GregValiant

You can try changing the Z seam location and play with "Z seam relative". This is where the single wall thing jumps up and bites you. The nozzle only makes one pass on a feature and so the start is far from the end. Then it has to go back and start the next feature from the same end as the previous feature. I agree it is wasteful movement. Not much you can do about it though as a big part of the problem is the nature of that model. As far as the stringing across the holes goes, what are your retraction settings? I can see where PETG would be a problem but printing with PLA should not. Here is the problem. The print head must move from island to island. There are a lot of layers that look similar. It looks like every 150 layers there are only 2 that are not a bunch of islands.

There isn't anything you can do short of changing the model. Each layer has either 9 or 16 separate "islands" that are being printed. The nozzle must move from one island to the next and that's all that travel you are seeing in the preview. It looks like it's spending more time traveling than it is printing. Those are some thin walls as well. Even dropping down to a 0.2 nozzle it barely wants to slice.

It's apples and oranges. Cura has a lot of speed settings. A user can also change the acceleration and jerk settings that affect print time. If the gcode you printed was sliced with an Ender 3 or 3 Pro as the active printer in Cura then you should be OK but generally - it's a bad idea to print someone else's gcode. You just never know unless you go through at least the start gcode line-by-line. All-in-all I've found Cura print time calculation to be pretty accurate. If that little print of yours took hours I'd be a bit concerned. I print TPU at 10mm/sec and PLA at 75mm/sec so for me the material makes a big difference as well.

Kind of. You can print "Infill before walls" and also "Outer wall before inner wall". I don't print much ABS but when I do I take the printer into the garage (toxic fumes) and throw a garbage bag over the top. That keeps the bed heat above the print. I adjust the heat of my enclosure by peeking inside every once in a while. I have my peek time finely calibrated.

It looks like a 10 minute print to me. Within the gcode it's calling it 9.05 minutes (543 seconds). When you open the gcode file in Cura does it look to be the correct size? Here it is on my 230 x 230 Ender 3 Pro bed. Did you scale the model in Cura? If it was drawn in inches then the scale would be 2540%. If it was drawn in feet or centimeters or meters then the scale would be different.

The Lego Beam Test 3mf file has an Outer Wall Inset of 0.3. I think that coupled with the .3 line width is what is hiding the outer wall. You can see a little bit of outer wall in the gear but essentially, the outer wall is there but it's line-to-line with the outermost inner wall. I hope that makes sense. One of the Ultimaker Engineering profiles uses a .35 line width and a .4 nozzle. I seem to recall that is for higher accuracy. If I need to go smaller than .35 then I move to a smaller nozzle. There is a point where the flow through the nozzle falls off to "not enough" and affects the prints whether we can see it in the preview or not. I've tried to show the effect of the Outer Wall Inset here in your last image. You can see that the outer + inner is about equal to one of the skin extrusions.

With that model loaded and set up for a slice use the "File | Save Project" command and post the 3mf file here. Something is going on at the root of the gear teeth at what looks to be the 9:00 position also.

When I opened the file I got the "Not Watertight" warning. I uploaded the file to https://formware.co/OnlineStlRepair Here is the report from the STL repair site: --> 0 Naked edges (?) --> 0 Planar holes (?) --> 0 Non-planar holes (?) --> 0 Non-manifold edges (?) --> 11108 Inverted faces (?) --> 2 Degenerate faces (?) --> 0 Duplicate faces (?) --> 0 Disjoint shells (?) -> Repairing: 100.00% ----- Repair completed in 15324ms ------ -> Vertex count changed from 35183 to 38579 (+3396) -> Triangle count changed from 70364 to 78876 (+8512) I'm not sure how you got that view showing holes. When I open the STL in Cura 4.12.1 there are no holes at all. Same with MS 3D Builder and PrusaSlicer - no holes. These screenshots are of the un-repaired model. Here is my prepare screen in Cura Here it is in PrusaSlicer Either your conversion to STL was wonky or your modeling operation was. The X-ray view in Cura doesn't show any holes or internal artifacts.

Under Mesh Fixes see if "Remove all Holes" is checked. It has it's uses but it's for very specific cases so you need it unchecked for that model. While you're there make sure "Make Overhangs Printable" is also unchecked or you will lose the horizontal hole as well.

"edit the gcode"

Hello @ahoeben - I believe it's #11047. The poster is trying to fool Spiralize and use his support structure as part of his model. The travel lines seem to be generated as the support is built up. I've not been able to figure out a way to fool it myself. I usually slice a base in normal mode and then slice the upper model in spiralize and marry the two files together at a convenient layer.

Cura currently requires OpenGL 4.1 to use the full fancy preview. If you just have 2D flat lines instead of 3D tubes in the preview then you are in Compatibility mode. You might be able to change it using the Preferences | Viewport Behavior | Force Compatibility Mode option. You might have to update your video drivers though. My laptop is beyond help and I'm stuck with the 2D version. In the 2D view - if you turn on the "Travels" option in the Linetypes dialog you should be able to pick out the Z seam location as your wipe travel moves should be in a vertical line. I use Ahoeben's GUI plugin for the interface so mine might look a bit different than yours.

