GregValiant

For the past week or so I've been printing thin walled boxes for electrical components. They are the type of model that was being used as an example in the "Debut/Release" video for 5.0. Several were done with 4.13 and Arachne Beta 2 and now with 5.0 beta. I am impressed with the difference between prints using the new 5.0 engine and those from the 4.X versions. Congratulations all around. @nallath - It appears that the lawnmower actually works.

Nice. And on my side, I managed to re-program the garage door keypad all by myself. Well, maybe YouTube was involved just a bit.

@ahoeben you continue to amaze. Thank you sir. The sidebar GUI is up and running. Unfortunately, until I get the grips back on the models I'm kind of dead in the water with 5.0. (Now if I could just talk you into coming over here and reprogramming this damn garage door keypad.)

@gr5 nailed it again. Most of the Creality printers have the purge lines on the side. They are in the startup gcode in your Machine Settings. This is from an Ender 3 but they are all similar. You can delete the lines in bold or put a semi-colon in front of them to comment them out. The first G1 line after homing is better with the Z at 10 or 12. ; Ender 3 Custom Start G-code G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G28 ; Home all axes G1 Z12.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed G1 X0.1 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to start position G1 X0.1 Y200.0 Z0.3 F1500.0 E15 ; Draw the first line G1 X0.4 Y200.0 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to side a little G1 X0.4 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 E30 ; Draw the second line G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed G1 X5 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move over to prevent blob squish

Going back a couple of posts to the conversation between @ahoeben and @Cuq it appears so. "Octoprint" is one of A. Hoeben's plugins. I know 5.0.0 is a Beta release but man am I glad I don't have to answer the phone regarding that one missing. Things like that may limit the number of Beta testers as well.

Go to the MarketPlace and look for a plugin called "Export HTML Cura Settings". I've never used it but it may be what you are looking for.

@JeroenR if the hole is vertical then have you used the "Horizontal Hole Expansion" setting? I printed what was essentially a hole chart with holes from 1mm diameter to 30mm diameter. Horizontal Hole Expansion was required to get the holes to their correct size. I found that the larger the hole then the smaller the amount of HHE that was required. Try enabling HHE at 0.3 and print a few layers of your motor housing. You just need enough of a print for the caliper to get a good measurement. Be advised though that a hole is a hole and that one doesn't necessarily need to be round. If you have a vertical hexagon shaped pocket for a nut then HHE will make that shape bigger as well. The HHE setting is there expressly to compensate for the phenomenon that @gr5 explained. The "Snot Factor" is real and is dependent on the material, print temperature, and the size of the arc being described by the nozzle. PrusaSlicer does have a setting for Horizontal Expansion but not a specific setting for Horizontal Hole Expansion. It might be handled in the background rather than being adjustable by the user.

Other than the plugins (of which I use both of yours and I will especially miss the Sidebar GUI while it awaits it's update) the migration went smoothly. Until I noticed that the grips were gone from the model for all tools. Rotating a model is not going well. It's possible that the grips are there but invisible. With the mirror tool active I clicked around the model a bit and it did mirror. cura.log

You're the first person to notice that. I'm rarely accused of being subtle but in this case I thought the "666" was appropriate.

I'm not a developer, I'm a Cura user. If a bug report isn't made then how would the Ultimaker Team know there is a potential problem? Furthermore, on a personal level I don't see that .2mm gap as a problem and I don't agree that it would "...weaken the print considerably". In an actual print the gap may not even be there. And thirdly, the situation doesn't occur with Cura Arachne and so maybe it has already been addressed. Cura 5.0 Beta is out today.

