yellowshark

Hi I need some white PLA. My goto filament for years has been Faberdashery Arctic white but they are out of stock of everything with a message saying they are moving premises see you later in 2019. Hell if I were moving my business I would not shut down production until the new premises were ready for me and then hopefully be down for 1 week absolute maximum. And I would tell my customers how long we planned to be down for. All sounds very dodgy and they have three goto filaments for me including the white and I am out of stock on two of them and not much left of the third. So what about ColorFabb my other goto manufacturer. Arctic white is snow white, not a hint of cream anywhere or anything else. For a white it is very easy and consistent to use. Does ColorFabb have a white that meets those two requirements?

Hi, from what you are saying, as I interpret it, your bed is not level i.e. there is a bigger bed to nozzle distance on the left so the filament is not getting sqished into the bed. Best solution is to get it level! Also I assume your bed is nice and clean all over. Yes increasing the flow rate will affect the whole print unless you using print control software , e.g. RepetierHost, that allows you to modify flow in real time. I do that all the time using 70% flow for the first layer then transitioning to 100%. I have no idea if the latest version of Cura has this capability.

Hi @Tettaura thanks for the info. OK several things going on here. You need 2 walls (yes “number of walls”), that is almost certainly your infill showing through the single wall. As you do not mention it then I assume you are using PLA and, if that is the case, then you are printing way too hot and you are over-extruding. Stupidly I did not ask for your layer height; even if you are using .3 layer height you should find that an extruder temp of 200 will be fine and gives you a big improvement. If your layer height is .2/.1 then 195/190 should be better. Of course if you are using ABS then your temp. is probably in the ball park but not for PLA. All printers and filaments are different so one cannot be totally prescriptive on extruder temp. but you should not need to move more than +/- 5 degrees on the above. Yes the preview will not show defect arising from the settings; only mesh defects in X-ray mode.

Hi @andrulonis ok as you do not mention it then I assume you are using PLA and if that is the case then you are printing way too hot and you are over-extruding. Drop your temp. to 195 which should be OK. You can even try 190 for a better result, especially if you are using 0.1. If you are using 0.2 with 45mm/s you might need to push the extruder temp to 200; all printers and filament are different, so one cannot be too prescriptive, what works for you is best, but not 235 🙂 If you are using ABS then your temp is probably in the ball park but I have. never used ABS so it would be wrong for me to guess what is going on.

Wow @lakerice, 2 days + you are brave😃. Yes your latest print looks much better and your legs look better than mine, I must get to the bottom of these zits although that will have to wait as I have a job agreed today that I need to deliver on Tuesday. My print that you are looking at was done with the model scaled down 50%. It is a bit late in the day now but you know it is always worth scaling down a model or sinking it into the bed (-Z position) just to print a portion of the model, to make sure the settings are right before pursuing a large print of 1-2 days. I note your response to @geert_2 where you said you made the walls thicker - I wonder what you actually did? IMHO and how I always work is that line width = nozzle and wall width = line width and you define the number of walls you want. Whether that 2,3,4 or whatever is up to you. And I always run with infill overlap = 15%; no scientific reason, it may be the default that I use but it works for me. What I did change last year was to measure the width of the filament being extruded which was 0.45 not 0.40 so I changed the line width to 0.45 which of course I will recheck when a new nozzle is deployed.

Hi can you please tell us your settings for Layer height Extruder temp Print speed(s) Flow %

OK can you tell me please your settings for Line width Number of walls Infill overlap % Dimensional thickness of the part i.e. the external casing Extruder temp. Print speed(s) Also useful would be a pic of the model in Cura layer view, at a layer in the bottom half where the vertical lines are showing

Oh and important, or maybe not, I reduced the scale of you model by 50% so I could print in just a couple of hours.

Well it is a weird one @geert_2. My problem in understanding it is that I have never ever seen that before but like you I nearly always run cool and slow. I normally use 100% or 40% infill, or in this case 10%! The next print of this I do when investigating the zits on the legs I will drop to 0.1mm and use 190 temp. So as I said 220 is way too hot at 50mm/s; it would be interesting if @lakerice could drop the temp down to under 200 and see what impact that has.

Hi @lakerice OK here is my result. My main settings were… No support used - to reduce print time; so the seat front is missing a few layers! (All) printer speeds 50mm/s Extruder temp 195 Layer height .15 Infill 10% Walls 2 (set to nozzle width; my 0.4 nozzle extrudes 0.45 so my line widths are set to 0.45) Cooling 100% Flow 100% I was going to use 0.1 layer height but I had a couple of false starts including a filament failure half way through the print before this one and so pushed it up to 0.15 to reduce the print time a bit. I did a partial test using 0.2 at 190 and there was some minimal under extrusion so I took the temp up to 195 and used that for this print but at 0.1 I would have used 190. With an infill of 10% and 0.1 I set top layers to 15. I forgot this when I changed to 0.15 and indeed after layer 8 the seat top was fine; i.e. 1.2mm so 15 layers for 0.1 was a good guess, you would probably need another 1 or 2 layers i.e. 1.3/1.4 using 0.1 layers. OK no two printers are the same, even if the same model. You have to consider manufacturing tolerances, hardware and firmware setup, general maintenance, slicer settings i.e. all the little hidden ones especially defaults if you do not set your own settings, and the PLA filament used. But you can use these above as guidelines. On thing is for sure, you are printing too hot! I can get 50% more filament through at 30 degrees cooler than you (using 190). Having said that white filament has a reputation for being the most difficult colour to get right - which I have experienced first-hand. I am not sure why I have so many artefacts on the legs. Pretty much standard settings for me apart from the 50mm/s and one of my go to filaments, so I am at a bit of a loss at the moment, probably this week-end's project! Will update you if I can.

