[Possible to print with out Blobs and Zits at 0.2mm?]

Hey all,

I'm having a devil of a time trying to calibrate my Ultimaker 3 to print cleanly at 0.2mm. I have had this issue with many different PLA filaments.  I want to print at 0.2mm for speed purposes and I am ok with some lines and striations on the prints. However, I would like to avoid blobs and zits and have done a lot of research on retraction and coasting settings. Unfortunately, nothing that I have tried implementing has worked.

I was wondering if anyone has had successful prints without blobs on their ultimaker 3. And if so if they had any suggestions on what settings they changed to get successful prints, if they had to at all.

I've listed the retraction and coasting settings and my interpretation of them below. Perhaps I am wrong in my assessment of some of these? I apologize if so as I am still a novice though I have tried to do research before posting to the forum.

Retraction

Retraction Distance - The length of material retracted. My understanding is that this should be a high value for clean prints (especially to avoid stringing)

Retraction Speed -  The speed that material is retracted. My understanding is that this should be a high value for clean prints.

Retraction prime speed and extra prime amount - Ok here's where I get a little confused. Cura says that the extra prime amount is an extra amount of filament that's "primed" to compensate for lost material that oozes away in a travel move. This sounds similar to "extra restart distance" from  this guide from simplify3d, which recommends a negative value to stop overpriming as most blobs and zits seem to come from extra filament. Negative values makes the input box yellow, but the print will still slice and print.

Retraction Minimum Travel - The minimum distance of travel needed to perform a retraction. So if I want retractions to happen, this value should be small or 0.

Maximum Retraction Count - Since retraction can lead to grinding issues, this puts a cap on how many retractions can happen in a print. If I want retractions to occur, the largest value without a yellow box is 100.

Minimum Extrusion Distance Window - The window in which the maximum retraction count is enforced. So, in a 1mm window, the maximum amount of retractions possible in that 1mm is whatever the maximum retraction count is set to.

Coasting

Coasting Volume - Cura recommends a value close to the nozzle (0.4mm) cubed (0.064mm^3). If I'm still having issues should I raise or lower this value?

Minimum Volume Before Coasting - The smallest value to be extruded for coasting to kick in. This value should always be larger than the coasting volume, but if I want coasting to happen frequently, this value should be close to to the coasting volume.

Coasting Speed - Speed of coasting compared to extruding, which should be slightly less than normal print speed due to less pressure in bowden tube.

My values for the settings that I think could be related to clean outer walls are as follows.

Quality: Did not change

Layer Height: 0.2, 0.2

Initial Layer Height: 0.27, 0.27

Line Width: 0.35, 0.35

Wall Line Width: 0.5, 0.5

Outer Wall Line Width: 0.5, 0.5

Inner Wall Line Width: 0.3, 0.3

Shell: Not changed

Wall Thickness: 1.2, 1.2

Wall Line Count: 3, 3

Top/Bottom Thickness: 1, 1

Top Thickness: 1, 1

Top Layers: 5, 5

Bottom Thickness: 1, 1

Bottom Layers: 5, 5

Outer Wall Inset: 0, 0

Outer Before Inner Walls: Unchecked, unchecked

Alternate Extra Wall: Checked, checked

Compensate Wall Overlaps: Checked, checked

Z Seam Alignment: Random, Random

Material: (changes)

Printing Temperature: 195, 195

Flow: 100%, 100%

Enable Retraction: Checked

Retraction Distance: 8, 10

Retraction Speed: 25, 45mm/s

Retraction Retract Speed: 25, 45 mm/s

Retraction Prime Speed: 25, 15 mm/s

Retraction Extra Prime Amount: 0, -1 mm^3

Retraction Minimum Travel: 1, 1 mm

Maximum Retraction Count: 25, 100

Minimum Extrusion Distance Window: 8, 1 mm

Speed: (did not change)

