yellowshark

earlier this year I printed a squirrel beater to keep them off my bird table, using PLA. It is still their intact, although I will admit that the English summer this year has fallen short of any sane definition of summer. If you are down south like Florida I suspect it will not work though;)

This may be what you want (not my pic, nicked from the Taulman site) [media=5671][/media]. The bottom half is Taulman t-glase - which I use. The top half is the same filament but covered with XTC-3D - which I also use.

@nallath I can fully understand why the focus would be on Ultimaker printers. It does seem a shame though that whilst configuring other printers in 15.04 and back was pretty easy, it seems though that with 15.06 onwards it has become more difficult. I say this based only on the various comments I have read on the subject in the forum threads rather than trying it myself - so I may be being a bit unfair. But perhaps this is something that could be revisited in the future when the heat has subsided with the new release. Working with a GUI is certainly preferable to modifying a text file; the former helps to reduce errors and is infinitely easier for non-programmers, or old ex ones like me! Is 15.06 Pink Unicorn or is that still to arrive?

Thanks for that Labern - seems like the jury is out at the moment. Actually Cura seems the least of my problems. Looking at the RepRap forum there seem to be issues with RepetierHost and it seems that Windows 10 Home automatically applies updates and you cannot turn that off; and there seem to be conflicting views as to whether the Pro version does or does not allow auto update to be turned off. I guess if one has a 20 hour print one could disconnect from the network to avoid this. Anyway looks like I will be sticking with Windows 7 for the foreseeable future

Hi I put Windows 10 into the search engine but got nothing. Does 15.04 work with Windows 10?

Hi Cloakfiend, possibly germane, possibly not. A while back I was working with a scan of a plaster cast of a foot (so a reasonable size of model) - which we then take Into Solidworks and create an orthotic insole. The model had about 750,000 faces. I found that most of our software including Solidworks (£5,000 not free like Cura) struggled with this (not sure about Meshmixer as memory fades). "Struggled" means took ages, took so long I killed it, actually failed or would not seem to load the model(could just be taking ages). I decimated the model to 80-100,000 faces and all was OK. On the computer screen I could not detect any negative impact on resolution of the surfaces. I have no idea what type of models you work with but I wonder if a similar approach could be a route forward for you? I.E. in the real world does one actually need millions of faces. A bit like photography where ultimately it does not matter how much resolution the camera sensor has, you end up being constrained by your printing hardware or display screen resolution.

Hi Cloakfiend, it takes a bit of practice but you can get a great finish with XTC 3D (i.e. not lumpy). I guess the model size/geometry comes into this also. I make an automotive part for a client and the part goes straight to the paintshop for spraying so it has to be ultra smooth. The one problem I had was the occasional "run" but with some practice I got rid of these. I also use the colour dye so that the layer lines are completely disappeared

Personally I question the wisdom in setting different speeds (except layer 1). As an ex Slic3r user I used to do this all the time but since moving to Cura and not doing it I find that you loose unwanted artefacts that are caused by the period of change in pressure mid print whilst the printer stabilises to the new setting. I would agree that on large models it can be very useful and that in itself would be helped if there was the capability in Cura to set where the layer change is located, i.e. somewhere that would be out of site when the model is displayed; of course that is not relevant to all models but every bit helps!

Is Pink Unicorn coming or has it arrived

As an aside, unless it has changed in the latest versions, the print all at once has never worked properly. Say you have four objects 1234, the print order is 1234,4321,1234,4321 etc etc. So the last object in the sequence has less time to cool than the other before the next layer is printed. Not an issue if the models are reasonably large but can cause problems if the models are small. So you have to slow the speed right down which defeats the object.

Yup I use Meshmixer supports most of the time as they can be highly tuned - to be fair to Cura it is a slicer so for simple models I guess we should be thankful Cura does provide the function.

Thanks for that George, a useful bit of info.

LOL as an Englishman I order my beer in pints and my clothing in inches and my petrol in litres and my pasta in grams, my wood in inches and centimetres and our cricket pitches are in yards; we just got used to it although some smart alec will no doubt say that that just mirrors our take on the EU. Interestingly my son did his engineering at college and his apprenticeship working in metric, which is what we use in Solidworks. I am guessing that if we did get specifications in Imperial then that is what would go into Solidworks and we would get Solidworks to convert before creating a stl file.

That is because I have a high ability to print complex models;)

Hmn, I would offer to try printing your model but my 2nd extruder needs a new heating element to be fitted and that is not going to happen in the next week or so. I don't know how big the model is but it might be worth scaling it up so that more material flows before a retraction. I know that is not solving your problem but it might give some indication of what is going on. Can we assume this is not a problem you normally experience?

Almost without exception it is caused by your drive wheel being too tight on the filament. If you can manually feed filament through, eg using Repetier Host, then feed 40/50 mm through and pull the filament. Does the side pulled by the teeth feel almost smooth? If so you really should be Ok. If it feels any rougher that is your problem. If you cannot manually feed then just print a square with retraction off and then pull the filament.

