GregValiant
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Posts posted by GregValiant
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Part of the FDM process requires that the filament stays where it's put. Looking at the skirt in your image, the extrusions aren't sticking to the build plate but rather dragging behind the nozzle like a trailer. There has to be enough "stiction" so the material doesn't follow the nozzle. Not sticking means you can't extrude a curve as the filament wants to be in a straight line back to the nozzle.
Your block in the middle might well be doing the same thing. It's extruding across the middle, but the plastic isn't staying there. It's dragging across and then that extra material is forming a cow paddy on the far side.
It's a big nozzle and clay isn't a material that many people here print with (I've tried with chocolate by not clay). Big nozzles, screw extruders, and pellet extruders are a real niche-use thing.
Have you searched over on Reddit to see if there is a group there? If the printer isn't a home built then maybe the printer manufacturer can offer some advice. There are people here who are really good with the software and know the FDM printers pretty good if they are printing the normal everyday materials.
I'm reaching here but maybe you can try printing on something like a piece of sandpaper. My thought is that it would provide some grip so the clay doesn't slide around.
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I don't know if this is right, but I've found that looking at it like this gets my head around "Infill".
There is a block of infill that encompasses the entire build volume. Cura uses those portions that intersect a volume of the model where there should be infill.
Consequently, the "mid-point" of the infill pattern is at the mid-point of the build plate.
If you move that block to X0 Y25 (1/2 the model depth) I think you'll get what you want. Cura's "block of infill" will stay where it is, but you will force a different "intersection" with the model.
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When you set the support extruder to #1 it seems to turn off "Enable Support Interface" and that's why your other three options disappear. You will have to go back down and re-enable the interfaces and you should be OK.
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Your Cura is running in "Compatibility Mode" so other options aren't available. Whether it's in that mode because of an issue with your OpenGL version (on your video system), or because it is set that way in "Preferences / General" and the setting "Force Layer View Compatibility Mode" you will have to check. If the OpenGL driver is less than version 4.1 (I think) then you can't get out of compatibility mode.
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The size of the print can depend on Cura settings like "Scale factor" in the material section. There is also the question of how many models were sliced to create the gcode. If it was a single model then you have a chance.
If you open a Cura Gcode in a text editor (like Windows Notepad) and scroll to the very end of the file and then search upward for " Z" (space + Z) you will find the working height of the top layer.
If you know the actual height of the model then you can calculate a scale factor based on the actual height and the Z of the top layer.
If a model happens to be 100.3mm tall, and the gcode was sliced at 0.2 initial layer height and 0.2 layer height then the top Z in the gcode will be short by 0.1mm as Cura will leave the print short rather than making it too tall. For most things though, you can get in the ballpark and things should fit together.
And now you know why @Dustin said "Nope".
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I do that using Pause at Height and splicing parts of gcode files together. It's a lot easier when your layer heights are exact multiples of each other. A "high" layer height of 0.30 would be easier if the "low" layer height was 0.10 or 0.03 or 0.05, etc.. If the low layer height is 0.04 then the high layer height of 0.28 or 0.32 would work easier.
Lets say I want to print the 12.0mm base of a model at 0.30 height and the upper portion of the model at 0.05 layer height.
I slice the file once with a 0.30 layer height and a Pause at the top of the base which is layer 40. Save the gcode.
I slice the file a second time but with a 0.05 layer height and a Pause at the top of the base but now the Pause is at layer 240 (0.30 / 0.05 = 6 * 40 = 240).
Copy from the first line of the 0.30 file to the ";TYPE:CUSTOM" line at the beginning of the pause code and paste it into a new file.
In the 0.05 file copy from the pause line to the end of the file and paste it into the end of the new file.
The transition area must be checked to insure that the Z and E will match up and that the first extrusion after the transition starts from the correct XY location.
Occasionally there might be unmatched retractions and primes at the transition. That would need to be handled within the transition code so the filament starts at the correct distance back from the nozzle
It takes a bit of practice, but you can actually do the gcode splicing in just a couple of minutes. You can have the layer height change several times in a spliced file and the transitions are absolutely exact.
The same system will work if you want to print a "Spiralized" model on a solid base.
