yellowshark

I did my 2nd print and the result was so much better. As before finish was good and there are some tweaks in the bag which I am sure will turn that to excellent. It was much faster, this time being 4 minutes faster than 15.04.4, although for some reason layer 1 printed at 30mm/s rather than 20 mm/s, so it will be a bit slower but nonetheless still significantly faster. The dimensional accuracy was fantastic, being 40 microns better than 15.04.4 rather the 250 microns worse. This was the best result I have had on this test over the past weeks. On the basis of this result 2.3.0 rocks

Hi if you have or can borrow some “ isopropanol Alcohol 99% Isopropyl liquid cleaner" it is great at getting filament off the hot end. It is used mainly for cleaning electrical contacts but I tried it on the hot end and it works a peach - recommended to me by my American friends,

Ok just done my first 2.3.0 print. Happily everything ran from start to finish without any failures or real weirdos; no crashes or extrusion problems. Also the quality of the finish I thought was good, especially on first run through. Beware! If you do not set everything to “on” with the Visibility Settings screen, you will not see what strange things Cura is doing in the background. E.G. I used a standard print and settings so I could compare 2.3.0 with 15.04.04 and Kisslicer and S3D. The first shock was that whilst it is a 27-28 minute print, Cura was estimating 42 minutes when normally for me it underestimates a small amount. Anyway I went ahead, assuming it might be acceleration or something similar; but no it took about 42 minutes. The first thing I did then was turn on all the Availability settings and there it was. Whilst I had asked for 30mm/s, Cura had set outer wall/skin was 15mm/s, infill was also slower, Top and Bottom were slower. Anyway it did not take me too long to get Cura back to an estimate of 26 minutes. The top and bottom finishes came out very well; on the one sample I would say better than 15.04.4 - there were of course a variety of settings Cura had turned on without me knowing, which may have helped or been a hindrance - indeed of course some of the print speeds were slower which probably did help to enhance the finish. So I need to do some more work on that one. On that one sample, dimensional accuracy was not good, err rather bad (same model, in theory same settings); on average 250 microns worse than Cura 15.04.4 and noticeably worse than Kisslicer, which in my recent tests, quite extensive, was not as good as Cura 15.04.4. This is even weirder given that Cura was running some of the speeds slower than I had expected. One test does not a problem make. But I mention it at this stage only because the difference is huge. There are no curves or circles here, just rectangular geometries on the x/y axis, Maybe the developers are aware, maybe they are not. Of course there is a bunch of settings set that I did not want, so I need to go through those carefully and retest but with the speeds being slow and the flow being standard, I am not sure there are other settings that would have such a large impact, but I should get another test through in the next few hours. One final point that I am hoping someone can help me with so I save some time. I selected z-hop and saw during the print than when the hop happened, there was a very small pyramid shaped piece of filament was left on the surface just exited. If you look at the final print quickly you do not see them but a closer look exposes them. I will change the retraction settings but the following will help. Does the hop happen after, during or before the retraction?

Yup wrote my own own speeds to do my first test. Yes I saw later that the temp lines are handled by Cura 2.3.0. The code is not in the default Start code so must be inserted by the Cura compiler or whatever I guess. But that still leaves me with the problem of the travel speed. Perhaps you could have a look @nallath

Thanks for that @nallath ; hint taken

Hmn I seem to have a gcode creation problem. In my start code I have M190 S{print_bed_temperature} M109 S{print_temperature} G1 F{travel_speed} And that is what is appearing in the gcode file created by Cura. It seems to be failing to replace the variables with the figures in the profile settings. I have the same thing in the end code with G1 Z+0.5 E-5 X-20 Y-20 F{travel_speed} It is a custom printer with the RepRap (Marlin) Gcode Flavour selected – the same as I have in 15.04.4

Hi, just about to do my first 2.3.0 test (excited ) but I am not understanding the top/bottom width settings. I have a layer height of 0.3 (all layers) and have requested 4 top layers and 3 bottom layers, The top/bottom thickness box is irrelevant but is showing .72mm. Am I going to get .72 mm or will I get 1.2mm for the top and 0.9mm for the bottom?

