GregValiant

Moderator @gr5 put together this VIDEO that pretty much covers build plate adhesion. You might want to make some popcorn as it is a tad long, but he covers a lot of material and it's good general knowledge for any printer.

You can use the Cura Pause At Height but it's a little clumsy. It is an option if your printer doesn't have M0 enabled in the firmware. If there are Z-Hops enabled in a file then you must use "by layer" as zhops will confuse the "by height" option. Remember that the layer number refers to the layer in the gcode, not the Cura preview. Look at the preview, subtract 1 from the layer number, add that to the Pause at Height box. In the dialog for Pause At Height are two boxes you can add some Gcode to. In "Gcode before Pause" add M300. That's the beep and if you are sure it doesn't work then leave it out. In the "Gcode after pause" put G4 S300. G4 is a "delay" rather than a pause and it is fixed length ("S" is in seconds and you can adjust it to whatever you want). There is no command to stop the dwell before the time is up. When the time is up the printer will resume even if you want it to wait longer. So the example "G4 S300" will dwell for 5 minutes and at the end of that time the printer will start by itself.

The gcode that Cura comes up with is pretty generic at the start. Heat the bed, heat the hot end, Auto-Home, start printing. If there is something that Xvico put into the startup gcode, or into their firmware, then they need to explain it to you. I can't make any promises but if you post the gcode file I can take a look. If you received a sample file on the SD card that came with the printer - does the sample work OK?

Thank you @ahoeben. With all the straight lines it never occurred to me that ArcWelder might be active.

A different part makes it like comparing apples and oranges. Without that exact part there isn't any way to tell what's going on.

A Cura project file has your printer, the model, and your settings. It's good for troubleshooting and to save what you are doing.

If the part is not proprietary can you post a 3mf project file? Go to "File | Save Project" to create the file and then post it here.

That's a strange one. What printer is that? That image looks like the STL in Cura that @Smithy asked for. I think another step would be in order. Clear the build plate in Cura. Use the File/Open command and open that gcode file in Cura. The preview you see is a true and accurate representation of how the gcode is telling the printer to move and print. If you see the error in that preview then the gcode was created wrong. If the preview looks good then something probably slipped in your printer. The failure looks like a rotation, or double print either of which would be really odd. Is there any chance that the build surface slipped? Do you have a cat living with you?

Pick one of the Anycubic machines that is the closest match to your machine in "Settings / Printer / Add Printer". Select "Add a non-networked printer" and scroll down to the Anycubic machines. The i3 Mega (EDIT per ZDOG90210: not the "X" model) seems like a good choice. On the right side of that dialog you can change the Printer Name to whatever you prefer then select "Add". The next dialog contains the machine settings. You have a different size build plate than the Mega X so you need to change the numbers to X(width) = 245, Y(depth) = 245, Z(height) = 260. Make sure "Origin at Center" is NOT checked. IF your build plate actually measures 245 x 245 you may want to enter a smaller number in Cura so there is a safety border around the build surface. That will insure that prints are always on the build surface and not hanging off the edge. If that is the case then I would enter 240 x 240 x 260 in Cura then on the printer select Auto-Home. Using the controls on the LCD move the print head to a point 2.5mm in from the left edge of the build surface and 2.5mm in from the front edge of the build surface at a Z = 0. On the LCD select "set home offset" and then "save settings". The build plate in Cura will be synced to your real build plate on the printer. The Anycubic site has Cura 4.2.1 for download. I looked at it but it doesn't have a specific definition file for your printer.

When Creality released the 4.2.x boards there was a conflict on the boards between commands that send messages to the the LCD (M0, M1 and M117) and the LCD itself. Because the TFT style LCD doesn't understand the "message" part of the command, the command is simply ignored. In short - the normal failure is that the print should not have paused. If you look through the gcode you will see the M0 followed by the resumption of the print. There should be no "dive" in the Z. (Your only PauseAtHeight setting I would question is your standby temp of 25°. I typically don't allow the hot end to cool but I'm also generally close to the printer to catch the pause.) I think you need to look at what Octoprint is doing with the M0 command. The normal function of M0 is "unconditional stop" and a message "Click to Resume" is sent to the LCD indicating that a button click will get the printer going again. If you don't see "Click to Resume" then maybe you have the issue described above. A way to check is to send an "M117 BLAH BLAH" to the printer and see if the message appears on the LCD. If it doesn't, then you have the glitch and maybe Octoprint is passing it's own M0 command routine to the printer which might include a homing move.

I'm printing the benchy now and it looks fine. So the mess we see is your printer's fault since the gcode is fine. It looks like you are over-extruding by a lot. There is so much over-extrusion that it may be hiding other problems but you need to get that sorted out first. Your printing temperature is fine at 200 and 60 for the bed. Your retraction distance at 6.5 should be keeping down the stringing but your benchy has quite a bit. I'd start by re-calibrating the E-steps but you need to look at the trolley wheels and belts as well. Something (maybe more than one something) has gone out of adjustment and you need to get it back. What mainboard are you running? I changed mine to a 1.1.5 silent board but I didn't notice any difference in print quality when I made the switch. 3 weeks later it burned the E-driver chip and my extrusion was all over the place. Creality finally sent a replacement board. EDIT: This is printed from the Gcode you posted, that uses your settings, and printed on my Ender 3 Pro. It looks like a 3DBenchy. I believe that your printer has gotten funky and needs some tuning.

