not get noted) - hitting a print key would be so much easier

Cannot really say much without knowing what your settings are, eg temperatures print speeds, overlaps etc. The tall thin piece will probably be due to minimum layer print time - ie. it is so thin there will not be enough time for the layer to cool before the next layer printed - of course the pic is not of the complete model so that is more of a guess than an absolute.

Man that gets my BAT award for the year (Beacon of Awesome Talent)

Lol, notwithstanding I am trying to get my new Canon printer to work properly, it prints ink onto paper, probably never catch on, happy to get a copy of the SW .prt file and have a nose around.

Having used SW for the past 4 1/2 years I have never once had a problem with it generating models for 3D printing - Lol that is why I keep telling myself it was worth the five grand! This could be an optical illusion but your printed part sure looks thicker than the Cura display. I wonder if the model walls are too thin. Best to check with your SW guy - ideally you want them to be at least twice the width of you nozzle. Set Cura to x-ray view - any red colouring displayed will indicate errors in the mesh, which would surprise me coming from SW. I have no idea if this view would highlight thin walls but it is worth checking. What is the diameter of the circle approx. ? Also can you look in layer view and see if the walls, presumably two of them,look OK.

Congrats Steve the pipe is stunning. I was going to get a reel but stopped when I saw the price. But your review has convinced me I need to get the cheque book out! Thanks for the settings info.

OK, I wish we knew where people lived on this forum, like we did on the old forum. How about it @SandervG ! Several points 1. Where you live dictates the thickness of your piece of paper! Have you measured yours? In England our normal sheets are 0.15mm. How we got that one past Brussels God only knows. 2. Think about how often you need a part with the printed z-xis to be more accurate than 100 microns; not often I bet. If you do then one answer may be to rotate the part 90 degrees. through the vertical. 3. Most fabrications will have a tolerance of at least 100 microns if not more. In most cases 100 microns is not going to bring the house down; I guess I should admit that we do guarantee 50 microns accuracy for our engineering work if necessary. 4. That 100 microns is only theoretical, depending on how much you squish the first layer in to get good adhesion. 5. If that dimensional accuracy is really important to you then the only thing to do is to test your printer with your filament at the settings you will use. Print a 10mm cube and measure it. Do it again. Do it again maybe on another area of the bed. Repeat the aforesaid. Repeat the aforesaid again with a different dimension so you can assess whether the difference is an absolute value or a %. Assess your results; are they good enough, say within 50 microns; if not is there a consistent value of error. If not try an work out why that is. Assuming yes then modify your model dimension accordingly; and presumably modify all future models by the same amount/% 6. Do not forget that shrinkage may come into the mix too. 7. Yes, I use a Custom printer definition and there is nowhere to record the nozzle to bed distance. 8. Do not forget layer height. If you have a model that is 10mm high and you print with a layer height of .300 I have no idea what Cura does when it has printed the layer at 9.9mm

I should say that the Cura install code has been buggy so whether you will see exactly the same folder structure as I described I know not E.G. Under my Cura folder I have two folders, 2.7 and 3.2, but within my 2.7 folder I have a second 3.2 folder structure!! Which of the two 3.2 folder structures is the right one I know not as I use 2.7.

Point1: menu item Settings\Printer\Add printer; select Custom - then enter your printer name - then hit Add. You should get a dialogue box displayed for your new printer. If not then menu item Settings\printer\Manage printers . Select your new printer from the list and hit machine settings. Point 2: Depends on what version of Cura you are using. I will assume 2.7 or above, I also assume Windows OS. Go to the Users folder and select the folder structure under your user id. Select the folder AppData and then the sub folder Roaming. Go to the sub folder Cura and within that you will see a subfolder with your version of cura e.g. folder 3.2. If you have installed versions prior to 3.2, down as far as 2.7, you may see subfolders for them also. Within your Cura version folder there are two relevant sub folders, Machine Instances (will have your printer definition(s) ) and Quality(will have your settings profile(s). Point 3: the data is not in the Programs folder

Me too...

Well I am not sure if I fully understand what you want to do but on the build plate select the model and then select the first icon from the vertical list of icons on the left hand side of the window. There you will see the x/y/z/ positions; the z will almost certainly be 0 and if you set it to a +ve number that will raise the model off the bed.