Can I install 2.3 onto the same laptop that I have 15.04.4 running, without 2.3 affecting 15.04.4? I read somewhere that 2.3.0 affects 2.1.3

Hmn LOL that is possible!!. I cannot be certain but it seems certain that thinking I was in 2.3 I actually opened the Visibility settings in 2.1.3, doh!

Hi @nallath Sorry I am still somewhat confused. Are you saying that if I fit a 0.8mm nozzle to my printer and want a line width of 0.78 then I should NOT change the nozzle width in Cura from 0.4, instead I should just change the line width? I always thought there were algorithms in the software that considered the line width you wanted to print vs the physical size of your nozzle? Surely t takes more pressure to get a .78 line through a .4 nozzle that it does through a .8 nozzle?

Thanks for that. Just before going to bed last night I made some progress, establishing that it was a Machine Settings problem. I added another printer and chose Ultimaker 2 and the model sliced. I had chosen a German Reprap Neo from the Other printer list and added my settings and gcode. This morning I decided to start again. Under Adding a Printer I chose “Custom printer” which I must have missed last night – not sure how as it is staring you in the face, but I did. Setup my printer again and it all works.

... and because it is stuck on slicing I cannot get a "layer" view.

I mentioned this in another post I made this evening; I think it is a bad idea - I have no idea if it has advantages. If you have a model that you want to reprint in the future - happens a lot to me - a nozzle size in the machine settings is not saved as part of the Profile - I assume. So if you reprint and forget that you used say a 0.8 nozzle, although you reload your custom settings it will not come out the same. Can we regress that change please

Nice right up @gr5. LOL the reason I tried nGen the other week was because I had a PLA part melt in the car! I concur with your comment on the tensile modulus. That extra bit of flex is useful for several parts I make; they are fine but the nGen will make them better. Interestingly I tested the difference between an open printer and a closed printer and found no difference. BUT the piece I was using had a small surface area so I would not expect any problem with 1st layer adhesion, but you may well be right when it comes to parts with a much larger 1st layer surface area - something I will watch out for.

Thanks for explaining that @gr5. Now that you describe it I can understand what was happening, strange though it is, i.e. strange that it was happening. Apart from temps. I was using my standard PLA settings, in particular 30mm/s and same retraction settings and had never seen this before. I am assuming it is something to do with different flow characteristics between the material types. I changed retraction settings (see above), which ties in with your comment, and that fixed it never to return, so far.

OK I finished my software configuration and loaded a model. The message at the bottom right changed from "Please load a model" to "Preparing to slice..." and that is where it stayed. After 10 minutes I closed Cura and restarted, losded my settings Profile and the model and the same thing happened again. Any ideas? It is a small model, centred on the bed and in 15.04.4 takes about 4 seconds to slice with same settings.

Hi @SandervG, another point on this I would like to add. If it IS true that the nozzle size has moved from the main Profile settings to the Machine settings then, unless I am misunderstanding/missing something, I think this is a bad idea. On older Cura the Nozzle size was part of the Profile, so if you were testing a model with changes to line width, nozzle size, wall width, you could save these settings, or more likely the final version thereof and then at a future time if you needed to reprint the model you could load the Profile settings and everything was there. If the nozzle size has moved to Machine settings this will no longer be the case - as far as I can see - and one will have to make a separate note somewhere of the nozzle size used. The same also applies if the model will benefit say from a 0.8mm nozzle setting; which I find I am using more and more these days, and I am some others are too.

Thanks but that is not true for my version of 2.3.0 downloaded yesterday. I say that because there was a tick box for it under the Visibility Settings when I firs started to set the software configuration and that tick box is no longer there.

