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guitardr34m

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Posts posted by guitardr34m

  1. Hey everyone,

    I've been printing a bunch of parts I made in Sketchup for the past few weeks. I export them as COLLADA files and just load them into Cura and print them without an issue. I've printed 10+ parts and this is the last one I need and for the life of me I can't get it to show up in Cura. I've redrawn it multiple times and even changed it slightly to see if it would work but it just literally won't show up in layers view. Could anyone help?

    http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:735447/#files

    This is the part I'm trying to make.

    Any suggestions are very helpful. Thanks!

     

  2. Levelling the bed a bit closer so that the first layer is squeezed onto the bed tighter can help. But I would recommend installing this plugin. Download the file and dump it in [installation directory for cura]/plugins and restart cura.

    These are the settings I use for a 0.2mm first layer.

     

    This will cause the printer to retract, lower the bed, perform the move, un-retract and bring the bed back up again. This helps to prevent the nozzle from dragging across the already printed lines.

     

    Thanks for the quick reply.

    I leveled the bed a little closer to the nozzle like you suggested and also downloaded the plugin and used the settings you showed.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byffs2-9EE3bRTRGaGx3NGtGeGpOZnJXdHdFa2tpTmsySlpZ/view?usp=sharing

    It looks a lot better but i'm still having some issues with it. It almost looks like its printing them too fast. I have the print speed set to 30mm/s and the infill to 60mm/s. Would that have anything to do with it? I assumed 30mm/s would be slow enough but maybe its printing at 60 instead? I didn't think those circles would be considered infill.

     

  3. Thanks again for that tip my 12 hour print came out almost flawless thanks to you!

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byffs2-9EE3bUlhlWXBTTVhiMTQ/view?usp=sharing

    But now I seem to have another problem with a different print that I am hoping you could help with.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byffs2-9EE3baDJVQlBNTTJueVk/view?usp=sharing

    The problem as you can probably see is with the outline it makes for the small circles. When it prints them the nozzle keeps extruding as it travels to the next one and it grabs onto the circles and ruins them. I tried decreasing the retraction speed and increasing the height but that didn't help. I also increased the bed temp. to 70c for the first layer as I read in some threads and decreased the nozzle temp. to 198c. Neither of those helped.

    Any other ideas on how I could fix this?

     

  4. go into expert settings in Cura expert tab> open expert settings (or ctrll+E) . Go to bottom right and uncheck "combine everything (type A).

    Go back and look at the model in layer view, moving up through the layers to see if it's going to print the holes now.

    It's a good habit to look through your layers before every print to see how it's going to print. For instance, there may be times when you want 100% fill, but accidentally have it set to 20%. If you look through your layers, you'll catch things like that before wasting valuable time on a print.

    It also may be the .stl itself is faulty. Have you tried to run it through netfab? In case you are unfamiliar, it's a free program that fixes .stl files for you...really helps when trying to print models from inferior cad/design programs.

    here's the link to netfab

    https://netfabb.azurewebsites.net/

    if it's something else post back and I'll try to help

     

    Thanks for those tips it's really appreciated!

     

  5. Hey everyone,

    I finally decided to purchase an Ultimaker 2. I printed some small little items the other day when I got it and they came out great.

    But now I need to start printing parts for a prototype I'm working on which is the whole reason I bought the printer to start with. Here is a copy of the amf file I uploaded to Thingiverse http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:497580

    As you guys can see it's symmetrical on both sides but when I started to print it, the holes on the right side didn't print out.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byffs2-9EE3bRGJ2QWxGdG13ZFE/view?usp=sharing

    You can see in this picture that the 2 holes on the bottom printed out fine and also the start of the larger hole came out fine.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byffs2-9EE3bTHdpeGxKbUV1RUU/view?usp=sharing

    But then on the other side the 2 smaller holes kind of came out but the start of the larger hole isn't even there.

    Does anyone know what could be causing this? Any insight is much appreciated.

     

  6. This isn't really related to my question but I didn't want to start a new topic to ask it. Does anyone happen to have a copy of the PDF of the "Terms of Service"? They're page on it on the Support tab isn't working and I haven't gotten a response via email from them for a couple days now. It's just something I'd like to read regarding warranties and things like that before I put in an order. Thanks for any help!

