johnse

Just a thought: buying a .6 hardened nozzle would open your available choices a lot, and the lower expense of the other filaments may pay for the new nozzle.

The first time I tried combining two models, I had wildly different origins so the models sprang apart when I did the merge. That made it clear it was different than when Cura settles objects to the base plate. Glad you were able to figure it out, and here’s hoping your print works!

Some suggestions and guesses here... the “trick” to getting your two models to merge correctly is to be sure they have the same origin. I don’t know TinkerCad, but in Fusion 360 different components in an assembly can have different origins or transforms. When you merge in Cura, it aligns the origins of the models. As to the half black, half white arrow... is it possible that your keycap model is not watertight? What you describe sounds an awful lot like “Z-fighting” in 3D graphics, where the renderer cannot quite decide which of coplanar faces should be displayed. Try slicing the two parts separately and look at each in Preview mode. Is the hole in the body sliced properly? My guess is that it won’t be. Turn on x-ray mode in preview and look for red areas. If that is the case, search for watertight or non-manifold in these forums for pointers on correcting them. IIRC, in TinkerCad this can happen when intersecting objects are not combined correctly into a single solid.

I think it was @ClausJ that had gotten the kit. I had originally commented that some 2.85mm filament is nominally know as 3mm...and thus there could be suppliers you might have missed if unaware of that. Good luck!

I don't have a UM2 of any kind. I have a UM3 and a Monoprice Maker Ultimate. The latter I modified with a Flexion extruder for printing Shore 60A TPU.

That was what I was getting at with my edit. I wasn't printing to a UM3 with a USB cable, I was printing to a Monoprice Ultimate. I had missed that the OP was talking about a UM3 and was focusing on a print stopping partway through. It was very shortly after that I realized my error and edited the post.

Are you printing from Windows? Did your computer go to sleep? I recently had a USB print stop when the monitor turned off. I have it set to never sleep when plugged in. When I wiggled the mouse, the screen turned back on and printing resumed, but the hot nozzle staying in one spot had ruined the print. That gave me the Round Tuit I needed to set up an Octoprint server on a Raspberry Pi I had laying around. EDIT: I just realized we may have been referring to two different kinds of USB printing...I was printing directly from Cura via USB cable.

Tagging @gr5, I think he'll be able to give you a lot more information (he runs the store that @chuck-yanke referenced).

I had similar issues printing nylon-which I’m guessing is similar in nature to this material. Try drying your filament. Also try enclosing your printer to keep the temp stable and prevent air currents.

I have seen other threads on here about such conversions, so a search might be fruitful. i have also seen where people were misled by the fairly common mislabeling of filament as 3mm. While some “3mm” filaments are really 3mm, many are actually 2.85 mm but the stores round up for whatever reason. You did mention importing filament to be a possible option... there are many online suppliers with a very wide array of 2.85 mm filament. Good luck on either finding a supply or making your conversion.

EDIT: For this first issue, of brim printing in support material, I discovered the "Brim Replaces Support" option when searching all of the options that have "support" in the name. So the first part of this is solved. The unnecessary support in the upper reaches is still an issue. I've got a part that I wanted to print with support that had only a small footprint on the build plate. I wanted to print it in this orientation so the long cylinder would print where there was other stuff on the same layer so it would cool properly. Because it has such a small footprint of Material 1, I choose to use a brim to give it extra adhesion. I normally print PLA with just a skirt. As you can see here, the outer brim printed with Material 1 (purple) but the brim around the small footprint (purple circle) was printed with Support (White Material 2). Clearly that brim was caused by the circle (base of a hollow tube). The other problem is that support "Expansion" reached layers above where any support was needed. Generate support was set to only Touching Buildplate. The first slice is showing how the support should be (used Support Blocker as shown in project file). This shows what it generates without the support blocker. This is all with Cura 4.2.1 UM3_PMGearPlate.3mf

I don’t know if there is a setting for this, but perhaps a workaround? Try adding a second object, just a simple tower that uses both materials (much like the prime tower) that prints after your actual part on each layer. This is often used as a cooling tower when printing parts that have small features, like the point of a cone. Between the cooling tower at the end of a level, and the prime tower at the start, the hot end temp and flow rates should be stable for the primary object. You should be able to search for part order and cooling tower to to find relevant threads about these topics.

I suspect your model is not watertight, or “non-manifold”, or contains internal geometry. Blender is a mesh editor and so is very easy to have these problems. As such, Cura gets confused about what is inside vs outside. Check “X-ray mode” in the model preview—any red is bad. Try the Mesh Tools from the Cura marketplace. Or try the repair tool at service.netfabb.com. Requires registration, but is free.

My UM3 has not had any problems leveling, but I'm not sure my experience bears this statement out. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding. On mine the bed raises until the print core touches, but then goes a little further. You can see the bed deflect slightly as it does this. IIRC the description written by @Daid mentions this in that they look for the inflection point in the distance sensed by the capacitive sensor where the reported distance stops changing. I've never manually leveled my bed 🙂 so the screws are as they came from the distributor.

Hi @QC102. I do not have an answer to your question, per se, but I did want to point out that this is NOT a CSS file. This is JSON, or "JavaScript Object Notation". It's a data format. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON

Is your concern the ropy texture of the surface around the hole? And this surface was on the build plate? That would indicate that the first layer was printed too high and you didn't get enough squish. What layer height and nozzle size are you using? Perhaps check the initial layer height.

You may want to check this video:

1mm walls with a 0.4mm nozzle doesn’t divide equally. If you look at the preview and select “line type” as the view style, it will color the lines according to skin, wall, infill, etc. Do the lines in those areas show the gaps you are seeing in your prints? If so, either modeling them as an integer multiple of nozzle width, 0.8 or 1.2, or decreasing the line width until the gap shows a line will help. Another option to maybe try first is the “print thin walls” option (you may need to search for the option. if it looks like there’s no corresponding gap in the lines, then it may just be underextrusion. You can adjust the “flow rate”. This is a percentage where you can increase (numbers above 100] or decrease the flow rate.

No direct experience yet. It is a well known brand and supposedly easy to print.

Have you checked the machine definition? What printer do you have?

To my understanding there are a couple kinds of auto leveling. They both allow the printer to adjust the z-axis dynamically to maintain an accurate layer height for the first layer. After that, I think they gradually adjust so the layers are level to the xy plane of head movement. They do this by measuring the actual height of certain points on the bed. Simplest is a 3-point sampling like is used on the UM3. Three points define the plane of the bed in 3-space...assuming the bed is actually flat. Others (I think the UM S5 does this) sample multiple points in a grid pattern. This defines a mesh that can model curvature of the plate that might occur, for example, from uneven heating. Of course, the better the mechanical leveling and the flatter the plate, the less needs to be corrected by the algorithms.

What material are you printing? Have you tried printing with a brim? Adhesion issues often show up on the first layer. Perhaps sharing a picture of your first layer would let one of the experts suggest solutions.

Those are not support lines. Those are movements without retraction that the slicer thinks are ok because it’s moving within an area that will be printed over later in the same layer...otherwise known as combing. The “not in skin” setting is supposed to prevent this. Also there is a setting something like “max distance without retraction.

Without seeing the model, I can only speculate. I suspect the model has some internal geometry that makes it think the center area is solid on those layers. Try viewing the preview in “X-ray mode”. Any red is bad. The spaghetti looks like you might expect with such a large span attempting to print without support. Bridging only works so far.

I think this means you’ve tightened the bed screws too much, so it is pushing the core up into the head. The literal meaning is that it expects to see 1.5mm difference between the height of the fixed Core 1 position (with core 2 raised) and the lowered core 2 height.