I have just been configuring my printer and slicing settings in Cura 2.3.0. The Machine Settings dialogue box for my 3rd party printer now has Nozzle Size, which was not there in 15.04.4, so I entered 0.4. Under Preferences, in the Setting Visibility dialogue box the first section is/was Machine Settings with one entry, Nozzle size, so I ticked that to be displayed (or maybe it was already ticked, cannot remember) and then ticked all the other boxes I wanted . Now I am not sure exactly what I did but I think on the right hand side I changed the Profile from High quality to Normal quality. This was the cause, I think, of a message coming up in the Visibility Settings dialogue box asking me if I wanted to transfer settings or something like that – I have to confess I did not pay too much attention and just hit NO. I seem to have lost all the visibility settings I had entered and importantly (?) The Machine Settings grouping has disappeared from the top of the Visibility Settings box along with the nozzle width tick-box. Is that because my actions caused the software to catch up with itself and realise that I had defined a 3rd party printer ( with a nozzle width defined in the Machine Settings under Printer) and so the entry on the Visibility Settings was deliberately removed? If so, do I rightly assume that if you have an Ultimaker or other Cura defined printer then the slicing software takes the nozzle width from the Cura displayed Settings box on the right hand side but if you have a 3rd party defined printer it takes the nozzle width from the Printer settings? – seems a bit strange to me I must say, I guess it actually gets the data from the same place but the GUI is different for how you enter the data?

Hi I have downloaded 2.3 and have been looking at settings, There is a term there that is new to me, as a 15.04 user, i.e. Skin. Am I right in assuming that the Skin is simply the outermost wall a.k.a. Perimeter?

I have always assumed that Cura works with the dims YOU enter for the printer, not for the printer itself. If that is the case then your model either exceeds those dimensions at least on one axis, or the model is not centred and is exceeding one of those dimensions.

Well done Pilla. Nothing like some perseverance to overcome a problem 8) It looks really good too.

Hi PIlla, many thanks for your answers. I am in a bit of a rush but a couple of points. "From posts here, I see that the volume/sec should be around 5 mm^3/s, so I am varying around there." I do not know what context that post was made in, but either you have misunderstood it or the post is wrong - there is no target volume/sec. in terms of how you print a model. Let us say you are printing at .300 and 50mm/s satisfactorily. If you were to reduce the layer height to .100, i.e. 1/3 of the volume, you would not increase the speed to 150mm/s, quite the opposite. Really you would only reduce the layer height to increase the quality. Speed too affects the quality, generally speaking (with some exception) slower is better. Now you might want to retain the print speed to try and reduce the increased print time caused by the thinner layer setting, but normally you would reduce the print speed too, in this case say to 30mm/s or 20 mm/s. Bottom line is if you are after higher quality and reduce the layer thickness, it makes no sense to increase the print speed. None of this should cause blobbing normally. Now your piece looks pretty small and that CAN cause issues here. For the moment I would scale it so it is at least 20mm*20mm*20mm or close. Let's get clarity on whether you have a printer problem first and then we can scale back and address issues. If you want to print this at .100, fine but I would reduce the temp to 190c for that. Oh and you want you fans on at 100 %, let's say on from layer 3 and 100% by layer 6. Personally for the moment I would reduce the retraction to 4.5mm for PLA. Good luck!

OK that will teach me to watch videos before commenting!! When you say your print speed is 125, do you mean 125mm/s, if so that is awfully fast. Certainly outside of my experience envelope. Your video suggest the two prints were done with different filament, another variable which does not help. Are you sure ALL of your settings, including retraction settings were the SAME on both machines? The point that the fan is on one side may exacerbate the stringing but it does not cause stringing. What are your retraction settings and travel speed? What is that silver/grey filament, e.g. Colorfabb shining silver? Err I am not sure what you mean by "Cura speed is irrelevant", speed is always relevant. Speed along with layer height determines your extruder temp. If the temp is too hot for the combination of layer height and print speed then that will lead to stringing, irrespective of where the fan is. I would say that the fact that the print stopped halfway through is an entirely different problem to the stringing. To my mind that would be a software/firmware/machine glitch. Did you notice if your buffer had gone to 0? Even if you had a feed problem I think you would see under extrusion first before the print stopped. Actually that is wrong, even with a feed problem I have never experienced feed causing a printer to stop, it just carries on. May I suggest you slow this down for the moment and print one at .15/30mm/s/195c. and we go from there. I have no idea what the right temp should be at such a high speed of 125mm/s. I would like to see those retraction and travel speed settings too.

So what is your print speed? Lol I tried to reverse engineer your formula but came up with a ridiculous result.