Clancey

I'm not sure what the technical term would be, I've found loads of useful tips in the past for problems, but I can't get to the bottom of this one. It's possible I might have asked this before I've had the issue for a while now. But my head is a sieve and I've had a lot on, so who knows! When printing upright cylinders, say under 10mm, I get awful ringing around the circumference as if the outer layer isn't being printed in the right place, each layer is slightly different and the results are horrible. Make the cylinder larger and the problem goes away. The problem is most pronounced with nylon (Ultimaker) but is also noticeable with other materials. Straight edges, slight curves, overhangs, all beautiful. I've tried slowing the print speed, more and less wall thickness although I need at least 2mm thickness really. These particular cylinders have a hole through for a bolt, but it makes no difference if they are solid with infill, or tubes. Apart from changing the wall thickness and speed all the other settings are the Cura default for Nylon Fast 0.04 Any ideas? Many thanks.

HI folks. I have an Ulti3 and a CR10 which I use for large stuff where the quality isn't paramount. If I set both printers off at the same time with a print speed of 80, the Ulti ponders around carefully printing the objects while the CR10 goes off like bonkers and prints approximately twice the speed. I know the Ulti uses a different flavour of gCode, but surely speeds should be the same? it's all mm/s isn't it?

So I've done the latest update which the printer informed me about this afternoon, now, no matter what I try, the printer tries to print the bottom layer 3mm above the glass. This obviously isn't going to work!! I need to fix this quickly but I can't find any options in the menu to calibrate Z. It's as if the height would be correct for nozzle 2, but I'm not using nozzle 2. I've powered on/off, calibrated the build plate etc. Help!

While prototyping I'm using a hell of a lot of material that gets thrown away. That's just the nature of what I'm doing, there's no way around it. So, does anyone have any means, or is there any machinery available I can use to turn the old parts and offcuts/structures into material I can use again? Is there a limit to the number of times it can be melted? It just seem so stupid to be wasting over 90% of the material I buy. All ideas welcome. Thanks.

Ah, thanks, I'll give that a go.

I don't have much experience with ABS, this is Ultimaker filament, Ulti 3, with Rigid settings, the only change I made to defaults was to turn off print cooling, which I've read somewhere helps stop abs shrinking too quickly and popping. I'm not sure how true that actually is. Apart from the print quality being a little ropey, which doesn't matter for this piece, I'm a bit confused with the bottom of the part which appears to have shrunk over night! The part had popped off the bed, but the large brim had kept it down so there's no curling of the edges, just this odd small foot print. I've used some other makes of abs which either just will not stick, or curl horribly. Are there any tips/tricks to keeping this effect under control? Many thanks.

Does anyone know how I might be able to dial out these awful rounded corners? The material is ABS, although it makes little difference what material is used. I won't give you the whole profile, but I'm basically printing with the suggested settings. It's not just rounded corners, all curved surfaces seem to suffer the same kind of problems, unless I print at a stupidly low speed. I can't afford to turn everything down to 20, I'll never get anything done! Everything has been kept well lubricated and the printer is on some TPE cushioned feet. Any ideas?

My Ultimaker 3, with the very latest Cura version, throws an error Ln=14 (I guess that's a line number) if I try to print anything with a raft. Is this a feature?

How does one tackle the problem of having a length of cleaning filament stuck in the top of the print head? The cleaning process was started by a certain youngster who shall for the time being remain nameless.... I thought they'd got it stuck in the core, but I've just removed that (bb 04) and it looks fine thankfully, also nice and clean! But the filament is stuck in the bowden connector hole, the tube is disconnected. It's not 'glued', it's kind of loose. The end of the filament must have swollen on the way in or the way out so now there's a blob on the end of the filament that's too large to come out of the top or out of the bottom. I've pulled and pushed as much as I dare, before starting to bend metal and crack plastic to no avail. What's the procedure from here? I'm happy to wield the hammer if needed. Many thanks.

Has anyone out there tried multiple colour printing by cutting material into cm lengths and pre-loading the bowden tubes before starting a print? It's the UM3 I'm thinking trying this with. Obviously you'd have to match the material and keep an eye on the loading procedure, but that's pretty easy. Just wondering if it should work, are the bowdens tight enough to keep the material chunks inline. Anyway, just an idea, and just wondering. Thanks.

