cloakfiend

I guess printing the same object twice and seeing if the lines are in not the same place will rule that out. If they are then it is the Z. Id put the varying line thicknesses down to all the other factors related to grinding and slow jams, and slightly blocked nozzle, that can build up and then suddenly release more filament hence a thicker layer spilling over more than the one before it. Try printing cooler, if you cant cause of clicking, then your nozzle is jammed, even slightly. And i've had much worse looking lines than this guy, i just didn't take any photos as I already knew what my problem was.

some pics, to prove its temps..... printe at 230c in green 0.2 layer 50mm/s (very bad as green is more melty for me. Would have looked better at 70/mm/s Printed at 222c in red .1 layer 50mm/s Printed at 215 0.06 70mm/s (hence the maechanical lines, but its real smooth. Your problem is heat. You are using a too high temp.

That is NOT what an atomic pull should look like. It should look like a perfect imprint of the inside of your nozzle. I made a few vids, but i dont force it in anymore due to hydraulic pressure. Just do it with your hands and ignore me pushing it in real hard.

I get this when i print too hot and too fast. or just too hot mainly. if you can print slow and high rez without these issues, then its just finding some good middle ground. Ill post some pics to demonstrate, but i really think you are simply printing far too hot. therefore the stripes will be random due to the excessive temps cooling the filament randomly as it is essentially overflowing on the model as its getting layed down. I also only get this printing 0.2 layer height as that is when i tend to ramp up the temps to allow for better material flow and also speed up the print. So you are essentially lowering your quality to get more done quicker. You need to experiment to get the best you can thats all. P.S. I doubt its the teeth, i found that with my cura the left side is not accurate, and if i put an object too close to that side, the head cant physically go there as it hits the side or the casing so it grinds the belt and jumps teeth i have to quickly stop it as too much of that and i WILL need a new belt, but its happened quite a lot and still i get perfect layer height so they are quite tough and can take a bit of a beating or grinding. P.P.S. You haven't posted any settings and without saying what you use no-one can easily help you.

99% of ALL grinding is down to a blocked nozzle. Cleaning it a few times wont always help, it may need more cleaning than you think. The only other thing that will cause grinding is if you get a tangle printing off the roll. Thats it. You can still acheive perfect prints with a slightly blocked nozzle, but long prints will result in a slow jam, as pressure is building up ever so slightly, and eventually it just gets blocked, and it will suddenly just stop and thats your print doomed. Always babysit the first layer or two and if you are new to this, print one object at a time until you understand why things are going wrong, as until you do you will always have these issues. Dont worry, it took me 9 months before i figured out all this, especially cleaning my nozzle, which i wasn't doing right for such a long period of time, but due to me using good filament I got away with it. Cleaning filament in my opinion is a gimmick and a waste of time. Ive never used it and have sorted out my burnt out nozzle everytime with standard atomic pulls. Im still using the same one it shipped with. Just keep doing atimic pulls with pure white filament so you can see the exact shape of the nozzle and examine it for any minute bumps or lumps or discolouration, or burning marks, or scratches or anything. Dont EVER put a stiff wire in to clear the nozzle you will most likely damage your nozzle doing that (by scratching the interior) , then you will need a new one. To put things into perspective i had to do 30+ atomic pulls once to sort my nozzle after burning it out for 15 hours due to a tangle, and a slow jam. get a chair, put on some netflix and sit by your printer for an hour doing atomic pulls. Then print like it was brand new.....assiming your temps according to your filament are right, and the speed and layer height setting also match. Unfortunately it takes along essay to explain everything and nobody will read and take note of all the things you actually NEED to take care of, so it mainly comes down to experience. You'll get there......eventually.

im getting this crap at the top of my chrome now... cant click on anything anymore.

i have not used simplify 3d so i cant comment, very interesting to know you can manage individual layers so precisely but i feel your layer by layer controls may be slight overkill, but then again you must have your reasons for doing things that way. I find if my first layers are good, the rest are going to be fine. Unless you are printing one single object then large stuff in pla or many small things like in my pic above you dont really need layer management regarding temperature. The most important thing is to test what your filament reacts to best then stick with that. And with my current pfte issues after replacing the first one, i have many issues, so if i waited for a layer to cool i would get a jam. And that. Would be that. Game over. but in this game every printer has its own personality so you need to know you printer to get good results. For tiny stuff you need the fans, but to be honest the default settings work just fine for me. I just adjust speed wall thickness and and nozzle temps. And print as cool as i can get away with. the rest i leave alone.