Thingiverse is fine. Some of the model STL files can have errors but they can usually be repaired using Fusion 360's NetFab or MS 3D Builder, or Cura's own Mesh Tools. If the plastic was sticking to the bed properly then you wouldn't be here. Here are some questions to ask yourself. Are you using a BLT or some other Auto-Leveling system on your printer? Maybe the Z offset needs to be tweaked. Are you using any adhesion promoter like a glue stick or hairspray? Have you calibrated your E-Steps? That should really be #1. What are your normal "Flow" settings in the Material settings in Cura? (There are 9 flow settings). Your clean your build plate with dish soap and then wipe it down with Isopropyl Alcohol prior to printing and applying the adhesion promoter? The trolley wheels on the X and Y are all adjusted nicely so you can just turn them with your fingers? There is no binding in the Z and the Z motor always Auto-homes to exactly the same place? (inconsistency there can be a big cause of bed failure prints). When the first layer goes down all the extrusions should be flat an welded together side-by-side with no gaps. If instead they look like a bunch of little sausages then your leveling is off (no squish). Moderator @gr5 made up THIS VIDEO about bed adhesion and warping. It covers a lot of material and you might want to make some popcorn, but it's pretty much all in there. Or you can just jack up your Initial Layer Flow to 120% and cross your fingers.

It might be your Start-Up Gcode. At the very least there is contradictory information contained in the stock StartUp Gcode for the N2 Dual. This is from the end of the StartUp Gcode from the "N2 Dual" model that is included with Cura. (Raise3D is listed as the author of the printer definition file for the N2 Dual). T1; left tool ; set extruder steps per mm M92 E140 T0; left tool...??????????? C'mon man! Does it have ambidextrous hot ends? then later.... ;move up a bit G1 Z5.0 F9000 ; wait 300ms G4 300 ;fast move to center G1 X152.5 Y152.5 F9000 T0 ;Raise3D Job Start M117 Printing... M1001 You can see that even with T0 disabled in Cura that "T0" is hard coded in the StartUp to print the skirt. The command to Zero the extruder (G92 E0 E1) would be illegal in Marlin. It may be a good command for the printer's firmware but maybe that line should really be G92 E0 T1. (That's a guess by the way.) At any rate, I think your StartUp Gcode needs to be reviewed to see if it is the problem. If you could copy it from Machine Settings in Cura and paste it here then someone can take a look.

@Goonbunny87 That's a pretty good benchy. Whatever your settings are, they are close to being just right. What printer are we talking about here? What material are you printing? What is your current print temperature, retraction distance, and retraction/unretract speeds? Other settings come in to play as well. "Max Comb Distance with No Retract" and "Retraction Minimum Travel" have an effect on whether or not a retraction will happen. You can print temperature towers and retraction towers to help dial in your settings. Going hotter generally gives better layer adhesion at the cost of the plastic being soupier and wanting to dribble and that means more strings.

@geert_2 - I'm not sure what all of that means ... but I like it.

You can do it in Cura by bringing in a support blocker, sizing it, set the Per Model settings to Cutting Mesh and for the settings select Wall Count, Top Layers, Bottom Layers, and Infill Density. Set them all to 0. Move the block in space until you have it where you want it. Unfortunately you cannot rotate the block to give the bust an angle on the top like it has now. Because you are using "remove all holes" if one side of the feature is lower than the other side of the feature then it no longer constitutes a "hole" and you will be back to a shell for that portion. You really should use something like MS 3D Builder or Blender. Then you can subtract a block and it can be on an angle. I think that would look better.

Yep. Those parts come to a knife edge and knife edges can't be printed. Cura (or any slicer) won't acknowledge areas of a model when the slice is narrower than your line width setting. You can try dropping the line width to .35, or you can drop the nozzle size to a 0.2. In either case you will get closer to the tip but you can't ever get there as there will always be an area that is narrower than your line width.

Yes, regular ole' support with .5 horizontal expansion and grid Support Interface also with .5 horizontal expansion. The expansion allows for a wider base for the part to rest on. The Support Interface Density at 60% will give a smoother base for the print to rest on. Like I said above - That isn't an easy part for the first 5 or 6 layers. Above that it should go well. If you are having trouble with build plate adhesion then that is a different deal. That needs to be addressed separate from printing that model. I'm confident that I could print that with a skirt without loosing traction on the bed (but it would probably look bad on the bed side).

@Kingsidorak - Is that a "multiple-in-one-out" setup or did you add another hot end as well as an extruder?