It is a pretty much a totally new version. I think it is getting close to release. I did cheat on some of the settings (there are a lot of outer walls so speed at 35 helped. Support Layer Height at .4 (2X layer height) so it only goes down every other layer. Still at 30 hours though.

Use the "File | Save Project" command to create a 3mf project file and then post it here. Someone will take a look. Off the top of my head it may be "Fill Gaps Between Walls" is set to "Everywhere". See if setting it to "Nowhere" helps.

With your model selected in Cura - look to the lower left of the Prepare screen and you should see a circled (1) and a circled (2) indicating the extruders. Select (2). In this image I have disabled Extruder 1 AFTER bringing the model into Cura. So the model is now set to a disabled Extruder. The funky cross-hatch pattern on the part indicates it won't slice. Selecting the circled 2 on the left will set the model to extruder 2.

Thinking a bit more... It might look nice doing a color change at 142 and 146. The letters are only 4 layers tall at .2 layer height. A little definition might be in order (although you would have a different color stripe through the rest of the print).

Hello @UlrichC-DE and @maggiolo72, The new Cura version is called Arachne and the second beta is available in a post HERE. One of it's features is a variable line width and it handles narrow letters like those better than 4.12.1 (or earlier versions). The first image below is your project file opened in Arachne Beta II. I did make some tweaks to some speed settings and also changed to normal support so take a close look at the settings. It is sliced with a .4 nozzle and .35 line width with Print Thin Walls enabled. If it works for you I believe the Cura team is looking for feedback over on Github. Actually, even if it doesn't work for you they would probably want the feedback. One of the problems with the fine lettering on that model is that the STL is of a pretty low resolution. In the "Prepare" view in Cura take a look at the faceting of the holes. The fewer the number of facets, the lower the resolution of the file. That makes letters like O, G, D, etc. tougher to slice. The word "OFF" is so small that although it sliced OK it might not look to good in print. This is with 4.12.1...

Since you brought up an old saying... If I somehow did hit the nail on the head then it is a clear case of "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while."

@Torgeir is good with these. Maybe he can make suggestions.

Yes, the models can be edited. If you have the CAD model then that would be the best. An STL can be edited in software like MS 3D Builder. Without actually seeing the model I can't tell much. Sometimes you can sink a model into the build plate in Cura leaving just the part you want to print. Then bring it back up and put a support blocker over the top part and just print the bottom. If you put a couple of matching 2.2mm holes in each part you can glue in pieces of filament to use as locating pins to align the parts when you assemble them.

It is the Z seam that marks where the outer wall extrusion starts and ends. You can move it, you can try to hide it, but there is always a Z seam. If your graphics card is up to it then the Z seam is a white line down the preview. To the right of the settings search box is the settings visibility control. Click on it and set visibility to "All". At the bottom of the "Wall" settings you will see Z seam alignment. Try User Specified and then pick a location that is a corner of the boat's transom and then chose Smart Hiding. Set the Outer Wall Wipe Distance to .1. For round objects I find it best to leave it in a line rather than using random which leaves (what looks like) little blobs all over.

I looked at the video before I made my previous post. Videos are interesting but don't give any real information. That comes from project files and gcode. With only the video all I can say is "Yep. That's how it looks ".

Hi Torgeir. I'm starting to wonder if they loaded the wrong firmware onto that mainboard. Something like that would cause the problem. If it was a bad Z driver it would be more random rather than always happening right after the purge lines like it does. My current theory is that it's a mainboard problem though because you are right...we've pretty much beat everything else to death.

If the vanes were 2.4mm thick then you could have 3 walls up one side and 3 down the other. I think you have it in mind that a wall means the whole vane...it does not. A single wall would loop around the entire periphery and so there would be a wall up one side of a vane and then down the other. The thickness of a vane needs to be divisible by an even number - not an odd number like 5. Arachne can do it but previous versions of Cura do not. If you were to make the wall width 1.2 (3 walls) in Arachne the vanes would look the same as with 5 but the center post might not be solid.

Project files can tell a lot about what's going on, but unfortunately, nothing about what a person is really trying to do. As far as "What's going on"... The vanes aren't all the same size. In particular - the one at 12:00 is tapered from 2.01 at the tip to 2.16 at the root. Cura notices that. Here is a screenshot with the walls at 1.2mm (I changed the infill to grid also). You can see the gap in the upper vane extends from the root to the tip but the other vanes only have a bit of space. That is the inconsistent thickness having an effect. Because the vanes are essentially 2mm wide and your line width is .4 they need 5 stripes to fill in. So Cura will put 2 loops all around giving it 2 walls on each side and then use skin for the center gap that is left over. That's where things really slow down. The new Cura called Arachne would likely do a better job with your settings. Below I have infill at 0% and 2 walls and "Fill gaps between walls" is turned off. I put a blocker in the center configured to add more walls for the center post. That's what is in the 3mf file and you can delete the blocker if you want. If it is grouped with the model then CNTRL+left click will select it. GV_InfillTroubleshooting.3mf