Fair enough, but these printers take long enough without me extending the time just to let a layer cool a bit, and still there is no guarantee that the corners will not warp upwards over time. Its just to risky, and with real long prints you just don't know until a while in to the print and if you are printing many things as i currently am, all which need perfectly flat bottoms to connect to stuff then I just don't see it possible with ABS. I got quite good with it, but not good enough to guarantee a print, so i just abandoned it as an option. Ive tried all the fan settings, leaving it on/off, putting an enclosure over the printer, heating the bed hotter and a good amount of paste. Sometimes when I thought it would be perfect i came back a few hours later and a corner had very slightly lifted or something else that essentially ruined the print enough for me to get annoyed.

I agree with the flat surfaces being better (as in almost perfectly smooth), but seeing as flat surfaces are easy to sand i find them easier to print in PLA, as this has been my problem lately where i had to print loads of thin flat pieces to make molds from, but did not even want to mess about with ABS due to the risk of wasting tons of time on reprints abs paste and enclosure business. I can guarantee them looking ok in PLA everytime, without even replacing the glue on the glass once, having printed over 50 objects in a row, each with a densly packed amount of objects so it a no brainer for me. I just print, then take them off and print again and again again, and don't even worry about the glue on the bed as the glue im using seems to last forever. It slowly wears off over time but has enough sublte texture to stick even the tiniest objects to it. ABS is dead to me. A total waste of time in my experience. But i'm only using my printer for art so the thermal properties mean nothing to me as i can always make a mold and cast it in a harder substance if i need it to be more temperature resistant and that way its harder too. I just couldn't imagine doing this with abs.... I'd worry about the warping way too much.

My first coupler was deformed really badly after almost a years worth of use, so even cutting off 3mm wouldn't have helped, I guess it all depends on how much you push it, and surely you are more prone to the walls collapsing as the PFTE has been taking the heat from before. Still a good fix for those who replace it every five minutes. I hate the PFTE most about this printer. If you dont rely on the printer to do as its told, then its not so bad, but if you click on change material and expect it to come out every time then i would be changing the PFTE every five minutes. If you heat up the bed before and move the material till it comes out just before you kick a print off, you can still easily work with a dying PFTE coupler.

I say if it works, keep doing it until it stops working. Its all magic to me. Never really thought the fans did much to be honest considering mine sometimes sound like they are dying. and it was all down to ambient temps, but hey I really don't have a clue. Cooling temperature must be relevant to some extent, but where they are most relevant is another matter all together.

Cheers mate ill see how things go, im having trouble with putty warping all my flat objects at the moment. Pain it the arse. Flat thin stuff is just getting on my nerves at the moment especially if i need to get it ultra smooth. Acetone and all the various puttys i've tried that contain quick drying solvents are warping my objects, forcing me to print stuff in higher rez to avoid using filler and only sanding them. But to print large tall thin stuff in high rez (0.06)with perfect layer height means not getting a single jam or tangle and its always a bit of a gamble (which rhymes) especially if the printer is running for 15-30Hours.

I understand your concerns, lots of retractions, lol! but i'm happy to push the printer till it falls apart or even breaks as i'm getting good at repairing it, and its not mine after all, lol! I think many people are simply too afraid of trying stuff. Ill give it a go but am pretty confident it should look shit hot. If not, then the entire reason for me getting a 3D printer has been a fail. As this is my work printer, so i'm using it as a trial to see if it lives up to my expectations for me to personally buy one. If I can print my next model with this printer, then I will be totally confident in assuring others that the sheer quality (not speed) is why this is one of the best printers out there. If I cant, well, then i need to look for a different printer, but the form 1 is a no go as its too expensive to run and im not sure how sandable the resin is afterwards, etc. maybe im wrong, eitherway ill find out in the next two months. Got tons of work on so wont have a chance to print this for a while, and i'm certainly not sending it to shape ways, as the cost for what i want is a joke. I'd be very happy with a 30 Hour print. as long as its not over 48 hours, luckily I've solved my printing off the roll problem, so i just print on the roll now, and its all good. before id measure out the filament but now i don't need to, and print normally like everyone else.

I've had that happen to me for the first time last week with Ultimakers new Dark blue PLA.

