yellowshark

What is your layer height and print speed- no way of knowing if extruder temp is ok without them. Several years since I played with spiralize so this is somewhat of a guess. Turn off retraction; set your line widths to 0.8 with 1 wall. If you are not printing slow then printing slower may help. I doubt I ran mine at more than 30mm/s Yes the z-scar or whatever it is strange because I do not think the print head has any travel moves in spiralize; something to do with an 0.8mmnozzle I wonder. Certainly not a problem I ever experienced. No idea if you are an expert with a .8mm nozzle, remember you are pushing out twice as much material per sec. so you may want to do some testing with a simple cube to get the extruder temp spot on.

OK I would suggest a different way. I assume you have levelled your bed using a sheet of paper or card. I will also assume you have a glass plate fitted. I will also assume your Z height is 200, of course you will need to change that probably. What you need to do is to put a z-offset command into your start gcode in Cura. You can calculate it as Z height - paper/card thickness- glass plate thickness = NNN.NNN Place the line of code into your start g code so the line is preceded somewhere by an absolute positioning command G90 ;absolute positioning G92 ZNNN.NNN ;set z-offset Print a skirt line. No good? Change the G92 command either reducing or increasing the extruder distance. I normally change in steps of 0.1mm until I get close then switch to steps of 0.04 mm until it looks good (or if .1mm either way is worse I will start again using steps of 0.04mm). Then I will go both ways with 0.02mm to see which of the 3 settings is the best

If the dimensions are not too important then just scale it down to fit; scale icon is in the icon strip on the left hand size. If you need to keep the dimensions then I would cut the model in half and glue it together once printed.

Lo oh for sure, the world of litigation that we live in these days, our American cousins have a lot to answer for, can be blamed for everything. And indeed Health and Safety, in its origin, was a laudable thing but these days laws are dreamed up just to keep them employed. Pinch points? Give me a break. I pinched my finger in a kitchen drawer the other week; should be suing the manufacturer for his poor design? Does the CEO want to miss out on new business or make product development longer than necessary just because some mutt might pinch his her finger by being stupid. I think not. Fortunately running my own 3D printing business I set the policies and getting the best quality print possible is one of them

We have used Cura for 4 years or so and pontificated over S3D for 2 years or so. We refuse to spend 150 bucks on software from a company with little pedigree without access to trial software. If e.g. Adobe can provide a trial whether the software costs 50 bucks or 500 bucks then S3D will never get our business. There is no doubt that S3D was better software by a margin. What particularly attracted me and still does, is the underlying structure of the software design that lets you change pretty much everything at a particular layer height, and again and again if you want to. But Cura has had a lot of investment over the past year or two and has a lot more functionality, but still no layer height functionality. But is it now as good as, better, worse? I am not qualified to say so having never tried S3D (only read documentation) and being on an old version of Cura. The problem with Cura and always has been is its quality. We keep wanting to move up to Cura 3 but every point release rather than fixing bugs just seems to add more, given the continual problems posted on the forum. They really ought to stop developing the software, which as I said has been immense in recent times, and just spend the next year fixing all the problems. They are two are different animals. The new Cura (well not so new these days) has focussed on making the software much easier for inexperienced people with their standard setups and setups for materials - almost switch on printer, load model, select one option, print. I do not think S3D is that easy and indeed to get the best out of S3D you need to get your hands dirty and start writing scripts (think they call it something else). Cura has a great and helpful community; I have no idea about the S3D community. IMHO I would suggest you start with Cura, learn about the settings and how they affect the prints - 6 months? - and use the community to help you. Perhaps after two months start reading the documentation to be found on the S3D website and get an appreciation for yourself on how they differ. Check out their community and get a view on the quality and helpfulness. You will not have to relearn 3D printing but you will have to spend time learning how to best use the S3D software. Finally I would add that we do not 3D print for fun, we provide prototyping and manufacturing services primarily to engineering companies and architects, which of course is fun but we do it to make money. Over the past 4+ years we have not had a job that Cura has been unable to deliver.

Your settings do not seem to reflect the model shown. Apart from a setting of 70mm/s when you say 20mm/s, the base of the boat has no bottom but your settings say top/bottom thickness 2mm - all very strange. Quite possibly problem is due to under-extrusion but difficult to say as you have not quoted extruder temp. Otherwsie is could be a problem with your feed system/filament - maybe the filament is poor quality with uneven thickness which is causing it to stick inside the Bowden tube

You get my daily brains award for using your brain and trying another slicer. I doubt that Inventor would create such an error. We use Solidworks, i.e. Inventors main competitor and vice versa, and always get perfect meshes when exporting to .stl; never had a duff one.

t1. cut the model horizontally in half. 2. Prin both halves, I assume the adaptor will be supported by the plate. 3. Use the right glue and glue the two halves together.

tell them it cannot be done and then let them have a discussion with your CEO as to which department is more important to the Company. PLA requirement is to be printed cool. We have printed PLA mostly, for 4+ years, and always leave the door open and remove the lid (they are for ABS). To date we all still have 8 fingers, two thumbs and two lungs.

