yellowshark

Re post#329, interestingly when I swapped from 0.4mm to 0.8mm I had to lessen the bed/nozzle distance, not increase it. The amount was 0.04mm if I remember correctly. I also ran the same PLA filament at the same settings that I had for the 0.4 nozzle. I am not suggesting you will be able to, just noting that it was OK for me; .300 layer at 40mm/s at 210c. Filaments have been Colorfabb intense green and Fabber's robot silver

Lol I run my rc car on a track not in the lake, that is called and RC boat! Seriously, I strongly suspect that if you coated the parts with XTC-3D that would seal the nylon and prevent the contamination by water.

OK firstly let us look at your 4th pic, the finished product from the top. The gaps close by the wall are almost certainly due to your .2mm layer and .6mm top/bottom layer – as dirkdirk has said and given the solution. You can see from your 2nd pic that the base plate area has infill, which is why you are getting your problem on the top layers due to your settings. Your 3rd pic, showing the finished product from underneath, is more interesting. It should have a complete solid infill but it is clearly being affected by the wall, i.e. you “damaged” area is following the outline of the wall – which of course should start a number of layers further up. It would be useful to see a pic from the layer view of Cura showing layer 1. My guess though is that the model was drawn by creating the base area first, then creating the wall, then placing the wall on top of the base area. In doing so the wall has actually been extruded into the base area rather than sitting on top. That is a guess though, it is not something I have ever seen before Go to the advanced tab and then the quality section. There is a parameter there for “cut off object bottom”. Enter 0.5mm and then go back to layer 1 view; does it look better?

Oh if it stops line so layer by implementing retraction I do need it

Not sure I agree with what you said about starting higher. If your layer height is say.300 then for the 2nd layer the bed will move .300 so there will be a .300 gap between the 1st layer and the 2nd layer - as required. I will accept, although I have not tried, if your bed to nozzle distance is so way out, it might take a few layers to get it stabilised. The answer to that though is get the distance sorted! I do like the idea of retraction though ; it pees me off that Cura does not do this on layer 1 - that should be a major bug fix not an add-in. The 1st layer is not always the 1st layer in use, i.e. you cannot assume the 1st layer is the base and will be hidden in use.

I make a cup of tea or two, and watch mine. LOL what a sad life.

LOL me too, why are we so paranoiac or does guilt suffer from no smoke without fire

If you still get it after your bed is cleaned then reorient it to another position on the print bed, print again and check the result. It also would be worth you watching the 1st layer go down and see if you notice anything amiss during layer 1

Sorry I do not know the answer for Bridge but I would just warn that the various Taulman nylons do have different melting points (sorry I have forgotten the posh and perhaps more accurate term). I put some 645 and some T-glasse in the same oven. The 645 was perfect and the new T-glasse (with a lower temp.) was completely ruined. You do not make that mistake twice

LOL George my finger does not reach as far as the screwdriver, unless I am printing something in the front qtr of the bed, which would be unusual for me. Yup Slic3r wipes the nozzle at my wipe station in the SW corner - so long since I have used that slicer though I cannot recall if it helps.

No idea if there is a workaround, I just "suffer" it. I have a dedicated screwdriver. My setup is that as the oozing starts, the print bed is raising and the nozzle starts to move to its print start position. So I just place the screwdriver beside the hanging thread of filament and move it to one side as the print bed nears the top of its travel, so that the thread lays down flat on the bed, out of the way and then follow the nozzle with the screwdriver in case the filament does not immediately adhere to the bed and just help it on its way with the screwdriver. If any does stick to the nozzle then I just push it off with the screwdriver. I do find the screwdriver to be probably the most important piece of equipment after the nozzle I always print either a skirt or a brim so the oozing filament thing is never a problem with my models.

... sorry I should add that the Colorfabb reels I had problems with were replaced immediately by Colorfabb, free of charge and with no issue.