Print Speed: 75mm/s

Wall Speed: 54 mm/s

Outer Wall Speed: 38 mm/s

Travel Speed: 250mm/s

Maximum z speed: 0 (default)

Equalize Filament Flow: Checked

Print Acceleartion: 4000mm/s^2

Wall Acceleration: 1000 mm/s^2

Travel Acceleration: 5000 mm/s^2

Enable Jerk Control: Checked

Print Jerk: 25 mm/s

Wall Jerk: 10 mm/s

Outer wall jerk: 5 mm/s

Travel Jerk: 30 mm/s

Experimental: (changed)

Enable Coasting: Checked, Checked

Coasting Volume: , 0.064, 0.075mm^3

Minimum Volume Before Coasting: 0.1mm ^3 0.1mm^3

Coasting Speed: 90, 90

TLDR: What settings do you change to remove blobs and zits on the walls of your prints?

Thank you!

[Your favorite USA Made Black and White Filament?]

I recently had some awesome prints on my U2 using Matter Hackers Pro Black ABS.  I have an acrylic door on the front and an acrylic cover on top.  Printed slow and steady, somewhere around 30 for infill & inner shell and 20 for outer shell (hotend at 252 & build plate at 100) and they came out better than anything else I had printed in the past.

Here is one example.  The support material left some scarring, but I was able to sand that down and give it a 30 second steaming acetone bath for final gloss. The kludgy glued & tied up support was necessary to fix some support that fell over during printing.  

I like the white ABS I have, but don't remember where I got it from.

Here's a link to MH's Pro Black ABS:http://www.matterhackers.com/store/3d-printer-filament/pro-series-black-abs-filament-3.00mm Oh, and beware MH's spools (at least the ABS ones I've tried) tend to unwind themselves if you have a modified spool holder with bearings!  I put on a new spool and it unravels itself by at least 10 or more spins.  I have lots of other spools from other places and they don't seem to unwind like the MH's do.  As long as I keep everything aligned, it works ok.

 

That's beautiful! I forgot to mention it in the first post but I'd prefer to use PLA. But when I use ABS I'll definitely give their's a try.

[Your favorite USA Made Black and White Filament?]

I have had good luck with ProtoParadigm ProSpec PLA in Marble White and other colors.  I have not tried black yet.  Besides the price being right, the material is good quality and uniform in dimension.  The material seems less brittle than other PLAs.  I had one problem with the coil getting tangled resulting in a failed print, but that has been only one time out of maybe three 1kg spools.

On my UMO+ I print at 200°C and standard Cura print speeds with 60°C bed with good results.

 

Thank you!

[Your favorite USA Made Black and White Filament?]

Hi!

I'm looking for a quality USA made filament in black and white that people have had success with on ulitmaker machines. Some of the options I've seen are Push Plastic, Makergeeks, Matterhackers Pro, Proto Paradigm, Coex, and Proto Pasta.

I'm looking to place a large order as I will be printing different parts of a set on multiple machines simultaneously and need the filament to be uniform and the same color. The pieces have some parts that require bridging and others with overhangs. I was hoping the community would have some recommendations so I didn't have to trial and error all of them myself! And if you have a favorite, if you could share the settings that you had success with!

Thank you!

[Filament Grinding UM3]

Yes it was with cura.

Wanted to mention that I had checked the filament and it wasn't tangled.

I'm using Ultimaker PLA. Do you used that at those settings?

[Filament Grinding UM3]

Hi,

I've had three prints fail due to filament grinding recently. Is the advice here http://support.3dverkstan.se/article/23-a-visual-ultimaker-troubleshooting-guide#grinding

about the UM2 applicable to the UM3 as well? I believe the UM3 has a hex on the top as well.

Anyone else had grinding problems?

Everything's going fine, then all of a sudden the printer makes a loud distress beeping sound, moves very slowly, seems to get off its rhythm and starts air printing with no filament out of the nozzle.

Thanks.

