GregValiant

I saw your post over on Reddit and I'm starting to think that you do have an Origin At Center machine. That website that Illusi linked has these lines in that Gcode snippet: G1 X-90 Y-73 E24 F2000 ; Extrude a line of filament across the front edge of the bedG1 X-100 Y-73 F180 ; Wait for ooze So there are negative X and Y moves and so the Origin at Center box in Cura should be checked.

It appears that the printer uses MakerBot firmware. I would start with Makerbot and see if they would offer any support. One of the lines in your snippet tells the machine to move to a Y of negative 60. Typically negative numbers in the X or Y indicates that "Origin At Center" should be checked. It really depends on where the Home Offset 0,0,0 is and that isn't mentioned (but those numbers are loaded with the M132 line). Does the print head move when you use the LCD controls?

I know that the USB Printing plugin works (as good as it can) with my Ender 3 Pro. There are a couple of things you can check. USB Printing must be installed in the Cura MarketPlace. You must have a fully functional USB cable (some are just for charging phones with no data capability). You must have the correct USB-Serial drivers installed on the USB port of the computer. Some drivers only install to a specific USB port so you can only plug in to that one. Others are enabled and notice when you plug the printer in and will adjust to any USB port. Start with the printer off and Cura closed. Plug the printer in to the computer and then start Cura. Cura should "notice" the printer. The "Monitor" screen should populate with a couple of controls. After that happens you can use the arrow on the side of the slice button to change to "Print Via USB". Printing via the SD card is much preferred. As @Smithy says, USB Printing has not been updated in years and isn't likely to be updated any time soon. Octoprint/RaspPI are an option if you really need remote printing.

@3dprntz - If you paste the snippet below into a text file and save it as a *.gcode then you can check a couple of things when you print the file. The G2 command is a CW circle of radius 50 followed by the M0 which is "Unconditional Stop" (used by Cura for many Marlin machines in Pause At Height) and which should require a button click to continue. Upon continuing the G3 command is a CCW circle of radius 50. If the printer moves in a circle, pauses, and moves in a circle then G2/G3 and M0 are enabled. If that isn't the movement pattern then as @ahoeben says, the problem is the lack of support for those commands in your firmware. G28 G0 F600 Z5 G0 F7200 X10 Y75 G2 F3600 I50 J0 M0 G3 F3600 I50 J0 G28 X Y

Post one of your gcode files that you made and that doesn't work. There is supposed to be a routine that runs at the beginning to initialize all the axes. If it isn't there then it may be an easy fix.

It's four posts up and in about the center.

Under "Special Modes" is a setting called "Mold". It makes a negative of the part (an "inverse") that can be used (among other things) to pour another material into to make the "real" part. Just above all the Cura settings is a box for "Settings Search". Just to the right of that is a dropdown for setting visibility. Scroll down the visibility options and select "All". Go through and make sure there are no other surprises. The only thing you should have checked in Mesh Fixes is maybe Union Overlapping Volumes. Nothing should be checked in Special Modes, and nothing should be checked in Experimental. All of those are Special Use settings. When you do need them for a project they are handy, but then you have to remember to turn them off or odd things can happen to your next project. FYI there are two types of *.3mf files. One type contains just a model. The other type is a Cura Project file and contains: the printer, all the Cura settings, and the model. When you or your friend find a Cura setup that works you can choose "File | Save Project" and create a Cura project .3mf file and share that. Sharing the gcode is fine, but passing project files back and forth gives a different view of what is actually going on.

When you say inverted - it's printing upside down? or is it printing a symmetrical opposite? If it's an opposite then which axis is it being mirrored about? Those photos are of 2 different parts so they don't seem to be real helpful.

Thanks @tinkergnome. I forgot about the feeders. Even in this day and age (where everything is a POS) a failure rate of 100% is truly impressive.

I don't understand. You want to print over the USB or you want to send files to the SD card (very slow) and then print from the SD? It has a USB port, just plug it into your computer with a data capable USB cord.

I refuse to allow myself to grab anymore Creality firmware. Until I've gone to school and figured out the basics for myself I'll let it go. My printer works fine. If you get the G4 workaround to work and you can pause and change colors then I suggest that before jumping in and changing the firmware, you allow yourself to soak up a greater knowledge of: Cura (or Prusaslicer, IdeaMaker, or whatever), your choice of design software, and gcode. Learning to print and getting consistently good results is the end prize. There are a lot of horror stories over on Reddit put up by people who followed someone else's advice and changed the firmware without a good idea of what they were doing. I have no intention of adding myself to that list.

Post the whole gcode file here. I'll be back later and take a look. The printers don't do anything without being told, but I don't see anything in what you posted to account for the big retraction. May I assume that is a single extruder machine?