Select X-ray view and look for any red areas. If you have one/some that indicates a fault with the model and is almost certainly your problem

Difficult to say; in the 1st pic the print head is in focus but the part is not. The 2nd pic only shows a small amount of the model rim so difficult to know if it is all nicely stuck down. But hey it looks OK. I think you may get a better surface finish if you squished it down a bit more

Indeed it is Steve, exceptional. Well done

Sorry but I am getting to the limit of my knowledge as I have only used a 0.8 a few times and l always got perfect results. I am guessing that the printer stopping at the end of each layer each layer is causing the problem, well not really guessing, that will be the cause; but why the printer would do that with a 0.8mm I have no idea. Ok I looked at your settings more closely. I would suggest you change them as follows wall thickness 0.8 (and 0.4 for your 0.4 nozzle) z-seam alignment to random (probably) infill to 0 There is no infill when spiraliziing - there might be a Cura bug if you had a figure in there print speed - ypu pic is not showing all the print speeds; find them and set them all to the same value (1st layer print speed can be different)

Well the short fix is to load your model, select it, and then select the top icon from the vertical list if icons on left hand side of the window. This displays your x/y/z co-ordinates and I assume the Z co-ordinate will not be showing 0; set it to 0. What version of Cura was used to create the old gcode and what version was used to create the new version. Are the sets of gcode for the same or for different models?

Looks like you have some nice results there. What filament were you using, I might want to try it! You now have the right settings for you 0.4 nozzle. I cannot see what the difference would be; all you are doing is printing a wider wall so I see no reason why it would not work with 0.8mm; I have had some really nice results with a 0.8mm (not spiralizing). As I said you are needing to push though twice as much material so I would use your 0.4 settings but push the extruder temp up 5 and/or 10 degrees to see what happens. I do not know why the print would stop shortly at very layer change, although clearly that is causing your vertical mark.

Filaments all tend to have different flows, they are affected by the colouring dyes. So when get down to the nitty gritty I guess a small variance in line width might occur? Maybe you could try reducing the temp. of the yellow extruder to restrict the flow a bit. Yes one would hope the printer should print as per the instructions from the slicer - but your settings can affect the flow of the filament, as can the filament itself and indeed the hardware accuracy of the printer. It might be worth trying two other filaments and see what happens; maybe then pick the two filaments that seem best matched.

@JohnInOttawa has some good points. It might be that you need to change the x/y dims of one of the models to compensate and get them to line up. You would use the Scale icon to do this. It would probably take several goes and whilst you may get the external dims to match if the walls are different thicknesses then you may not fix that. Also when you scale up or scale down that will, I assume, modify the thickness of the wall on that model but maybe not noticeably. Maybe worth a try.

Yes the two models should be identical dims on exit from Netfabb; but if Cura has bugs so can Netfabb,I am sure they are the same but you do not know. On the Cura screen select one of the models and the on the left side of the screen you will see a vertical set of icons. Select the Scale icon and you will see the x/y/z dims of the model. Repeat for the other model.

It is certainly true that different PLA filaments will have different characteristics and may need different temperatures to produce a decent print with the same settings; not the norm but it happens. I am talking about "normal" PLA nor the PLAs mixed with wood, bronze etc. I have personally never gone above 220 and these days I rarely go beyond 200. So I think the answer to your last question is NO. Now if people have a blockage in the feed system then not knowing or understanding that they may go to ridiculous temps to get the filament extruded - 235 is a good example. If you printed the PrimaValue Grey after the eSun then I think you can say that your printer is fine. I am not familiar with eSun, maybe it is not very good or you just received a bad reel of filament. That does happen, I had to return a reel of Colorfabb filament once and they are considered to be one of the top suppliers. (to their credit I had a new reel from Holland within 2-3 days no problems). Personally I would junk the eSun reel and move on.

Have you checked that in Cura the x/y dimensions of the two models (before combining) are exactly the same after being cut in Netfabb?

Hi John, good to see that we seem to have cured the poor bed adhesion problem. Looking at the new picture I would say that your bed is not level and the problem areas in the middle and lower part of the pic are due to that side of the bed being too far away from the nozzle. If the model was actually printed on the bed in the orientation of the pic then raise the front of the bed by a qtr. of a turn on the adjustment screw. If the orientation of the print was actually 90 degrees turned around, then do the same thing with either the left or right adjustment screw depending on the orientation. The 2nd pic is not particular helpful because that was printed before we made the adjustments yesterday and the first pic does not show any evidence of poor adhesion at the edges.

Ah sorry for my misunderstanding. For a straight line Cura has an accuracy of at least 100 microns, I normally see 50 microns or better, down to the point when the skill of the measurer comes into play. I do not know what tolerance you are looking for but if we are making a part to fit somebody else's assembly (normally injection moulded) we tend to find that the assembly has a larger tolerance than our target. Of course the printer in use has a large part to play as indeed will the Cura settings you select. Would scaling the model resolve your problem with the printer? I am thinking that if your 100mm always came out as 110mm you scale all models down by 9.09% Oh surely just print a 100mm * 100mm square and just measure the first line?