yellowshark

I have tried this a couple of times this week since reading the post. My first thought was wow this is smart! I was actually surprised how well it came out - i.e. it exceeded my expectations. The pic was of my convertible, shot from the side, and showed the windscreen, wing mirror and headrests very well; and indeed the overall shape of the body. But once I settled down and thought about, it is very limited for a lot of pictures. I.e working on contrast means shade can be real problem e.g. as a flat surface becomes two surfaces. So I am going to put the pic into Photoshop next week and try and "tidy" it up from a 3D printing perspective. Conversely if you wanted to print a logo then, with the right logo e.g. just a couple of primary colours, a simple clip from a web page would I suspect work really well as long as you do not pick up a lot of "noise"

I was going to asked if Release 14 with 14.04 was considered stable yet but make that 14.05. Are we still on Windows release 1 status or do we have the stability following an SP1 release? Currently I am happily using 14.01 and cannot afford to loose the time if things that are working perfectly well in 14.01 are suffering problems in later releases. No complaints, this stuff takes time and we do not have the resources of MS but right now I cannot afford the time to be a Beta tester. Has everyone moved on from14.01?

A thought floating around in my mind recently. Which is stronger, thicker walls and less 100% infill or thinner walls and more 100% infill?

Hi FUH, I have tried over 20 plus different colours of PLA, spread across 2 suppliers, Faberdashery and Colorfabb. I have not read this anywhere but I am convinced that the pigments used to dye the filaments affect the flow characteristics. Without doubt it is true that filaments of different colours from the same manufacturer may have different flow characteristics let alone filaments from different manufacturers. I have found that normally the difference equates to a 5 degree difference in extruder temperature from the manufacturer norm (norm being established by myself), but I have experienced 15 degrees. I am not including in this any “funny” filaments like woodfill. Whenever I get a new filament I always run a series of tests to try and establish the optimum setting for a variety of layer depth/print speed combinations. As for your problem of droplets, that sounds to me as if maybe you had the filament in a heated extruder not extruding for too long before starting the print and not manually extruding the filament before staring the print. Sometimes you need to extrude 50mm+ before starting. Of course it may not be that but I have experienced that myself.

Thanks for that George, a useful technique. It is not a geometry that I often print at the moment but the next time I will give it a try. Would I be right in thinking that you would tend to not use the fans when using the technique?

Danger of getting Mum to suck eggs here but in the UK all my paper is 0.15 not 0.1 so I use g1 z0.15. I have found that modifying the z-offset by <0.05 has a noticeable effect. So make sure your code and paper thickness correlate.

I posted a similar thread maybe last week but no-one replied. Cura 14.01 Slic3r Cause Looks like I am going to have to back to Slic3r if no-one knows how to fix it - shame as Cura's retraction is so much better

I was going to mention George's thread on the dual colour approach, his thread has some great detail on how to do it - but I cannot remember the thread - maybe George does!

Why do you say that George? (sorry Quote has never worked for me - ie refer to min of 75 bed temp). I have printed items that almost cover the bed and have never printed anything above 65c bed temp. I will admit though they have been plinths, not exceeding 2-3mm in height, which of course may make a difference.

I am thinking that you are using 0.04 at 20m/s IMHO 230c is way too hot. I would try 200c; increase by 5 degrees if you get under extrusion. You also might want to try a different filament; a change in filament and/or colour may help. If you can, then embossing rather than engraving the letters would be worth a try

Corners eh, tricky. The only thing I know will help is to slow the speed down. I also suspect that a thinner layer depth may help, as maybe slamming on the fans after layer one. Knowing that close up photography tends to make it look worse than it is then another solution is to get a high quality file (e.g. from a jewellery parts store) and smooth the end result, followed by some baby oil to bring the lustre back. It would be helpful to know your print settings. A pic of the short side with two holes would be useful. There seems to be some "interference" between the two holes; slowing down will certainly help reduce that.

Ok reducing the bed temp was a smart move. Are you applying anything to the glass bed to improve adhesion? There are a variety of favourites noted on the Forum. Personally I use hairspray; extra strength using two light coats with about 20 secs in between. This may well last you several days before reapplying. It would be useful to know your layer depth for 1st layer and subsequent layers and also the print speed you are using for 1st layer and subsequent layers – I suspect 200c may be a bit low for the 1st layer but without the information it is impossible to really know. Looking at your pic it may well be that you have the fans OK – come back to that. I see you are printing multiples. I suggest you move them away from each other, towards the corners of the bed. This will help you identify any issues with the bed levelling. A brim will help. Personally I use between 10 and 20 loops. I would suggest you Get your temps/speeds/layer depth right Try with and without brim (unless you are happy with brim in which case just use it. With some pieces I try and avoid brim, but I do use it a lot). Make sure the bed level is OK Experiment with the fan; i.e. slow down its application until you see adverse effects. With overhangs at the bottom as you have it can be beneficial to load up the fan immediately after layer 1 and go real slow, although yours are not that severe. Your most recent problem; yes one of the models might have lost adhesion, or one might have got a blob or build up of filament on one of the corners that the nozzle hit during movement.