Hi Mekks, welcome! To be absolutely accurate, Faberdashery is PLA and Colourfabb is PLA/PHA; personally I could not tell you what the difference is in the printed model. Both are great filaments and for PLA they are the only suppliers I use. I used to really love Colorfabb but now I use Faberdashery mostly; because I did find problems with a few reels of Colorfabb filament and I have never had a problem with Faberdashery. For me also Fab has two advantages, firstly living in England postage is a bit cheaper and secondly you can buy Fab loose rather than wound on a reel which I prefer. But you will get great prints with either of the two. Storage - I store Colorfabb in the delivery box and Fab in the plastic delivery bags. No silica or anything like that. In a room varying from 8c to 22c. I have filament greater than 12 months old which still prints great. If you but nylon filament then storage is more important as it hydroscopic, I keep mine sealed and in the airing cupboard i.e.the space housing the hot water tank for the house. And I must admit sometimes the PLA can be left laying on the floor for a number of weeks, if not longer

Certainly 12 months plus for me; I do keep them in the plastic bags that Faberdashery ship them in, i.e. loose not wound onto plastic reel/spool

I use Repetier and USB and likewise I have never had problems. With Repetier you can manually pause and restart without needing to worry about gcode

Well the first simple answer is that Cura does not know what material you are using and nozzle temperature ranges differ between different materials. As I said earlier I think, even if you are using say PLA from the same manufacturer there will be some colours that will benefit from a different temp; when I say "benefit" I mean you will get a better result. As for print speed, well that is your decision. It plays a major part in the quality of result. YOU rather than Cura may decide that for the first print of an item you just want to get a general view of how the part, or a specific section of the part, will come out. In which case fine quality is of no concern and you may be happy to print at say 60mm/ or faster. So once you have verified that the top of the Eiffel tower is coming out OK, you can start it again at 20mm/s for top quality and go away for the weekend "Why I have to reduce prints speed manually". I am not sure if I understand your question fully correctly. Apart from the 1st layer where you normally want to go slower and Cura lets you set that separate speed, you do not normally need to change the print speed. Yes sometimes maybe, I have had models in the past where I have wanted to slow down somewhere vertically in the print, but for me that has been rare and you can do it manually. Simply3D has a layer height architecture which gives you lots of flexibility on changing settings at multiple layer heights; but it costs 150 bucks, Cura is free. There are a couple of add-ins for Cura that let you change at a particular layer height, whether or not they include a speed change I do not know; one is TweakAtZ and I forget the name of the other one.

You really need to give us more info on the settings for the pic you have attached - e.g. layer width, fan setting, print speed ("e.g. 50mm/s) does not actually tell which speed was used for the pic , extruder temp., nozzle width Am I right in assuming that after the letter S started to print that you increased the flow %? I am certainly one of those that does not advocate using the flow meter; in essence by doing that you are hiding a problem. Without knowing most of the settings, if you were running PLA at 230 (hot!) and still had to use flow to get a result then there is something wrong with the printer, probably a blockage or a problem with the drive wheel or bad filament fouling the Bowden tube; but difficult to be a more precise without knowing what settings you used for that print

Hi guys, you need to consider what your business/financial model is and whether you can compete in the market(s) you are targeting. As a general statement, setting up a store front and selling to the public is difficult because of what you are competing against, i.e. quality of surface finish in the consumer market and mass production from the far east. Yes you may be able to produce something in 24 hours but hey I can get it delivered from Amazon tomorrow. Think about 3D printing strengths which include - zero capital cost for prototypes and production because there is no tooling; JIT manufacture giving no "minimum quantity" production and no need for the customer to invest working capital for stock holdings. During product development the ability to rapidly modify the design and produce an updated prototype immediately. Example… A new customer came to us to see if we could help. They had a product which was an assembly with all the parts being injection moulded. They wanted one of the parts to be redesigned but faced the problem (for them) of costs of circa £400(not including design) for one prototype and a tooling cost for production of circa £4,000 when the quantity required was a maximum of 300 units. With 3D printing we were able to provide design and a prototype, within about 48 hours, for circa £50 and a production cost for 300 units of circa £2,500. Thankfully we got the business and then further business. As others have mentioned it is not just printing, you need to be able to do sophisticated 3D design, or pay someone else to that for you. Fortunately for us we have very good Solidworks expertise so that is not a problem.