If your budget is under 1,000 eu/gbp/usd then check carefully, very. About 18 months back, so things will have moved on, I was looking for something for us to win a contract, I could find nothing that did not present us with issues and in the end gave up - of course it depends on what you want to use it for. I did look at one which seemed to do the business but that was 20,000+ gbp

Ah that was a bug, I forget the version but it did get sorted. Maybe it has been reintroduced; the speed setting should be the speed/speeds you have set in Cura. Yes it can be modified in the g-code, just load it into an editor with a search function.Ii is dead easy to change if, ignoring the first layer, you set all your printspeeds (not travel speed) to the same value. In the editor search for Layer:1 . You will probably see an M140, M106 and G0 commands. Then probably a comment ;type:wall-inner , or similar. The next line will be a G1 command starting with an F parameter; divide the figure by 60 and that is the speed, nn/ms, that Cura has set the printer. So multiply your required print speed by 60 and type in that number. It more time consuming if you do not have all the print speeds the same because then you will get several G1 commands with F parameter on every layer. I guess you could use search replace to fix them all. Also beware if you have entered a number against slow layers because each of the first few layers will have a G0 F command (I assume) and you will need to fix them.

Hi @SandervG, I have just noticed that I am missing notifications from a topic I am contributing to; there may be others missing too of course. There was a response to me about 4 hours ago but nothing is listed in my notifications and I did not receive an email notification either.

Ok you might want to experiment with a bit of tuning. My retraction distance for PLA is 5.5mm and the speed I am sure is 50mm/s. I also normally use a z seam alignment (or whatever it is called) of random and retract at layer change is on. About a year ago when I was trying Ngen I had a similar problem and found that experimenting with the retraction settings resolved it. I moved retraction distance up to 6.5 and made another change but off-hand cannot recall what it was. As always everyone has differences and what works for one person may not work for another but I do suspect that if you make sure you are not printing hotter than you need to and you lengthen that retraction distance you may well see an improvement.

Nice looking print, I see you are an architecture guy too. I assume the inside is hollow which makes me think your furry strands could be due to the fans if you have dual extruders. One thing you can do to try and help is to print as cool (extruder) and as slow as possible. Use you little test plates, you will need them to be higher, say 10mm? and see how much lower you can go in temperature (using the print speed and layer height for your print) before you get under extrusion. I do not know how large the building is and can understand that going slower may be problematical in time. But dropping from 40 to 30 should help. What is your retraction length and speed?

Great that you seemed to have cracked it , even if maybe a little way to go. Hey money comes into this of course but why not just buy a glass plate from your "local" 3D print supplier or visit your local glazier and get them to cut a glass plate for you - need a discussion with them on how level the plate will be and its consistency across the plate. The latter is probably more important as a small slope can probably be addressed by the levelling procedure. But if it is working fine for you why change! Re your question "I think that lines that do not connect or blend together means nozzle is too high?". Well yes but I am sure I have experienced the opposite where moving the nozzle away from the bed has fixed the problem. I am not sure on this, it is a long time since I have reset the distance and my memory is failing me. One of the two will fix it! Using hairspray. Well I have only ever used hairspray, for 4+ years now, so I suppose I am a hairspray expert not that there is much to be expert about. The same with many things there are always alternatives to what I am about to say and some personal experimentation is always a good thing. I use L'Oréal Elnett Satin extra strength - it was recommend to me by my printer manufacturer and I have never flet the need to try something else. Cleaning the plate. Go to a sink and hold the plate under running warm/hot water; using a clean J cloth wipe off the hairspray. You should find it bubbles up and leave the surface as you wipe. Dry the plate then spray onto the plate some Isopropyl alcohol and wipe over with another J cloth. Put the plate under the running water again and give it a good wipe to remove any alcohol residue. Dry the plate and warm it up in your printer to 60 or so. Remove the plate from the printer, you do not want any hairspray in there, and holding the plate about a foot or 30cm from the can spray on LIGHTLY a coat of hairspray. Wait about 20 secs and spray a second light coat on. Two coats is normally good for me although sometimes I have needed to remove the plate and spray on another coat or two. In my experience that should last you several weeks. When adhesion starts to falter just spray on another two coats. Repeat until the time comes when another good clean is needed; 6 months?

I agree with @mattgriffin totally. As long as you are printing your 1st layer at 0.3000 and with a bed temp. of, let us say, 60 or more, your problem will be external to Cura. Accuracy of bed level, cleanliness of bed surface, consistency of level of surface, e.g. no blobs of glue everywhere, correct/optimum surface to nozzle distance (termed z-gap in the Ulitmaker levelling procedure?). Also, and this will vary with printers, e.g. on my printer the heater/sensor is located in the middle of the bed. When that reaches the temp. that I want to print at, the perimeters of the bed, i.e.outside of the central area, will be 10 degrees cooler. This is no problem for small items but for larger items such in architecture where a wall or a floor can extend to the extremes of the bed surface it equal disaster. I always measure my bed temp with an IR thermometer in these cases and wait maybe 15+ minutes for the touter areas to catch up.