     

  7. If you're trying to balance strength with quicker print times, you could use the "pause at Z" function to drop in inexpensive metal supports, such as brackets.

    Basically, you design hollow voids into the part that would accept the metal supports. In Cura, under plugins, you would tell it to pause at the layer just before it covers those voids. Printer pauses, you drop in your metal supports, hit resume, and the printer prints over the metal brackets, sealing them in permanently.

    Best of both worlds, quicker print times because you don't need to go to the extremes with fill and shell %, and excellent strength from the metal supports (as well as not actually having to mount the metal supports since they are completely integrated)

    anyways... it's just a thought

     

    Wow I didn't even know you could do that. That sounds like an awesome idea though it's something I definitely need to try out. Thanks for that.

     

    Forget making things totally solid, not really worth it unless you intend to throw things of a mountain :p You`ll be surprised at how strong the PLA prints can be with just the right amount of wall thickness. Your 90 hour print will probably end up more like 10 hours hopefully.

     

    Yea I was also looking into other materials and I came across a carbon fiber mixed ABS that seems very strong and I think it would work really well if I were to make the layer height a bit thicker and keep the infill pretty low to cut down the printing times.

     

  8. It would probably not affect the holes at all really.

    And yes, 99.9% of the time the things people print will not be solid. They are instead filled with a cross hatch pattern of varying density depending on the settings. What I would recommend is that you load a smallish object into cura (to reduce processing time) and then switch over to layer view by clicking the large button in the top right of the screen and selecting layer view. After a few seconds you will see what the layers will look like. There will be a small slider that you can use to travel through the layers.

    Now you can change the settings and watch the layer view update to reflect those changes. This will give you a better idea of what's going on.

     

    Thanks that actually really put things in perspective for me. I had no idea that it was printed like that.

    I really appreciate all the help everyone. It makes things a lot less confusing for me and pretty confident in ordering my first Ultimaker 2.

     

  9. I think the default settings for the layer height is 0.1. For a block shape with strait walls you can change that to 0.2 or 0.25 and that will change your print time enormous.

     

    As you can probably tell I have never done anything like this before. I changed the layer height to 0.2 and it dramatically decreased the print time but there are also two 1" horizontal holes going through the side of it. How would changing the layer height to 0.2 affect those holes?

     

    Also, when you say solid, do you mean 100% infill, truly a solid block of plastic?

    You mentioned strength so I'm sure it is a concern. However, there is diminishing returns with dense infill.

    Depending on how you use the part, you might reduce print time by going with say 30-40% infill and increasing the wall thickness to 1.2mm, 1.6 or 2mm (make the thickness a multiple of the nozzle size which is 0.4mm). Even though the default 20% sounds low, you would be surprised by the strength of a part that is 80% hollow.

     

    Again I have never 3D printed anything before so when you say 30-40% infill, even though it's a solid block it wouldn't print solid? Sorry if that's a dumb question I definitely need to read into this some more. It's not as easy as I thought it was going to be.

    Thanks for both of your answers it's much appreciated.

     

  10. Wow thanks for such quick replies. I'm just waiting for the confirmation email from YouMagine and i'll be sure to upload my file.

    It's pretty much a 6"x4"x6" block with some room bored out to hold a stepper motor and holes for a guide rod and a lead screw. But other than that it's just a solid block. I was thinking about taking chunks out of it for faster print times but I don't want to take away from its strength.

    Anyway i'll upload the file and post a link here and if you guys have any suggestions I'm all ears. Thanks again!

     

  11. Hey everyone,

    I've recently been prototyping a product and I've decided that 3D printing would be the most efficient way to do so. I had my first run of parts made with an online company and it was quite expensive, so for my next run I think it would be best just to purchase my own printer and save money in the long run.

    Now I downloaded Cura and just loaded in my 3D models just to see how much they'd cost to do myself and how long it would take. My biggest piece said it would take 90 hours to make. I know nothing about 3D printing so I was wondering if this is normal? Can I keep that printer running for 3 days? It just seems a bit crazy to me but then again I'm a complete amateur with this so that may be a short amount of time compared to other things I just don't know.

    Any insight on this before I put an order in for my own printer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

     

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