@Pureminer - With the model loaded and Cura ready to slice, use the "File | Save Project" command and then post that 3mf file here. I have a feeling the model gets too narrow for your nozzle/line width. A project file will show what's going on.

I don't know how experienced you are but first - you want to enable the "Custom" settings, and then, next to the Settings Search box is a button with 3 lines on it. It's the Settings Visibility tool. Click on it and set visibility to "All". The problem with printing cylindrical objects that are laying on the bed is that the part has no "footprint". There are just a couple of lines on the bed that have to provide stiction and support for the layers that follow. Without a brim it is kind of easy to break loose and just move around the bed with the nozzle. I'm guessing that's what's happening when you print it. Here is your model using a skirt for bed adhesion. This would be a problem to print. Another problem is that the 2nd layer overhangs too far and will fall to the bed. It needs support, but there is no room for support and so the first two or three layers would not have the correct shape. Here it is with a brim. This is better, but the brim will be harder to remove than normal because the second layer will droop down and also bond to the brim. Here I've moved the model 1mm off the bed and turned on support with 0.5mm horizontal expansion on both the support and the support interface. The support interface is at 60% density. This will work, but it will leave marks when you remove the support structure from the print. PLA is brittle. PETG would be a better choice if you want it to be flexible. All-in-all that's a pretty tough model to print. And no...I don't do other peoples homework. It can stunt their ability to learn.

Consider a basic calibration cube. It has 12 edges where one face meets an adjacent face. There should be no gaps in those edges. If there was a gap then if you tried too fill the cube with water it would run out onto the floor. The model isn't watertight (also called non-manifold). When a slicer goes through the model it needs to know where the inside is and where the outside is. That gap in a seam allows the slicer to move along the wall on the outside and keep going through the gap instead of onto the outside of the adjacent face. Now the slicer is on the inside but doesn't know it. That's when all the confusion jumps up and the slicing goes wrong. That's why the warning comes up. Even a "Respected Designer" is at the mercy of the software utility that converts a CAD model into an STL/OBJ/3mf file for use in the slicer. Designers themselves can put a model together incorrectly and cause problems during the export to STL. Cura has some basic STL repair functions (if the Mesh Tools plugin is loaded from the MarketPlace). MS 3D Builder (in Windows) and Fusion 360 have decent repair tools as do some on-line sites (I've been using THIS ONE and it's pretty good. I like the report it generates on what was wrong with the model.) A pretty fair percentage of the problems attributed to Cura both here and on the Ultimaker Github site are actually problems with the models. Of those problem models only a tiny percentage cannot be repaired without going back and fixing them in the CAD software. That FormWare site I mentioned fixed one model that had 36,000 errors. In that particular case I think magic was involved.

Taking out the nozzle and putting it back in may have changed it's height relative to the "trip point" of the ABL sensor. A quarter turn is .25mm and that can make enough of a height difference that it affects bed adhesion. Try adjusting the Z offset in the printer to move the print head down closer to the bed. Try 0.1mm at a time. I don't have an ABL so I don't know if you will be adding or subtracting. I think that is something you will have to revisit every time you clean the nozzle or change nozzle size.

Hey, it took us almost 5 days but you got it done. Congrats.

Microsoft may have included "MS 3D Builder" with your version of Windows. It's not real intuitive but if you have it you may as well play with it. One thing it can do is alter STL files. If you open that Call Letter file in 3D Builder you can then bring in a cube, change the size of the cube, plop it down on that base, and subtract it from the original model. The letters will be gone and then you just need to build the letters and do everything else. Much of 3D printing involves a learning curve. I had a head start being an old Gcode/CNC guy but I still started at the bottom. I figure I'm a quarter of the way up the curve now after 50 years of putzing with this stuff. It's not that I'm slow, it's just that the hill gets taller faster than I can climb.

OK. After looking at that model - when you remove the call letters you just have a two tiered base left. You might as well start in on a CAD program (Fusion 360 is popular) and simply design your own. You will eventually want to know some CAD anyway in order to produce your own designs rather than having a situation like this where you are kind of stuck with an STL that someone else made. BTW that isn't a good model. You can see here that the K and E and part of the "0" are floating above the base.