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That was it. I hadn't loaded it when I moved up to 5.7.1. With the Material Settings plugin installed the right click menu has the option again.
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If they don't match up then it isn't likely a Z axis problem.
Zooming way in on the red ones it almost looks like a line was made with no extrusion. Is that what it looks like up close?
Intermittent printing problems are like intermittent electrical problems on a vehicle. They are tough to troubleshoot. The fact that the problem starts part way up the print and then vanishes makes it tough to nail down.
I'll think on it but I'm pretty much out of ideas.
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When a wall has letters in it then there is a lot of direction changes and herky-jerky movement right at the letter, and there is often some bouncing of the print head as it continues on the straight part of the wall (generally called "ringing").
What you have there almost looks like the printhead didn't follow the gcode instructions for a couple of extrusions.
I have read numerous Cura gcodes into AutoCAD and the problem won't be in the gcode. Each extrusions will directly above the previous one. That's one reason I'm still leaning towards a printer problem. Is the Z height of the bad layers match up when you set them side by side? I know the one model has a much larger problem area and it is really odd that it is only on the one wall rather than going all the way around.
What printer do you have?
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There is another plugin in the MarketPlace "Extensive Support Logging" which will add more information to the log file.
You can try setting up your slice in 5.4 and then creating a "Project File". Open the project in 5.7 and it will carry over the settings from 5.4. You can also export your custom setting profile from 5.4 and import it into 5.7. Going from 5.6 to 5.7 those sorts of things carry over automatically but I don't know how many versions back Cura will go.
One error I know occurs is when the "Max Speed Z" is set to maybe 10mm/sec but the "Z-hop Speed" is set to 20mm/sec. I know that will cause a "won't slice" and there are probably others. Beyond that - just going down through all the settings and looking for ones that are red may net you something.
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"Tiled Infill" is in the Marketplace and I think you need to go there to disable it.
Right near the end of that log file is:
"Unable to slice with the current settings. The following settings have errors: "
But it doesn't mention the settings that have errors. There are a couple of other errors mentioned but I'm not well versed enough in the logs to decipher them.
Maybe if @ahoeben has a minute he can take a look.
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Looks like it might have been a bad spot in the filament, or something in the printer mechanicals.
All those lines relate to the area where the white spots are...
I was thinking maybe something stuck in the nozzle and then cleared itself, but if that was it it should have wrapped all around.
Still, it looks like something changed and then everything was good again.
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I'm missing the top line of the right click menu as well. In 5.6 it's "Use value from material" but in 5.7.0 and 5.7.1 the menu only lists "Remove from favorites" and "Configure favorites".
I opened a bug report regarding the right-click menu.
@TT_Vert there is a fabulous, wondrous, absolutely scintillating, new post-processor "Advanced Cooling Fan Control" in 5.7.1 that you might find useful as an alternative to the native Cura fan control.
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When you say "won't save the temperature settings for my ender 3 v3 SE" what exactly do you mean? The temperature comes from the material but can be overridden with a Custom Setting Profile.
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Post the STL (if you can share it) and maybe something can be done.
One thing for sure is that the grid areas must be printed sllowwly with a lot of fan. The initial lines must be cool or they will deform when the crossing lines are laid down because the nozzle runs into them.
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"..The resulting prints resemble more of a blob than a grid."
I can see that happening.
Think of the grid as a bunch of long horizontal walls running right to left. Now consider all the vertical walls not as complete long walls, but rather as partitions between each horizontal wall. Cura doesn't really want to run over the "cross" at the wall intersections. That means each of those little partitions needs to be a separate extrusion with a 0.4mm travel across the horizontal wall, then another 1mm extrusion follower by another short travel. That would be highly inefficient so it appears that Cura has decided to print 2 walls of each square so the extrusion can simply continue. I uess that's why many of the toolpath segments look like zigzags.
This is a model I made up with 1mm square holes and 0.4 walls between them. I've used "Remove all holes" and set a grid infill with no top or bottom skins.
This is Cura printing the grid infill. Each stripe goes from left to right to left, and then the vertical stripes go in.
The down side is that at the crossings, the extrusions don't stop extruding so there is a double bit of material at each crossing.
You can use a support blocker as a mesh modifier and make the infill for your different areas different
Here one model is as above, and the second is a copy but has 1.9 line spacing and the grid has been rotated and offset.