I'll need that gcode. I'll try printing it on my Ender 3 Pro. Did you use File/Save Project or did you use File/Export. Both generate a 3mf but a project file has your settings with it and a 3mf model file is just the part.

What printer? What version of Cura? What operating system? Are you printing from the SD, USB, Octoprint? With the benchy loaded in Cura use "File | Save Project" and post the 3mf file here. Post that gcode file of the benchy as well.

It depends on the smell and where it's coming from. A new machine might give off some odors the first couple of times it is used. Most PLA's don't have much of an odor but white PLA does. The smell of burning PVC insulation is very acrid and is a BAD THING. If that is the smell then shut it down and open up the Mainboard compartment and check all the screw-type connectors for any discoloration. On the Creality machines the main 24volt power line connector can develop a "high resistance" condition causing it to burn. The main power supply can also develop problems. Just using your nose to find the source of the odor can help. If it is coming from the mainboard or power supply areas it can be a serious problem and cannot be ignored.

If the model is 330 x 330 on the build plate in Cura then that is the size it will slice. To my knowledge there is no further scaling of a model within Cura to generate the gcode. Do you happen to be using Octoprint? Do you have a post-processing plugin active? If you open the gcode file with a text editor, at the beginning of the file Cura inserts comments on the model size plus the room taken up by a skirt/brim/raft. If you subtract MinX from MaxX and MinY from MaxY you will get the amount of floor space that the model takes up. This is from a 25 x 25 cube sliced with no skirt or brim: ;MINX:102.7 ;MINY:102.7 ;MINZ:0.2 ;MAXX:127.3 ;MAXY:127.3 ;MAXZ:25 Because there is no skirt or brim: MaxX - MinX + LineWidth = ModelSize so 127.3 - 102.7 = 24.6 + .4 line width = 25. If it was sliced with a 10mm brim the math would come out to 45. Post-processing a Gcode file to mirror it is pretty easy, but scaling a gcode file is not.

AHoeben responded to my feature request over on GitHub. It turns out that I'm behind the times again. The Mesh Tools plugin can be found in the MarketPlace. When it loads - the tools become available on the right click menu. There is also a sub-menu added to Extensions so it's Extensions | Mesh Tools | Mesh Tool Settings... and then choose your favorite units for your imported models. Most units are there but he left out Cubits. Noah would be in some trouble especially since there doesn't appear to be a utility to convert PencilCad from papyrus to STL.

This is "My Rant" on calibrating flow. I came up with it with help from a PhD friend who I give full credit to below. What is flow? Most people consider it to be volume over time. It might be gallons/hr, liters/min, or in the case of 3D printing "mm³/sec". It has nothing to do with steps/mm and it certainly has nothing to do with how thick a wall is. That's the first thing. Cura knows the diameter of the filament (which you should have measured with a decent caliper and entered into the program) and so it knows the volume of a length of that filament. Cura knows the height and (theoretical) width of an extrusion and so it knows the volume of the length of that extrusion (as the volume of a perfectly rectangular solid which it is not). Due to manufacturing variations and the different components involved, there are variations in the printers regarding how many steps the motor-driver sends to deliver a precise amount of filament. So you calibrate the E-Steps to tell the printer: the exact number of steps to send to the E-motor to push an exact amount of filament. So where are we at this point? Lets see - Cura knows the volume of the extrusion and it knows the length of filament required to provide that volume and enters that length on a line in a Gcode file. The printer sees that line and knows the number of steps to send to the E-motor to provide that length of filament. By Jove, I do believe we are calibrated! Volume In = Volume Out at a 1:1 ratio. As I said - it's a misnomer (time isn't involved) but let's call that 100% Flow. Perfect. Now that we have Cura and the printer in PERFECT sync how can I improve on that? Oh, I know, I'll print a single wall cube and measure the width of the wall. Then I'll adjust my PERFECT calibration to some random number I get by comparing the "thickness of an extruded wall" to my "Line width" (even though the Line Width is nothing more than the index distance between two adjacent lines of extrusion and has nothing to do with volume, "flow", or nozzle diameter). Really? And I'm going to make that adjustment even though I know that in real life one side of an extrusion is almost always constrained by a wall of a previous extrusion that was itself unconstrained on that side? Really? Not me. When my E-steps are calibrated and in Cura I have my exact filament diameter entered in "Manage Printers | Machine Settings | Extruder 1 | Nozzle Settings | Compatible Filament Diameter" I am done. During a print, if I see I'm running a little short on material I will kick up the Flow % to tune the print on the fly. I know that when printing Silky PLA I get better results if I kick the flow up to 105% (because I don't bother to fine tune the filament diameter in Cura for every roll) but for 99% of the stuff, I'm at 100% Flow where I know that Volume In = Volume Out at a 1:1 ratio because I calibrated it to be so. Calibrate the E-steps and you are done. After that, LOOK at the print and read what you see and then maybe make an adjustment. It shouldn't have to be by very much, but sometimes it needs to be done. Thank you for reading my Sunday morning rant. Next week I'll cover "bed leveling" which never involves the use of a level. Regards, GregValiant with the help of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew

When you print small parts like that it always boils down to layer adhesion. No matter how you do the support, if you print the part vertical then the support may be stronger than the part (it only has a single wall) and it will be really tough to get off without breaking the part. I'd use a Dremel tool with a narrow cut-off wheel. The 3mf has a vertical part and a horizontal part. The Minimum Support Area and the XY Distance settings are the key. EDIT: It's a 7 minute print so I did print the 3mf. On the horizontal part I tried to get fancy and allow the support in the hole. Bad idea, I should have blocked it all. The vertical part is OK. I whittled off the support with an Exacto knife. On the breakage test the horizontal part did much better. If you aren't going to beat it up the vertical part would probably be fine. The finish on the horizontal part was better but in fairness, the old white PLA I used was not good and some of the cosmetic stuff on the vertical part can probably be blamed on the filament. The 3mf has been changed to block all support in the hole of the horizontal part. GVFilament_Plug.3mf

Every system I've come up with to get around the scaling problem has had their pluses and minuses. I'd have a large assembly drawn in metric and then open a catalog and have to model a purchase component that was drawn in Inches. So I'd usually draw it in inches so I wouldn't have to sit with a calculator in my lap and when it was done I'd scale it by 25.4 so it would fit into the assembly. Cura's "Scale Extremely Small Models" default is 10000%. I think it would be handier if the default was 2540% or if there was a toggle so it could be made 2540%. Maybe I'll put in a feature request over on GitHub. EDIT...I put in the request.

I have a really good rant regarding the use of any type of wall model to calibrate flow. I'll spare you and leave it for later. I'm not exactly sure how spiralize determines the "incremental" Z adjustment around a circle or curve but for a cube it adjusts at each corner as that is all that is possible since there are only 4 lines of gcode per layer. There is no "shuffle" in the XY. As you can see in the snippet below, each move around the square has the same XY as the layer below. ;LAYER:6 ;TYPE:WALL-OUTER ;MESH:Ref Block.stl G1 X102.7 Y127.3 Z1.45 E240.93544 G1 X102.7 Y102.7 Z1.5 E241.78243 G1 X127.3 Y102.7 Z1.55 E242.62942 G1 X127.3 Y127.3 Z1.6 E243.47641 ;LAYER:7 ;TYPE:WALL-OUTER ;MESH:Ref Block.stl G1 X102.7 Y127.3 Z1.65 E244.3234 G1 X102.7 Y102.7 Z1.7 E245.1704 G1 X127.3 Y102.7 Z1.75 E246.01739 G1 X127.3 Y127.3 Z1.8 E246.86438 Here is a layer near the top ;LAYER:110 ;TYPE:WALL-OUTER ;MESH:Ref Block.stl G1 X102.7 Y127.3 Z22.25 E616.08031 G1 X102.7 Y102.7 Z22.3 E616.9273 G1 X127.3 Y102.7 Z22.35 E617.77429 G1 X127.3 Y127.3 Z22.4 E618.62129 ;LAYER:111 So check your gcode file. It should be similar to the snippets above. You may have loose belts or the trolley wheels need an adjustment.

I don't believe so. You can use an mouse ear instead of a brim though. There is a plugin in the Marketplace called "TabAntiWarping" or you can use a support blocker configured to print "As Part". Slide it under the knife point and make it "Layer Height" thick and as wide and long as you need it.

If you designed the part in inches then select the model and set the scale to 2540%. You could scale the model up in the cad software just so you could export it but I've always found that to be an unnecessary step. It really doesn't matter so long as you know the conversion factor whether it's from decimal feet to millimeters or whatever.

The horses legs and the lower text are so narrow that slicing is problematic. Here is Cura 4.10 using the project file. I changed the line width to .35 and enabled Print Thin Lines. It is better but there are still discontinuities. Here is what I got with PrusaSlicer with Detect Thin Walls enabled and all line widths at .35. This looks much like the 4.10 preview as the legs and lower lettering are incomplete. This is with Cura Arachne (which I think is the best slicer choice). This is with a .3 nozzle at .28 line width. I thought it looked pretty good. Your current setup has horizontal expansion at -.02. That is part of the problem as the legs and lower letters get even thinner. Using Arachne with .2 nozzle and .2 line width and horizontal expansion at +.01 finally looks very acceptable in Preview and the print time isn't too bad at 3hr15min. I know it has doubled the print time but fine lettering (and horses legs) are tough to get right.

@Torgeir, what do you think?

What printer is that?