Personally I think your bed temp is too high. Whether that is causing the problem I do not know but suggest you try it again with a bed temp of 60c. Are you putting anything on the glass bed? If yes then fine, if not I use hairspray successfully

Lol which only goes to show that filament can be the mother of all evils. It has stayed on the shelf ever since so maybe when I get a slack schedule I will give it another try.

Eldrick, that is the way Slic3r works and although I now use Cura I probably prefer the Slic3r way. If you have a skirt or a brim I have always found it easy enough to remove any pre-print filament. If you do not then a skirt is a good idea as it helps get the extruder pressure equalised before starting the print proper.

Blimey. Has the latest Cura got a z-offset parameter now? Just wondering how you manage using say a glass plate

+1 on Faberdashery but stay away from the Galaxy Blue. It is "flecked with sparkle" and looks real nice but the sparkle is bits of other filament and I found it quite easy to get a blockage. Get some experience then try it . Also with Fab you do not need to buy 100mtr reels; you can buy a colour by the metre eg. 30mtrs of white, 20 mtrs of a blue, for trying out different colours it is really useful. Buying 100 mtr reels is the cheapest option though

It's a bit like comparing Edlin to MS Word. You need a lot of time, resources and money to make that quantum leap. AND you need a marketplace big enough and prepared to pay MSWord/Office prices to enable a business case for the investment. One might surmise that eventually that will happen. It is interesting to see that MS, Stratysys and particularly Adobe are now touching the market. We, or at least I, live in hope Currently it is too difficult for non technical people to get good results. When I think about how frequently I had to reload and reconfigure Win95, and learn Assembler to get decent graphics on the Amiga, the World has moved on, as it always does.

Well I am no super expert on the subject but I am sure you can fix that with appropriate code in the Gcode start section, unless I am missing a point there. Mind you that does seem to be unnecessary work to do.

Hi, hoping someone can help me with how to stop these artefacts appearing on the surface of the semi-dome shown in pic 1. The primary settings were Layer height- 200; speed – 60; temp – 220; extruder nozzle - .4; wall width – 1.6; infill – 40%; retraction speed - 40; retraction amount – 5.5; fan - standard setting ; filament – Faberdashery I wondered if it might be blobs arising from retraction , so as seen in the next pic I doubled the wall width to 3.2, but with no effect. (in retrospect a flawed thought process) What I did see though was that the horizontal line at 90degrees to the wall was clearly causing the artefact. This line results from Cura ending one wall and moving outwards to the next wall So remembering that Slic3r had the option to start the external perimeter before the internal perimeters I tried it in Slic3r with the same settings; thinking that as the “line” was moving away from the external perimeter rather than towards it, it might improve. As you can see a vast improvement. (whether that was moving to outside in or just swapping to Slic3r I do not know) So I am wondering if there is anything I can do in Cura (14.01) to get a quality similar to Slic3r? The one thing I do not really want to do is to change the layer height and print speed. And also the top of the sphere is bad too – this is the first time I have printed a sphere geometry. Is there anything I can do to impove this? This was printed in Cura with changed settings of layer height 100; speed 30 temp 210

EVERY time, before I start a print, I always extrude at least 30mm, ie I want to see 30mm of perfect extrusion before starting. Some filaments can go quite gloopy if left in the head for even a short time at print temperature.

Have you tried doing a cold pull with ABS, that might help extracting the flex pla

Well I guess it depends on how grinded the filament is but it is not something I have ever experienced. Also now I tend to print a test cube after a filament change just to satisfy myself that everything is fine before starting the job.

Well you could try a lower bed temp.. When I was trying t-glase unsuccessfully I read a post from one guy who was using around 40 degrees with success and another guy who was using 110 degrees. Now that makes no sense but it could be you are running the bed just too hot. Unfortunately, at least the last time I looked, the Taulman website makes no comment on bed temperatures. I ran 645 successfully with 60degrees.

Hi Shurik, I am not sure of the precise details and how strongly you feel that the filament caused your problem but here are two scenarios. 1st scenario. You have not used the reel before. You got a blockage. Checking a few feet of filament you have a large bulge. Can you check more of the filament, say 10-15 metres. You find more bulges. Is it possible to get a photo of the bulge that resolves well enough to show the problem? If you have lots of bulges I would certainly email Colorfabb, not only to help them but to try and get a reel of duff filament replaced 2nd scenario Maybe you have used the filament before quite few times. You get a blockage. Measuring some of the filament it seems OK then you see the bulge. Checking more filament you see no problems. In this case I think it is difficult to assess whether the filament caused the blockage. I think if I could get a decent photo then I would certainly email Colorfabb for their help and comment. You can be cool about it and just ask them if bulges this size are a common occurrence.