@stolowma it sounds like a plan. Thank you @ahoeben for the nice lead-in to this weeks "Greg's Sunday Rant". I never would have expected Creality would butcher it like that. Steal it yes, butcher it no. It is so dumb that I find it mind boggling. Mechanically they make decent machines. Being total bottom-end printers - some of the components are very poor (the 4 fans lead the list followed closely by the hot end) but once adjusted and trued up they print quite well. Failure rate on the fans is high and they all need to be replaced in a month or two. The hot end will become unusable shortly after that. I know they try to hit a price point but for the (mostly) young target-market (many of whom seem to have no mechanical ability) it must be very disheartening. On a lark, I bought a 32 bit replacement board for my Ender 3 Pro. I have powered it up via the USB and sent commands to it so I could view the responses. From what I can easily check - it has the same lack of support for any command that sends a message to the display. I found that G4 is enabled but G2/G3, M0/M1 and M117 are not. Without doing the full install into the printer I can't really check any further. Right now I consider it one step above useless. Any competent machine designer knows that everything rests on the controls, and Creality has made a decision to emasculate their controls. Amazing. The 8 bit board currently in my printer works fine and I have no intention of actually installing the 4.2.7 board until I get around to taking Firmware 101 so I can address all the shortcomings. My plan is to adjust "real" Marlin into what I currently have on my 8 bit board plus (hopefully) enable G60 and G61. Maybe by Christmas I'll have "GregWare v1" ready to install. Maybe it will even work! As a Windows user my personal Rule #2 is "Never upgrade an operating system". There is always something that doesn't get the memo and leaves a computer at least crippled and at the worst, dead. In this case I won't mind violating the rule since I will have a working board to fall back on. I can't imagine that HP, Dell, Sony, Asus, etc., would sell a computer that immediately needed a new operating system and maybe even a different mainboard. Ridiculous. That's the end of todays Rant. Time for another cup of coffee.

There is no need for M82 in your start or end gcode because Cura always adds it. If you are in relative mode the M83 will be added after the start gcode. The M82's might be redundant, but it doesn't hurt anything. I would say the same applies to the M104, M140, and M107. You don't need them in your end gcode as Cura is going to add them. It is a way for Cura to make sure certain things happen without the need to slow the whole process by parsing everybody's start and end gcode for particular lines. In the case of M84 - many people prefer M84 X Y E so that the Z doesn't drift down and the still-hot nozzle hit the print. What I do like to add to my start and end gcode is M221 S100 and M220 S100. If I abort a print that I happened to manually tune, the restart will reset the feed and flow rates. If a print finishes that I happened to tune while it was running, it will reset at the end. It might seem like belts and suspenders, but it works for me. The line "G1 F3600 E3346.6678" is likely the last retraction in the file. If you look above that line for the next E value, you should see that the difference between the two E values is your retract distance.

We all start someplace. There is a lot to learn. At the same time the printers are both extremely simple, and extremely complex. Slicing software, Gcode commands, Firmware, and the mechanical side of the printer are separate lessons in the course. The amount of science that takes place in that little spot below the nozzle is amazing. In the Cura MarketPlace are two tools you will want to load. One is the "Mesh Tools". They add commands to both the main menu bar and to the right click menu. One of those tools is "Check Mesh" and it will report on whether the part is "Water Tight" or has open seams (not water tight). The other is "Printer Settings". Some of those only affect settings in Cura but some do affect the gcode that Cura will output. That is required for 2-in-1-out extruders. The image below is the model opened in 3D Builder. You can see that the intersection results in the remaining tube coming to a feather edge point. Modeling errors aside, there is no way to print the feather edge once the width falls below "Line Width" in Cura then the area can't be sliced. A smaller nozzle would do better, but the width of that feather edge approaches zero. This is because it appears you subtracted a cylinder of the same size from the main part and went to the main part centerline with it. Regarding CAD programs, I have heard some good things about Fusion 360 (but I'm biased as I use an old version of AutoDesk Mechanical Desktop). Moderator @gr5 and some others here know more about free CAD programs like Blender and maybe he'll comment on that. They all have a learning curve. You just have to keep after it. Sometimes it will be necessary to walk away for a few hours and come back with a fresh perspective. Sometimes a 32oz ball peen hammer is in order.

As I recall, that is a 2 in 1 out extruder. Within the "Printer Settings" (a plugin that is loaded from the MarketPlace) are the settings for "Extruders Share Heater" and "Extruders Share Nozzle". I believe they have to be checked or the hot end will use the standby temperature when you switch tools. Another problem can be the retraction and prime distances for tool switches. I think those settings are in Dual Extrusion section.