Question 1 Yes that is how it works although it lowers the build plate it does not raise it, unless oyu have a weird printer that woks the other way . Question2. No not really. You have two settings; "Layer height" and "first layer height". The first setting is the layer height which is the layer height you want to print your model with. The second setting is an exception and only applies to layer 1. When printing layer the first layer Cura moves the bed down by the distance in the second setting. When printing layer 2 and all subsequent layers it moves the bed down by the distance in the first setting; there is no reference to or any calculation based on the height of the first layer.

Well you could; I have never used their standard settings and I have seen examples of them quoted on the forum with settings I consider poor. But you never know . If you can post your model somewhere I am happy to print it with my settings and see what happens. You did not say if this was your first model or whether you have printed other models previously which have been good? When you say you tried a different filament, which was better, was that print using my settings or did you do it before I posted them? Can you post a pic of that "better" model.

Lol, yes that is probably your problem, at least it will not help. The first layer is printed as 1 layer at the height you specify and all subsequent layers are printed at the generic layer height you specified. You will always get a difference in the printing quality of different coloured filament because the dyes react differently with the PLA - that may not be an entirely scientifically accurate statement! I have had trouble with some whites and I have seen others, more experienced/knowledgeable than I, make similar comments. Having said that these days I use Faberdashery's Arctic white which is great for me. Probably if they released an Antarctic white that might be problematical!

Hmn, I actually thought it was your retraction settings that were probably causing the problem - they are way out compared with anything I have ever used. Can you print any other model, even just a cube, that comes out perfectly? Or is the problem present on everything you print? What printer and PLA filament manufacturer are you using I guess you are using Cura 3.n. That will have more settings than 2.4. These will have defaults set, probably. Can I suggest you go through the settings again and if something (i.e. that I have not mentioned) is not needed then untick them or set them to 0. This needs a bit of care as I have not mentioned all my settings above - but certainly most of them - but then may just be something that is affecting it. Actually better still use a snipping tool (Windows has one) and just copy all your settings and post here. As @kmanstudios notes, anything strange about your environment, ultra hot or cold? If you have them are you printing with your door open and roof off Now we will have different printers, I have a 3ntr, so you may need to run a different extruder temp than me. Perhaps you could test with 190 and 210 and see what if any difference you get. I think you mentioned that the filament was not great anyway. if so get some decent filament; Colorfabb is good or if you are in the UK then imho Faberdashery is better and you can buy it in lengths rather than reels so spend less. Also looking at your picture again the two middle reels seem to have a decent top surface but the two end ones do not. Did you kill those two prints before getting to the end?

Yes it can, indeed should, be better. Some things to do are; reduce your 1st layer print speed, i.e. walls and infill, to 20mm/s; use .300 layer height for you 1st layer. Yes you can use a thinner 1st layer but the thinner you go the more difficult it is to get good adherence. Also a thicker layer will do a better job of overcoming imperfections in your glass plate. I would suggest you do some testing with a small simple cube, say 20*20*1.2 rather than a 47 hr print! Firstly you want to get your extruder temp right so you are not under/over extruding. Also maybe you need to practice a bit with your glue stick? Have you done previous prints where your 1st layer was better? If so think about what is different between then and now. I assume from your bed temp that you are using PLA; is that white? Not the best colour for getting great prints from; maybe you have another colour you can try. Is it from a reputable supplier? Cheap filament is cheap because it is not as good.

Yeah I eventually worked that out but as you can see getting it actually positioned correctly seems to require some extra dexterity

Sorry I seem to have dumped a copy of my pic into your initial post. I have looked for a help manual but cannot find one and have no idea how to get a pic into my post - it was so easy on the original forum.

Hi, Here is my result – it looks better in real life but close up and flash never do 3D prints any favours. As you can see there are none of your problems present. Settings were… Software: Cura 2.4 Main settings Layer height: .150 All printing speeds:30mm/s Temp. 200 Line width 0.4 Shell Walls: 0.8, i.e. 2 Outer wall wipe distance: 0 Outer wall inset: 0 Outer walls before inner walls: no Alternate extra wall: no Compensate wall overlaps: no Z seam alignment: random Infill Density: 100% - on this model 100% is faster than 20% Infill overlap %: 15 Skin overlap %: 5 Infill wipe distance: 0 Infill before walls: no Material Flow: 100 Enable retraction: yes Retract at layer change: no Retraction distance: 5.5 Retraction speed: 50 Retraction extra prime amount: 0 Retraction minimum travel: 0.8 Maximum retraction count: 90 Minimum extrusion distance window: 5.5 Travel – all settings off/no Fan speed Regular/maximum speeds: 100 Initial speed: 0 Regular fan speed at layer: 4 Mesh fixes – set to no/0 Special modes Surface mode: normal Experimental – set to no/0

Are you taking your measurement from the top of the cube (as printed) or the bottom of the cube? It would be helpful if you could post some of your settings; layer height, print speed(s), temps, wall line width and no. of walls., outer before inner walls, alternate extra wall; compensate wall overlaps, infill before walls. I am surprised you have such a large error.