Im not sure i understand what exactly you are doing and what you want to achieve? But it seems that you do, so good luck. Im just advising you that doing anything other than copying the file to your SD card and then simply putting it into you printer to print is a longer process. This is why I am wondering why you are choosing to do other things, simply because you can? Of course you are free to experiment as you please and i have nothing against that, but I always try to find the shortest and simplest solution to any problem, as i believe the quickest and most reliable way is the best. For me that is simply dragging the files from my computer to the SD card and then putting it in the printer, it takes a few seconds only. It sounds like you need to get a spare SD card and card reader to take to work with you, then you can just copy the files when you are at work and as soon as you get home you can put it into the printer heat up the bed, and you are ready to print! And I'd add that printing remotely is probably the riskiest and most unreliable way to go. These printers are likely to fail without close monitoring especially at the start as that is the most important part. Usually atomic pulls are needed after each print but again you have to be there to do it, which is why i wouldn't do anything remotely. But fee free to experiment and play around as I would not want to stop you from tinkering as that is what is great about these printers. Just a bit of advice.

Lol, this is my next personal project....almost done. but put on hold till my printer frees up. Love Gigers stuff, so inspiring. mines not quite the same, but close. the face is different more human and the eyes more real.

Fair enough then. I was just curious about why his routine needed this? thats all, if you know why someone needs to do something perhaps you could offer some advice?

I always wandered about the questions and all this remote printing business, and remotely writing files to SD cards or printing from USB, was it so you can upload new files to print directly to the sd card? but surely if you remotely manage to print something, isn't the biggest problem taking it off the plate to print the next thing? rather than remotely copying the file you want to print next? Maybe i'm missing something but if you're not home to take the first print off the bed, why even think about remotely copying a new file to print when you physically can't do it?

I got stringing with leaf green, but Warm red is safe for me. I don't normally print much at a time for risk of failure, but i'm quite confident now. Colorfabb Warm Red, 207 degrees, 30mm/s, 0.06layerhieght. All basic settings on UM, didnt change anything else, walls and top/bott 1.2mm. Just some lamposts im doing.... No stringing, but i also agree with gr5 and say white is probably the worst colour to work with, its too globy, and melty, and any other colour will be better. I only use white for atomic pulls.

For good quality print i find the filament also matters. i have the best luck with warm red from colorfabb that prints anything great. i did not have so much luck with their green or black even. And dont waste your time printing 0.04. you wont need more than 0.06. also there is no point putting yours objects so far apart, you may as well just print one at a time and then you will have no stringing at all. Printing many things at once also reduces quality as the head is constantly leaving and returning to the object and different layers are cooling at different temperatures due to the other objects on the bed. When if you print one object the head stays on that object and the side are smooth rather than with lines on them. Also try to print as cool as you can until you hear the clicking noise. That is the secret to these printers, the coolest you can get away with means the cleanest surface you can get, and the best quality in general. Also make sure to keep your nozzle clean and you don't need to buy anything else for your printer in my opinion. The olsson block is only good it you plan on using special materials that degrade your nozzle hence changing heads often otherwise there is no point in getting it. I have been using the same nozzle for about a year now with no issues what so ever.

So much simpler to just chuck the file on an SD card no?

Considering you actually have to be by the printer to kick it off reliably anyway, whats is the problem with using SD cards anyways? You get one with the printer? I don't understand the fascination with printing from USB. I'm assuming you are only doing it as you have no SD card slot on your machine. They are very cheap.

Mine used to arrange by date of and just put it as the last file, but now its totally random.

I don't understand why you'd want to? Slap in the sd card, copy the stl file over, slap it in the printer, let the printer print. USB is a piece of shit as far as i'm concerned. Its one of the best things about this printer that Its entirely self contained you can fill a room with them and not have to mess about with any computers. You are simply doing things the long way thats all.

I agree with @Labern, I just got some Leaf green Colorfabb filament, and its much meltier than the red i had, and also the black. Its the same brand, but i have to print much cooler than normal or else it jams or i get poor quality. And also 50mm/s is too fast to preserve small details without patterning on the sides as I call it. The faster you print the more mechanical lines you see on the outside like stepper motor patterns and vibration patterns. for what i call high quality you cant really go much above 30-35mms in my personal experience, i have always printed at 35 at 0.06 and 208, but noticed improvement at 30 205. Again there are so many factors involved, it boils down to trial and error. I used to always ask this question, but again not everyones printer is the same and temperature sensors vary. Also overhangs are best printed with manual support designs unless they are simple and flat underneath or else they'll look lame.