GregValiant

Take a regular old simple calibration cube and scale it to X=100 Y=50 and Z=1.0 and slice it at 100% flow for everything (except maybe the "Initial Layer Flow"). Also change the Top/Bottom line directions to [0,90]. As it prints you can tune the Flow on the LCD every 50 or 60 lines of extrusion and watch it closely to see how they go down. Make sure to change the flow rate across the top surface. When it's done, take a look at the top skin with a magnifying glass (a microscope is best). You may see how your changes in the flow are reflected in how each extrusion abuts with it's neighbors on either side. There will often be some over-extrusion at the beginning and/or end of each nozzle run. That's generally a function of the acceleration setting. Lower acceleration will create more of that "look" than higher acceleration settings do. There is a point where print accuracy can fall off if the Accel is too high for the mechanicals of your printer at your print speed.

When you say "...Work with this model..." what exactly do you mean? Each feature of any object will create line segments. The length of the segments of features that aren't straight is controlled by the resolution setting of the "Model-to-STL" utility that you use to change something like a 3D CAD model into an STL model. That utility should connect all those line ends into triangles (facets) in the STL file. In the image below (MS 3D Builder) you can see that a simple cube has 2 triangles for each face. Since each pair of triangles is planar, you won't see any faceting when you slice this. The cylinder has dense triangles because the top and bottom "circles" have been broken into short line segments. Each line segment on the top circle is connected with the end of a line segment on the bottom circle. The result is a lot of triangles that comprise the wall of the cylinder and pairs of triangles are planar because the top and bottom "circles" are the same size. If it was a cone then none of the wall triangles would be planar. There are no true circles or curves in 3D printing. The math doesn't allow it. I think it's Pythagoras' fault. So there are no "useless" lines in your model, just the lines needed to make a bazillion triangles. "Bazillion" is a technical term and is a number tied to the resolution setting of the STL export utility. Here I have used the "Simplify" tool on the cylinder to reduce the density of the triangles. You can see that this would print poorly because the top and bottom circles are obviously made up of line segments. In this case it's a "pentadecagon" (I had to look that one up) rather than a cylinder even though it's the same object - just altered a bit. I just saw that second image with the faceted surface above a rectangular surface. There are a lot of facets on the top one because the end points of the different line segments lie on different planes. The bottom one must have been a plane.

Hello. My printer is an Ender 3 Pro so it is much like yours. The "Anti backlash spring nuts" and "Dual Z axis kit" can wait. (I've never had a need for either.) If the Z kit is a belt drive or is going to run off a splitter then you can install it whenever you want. There are some that require a second Z port on the mainboard. You may need to look at that depending on the kit. The "Bowden Tube" is a consumable. The piece that goes into the hot end gets damaged both at the nozzle, and from the jaws of the fitting that holds it. Usually just nipping 6 or 7mms off the end and then sticking it back in will give you another bunch of prints. Eventually it gets too short and then you will need the new one. You may as well wait on that install as well. When cutting the tube I would recommend a single edge razor. That cut must be as close to a perfect 90° as you can get it or you will have problems with clogging between the nozzle and the bowden. The aluminum Extruder should be put on right away. The stock Creality extruder has a failure rate of near 100%. I level with a piece of paper (but the software I've written has movement commands for leveling so I don't use the knob). If the CRTouch does NOT require a firmware update then you can install it whenever you want. If it does need a firmware update then you may want to wait until you get more familiar with the whole "update the firmware" thing. It can be a deep dark hole. Getting that first layer to stick requires that the plastic gets squished to the bed. Calibrating the E-Steps is a big part of that. If not enough plastic is being pushed (under-extrusion) then you will struggle getting prints to stick. Spherical shapes are tough. I am assuming that flaw you see is the Z seam where the outer wall extrusion starts and stops. It can be moved but you can't hide it on a round shape as there aren't any corners to hide it in. Finally...The top of the egg requires support on the inside. Like Z seams - there are always "steps" in a print that are 1 layer height high. It's the nature of the process. When those steps are too far apart (geometry of the model) then they will fall in if they aren't supported.