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@Torgeir is good with the UM 2 printers. Maybe he has a suggestion?
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I don't like to guess, but this is a guess.
Cura doesn't see a bunch of walls, it sees a bunch of square holes and each hole has "outer-wall" around it. The fact that the distance between holes is about 1 line width means that each square hole shares a wall with the adjacent hole. That might be what is giving the funky toolpath. You can try playing with "Group Outer Walls" and "Optimize Wall Printing Order". You may end up with a different toolpath, but not necessarily a "better" toolpath.
As AHoeben suggests, if you make that area solid, and use a properly spaced "Grid" infill (you might have to use a Mesh Modifier and adjust the line distance rather than the infill density) then Cura will print the grid as lines from one side to the other, You can rotate the grid so it is perpendicular to the structure by adjusting the line directions to something like "[0]" as the default (empty brackets "[ ]") is 45°.
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My older 8 bit mainboard can print from a sub-folder on the card, but not from the LCD. The file has to be called out in a very particular fashion and can only be done with a script calling out the file with an M23 command sent to the printer and using the DOS 8.3 filename. That took some cogitatin' to figure out. The form for a file in "NewFolder" is:
"\NEWFOL~1/SUBFOL~1.GCO".
Removing the drive letter wasn't bad but having to replace the back-slash with a fore-slash was NOT obvious.
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Have you tried saving to the hard drive and then coping the file from there to the SD card?
You could also try formatting the SD card. They can develop corrupt memory sectors and those areas can't be written to.
If you go for fomatting, remember that it will wipe out all files on the card so back up any you want to save.
(If there is corruption on the SD you might not be able to get your files off it.)
What printer is it? Some don't like file names over 16 characters and others can't handle large capacity memory cards.
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I didn't have any trouble slicing it.
What version of Cura are you using? The Ender 3 definition file has changed over time and some of the early definitions had "disallowed areas" that were reserved for the bed hold-down clips. Changing the build plate size in Cura would not change the disallowed areas as they were hard coded in the definition file.
This is in 5.7.1.
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There is a post processor called "Search and Replace". You would need two instances.
Search = M204
Replace = M8008
and
Search = M205
Replace = M8007
Those will work as long as the units are the same and the parameters are the same. Cura will use the S parameter for Accel. Other parameters for Accel would be X and Y for each axis or P and T for print and travel. You might have to get fancy with the regular expressions if there are numbers between the parameters.
Jerk is by axis so it always uses X Y parameters.
I think Search and Replace will start at the first layer (raft or model) but you'll need to check to make sure.
Search = M204 S(\d*)
Replace = M8008 P\1 T\1
Use Regular Expressions = checked
would go from
M204 S1000
to
M8008 P1000 T1000
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It turns out that I'm like the 17,000th person to have the idea.
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You need to talk to Elegoo about that as UltiMaker won't be involved in someone else's hardware.
On the other hand, the "variable line width" of Cura means that the nozzle size isn't near as important as it used to be. You can make up a custom profile of settings you use. When I print in spiralize I often kick the line width to 0.60 or 0.80 with a 0.4 nozzle. That works fine. You can't really go smaller though as there isn't enough squish.
You can also add a nozzle size by editing a nozzle file (in the variants folder) and doing a Save-As. You might have to do the same thing with at least one "Quality" file for a material. Quality files contain a line that mentions the nozzle size.
Between the nozzle file and a quality file there might be 3 or 4 lines that need a number changed (like from 0.4 to 0.5). When you do the Save-As make sure you use the same file naming format as the original file.
Why is the Z-seam always on the outside?
in UltiMaker Cura
Posted · Edited by GregValiant
@T9_AIR -
"...A Z seam forms during the time it takes the printhead, specifically the nozzle, to jump to the next layer..."
That is (at best) misleading.
Consider a hollow box with 5mm walls. There is an outer wall facing inward, and an outer wall facing outward. Whichever outer wall is printed first, there is no layer change when moving to the other outer wall and yet each outer wall will have a Z-seam. The layer change doesn't come into it.
This is two identical parts. You can see that the inner diameter has a Z-seam and the outer diameter has a Z-seam.