[What happened to my walls?]

Ok. The first I see it's way too many speed changes. General speed it's at 50mm/s but infill it's at 100 and inner shell 80. As a general rule (the default profile if was like that it quite sucks) you need to try to print everything at the same speed, and you can go 5-10% up or down. But never (not recommend) a 200% more for one kind of infills/etc.

If you set all the advances/speed settings (except travel that you can raise easily to 180mm/s) set them to 0. This way you will control the speed from the Basic/Speed that you have at 50mm/s

Or just change that infill and inner shell to 40-60

The changes in speed that high while printing make an unatable flow from the extruder because it has to change speed. That can cause underextrusion, and errors while printing.

Try that and let's see how this goes.

Also try to read this guide, not to fix problems but to learn more details about how the slicer thinks and works. It helps in the long run to print better and better.

http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/30-getting-better-prints

Hi Neotco,

Thanks for your help. I will go ever the guide, see if there's something I can do to improve the prints. I did find the "picture guide" from the same website, which was also quite helpful. I guess I just did not look any further.

I will try to print again after Easter, but I will let you know how it goes.

[What happened to my walls?]

First of all

Standard settings are to print fast stuff. You need to learn the advanced mode if you plan to print seriously on any machine.

Shell thickness as a general rule must be proportional to the nozzle. 2 layers are for 0.4 nozzle a 0.8 shell, 3 are 1.2 and so on

Since you said it printed well once I would import the profile from that gcode and process it again.

Also you need to show us the screens of the settings of that print, no matter what you selected. Maybe there's a bug that has set your top layers to 0. Anyhow, without all the info (not just 'standard settings') it's hard to help you in anyway (even if you only adjusted 1 parameter). .

Hi Neotko,

These are the settings I used. This print (yet another part) is coming out fine. It's printing as we speak. I did not change the settings after yesterdays failed print. I did not even shut down Cura, I just closed my laptop and tried again today, hoping a different model would come out better. It all seems pretty random to me, I really hope you can help.

[What happened to my walls?]

Dear co-ultimakers,

I know you mean well, but this is not really the help I need. As i said before, I m not new to 3D printing. I have been in design engineering for over 10 years now. I have been using 3D print hubs for about the same time. I have worked with a resin printer (Form 1) was a while in my previous job and a Flashforge machine as well. I have never worked with Cura and Ultimaker and yes, that's frustrating the hell out of me. So please, read my posts? As I said, I did NOT change many settings, just increased the speed of the "standard" settings by 5mm/sec so it would fit into one working day. The print shown below is the same print, printed with half the supports and it is fine. SAME PRINT, STANDARD SETTINGS. I DID NOT CHANGE THE SETTINGS FOR THE THIRD PRINT, AND I GOT THE PARTS AS IN THE LAST PICTURE. What is happening? Could it be the Cura update? I did not update to 15.04.5 yet, though Cura itself says it's the latest version. Which is odd, but ok. If only that was the worst of my problems...

[What happened to my walls?]

3) You have quite a bit of underextrusion - there are lots of gaps on the top layer.  This is probably the hardest problem to fix as there are dozens of possible causes but the simplest is temperature and speed.  Try printing it either 20C hotter or at half the speed you had used.  What was your:

layer height, speed, temperature?

 

That's the whole point: that's not underextrusion, I'm pretty sure thats the mesh fill. In normal printing it makes the outer shell solid and the infill (26% in this case) by crossing lines. I do not have the 0.96 shell thickness anywhere, but I only have the 26% fill where my walls should have been.

The crazy thing is: I printed it again, and it was fine. Nothing changed but the speeds were brought down by 5mm/sec (all of them). I just toggled Cura to quickprint, selected "fast print" toggled back to expert mode and brought the speeds down. It looks great. I will post a pic tomorrow for reference. I repeated the same steps for the opposite wall, thinking that I did accidentally change a setting before. But now I have the same problem again: all support and fill, no walls.

ARGH!

my temp is set to 215, layer height to 0.15 and speed to 50mm/sec, for PLA

[What happened to my walls?]