[Camera recordings and the mystery of why are my prints are being knocked over]

Is there any way to view recordings of what the ultimaker 3 camera has seen. This would be especially helpful to find out why my batch of 6 prints failed from falling over while I was sleeping for two nights in a row! Test runs of a single part printed fine.

Everything I've found online just says that it's a "live" camera for monitoring while you do other things on your computer?

[45 Degree Overhang Problems (And I print Sloooow!)]

Speed and temp go together. So if you print really slow you need to lower the temperature too. Try 10C less and ofc fans at 100% for something so thin.

 

I have been. The ultimaker PLA says a range of 195-240 and I've been printing at 195. Do you think I should keep going lower or start messing with the flow % instead?

Anyway to prevent the printer from filling in the center last, and instead do an inside out print?

[Best Support Settings in Cura for Ease of Removing?]

If any support, or part of the support, is narrower (or equal) to your nozzle size, Cura will have difficulty slicing it (ie: it won't - reliably)

Try X-Ray view in Cura to see if there are any Red areas. These are issues with the model and can prevent it from slicing properly

 

I redid the supports and made them thicker and cura is recognizing them now. Just weird that for some it would slice properly while others it would not. But I guess as you said it's not as reliable.

Still have no idea what's happening in my last three models though haha

[45 Degree Overhang Problems (And I print Sloooow!)]

I've heard as a rule of thumb that 45 degree angle pieces are able to be printed cleanly without any support material. I've searched the forums and found a variety of recommendations that I have mostly implemented, such as lowering the temperature, increasing the fan speed, slowing the print speed down, and making all the print speeds the same so there's no acceleration (should probably mess with flow rate to account for slower speeds as well... but I don't think that's main issue as described later) But I still can't get a clean print as shown below.

Note: This piece in this photos uses smaller than 45 degree angles, but is indicative of the issues I'm having with 45 degree pieces as well. What's infuriating is that part of the print is beautiful! Before descending into a mess.

I've been watching the prints to see if I can discern what is causing the problem. Although I can't upload a video I'll try to describe the problem. It seems to me like the printer prints the outer two layers first at slow speeds and fairly cleanly. However, it then fills in the remaining center section quickly. My infill was set to 20% and I thought maybe that low density was causing very quick, sporatic filament placement and that motion was causing the issues. However, I also tried printing at 100% infill and still had the same issue. And I wouldn't think that such a skinny piece would need infill anyway...

I've noticed on vertical prints that the printer tends to do an inside out build that results in very clean results. I don't know why this angled print is doing the outer layers, and then moving to the innermost one... I don't think I changed any settings.

Is this piece simply too skinny to print cleanly? Any reason why the printer wouldn't build from the inside out to allow for the least amount of agitation after the final outermost layer has been set?

Thank you!

[Best Support Settings in Cura for Ease of Removing?]

Thanks Geert neotko and bagel. I've built custom supports. But my issue now is that Cura won't recognize some of them! Among many other issues I'm having with Cura...

This is what the file should look like. All of the supports are the same thickness and size.

However, when sliced some of the supports disappear. However, since some remain I don't think its a problem with the supports as they are all the same...

Any idea why this would occur?

With a different, slightly larger support structure the first few layers of the first two support doesn't exist according to the slicer, even though the regular model shows them and the latter two support structures are complete.

Another slicing issue I have is shown in the photo below, some of which I can get to print out with the full face while others, seemingly at random will remove the bottom of the ovals.

Also Cura "exploded" my model randomly as shown below even though all I did was duplicate the unexploded model to its left and lower the scale from 54 to 51mm.

And finally my printer/cura decided to randomly switch the print orientation about 3/4 of the way through a print. I couldn't find any record of this in the slicer layers but for some reason the rectangles that were being printed switched orientation. Based on how some started to try and print on thin air it looks like the entire file decided to do a 90 degree turn.

Are these bugs or are there settings I should be playing with? Based on my searches I learned about a "fix horrible" setting that might be autocorrecting things but I think that was only in old versions of Cura? Should I just reinstall Cura? Reset my printer...