Hmn as an ex user of Slic3r a couple of years ago, I love the Cura auto slicing. Personally I very rarely change settings. I have one settings file for prototype (lower quality) and one file for production (best quality). I have a set of these dual setting files for PLA, nylon and abs. So when I want to print I just load the relevant settings file. Then If I do want to change the settings, normally print speed and/or resolution, the first thing I want to see is the change to print time, which affects the cost to my customer. Having to keep hitting a button or menu option under Slic3r was a pain. Rock on Cura . Most of my slicing normally only takes seconds although I will admit I do not often print multiple copies on the print bed

We are dependent on the community for print profiles. So far we recieved a few, which have been added to Cura. Hi I have been off line for a couple of months and am just breezing through this thread prior to installation. I too have another printer and currently use machines/reprap (14.07) to configure my printer. If this is not available I am assuming I will not be able to use the new Cura?

Hi Nallath, I think that is not quite right. I consider myself an ordinary user but I change nozzle sizes. For an ordinary user you can get seriously faster speed at the expense with certain geometries of loss of quality. Sometimes I use different sizes on nozzle 1 and nozzle 2, appreciating that Cura will not slice that for me.

I would modify this slightly and say "when you want best possible quality you want to minimize or eliminate sudden speed changes". Having bottom layer slower is not an issue. The problem will only last for about 1/2 second or less from when the speed change occurrs. Lots of people print 100mm/sec no problem but you don't get nearly as good quality. It depends if you are making artwork or merely something functional. In fact if you don't care so much about quality but do care about speed then it's also good to use a larger nozzle. A .8mm nozzle prints 4 times faster. Hi George, yes your correction is absolutely right. I just assume (bad ) that everyone prints layer 1 slow at 20mm/s so took that as a given . Yes over the past few months I have been using the .8 nozzle where a pristine finish is not needed, it sure makes a difference! Not sure how it would go with something as small as Marvin though.

Yup myself also - I had thought it stopped last week. Also I used preview on this post and it disappeared

Hi Didier I do find that when swapping between a .4mm and a .8mm nozzle then the distance between the bottom of the extruder and the tip of the attached nozzle is different. Of course the distance is small but I fine tune my nozzle to bed distance to 20 microns so the distance in nozzle length can be substantial. Certainly I get visibly better results from both nozzles by using individual z-offsets rather than just the one

Hi Carl, My name is Pete. First the simple part. The z-offset command is e.g. G92 Z209.13 ; set z_offset I will talk about the Z value in a minute. You put the command into the Cura start-up gcode. You will find this on the main tabs, under the start/end G-Code tab and the first section, start.gcode. If you select this you will see the Cura start gcode – please note do not just copy this gcode from my message!! It has been modified in places and I have a 3ntr printer not a UM. You will see my z-offset highlighted in bold. ;Basic settings: Layer height: {layer_height} Walls: {wall_thickness} Fill: {fill_density} ;Print time: {print_time} ;Filament used: {filament_amount}m {filament_weight}g ;Filament cost: {filament_cost} G21 ;metric values M190 S{print_bed_temperature} ;Uncomment to add your own bed temperature line M109 S{print_temperature} ;Uncomment to add your own temperature line G90 ;absolute positioning M107 ;start with the fan off G28 X0 Y0 ;move X/Y to min endstops G28 Z0 ;move Z to min endstops G1 X1 Y25 F12000 ; go to wipe station G1 Y1 F6000 ; G1 Y15 F6000 ; wipe G1 Y1 F6000 ; G92 Z209.13 ; set z_offset ;G1 Z15.0 F{travel_speed} ;move the platform down 15mm G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G1 F200 E2 ;extrude 3mm of feed stock G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again G1 F{travel_speed} ;Put printing message on LCD screen M117 Printing... OK, some background. I print with a glass plate on my print bed. The depth of the plate is 7.04mm. When I level my bed and set the bed to nozzle distance, I do this without the glass bed in place. I use the traditional paper method with a piece of card 1.5mm depth. Personally I adjust the screws so there is quite a bit of friction when pulling out the paper/card. I can just feel this better rather than having slight friction. So I guess the bed to nozzle distance is a little bit less than 1.5mm after adjustment. On the Cura menu, under machine\machine settings I have the maximum height of the printer set to 216. So 216 -7.04 = 208.96 209.13(ACTUAL Cura setting) – 208.96 = .17 I have subsequently moved the bed 0.17mm nearer to the nozzle during fine tuning. For fine tuning I change the z-offset by 0.04mm and see if I get a better result and keep on changing it, both ways, until I reach the optimum distance. Probably easier than it sounds, it is quite a fast process. I hope this helps – get back to me if you are stuck!!

I suspect you guys would find it easier to use a z-offset in your startup code if you are regularly changing nozzles. I use .4 and a .8 and have a z-offset for both. When I change the nozzle I just go into Cura and change the z-offset - job done:)

Ah that would be where my earlier message went then!