2) Your walls probably were too thin - they need to be at least .8mm thick to print with a .4mm nozzle and even then they might not print due to floating point errors so I recommend 1mm thick walls.  However rather than do massive edits to your CAD model you can "lie" to cura and tell it you have a slightly smaller nozzle but you must change shell width to be multiple of nozzle size or nothing will change.  So experiment with .3mm .2mm .1mm or whatever it takes to get the walls to appear.  The farther you stray from the actual nozzle width the worse the qualtiy gets but .35mm is excellent quality output for a .4 nozzle and .3mm should be acceptable also.  .2mm - will if that's what it takes then don't print it.  So play with this and look at it in slice view and see what gets your walls to re-appear.  Again - CHANGING NOZZLE SIZE DOES NOTHING IF YOU DON'T ALSO CHANGE SHELL.  So .35mm nozzle and .4mm shell gives you .4mm lines.  .35mm nozzle and .7mm shell gives you .35mm lines.  It's actually easy to leave the nozzle size at say 1mm and just adjust shell at first to get your walls to appear and only then make the values make more sense e.g. nozzle .31mm shell .62mm.

/quote]

My walls are 2mm thick. As i said, shell was set to 0.92mm, nozzle to 0.46.

[What happened to my walls?]

First of all NEVER PRINT BEFORE CHECKING LAYER VIEW.  You would have seen these problems ahead of time.

You have 3 problems.

1) The "mesh" you refer to is support material.  In slice view you would have seen this as a grayish teal color.  You should probably turn off all support.

Hi GR5, thanks for responding to my post so elaborately, so let me get back to you point by point. I am new to this forum, but not to 3D printing. The support in Cura is grey, the walls are red and the fill is yellow. Check, check and check. The top of my print looks red in the Cura view, so do the outer walls. I do really need the support, I am trying to span a length of 105mm and a width of +/-55mm wits a 120mm radius curve. That's as good as horizontal.

[What happened to my walls?]

Did you by accident put 0 shell? i have before and my stuff came out like that.

 

No, my shell thickness was set to 0.92 (2* my nozzle size) and the shell speed was set to 9.7mm3/s

I checked it twice, I really don't understand

[What happened to my walls?]

Hi All,

I have yet another great puzzle for you. I printed this particular piece of a housing, by our own design. It has been made by a "professional" 3D printer, so I'm pretty sure my post-processing is good, the file is fine.

Then, as part of my ongoing experiment to use the ultimaker to speed up our product development process, I tried to print it myself. And this is what I got. I used the standard Cura settings (I did open the "expert settings tab"). It is PLA, the should not have been a problem. The only thing I did find, is that when I start a print, I have to manually set the nozzle temp to something, by default is says 0 degrees.

Where did my walls go? I made the print upside down, because I need a smooth outer surface. This did mean a lot of support was required. But there seems to be a mesh where my walls should be?

[Underextrusion? Understatement!]

Hi Didier,

Thanks for commenting!

I have had the speeds very low, but varying between the different stages of printing (as recommended in Cura). I will try a constant speed, How does changing the speed effect the print in general?

Laura

 

Also make sure you keep a constant speed (have the print speed set to 15 - 20 and the others to 0) and put 0 in minimal layer time to avoid automatic slow down of printing.

Ninjaflex is hard to print but possible

 

[Underextrusion? Understatement!]

Hi Sander,

Thanks for your reply. We have a few ABS prints we need to get out right now, but I think I will get around to having a new go later this week. I haven't changed anything about the printer, this is the way it came out of the box. I did update the firmware. The only time the filament gets tangled or stuck is during the back-spooling when I change the material. It comes out of the feeder in 6 loops or so, so now I just cut it in the bowden tube, before I spool it back. It's a bit of a waste of material, but a lot less work getting it out.

Do I need to "hit" the filament with the oil? Or is it all about lubrication near the nozzle and can I send it down the side of the tube?

Thanks,

Laura

[Underextrusion? Understatement!]

Hi All,

I hope someone can help me with this. I have an Ultimaker 2, on which I am trying to print using NinjaFlex. I know that this is not the best feeder for it, but this is the printer I have and I need the rubber components. Now, I have tried everything:

Nozzle temps between 210 and 250 degrees

Bed temps from very low to 90 degrees

Increasing fill level and decreasing it (between 20% and 65%)

Layer height around 0.1mm

Print speed of 20-25mm/s

Outer shell speeds of around 40mm/s (1.8mm3/sec) - so very slow

Toggled speeds between 90% and 105%

toggled flow between 95% and 110%

I attached a picture of the standard calibration part. It looks really pretty, like coral. But it is not exactly right. [/media]:angry:

Does anyone have some good advise on how to get the prints out right?