Right now, without waiting, without passing GO, and without collecting $200 - throw that single wall constipation cube as far as you can. It has nothing to do with anything. Once you have your E-steps calibrated you are done. When you enter the line width and layer height into Cura it is an easy calculation to figure out the volume of an extrusion. LineWidth x LayerHeight x Length. You have entered the exact filament diameter into Cura (or Cura will use the default 1.75mm diameter) and it is an easy calculation to determine the volume of a length of filament. PI x r² x Length. You may notice that neither formula says anything about wall thickness. It's "What volume of plastic is needed" to "The volume of plastic that is pushed". When that ratio is 1:1 then flow is 100%.

This is probably the #1 reason why people go to dual extruders. I would go about the supports on those a little differently (like normal instead of tree) but that's just personal preference. If you increase the floor distance then an interface can be a lot easier to remove. It will look kind of sloppy, but so what - it's all getting thrown away anyway. Try setting the Floor Distance to .4mm. Another thing you can do is make the support weaker by decreasing the flow. You are at overall 95% flow so try dropping the Support Flow and Support Interface Flow to 87% or something. If it's too low it won't lay down correctly. I've been running the Support Line Layer Thickness at 2X layer height so they only go down every other layer. In Cura 5.0 the high flow rate of doing that will cause a speed slow-down so you would need to adjust the Flow Equalization Ratio to 0%. I've noticed that the top interface comes away from the print a lot better if it was cool when the initial skin went down on top of it. I haven't done it yet - but for small prints I'm considering adding a pause at height just to allow the interface to cool. Large prints was how I noticed the difference as the support always seems to come away easier. A decent set of pics, a set of micro files, an Exacto hobby knife, a narrow sharpened screwdriver, and a pair of needle-nose pliers are necessary evils when dealing with support removal.

Auto-Home location might be off the bed. Mine is. That's why you need to set the Home Offsets. The printer takes the coordinates from a gcode file and puts the origin at the Home Offset 0,0,0 location. If you don't define the Home Offsets then the printer puts the gcode origin at the Auto-Home location which as you found out is off the bed. That means some prints will be off the bed and no prints will be centered on the bed. So you must set the Home Offset location in order for the 0,0,0 origin of the virtual build plate in Cura to match the 0,0,0 origin of the real build plate on the printer. I think you can change the "Notification" settings here on the forum so you do get emails regarding your posts.

It's a pain to fix. The most likely cause is the two screws that hold the bar to the extruder bracket are loose. You have to slide the whole gantry up off the machine to get to the screws. I ended up drilling a hole in the left upright so I could at least get to one of them. I still have to remove the entire Xbeam/gantry assembly if the left screw comes loose. Now with the gantry off I can tighten the left screw, put the thing back together, square up the X beam to the Z upright, tighten the right screw through that hole I drilled, and then deal with the adjustment on the right side bracket. (The screws are accessible on the right.) Here is the 6.35mm hole I drilled. With the gantry positioned correctly that right side screw head is in front of the hole and I can get an allen wrench to it from the backside. PITA. I'm sure there are videos on repairing this and re-calibrating the X beam/gantry. CHEP probably has done one and he's good with the Creality machines.

@A750gixr Load one of the STL files in Cura. Set it up to slice. Use the "File | Save Project" command to create a 3mf project file. You can post that here and someone will take a look. A project file has your printer, all the settings, and the model and is good to troubleshoot with.

Yes, bowden disconnected and extruding into air is correct. That +/-1% difference you are seeing is fine and about what you can expect from plastic that's being squished between a roller and a hard place. Consider that at .2 layer height and .4 line width 100mm of filament is 3006mm's of extrusion. With the E-steps calibrated you can drop the flow to 100%. The first layer is more dependent on the leveling, but succeeding skins, and especially top skins, can tell much about the flow and if it needs to be tweaked in Cura. If you have a magnifying glass you can take a close look at a top skin. When the adjacent extrusions are welded together and there is no ridge at the weld joint then you are good to go. Walls really aren't any good as a flow indicator because they always look kinda good unless the machine is way off.