This has been very frustrating as nearly model I have has an issue in Cura. They stl's are exported from blender, but on a different printer using repeteir host I have not had any of these issues.

Thank you!

[Best Support Settings in Cura for Ease of Removing?]

I've never been 100% happy with cura support structures.  It's such a waste that you bought the um3 yet you are doing single filament - too bad you didn't get the UM2.

Well I don't have any great answers.  I'm reasonably happy with the cura 2.X pva support options but those don't apply here.

I would probably just put my own support in cad.  You don't need any support for the square parts that have bridging.  But for those L shaped holes you have to support the base of the L.  Just not the top of the L.  For cylindrical parts you really need support on both arcing walls.  I'd make a very very thin wall  that touches at the top in 5 or 6 spots.  A thin wall on the inner and outer edge of those bridging arcs.

Just to reiterate.  The printer bridges pretty well.  So if you print like a doorframe - you dont' need support at the top of the door.

If you print with PVA it will make the pva stick out of the part - by default 3mm "horizontal expansion" which is perfect for these prints.  The pva can have a smooth top surface for the PLA to lay down on top of and it will come out very nice.

Here is a great example of what I mean by arcing support walls - the red portions on the lower left.  This is a solidworks rendering.  In real life it's all printed as one STL file in one color and you easily break off those thin "red" walls.

 

Thank you! Good to know about the supports. I've been messing around with creating custom ones in Cad but you saved me a lot of time trying to find just right goldilocks supports that might not exist in Cura!

The PVA support is great and I'm using it with higher end materials for the same shapes. I'm a little bit bummed it doesn't print great just on top of Ultimaker PLA and you have to waste all of the expanded PVA though, at least in the tests I've tried.

[Simplify3D Profile for Ultimaker 3 - Basic PLA/PLA (Work in progress)]

Thanks so much for putting this together!

If I'm trying to do single extruder prints with an UM3 do you recommend the S3D profile or yours? Based on the dates I think its the more recent one.

I noticed theirs is set for the right extruder. I assume I'm supposed to move the AA core over to the right extruder slot and completely remove the BB one?

Sorry I'm one of those newbs you were trying to save

[Best Support Settings in Cura for Ease of Removing?]

Hey all,

I've got an ultimaker 3 that I've been attempting to print some pieces with Cura that have fairly large open areas that I think need support. I have a few questions regarding this. I love the dissolvable support but am just talking about supports with the same PLA as printed for this post which I'm interested in also printing quality prints in because its cheaper and faster to print.  

Why do some sides print with the selected support pattern like "lines" shown in the photo below?

While other sides of the SAME print I have selected lines on utilize this more solid (but not concentric, much flimsier) support as shown below?

Is the "lines" pattern harder on the printer than others due to the frequent stopping and starting?

Why does my print string out at the top but the bottom and middle layers are supported and solid as shown below? Almost like the top layers don't follow the circular pattern because they aren't lying on anything circular and just go point to point. But the lower layers don't have this problem. I've tried increasing the horizontal support but that also makes the support layers harder to remove which is a problem as well due to the delicate nature of the prints.

And although I don't want the stringing to occur because it messes up the finish of the overhanging layer, if it doesn't string out, it is also almost impossible to remove because there's no gaps that you can kind of see in the image below.

I had been using a support roof because I thought the solid layer would lead to a cleaner print line on the printed layer I want to keep, but I'm wondering if that's making it too tough to remove from delicate places.

Essentially the main connective theme of this post is what support settings in Cura have people found to be the best for producing clean prints and being easy to remove? What pattern, density, support roof, XY distance etc?

I would greatly appreciate it because waiting hours for a print to finish only to have these issues is driving me crazy!

And while were at it is it possible to search the forums? I've googled and looked for an answer I promise! I've only found official ultimaker results using the search tool at the top, nothing from the forums.

Thank you!