Well the white one is over-extruding. lol I do not a pic to know that; 220 is way too hot for 0.6 at 50 mm/s 220. Now I have some figures I expect the grey one is over-extruding also. I will do some tests for you.

Hi @lakerice OK I have your model and it has loaded OK into my Cura. I might be able to try some printing tonight but if not it will be Wednesday. Looking at your new pic, I am not 100% sure but I think you are suffering some under-extrusion. Is it possible to take another pic, directly from overhead rather than from the side and post that so I have a better view. Also can you please tell me, for this version of the model, the following settings that you used. layer height - I assume 0.1 extruder temp print speed - if you used different speeds for different parts of the printing then give me all of them flow % please ignore layer 1 from the above

Ok well the good news is you have an Ultimaker so you should be able to get a decent print, better than the pic you have posted. Even with 0.2 mm layer it is still poor. Now you are printing fast and the faster you go the lower your quality will be; lol I have never printed at 80 and have used 60 once; most of our work in engineering where accuracy and quality of finish are important so 30 is our normal speed. I am not suggesting you have to slow down to that speed, I am just making a point about the way this technology works. Maybe when the print has finished you could post your speed and flow too and a pic of this new print. I would be happy to print your model for comparison if you can post it somewhere. I would though scale it down to reduce print time or maybe just printing part of it would be better. (for me, not you!)

Hmn, well @Smithy solution for your infill problem is certainly sound but is it an infill problem? I am trying to work out what those vertical crosses are, most weird and not the result of random artefacts. Plus the vertical resolution is very poor especially for .1mm layer height. I wonder what print speed, extruder temp and flow % you are using? Is it an Ultimaker or another printer?

The other thing you can do to help is to lower your flow rate for the first level by 20-30%

I have always printed a skirt or brim around my objects - it is no just retraction you have to manage but also pressure stabilisation within the feed/extrusion system. It is also beneficial to manually extrude filament before starting the print to ensure everything is flowing well; although I am not sure how easy that is to do if you are using Cura to do the printing; I normally extrude 30-50mm

Well imho if your glass is bowed it aint flat and no amount of levelling will make it flat - maybe you can fiddle and make a portiion of it flat big enough to get the job done. The distance between the glass and the nozzle is greater at the edges than in the centre (with your bowing) and that is why your back left will be working fairly well because the distance is greater and clearly closer to what is optimum for your print. From what you say then you virtually transparent areas will be in the middle where the glass is more compressed against the nozzle. i.e. shorter distance. It all figures apart from your bent glass!

The same for me on 2.7. of course using 0.1 takes the problem away but I guess that if your layer height is 0.3 and you set this thickness variable to 1.1 the question is does is print 0.9, 1.2 or does it throw in a 0.2 to give you 1.2?. If it were me I would set the thickness to equal what my layer heights add up to, i.e. at 0.3 either 0.9 or 1.2. I doubt it makes any difference to the finished article and it stops me worrying about it 😀

Err is this fun or business? I am not an expert on this but if it is business then you need certification, at least in the USA. Plastics need to be food safe and one/some of Taulman nylons is/are certified by the FDA. Details on their website; there may be others, I am only aware of Taulman

What material are you using? If PLA I would suggest you set your minimum layer time to at least 10 secs. Controlling your print cooling during the print; well it is quite normal to slowly increase your cooling up to 100% over the first few layers. I am not aware of any advantage in changing the cooling once it has got to 100% - but I could be wrong :)

Hi I have some suggestions but it would be nice to know first, print speed(s) and layer height(s) and flow %(s). Also the "change in resolutions", is it just on the wall shown or is all the way around the model?

Yup I set Cura flow to 100% and then before starting my print I set flow in Repetier Host to 70% and after the first layer I set Repetier Host back to 100%, so I get the 1st layer at 70% and everything else at 100%

Which manufacturer of filament are you using I wonder? Anyway check it to make sure the thickness is consistent say along a length of 2 or 3 metres and that it is 2.85mm +/- 0.05mm. Also if it is on a reel make sure it is not wound too tightly. If it is unwind a few metres to loosen it and rewind more loosely. Probably worth warming the extruder up to 180 and then seeing how easy it is to pull out the filament, i.e. it should be easy.

When estimating a job price, where print time is the fundamental cost, we add 8% to the Cura stated time (this is using vs 2.7). When we print we use Repetier Host which is more accurate and we use its timing to manage the print.

Well no not strictly true. I have never use initial layer line width, maybe my version of Cura does not offer that, but I run my initial layer at 70% flow and that reduces extrusion