As @ahoeben points out - it's a simple thing to fix. Don't go looking at changing a bunch of stuff until you have a feel for how the machine works. When the printer is put together with due care and adjusted correctly (all three axes perpendicular to each other, the belts are adjusted, the trolley wheels are adjusted, the E-steps are calibrated, and all the bolts are snugged up) the printer will kick out good prints.

Did you calibrate the E-steps on the printer? Having to run at 117% Flow sticks out. The Outer Wall Wipe distance of .5 is a lot. That move is typically around 1/4 to 1/2 of the line width. The move is at travel speed (200mm/sec in your file) and is supposed to carry over residual nozzle pressure and clean up the Z-seam. Looking at the starts and ends of your Outer Wall extrusions, they match up exactly. The Wipe move then runs past the Outer Wall start point. That should be smearing the Z-seam, but it isn't. So back to flow. If there is little to no residual pressure in the nozzle then no material comes out during the Wipe move and there is no smearing at the seam. When the Flow is calibrated then the volume required for an extrusion is the volume of filament that the E number is calculated for. 100% Flow should be at {Volume-In = Required Volume-Out}. That calculation will be correct provided that the actual real filament diameter is entered into Cura, and the E-steps are correct in the printer. So Flow (E-steps), Outer Wall Wipe Distance, and Travel Speed look to be the parameters that are involved. Lowering the wipe distance to .15 and lowering the travel speed to 120 reduces print time by 1 minute. Increasing the Travel Acceleration to 1000 may also help (you might have to add a line "M201 X1000 Y1000" to your startup gcode to increase the printers Max Accel setting). Finally, round objects are tough because there are no corners to hide in.

I'm learning this myself. I think 5.0 does a better job than 4.13 and earlier on thin structures. I've been using it on a regular basis (as opposed to the Arachne beta which I didn't care for much). I used to pay much attention to designing things with wall thicknesses that worked out to an even number of nozzle passes. Now it doesn't matter as Cura does the math and figures out the width of a middle extrusion. As you noticed - on thin wall structures a lot depends on how you can convince Cura to travel. Those vanes in your last image require an out-and-back move. If you tried to print it with 1 pass or 3 passes the nozzle ends up at the end of a vane and either has to comb back, or more likely, jump to the next vane leaving a string. I believe you'll like the results. One thing the Cura Team missed (again) was the "Easy" button. Ya still gotta think.

There are two new settings in the "Walls" section that might be affecting this. "Split Middle Line Threshold" and "Add Middle Line Threshold". The default may be around 95% (it's calculated) so try setting them at 50% and see if it makes a difference.

I shouldn't think you would be getting all the debris from a PLA or PLA+. PETG will collect itself on the nozzle and drop it off randomly, but not so much so fast. Have you taken the cover off the hot end and checked for leaks where the heat break screws in, and at the nozzle? For the PLA+ filament your print speed of 50 should have been fine. I wouldn't call "50" slow. I would move all the Cura settings back to what you know worked well, and then I'd take another look at the mechanicals of the printer. That just doesn't have the look of a software problem (to me anyways).

With a model loaded in Cura and with the settings configured to get that dimple - use the "File | Save Project" command and post the 3mf file here. Working just with photos isn't easy.

I'm pretty good with the Creality machines but I can't help with the CRTouch. There is some information on the Marlin Site regarding M420 that you might be able to use to reset the mesh (or enter a new one). That is provided that a couple required settings are enabled in your firmware. Have you asked about this over on Reddit? The Ender 3 Group is a big one and the Jyers firmware is a popular alternative to the stock firmware.

In the Cura Help menu is a command to "Show Configuration Folder". When you select that it will open your file explorer to a folder containing "Cura.log". You can post it here but the best thing is to fill out a bug report on GitHub Cura Issues and post "Cura.log" there. If you include a project file you know is causing problems, that would help as well. You would need to zip the 3mf project file to post it there.

