yellowshark

OK confused now. Laying down a thread of PLA on top of the layer is the opposite of scratching (engraving), it is embossing. Confused from Chaganooka Choo Choo If it is scratching, I have never had that. If it is oozing then I sometimes get that from the movement after the first layer but nowhere else - so I put it down to Cura being recalcitrant.

Hi, yup George is right is it a difficult print. If you are still failing vertically then I would try… 1.Lay the spoon horizontally with the indent in the spoon face facing downwards. If the rim of the spoon face is not touching the bed, then bury the handle so the rim is facing the bed 2. as before but if the rim is touching the bed and the handle is raised above the bed then use support for the handle. And then be prepared to spend some filing/smoothing time to repair the damage J

LOL we hit 22c in the UK today, although it was less that that underneath my car. Do not forget guys with 3D'd plastic filament you are not going to match injection moulding- as far as I have ever seen

"...Also the UM2 doesn't print as well on the last 1/4 roll of filament as the strong curvature causes extra friction." That is why, if you are in the UK, Faberdashery is a good choice because it is not shipped on a reel and does not suffer the above symptoms that George mentioned.

Sorry totally misunderstood! I guess with the bearing I would see that going along the floor

Great news Zoev89. A learning experience there. No doubt some will vehemently disagree with me. But my view is that if your printer does not have a fault then really you should rarely needed to push you printer beyond 220c for NORMAL PLA at anything up to .300 and 60mm/s (I never go faster than that so cannot comment). I said rarely because I did have one filament that I could not get right without going to 225-230 - never used it since. And to me changing the flow % is just masking a problem,either you have a printer problem or duff filament or your temp is wrong - never used it! Although I have never experienced it, I suppose there may be a particular geometry where a change in flow would be beneficial but I am not convinced.

Hi George I did not know you can specify different thicknesses for top and bottom layers - is that a 14.03+ thing?

If filing then some baby oil will bring back the lustre to the filament

LOL Chris at my age spotting a 0.2 increase in diameter as the filament goes along the floor would be a challenge.

OK well you are changing the problem now!! Can you clarify a point please. You say "Because I see similar things happening at the bottom layer". The you say " The first layer is squashed into the bed so perfect". That is contradictory. We need to know precisely what is happening so we can help. If you are running 20% infill then in my experience at .200 3 top layers should give you an OK finish. It certainly will with .300 so I suggest you take your top layer fill to 5 layers at .200 Then lower your speed to 30mm/s or 20mm/s. . Take flow back to 100% and drop your temp to a max of 220. Personally I would use 210 or lower but I will not argue that point.. Run the print and then let us know what the result is. We can then consider what is happening. Actually at the same time change the model. Just take a test cube off the Ultimaker site or Thingiverse.

George beat me to it, I was going to ask what was below the top layer! Does the inside have to be hollow? If not use a 20% infill finished with 3 top layers. If it does then as George says put in a few more top layers. Alternatively you could use support and then cut away the supporting PLA. The inside as it stands with the sagging 1st top layer is going to be be a mess anyway, using support may make it better.

++1 on everything Rob said. I leave my Fab filament laying on the floor - with the sizing bearing fitted

This is a technique that I have been meaning to use for sometime but finally implemented it yesterday following two jams in quick succession. It is not for getting a measurement to put into you slicing software, it is for very quickly finding bulges in the filament reel that will clog your feed/extruder mechanism. I bought a pack of 3mm internal diameter bearings. With my quite expensive Vernier gauge they measure 2.89 ID, so I am very confident that the ID will not exceed 3mm. Just drop the bearing onto the filament end and let is slide all the way along the filament - in which case no bulges:) It is easy to feed through but I have found it a bit messy to get the bearing off again. So I am going to get some more and just leave them on the filament reel. You need to make sure that the external diameter is such that if the bearing does get stuck on the filament it is not pulled up into the drive mechanism. My printer has a length of Bowden tubing preceding the drive mechanism so I have made sure the bearing is too large to pulled into the tubing. Had I done it earlier I would have prevented the problem yesterday with my Faberdashery filament - 1st time ever for me that I have had this problem with their filament.

Once you get the Z stuff sorted I would take the temperature down to 200 - I am reading current temp as 220 which I would consider too high for 100 microns at 40mm/s. I run 300 microns at 60mm/s at 220 and I suspect I could probably go down to 215.

So I need to stay with my current 14.01 release then!!

I do not have any axe to grind but it strikes me that if you could not contact your bank by 'phone or went to the cash till and got the message "Sorry we will not get a new stock of money until next month" then that bank would not last very long, growth or no growth.

Thanks Skint, that is good to know. I have read that the thinner you go the trickier it gets so I was wondering if temps might aid the process

I have a part where I need to print the 1st layer at .200 to get the dimensions correct. Is it advantageous to raise or lower the bed temp from normal when printing a thinner 1st layer?

As a general statement (specifics always break the rules) IMHO running PLA at 240c and flow at 108% is hiding a problem not solving it. The temperature itself is probably causing the stringing

Speed - 100% of what? What layer depth?

Well I have had more problems with their filament this year than I did last year. I know they changed their filament mix, was it earlier this year or late last year. Maybe that has led to some quality control issues? Having said that. I received a new reel of Dutch Orange several weeks ago and I have been using that with no problem. But a reel of Blue-grey under-extruded and then jammed the extruder assembly yesterday. But I was getting to the end of the reel where you are likely to get more kinks and I suspect it was that.

I am wondering if it might be a result or poor layer adhesion. What is the size of the dice and what settings do you use? Oops I see an earlier post raised this too - anyway question remains.

Braddock: the piece is for use in an embossing press; it holds the paper being embossed. Now I know the paper is subject to a pressure of 200-300lb because we are also prototyping 3D printing the embossing plates. I am not sure if this piece is subject to pressure but what I do know for certain is that this piece is replacing a part which is no longer available and the current piece is injection moulded and solid as a rock. Ultimately I will need to get the exact info. on this question. I had intended to solid infill but that was way too expensive so I dropped to 40% infill as a trial. George: OK I understand your logic which makes absolute sense in theory although maybe not in reality. The Slic3r print yesterday looked to me as if the infill was the same as 40% infill using Cura. Today I will partly print the piece in both software packages and compare the infill and report back!

Ok here is a Cura pic of a simple Item I need to get a print cost for. As you can see it is long but slim and at .300 it is 40 layers high. Print speed is 50m/s and infill is 40% with 0.8mm walls; using a 0.4mm nozzle. The slot in the middle and the end slots go about halfway down. Cura is telling me that it will take 2hrs 22mins and 6.11 mtrs of filament. That makes it too expensive. So I put it into Slic3r with same settings - and I have checked 3 times! Slic3r is telling me 1hr 28mins and 4.0 mtrs of filament which makes it affordable. I am used to Slic3R underestimating whereas Cura always seems to be pretty accurate. So I printed the Slic3r version to be sure of the cost and it took 1hr 28mins as estimated! So why is Cura taking so much longer. All the nozzle really need to do is go around the outline a couple of times and then infill, repeat repeat repeat.

Well Cura 14.01 does not think it is a 6 inch cube. If you rescale to 30% it fits onto the build plate - and I think my bed is a bit bigger than that on a UM1. Layer height .1 and print speed 20ms and infill 20% gives me 10.5 hours