I know this is a really difficult question without all the Cura settings, knowing the material well and having a copy of the model, but what angle would you think I can get away with if: I have the Ultimaker 3, I'll only be using 1 AA .4 I'm using a good quality PLA Major Cura settings are Profile Fast, Temp 210, Speed 100, Wall speed 50 I get good layer adhesion with these settings, the speed means the outer walls are a bit ragged, but this is actually good for this model. It's a hollow pumpkin which a friend is going to use as an LED light. It's only as the top curls back in that it really needs any support at all. But I'm aware time is running low if I'm going to get it printed by Tuesday morning, it fills the build plate. If I ensure the model has all the support it could possibly need (even on lowish settings) I don't think I'll get it done it time as the printer is already tied up until tomorrow morning. If I set the overhang to 60 I can save a couple of hours and I'll just get it done, but if it fails I wont stand a cat in hells chance of running it again. I don't really have a choice, but what do you folks reckon? Thanks.

Ok, I'm in a silly mood today, not even the holes in my model are annoying me. Yet! It's an odd problem I've only noticed with the AA .8 core. The core doesn't extrude enough material at the beginning of the outer walls. It's ok once it gets going, but for around the first 10mm (speed depending) there isn't enough material and the result is a very rough print or holes. I've played around with a load of speed settings without making any real headway and I'm wondering what to try next. It seems so daft to be playing about with settings for what amounts to less than 1% of the model's surface. Do I need to look at retraction? I couldn't see a re-retraction setting, or is it un-retraction, or attraction? Where would I look? Is it a speed or a distance I need to adjust? And, it's only the outer walls, everything else, all other details are fine, so I don't want to bugger about with settings that are going to fix this 1% and mess up 75%. If you see what I mean. Time for a cuppa and another search. Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks.

Hi folks. I've set off a customer prototype to run overnight, but it looks like I'm going to have to finish it off tomorrow morning as the 7 objects on the Cura build plate have turned into 5 on Ulti3 build plate. All items are in the printable zone, there are no odd angles or supports, in fact the 2 missing objects are the most simple. The 5 objects printing have bevels and curves and threads and all sorts of funky things, the 2 missing objects are tubes, nothing but very simple outer and inner surface tubes with a 1mm wall thickness. I did wonder if it was this thickness as the minimum Wall Thickness in Cura is set to 1.5, however 3 of the other objects on the plate have wall thicknesses of 1mm, so I doubt it's that. The missing objects started printing after layer 4 had been put down for the others, missing the brim and trying to drop filament in med air. Needless to say they haven't had a good start in life! I have been back to cure, re-loaded the objects, moved the objects, saved the file again, 3 times, exactly the same result. Has anyone else had anything like this, have any suggestions? Is this a Cura problem, a gCode error, the Printer? It's running now and looks stable enough to leave so I'm not going to stop it, I'll have to reprint the 2 problem parts tomorrow. Just confused about what I've done.

Is there any way to get Cura/Ulti to print an object to a certain height then stop? Allowing you to pre-post-process parts of an object before continuing the print process and finishing the object? Many thanks.

It does everything! Honestly. Getting it to stick to the plate is a nightmare, if I get it to stick the layers start to separate, if the layers don't separate the edges 'flop' and I get spaghetti. I've been playing about with it again today, I have a 3D scan of a garlic which I find a really good test object, it has some lumpy and some smooth surfaces, but natural. I can also test wall thickness and how different infills react with the walls and overhangs. After 6 failed tests this evening I currently have half a garlic which hasn't gone wrong yet. I've had to put the temperature up to 250 to get layer adhesion, the speed down to 50 so the layers have longer to melt together. I've had to add a 10mm brim, and a 25% tetrahedral infill to keep the sides together. The boxes that are marked (some aren't marked at all) say 3DFilaPrint (In an overseas trading partnership) I really don't want to say anything against the company because I have no idea how many people use their stuff without problems. Is it possible this stuff is too old, too saturated? Is it more likely just to be a bad blend for the Ultimaker 3 core system? The settings currently being used have wandered into ABS territory, I'm actually starting to wander if it's been mislabelled. I have multiple colours so it's very unlikely it's nylon, PC, PCE, etc. The finish looks like PLA so it's not anything exotic. For someone who doesn't know much about how different materials behave it's all a bit confusing! Anyway, now I have half a garlic and a little bit more that still hasn't gone wrong!.... I'm starting to tell myself this is ABS, but I thought it would give a more shiny finish, it's quite matte. And I'm tired and I've started waffling so I'm going to bed and I'll resist the temptation to check the camera overnight, I might have a pleasant surprise in the morning. Except, could someone point me at a 'General' heat/speed/etc vs material chart? Many thanks.