Hi guys. Scanners often create a "point cloud" rather than a mesh. You may need an intermediate piece of software to turn the point cloud into a mesh. That mesh could then be loaded into Cura. We used Rhino back-in-the-day. SolidWorks may be an option. Was there any software bundled with the scanner?

The beta went through a pretty good testing with (what seemed like) a broad base of users. There didn't seem to be much comment from the MAC community but the Linux and Windows versions had a few issues. I would hope that the large number of testers means the main problems were found and addressed.

I use the UM theme. That looks fine to me. I do have some critiques though as I've used it quite a bit for blocking supports. After you get it straightened out I'll look again at the re-worked version and send you a message. Off the top of my head - I've never understood the Max Size box.

And it only took a week!! (If it had been me it would have taken a month.)

Further proof that "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while."

@2lo4dsno and @natekwilson the changes to the Cura dialog boxes and controls meant that virtually all of the plugins needed updating. They are a work in progress. As the authors get to them they are re-submitted for approval. @ahoeben has been keeping a running list of his progress with his own plugins. I haven't seen notifications about the others. Maybe contacting the authors would provide a schedule for when they will be re-released.

@Gero I went into my printer definition file and added an override. You could also do it in fdmprinter.def.json but that is not advised. This is from fdmprinter.def.json "inset_direction": { "label": "Wall Ordering", "description": "Determines the order in which walls are printed. Printing outer walls earlier helps with dimensional accuracy, as faults from inner walls cannot propagate to the outside. However printing them later allows them to stack better when overhangs are printed.", "type": "enum", "options": { "inside_out": "Inside To Outside", "outside_in": "Outside To Inside" }, "default_value": "outside_in", It could be changed there. I have customized some of the Creality definition files for my own use and when I install a new release of Cura I always over-write the stock Cura files with my own. I added a line to the creality_base.def.json file "wall_thickness": {"value": "line_width * 2" }, -------The comma must be added and then "inset_direction": {"default_value": "inside_out"}

"...It is Cura's turn to show an error in usable form!" I'm trying to understand. One thing (among many) that I don't understand is what would be a "useable form". In the screenshot below we see that MS 3D Builder has found an error in the Benchy. It is indicating "errors" by showing a red square around the base of the model. There is no more specific indicator than that. It successfully repaired whatever errors it found. (I think it's a little funny because I originally altered the model in MS 3D Builder and it didn't show any errors at the time.) I uploaded the same file to https://formware.co/OnlineStlRepair. It also repaired the model and provided this report: -> Analyzed your file: --> 0 Naked edges (?) --> 0 Planar holes (?) --> 0 Non-planar holes (?) --> 38 Non-manifold edges (?) --> 41 Inverted faces (?) --> 342 Degenerate faces (?) --> 38 Duplicate faces (?) --> 0 Disjoint shells (?) -> Repairing: 100.00% ----- Repair completed in 220617ms ------ -> Vertex count changed from 131008 to 126312 (-4696) -> Triangle count changed from 262516 to 253830 (-8686) This indicates there were 459 errors in the model. I had guessed that the errors are around where I added "Greg" to the transom and it didn't mesh with "#3D Benchy" very well. What would I do differently if it did have 459 indicators showing the problems? (BTW my personal record for the number of errors in a model posted here is 35,000.) Here is the same file opened in MeshMixer. I think it's safe to assume that the red lines are where there are errors. MeshMixer is built for this sort of thing. I would not use it to slice the model...it's not what it's good at. It also successfully repaired the model. I'll leave this now, but in closing I have this poor analogy: I'm a bit of a motorhead and I have a lot of tools in my toolbox. I pick the tool for a specific job based on the requirements of that job. As an example - I own 12 hammers. I would not use a 3lb mallet to put in a carpet tack, and I would not use a tack hammer to pound a bearing out of a wheel even if the tack hammer was already in my hand. I would (hopefully) pick the right tool for the job. I have always found it "useable" that Cura points out that a model needs repair. There are other tools that are a lot better at doing those repairs. Among the many things that I don't understand is what a "degenerate face" is. I really don't care as long as it gets fixed.