I have the same setup but my E3Pro is about 18 months old and has the 1.1.5 board. M0 works as it should. The new Creality firmware seems to be missing quite a bit of the commands that it supported when it was still Marlin. M0, M1, M117 are no longer supported and now a poster here says that his Ender 6 does not support G4 (which was the main workaround for pausing). The first thing to do I think is to make up your own little gcode file. Use any text editor. This is just to test if M0, G4, and M117 work. You can paste it into a new text file and save it as *.gcode and then print it. G28 ;Auto Home all axes. M0 ;Unconditional stop which is supposed to leave a message on the LCD "Click to resume". G28 ;Auto Home G4 S30 ;Dwell (pause) for 30 seconds. If it works you cannot manually restart and must wait for the full 30 seconds. M300 ;Loud annoying beep G28 ;Auto Home M117 All Done ;Leave a message on the LCD screen If the G4 command works, you can enter it in the Pause At Height "gcode after pause" box as G4 S300. That will stop the printer for 5 minutes at the end of which time it will take off and go back to work. I don't bother with the Automatic retraction and prime that Pause At Height provides. When my printer pauses I yank out the filament by hand and then feed the next color in. Slow constant hand feeding will purge the previous color. Changing from any color to white takes a bit. When that is done I push a little more and then pull back about 3mm of filament. That hand retraction keeps a blob from marring the print at the restart point. Then it's ready for me to grab the booger with the tweezers and hit the button to resume.

Maybe @gr5 can help. I'm at a disadvantage as this old laptop doesn't support OpenGL 4.1 and so I'm in compatibility mode for the graphics. If you make a custom material it can be identical in all respects to your other material but you can set it to a different color for Cura to present. I think it only applies to the Prepare screen though. You might still have the colors in the preview reflect the extrusion type (OuterWall, InnerWall, Infill, Support Helpers).

I forgot about the clip area for the glass. The Ender 3 Pro is the same definition but does not have the clip area. Come to think of it...I don't think it matters since the clip area is hard coded into the definition and those areas are outside your 200 x 200 build plate.

You may not have gone wrong at all. Some more explanation of what you are trying to achieve would be good. The first question is do you have a multi-extruder printer?

As AHoeben says you can add a Custom FFF printer. An option would be to add a different Creality printer and change the build size in the Machine Settings. Creality printers use their own firmware that is a version of Marlin. Most other settings (accel, jerk, max feedrates, etc) are common throughout their line of printers. If the 200B has auto bed leveling it would need to be accounted for in the StartUp G-Code. If you were to add an Ender 3 and rename it, and then change the build size to 200x200x200 you should have a workable starting place. You can always add a Custom FFF as an option.

I'm putting sliding barn doors in the archway that leads to our bedroom (yes, it's true...I'm married) and they require a 19 x 19 slot in the bottom edges of the doors for a hidden roller guide. Typically I would have designed it, gone out and picked up the supplies, and then spent an hour or so fabricating it. I was never absolutely sure that I'd gotten the center of the guide to coincide with the centerline of the router. This took about 1 1/2 hrs to print. It would have taken MUCH longer to go to the store, buy the supplies, and cut, drill, glue and screw to get it together. The monetary savings was significant as well. For those of you who don't recognize it, it's on the plunger base for my 50 year old Porter Cable router. I did refine the design for the regular base as the assembly is much lighter (for an old man to hold up while he works). It worked as planned and the slot is indeed 19 x 19 and is centered in the doors.

You're too quick @Torgeir. I was busy trying to repair the model but didn't have any luck. It isn't watertight and there are some other errors. The model really needs to be fixed in the CAD software. BTW, what software did you use for the design?

Hello. The Search and Replace plugin will accept newline characters in the "Replace" box. If you were to have "Initial Fan Speed" at 15% and the regular fan speed at 16% (something different) then within the search and replace dialog: Search for: M106 S38.3 Replace: M106 S255\nG4 S2\nM106 S38.3 That results in this: ;LAYER:0 M106 S38.3 ;initial fan at 15% being changed to this: ;LAYER:0 M106 S255 ;fan to 100% G4 S2 ;Dwell for 2 seconds M106 S38.3 ;Fan to 15% Bear in mind that every occurrence of M106 S38.3 in the file will be changed, not just the first one. At any rate maybe there is something you can do with that.

I just saw this post. Sorry. Did you get this straightened out? If you adjust the Settings Visibility to "All" you should see the all the retraction adjustments in the Travel settings. Additionally, if you have the Printer Settings loaded from the Marketplace make sure "firmware retraction" is turned off.