OK I understand and I agree. I cannot prove it, as I have never done any comparative testing, but with a 0.4mm nozzle I have always felt that multiple passes, versus one pass, reduce the risk of the exterior surface being affected by the infill process, particularly on circular columns; where I have improved the surface by adding another pass.

Hi Foehnstrum, thanks for that. I wonder if you have typed a word wrong somewhere. If I read your 2nd paragraph first, then surely your first paragraph should say - " Single pass is better as a matter of principle"?

+1

Thanks for that George, nice to know someone else’s brain is frazzled :-P . Ok pretty much spot on, a couple of clarifications. Photo 1) 95% sure that was of version printed at .8mm nozzle real and in Cura Photo 2) I did two more prints, just a few layers with a 1.2mm wall and a 1.6 mm wall, to check. The 1.2mm setting produces one 1.2mm pass – it measures 1.35mm but given the few layers printed and I ripped it off the bed so it is bent, that measurement may not be too accurate. Yes the idea of single pass versus double pass did go through my mind although not as analytically as went through yours. Certainly the fans were on 100% once the slope started. The first pass will be partially seated on the previous layer, I assume, which will be cooled because of the 20% infill work before starting the next layer. Again I assume, that the 2nd pass adheres to the side of the first pass, or not! The very first run I did was 0.4mm with 1.2mm wall, using supports added by Meshmixer. The surface on that came out well also, but breaking off the supports just left me with too much work in filing down the break points to get a smooth finish ready for painting. I am thinking now that maybe the way to get really well finished overhangs is to go with a single pass. I have some pieces I did a year ago where I struggled to get a decent finish on the overhang (I have always used at least double pass walls) and I think I will revisit them with this new theory :cool:

Ok I am still in the dark really because I do not know what the settings in " Basic fast" are - but that is probably irrelevant as you have done the print successfully before - using the same setting? I suspect the problem is either that you have filament stuck in the nozzle or a problem with the drive system (causing you to under extrude) or you have suffered a hardware problem from the move (possibly the more probable). I will need to hand you over to UM owners for that one.

Yes the most likely problem. If you are not familiar with the Atomic method, then search this forum on Atomic. The posting is for PLA but if you have ABS stuck in the nozzle you will have to raise the temperatures and use ABS to do the pull (I think - someone may want to correct me). I guess heat to 235/240, feed 40 /50mm of filament then reduce temp to 160/170 and pull. Again someone more knowledgeable than I on ABS may want to correct those suggested temps.

I am printing this part; this pic shows the orientation on the print bed. As you can see quite a severe overhang, I am not using supports. My initial settings were; .300 layers, 40 mm/s, 100% fan, 210c extruder, 0.4mm nozzle, 20% infill and 1.2mm wall thickness. After my first run I had the obvious idea to swap the nozzle to 0.8mm to reduce the print time and cost. . The print came out quite well, better than I thought it might do – this pic is looking at the overhang from underneath – I started another print to check it with my grey filament and I noticed that in Cura I still had the wall thickness set to 1.2mm from using the 0.4mm nozzle of the first print, so I changed it to 1.6mm (everything else was the same)and started the print. I got this on the underneath of the overhang. I cancelled the print, changed the wall setting back to 1.2mm, and printed again; just a couple of minutes in-between prints. I got this Now I am not sure if this is a learning experience but I have no idea what is happening here. I have always thought it is best to make the wall width a multiple of the nozzle width, but this would suggest that is not true! Any ideas what was happening?